Moving Back In

You have to know when you take a year-long leave from your regular life that things won't have just gone into suspended animation in your absence. I did know that, but seeing it is different. Seeing the weeds that come up to my waist and the accumulated junk from a lengthy garbage strike, and seeing broken bits and pieces and holes here and there, seeing nothing where I expected something, and plenty where I didn't.
Dealing with all the minutia of returning to home and work after a year has been more physical than I would have imagined. More box lifting, more standing and bending to sort. Having barely walked the length of myself in Texas for the last few blistering hot months, it is liberating and limiting to spend so much time on my feet. I've got to get better at it - and quick!
So, instead of panicking, instead of feeling like everything and everyone should be the same, I have to let go and recognize that I've changed and that it's entirely natural that everything and everyone around me would have continued their earthly revolutions as well. This change will soon be the new normal, so I'm going to move back in and find my place, one element at a time, and be grateful for the journey.

Guest Blog by my Twin - Tara

On The Bus Today

Loud
Non-stop-talking A-hole
Taking up all airwaves
Until
Wait
Competition appears
In the form of
Loud
Cell-phone-using baby-talker
One on my left
One on my right
Airwave A-holes in stereo
Someone call the noise police

Thanks Sis! Understand and appreciate the theme! Love the idea of guest blogging. Guess I need to do a little better at keeping up. The verbal embellishment I received of this little poem was also priceless. It's good to be back in my city, despite all the work involved.

The Heat is On, and Moving On

Instead of a frenzied week of preparation for moving back to Toronto, it's been more of a slow motion roller coaster - our air conditioning broke - and for a variety of reasons it won't be fixed before I leave Texas tomorrow. Texas in August with no A/C - I wouldn't wish it on a mortal enemy. And personally, I don't stay cool easily, I run a little hot even in winter. So, I'm taking it worse than most. I have been spending lots of time either at the frosty library, or submerged in water up to my neck. I can't remember if I mentioned the example of a can of fruit exploding in our cupboard on this blog, but that gives an indication of how hot it is inside the house.

In some ways, it's been good. I haven't had the energy to worry so much about my year finally being over, and having to leave my husband behind again. Instead, I have been more focused on channeling the memory of this kind of heat back into my writing on Tokyo, where I first experienced this degree of torpid temperature bludgeoning. I've also spent time saying good byes to the friends I've made here, ones that I wouldn't have expected, but who made my cultural exchange so much richer.

So, I'm moving again, but this time, back into a house we already own that's full of our belongings, so really, I'm just packing up clothes and books. Still, there's always too much, so I've got the scale out now. Airlines only accept medium sized suitcases these days and I'm capped at 50 lbs each - so big red will stay in the closet down here.

I am worried about having to set an alarm. I haven't done that more than 3 times this year, and only then to catch flights, not to get up for work. And I'm worried about the challenge of continuing to write with a very full time work schedule. I don't want the hundreds of pages I finished this year to be the end of it. But I'm excited about getting home. I love city life, walking everywhere, the constant external stimuli. Friends and family you share history and geography with. Being in this suburb, as much as it has been a learning experience, has also sometimes felt like a trap. There's only so far you can walk in this temperature without expiring. Maybe I'll have to work on those driving lessons some more.

John Hughes & Teenage Me

I haven't thought about John Hughes since my much younger brother and sister bought my twin and I that Brat Pack collection for Christmas a couple years ago. But there were movies in there that I have to admit defined us at the time, and music that provided the soundtrack to our daily dramas. Today there are RIP John Hughes blogs and tweets and quizzes galore, and in between writing 15 new pages, I've read a few of them.

In response to which Hughes character was I, it's probably a mix. I'm sure my exes and my husband would all see a troubling resemblance to Ally Sheedy's Allison in Breakfast Club, whereas I always identified with Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful and Sam in 16 Candles. And in dreamland, wished I could be as cool as Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I was lucky because high school was great. Sure it was huge and there were different groups and even conflict occasionally, but it wasn't intimidating. Usually it was pretty open and interesting. I was able to be an Air Cadet, a Yearbook Editor and a Cheerleading Captain. I could spend half my time with my nose in a book and the other half dancing up a storm. I could be geeky and cool and no one minded. It was Grade 6 that was fraught with daily peril from the cool kids. High school drama was all self-induced. John Hughes really captured that, and the time. And I loved hearing excerpts from his letters to his 'penpal' @abfdc on twitter. He was real.

Finished First Draft of Twin Memoir!!!

As of today - our joint memoir - first draft - is done. I won't go into a lot of detail right now. It still needs significant revision and rewriting, but what an unimaginably glorious thing to have completed it! I can honestly say it was no work at all. It took time, but it was pure pleasure. I think it was an essential ingredient to refreshing my interest in my longer solo project as well. A project which I am still revising.

The joint memoir was begun in earnest just this past March, and sharing the writing with my twin blister, Tara, made it go very quickly. It was the source of a lot of mutual nostalgia and hilarity and I am so happy we made time for it.

The Fruits of my Knitting Frenzy

These are the amateur but much appreciated results. (note the pattern is the same though size, colour, function altered - manly afghan for Poppy, feminine walker seat cover for Nanny) Managed to finish these during my two weeks in Newfoundland for the family reunion/65th wedding anniversary celebration. While others were dancing and whooping it up, I'd be in the corner knitting frantically to the music, to get my offerings wrapped up before the big reveal. NEXT UP: something for my beloved maternal grandmother who supervised and assisted with some of my joining stitches. Not that she couldn't knit whatever I come up with in a quarter of the time and 100% better!
I love the continuity my grandparents give me. As someone who moved almost every year until pretty recently, I'm often amazed that they all still live in the very houses that they did when I was born. You can't buy that kind of anchor. Poppy has written and published his memoirs for the family. I keep hoping my stitches won't unravel, but will hold firm.

Knitting with my Nannies in Newfoundland

My Nannies are my grandmothers. I have two, and one grandfather (Poppy) here in Newfoundland where I have come for two weeks. After a frenzied week of preparing for a clan gathering where we hosted approximately 300 guests at a hugely successful 65th wedding anniversary reunion, I am just now coming down from the high of family time, and getting enough sleep to be coherent. Cousins came from all over Canada and the US but now are trickling away in small groups every day. I'll be the last one left.

It's hard to be the last one left, as the mood shifts from fun and frivolity to nostalgia and guilt over not staying longer, even though you've been here the longest.

I don't know anyone with three grandparents left at my age. I was 30 before I lost my first one. They are the anchors for me and my family. I know in my mind it can't be, but in my heart, I still think they will live forever.

Knitting frantically during every spare moment has left my hands cramped, but provided more of that moving mediation that I have sought this year. There's less of a caloric burn, but it's still effective. I've finished knitting a small masculine throw/afghan for Poppy, to put over his lap when he's booting around on his scooter. He likes to get out, but with poor circulation, he gets cold. My project has taken me more time than it would have either of my Nannies, but he will know I did it. The flaws are not subtle - it is clearly my creation. But, he will also know how much of me, how many thoughts and memories I had time for as I clicked away on the 4.5 sized needles, cramming a month's worth of knitting into one short week.

Now, I'm stitching it together. It doesn't look as polished as I'd like, but I love the feel of the high quality European yarn, and the colours, blocks of shimmery gray with deep brown and blue make me happy. I'd like to wrap him in it and keep him safe forever.