Wish I'd Known

No big deal.
Just a literal walking dream come true.

When I was fifteen, my family moved to New Zealand for a short time. Fifteen is an interesting age to be uprooted and dropped into any new school and community, let alone one halfway around the world, but I signed on to the adventure willingly.

While I was there, I became a fan of an Australian TV show called Home and Away, which at that time starred actress Isla Fisher, and I thought Isla was the most beautiful name I’d ever heard. I’d dreamed of being a mother since I was a little girl; at fifteen, I day-dreamed that one day I’d have a little girl of my own named Isla.

Fifteen years ago today, my Isla was born.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wish I’d known at fifteen, what I wish for my daughter to know as she sets off on another year of growing up and growing into herself.

I wish I’d known that perfection is an illusion and striving for it is a fool’s game.

I wish I’d known that self-validation feels so, so much better than validation by anyone else, and particularly the validation of boys.

I wish I’d known that you can be compassionate and also have boundaries, and that each is strengthened by the other.

I wish I’d known that opinions, particularly of the unpopular variety, make a woman an inspiration, not an outcast.

I wish I’d known that it is okay to be angry and sad and to say so.

I wish I’d known I had an abundance of time and opportunity ahead of me, so I could relax a little.

And when I was fifteen, I wish I’d known that when you came into my life, my Isla, you’d be an answer to the question: What am I here for? I wish I’d known that mothering you would save me and give me purpose. I’ve been your mother imperfectly and I’ve carried you while carrying my self-doubt and I’ve battled my shadows while your tiny feet shadowed mine, and now I have both the incredible pleasure and the heart-shattering agony of watching you begin to take steps away from me, without my hand in yours.

It is wild to me that I’m the mother of a fifteen-year-old. It is wilder still that I get to be the mother of you in particular and bear witness as you build what I know will be a beautiful life. I would say that I wish I’d known it would be like this, but the truth is I’m happy for the delightful surprise of you. You’re kind of a big deal. You’re a dream come true.

Welcome Home

My home. Or the bank’s home, I guess, but they let me live here.

In early March 2020, I signed paperwork to purchase a home. It was a significant moment. I had owned a home before, but this is the first time I would own one on my own. In the early days after my divorce, living in my rental, trying to figure out what life might look like moving forward, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to a time when it would be possible to own my own home. I felt proud that day.

And scared. And even more scared when the pandemic hit and my town went into lockdown a mere 11 days after I’d legally promised to pay for this house. None of us knew what was coming. Fortunately, my family remained healthy, my job remained stable and, weird bonus but I’m grateful: mortgage interest rates came down. The kids and I moved into our new home in late June 2020, waving at our new neighbours from a safe distance, and it became our sanctuary during a few of the strangest years I think many of us have experienced. (If you have to weather a pandemic, I recommend doing so in the countryside if at all possible. Also, foster kittens and adopt a few because four cats is a totally reasonable number of cats to own.)

As physical structures go, there have been three places in my life that have really been homes to me: my grandparents’ farm up north, the little green and white house I grew up in, and my home in my small country village. But what makes these places home can be found in places not made of brick and mortar, not surrounded by wildflowers, not decorated with a million throw pillows (I have a problem). Home means calm to me. It means safety. It’s a place where I can be myself. It’s an opportunity to connect with the bigger picture, not only the stars above but the stardust I’m made of.

Home can be found in people, and I’m fortunate to have several beautiful homes who text to check in on me, who find thrift store treasures they think I might like, who will at least tolerate if not laugh uproariously at my goofy jokes.

Home can be found in moments in time: in noticing the soft tree-sifted light of a forest, in wearing the same shirt as a stranger, in seeing a ‘90s neon wind suit costume at Spirit Halloween.

Home can be found in art: brushstrokes that just get it right for you, a TV show that is warm and perfect like the best mac and cheese (food can be home, too), hearing a song come on the radio that is your JAM (also, jam on toast, am I right?).

Welcome home: You are safe and loved. You are a part of the universe, you are located on a motherlovin’ timeline. You are meaningful: you are FULL of meaning and stardust and ‘90s Canadian soft rock song lyrics.

I am expansively grateful for the walls surrounding me, but I’m more grateful for the home I experienced in the moments when we painted them, so imperfectly, laughing. I breathe so easy in my cozy bedroom but I also breathe in home through the window screen in the sounds of the coyotes at night and nearby cows braying the day away. I love my open concept living space but I love even more the home I feel when my kids and I play Bananagrams here and watch Stranger Things and lift our feet because Ewok the hamster’s speeding by in his plastic ball (oh yeah, we got a hamster, too).

I wonder: Where do you feel at home? Who do you feel at home with? What song lyrics do you live in? Also, do you have a good mac and cheese recipe? I wonder many things. I’d love to hear from you, below. And if you’re struggling to find the safety and warmth of a home - in walls or arms - I am wishing it for you so hard and, in the meantime and always, please make yourself at home here. You are seen and you are stardust.

Reacquaintance

A calm, sandy beach with only the most delicate of waves. A dark land mass is seen on the horizon and above it, a blue sky with puffy white clouds. Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.

We went to the beach at low tide.

It was summer, the one just past, and we were in Nova Scotia visiting family. Or, not visiting family. They caught the virus-that-must-not-be-named so we couldn’t see them until the end of our trip. Therefore: exploring.

A beach at low tide might be one of the top three places for exploration, in my opinion. Also up there: a really, really old - like really old - and cluttered antique shop. And a mother’s box of costume jewellery and trinkets when you’re a kid. And when you’re not a kid.

Do you like shells? Do you like stuffing your pockets with all the pretty shells and figuring out later how you will take them on the plane ride home because that’s a tomorrow problem? Do you like smoothing your fingertips over pebbles and finding one that has the perfect cove for your thumb? You’ve come to the right place.

As in-landers who generally have to content themselves with lazy lake shorelines that are tight-lipped with their secrets, the ocean is magic. (No hard feelings, lakes. You’re pretty great.) We spent a few hours in the roll of it: solo contemplation scanning feet-ward for treasures, dotted with exclamations of success and joy.

Crabs! An in-lander knows that ocean beaches have crabs but THERE THEY ACTUALLY ARE. And oysters in their shells (we think they’re oysters). Can you pick them up? While the others gently poked at them with driftwood, I found myself reaching down. What’s the worst a maybe-oyster could do to me, I thought, and it turned out to be not much. Spit some water, I guess. No big whoop, as we used to say and should definitely start saying again. We left with pockets heavy and hearts light; sometimes a cliché just gets it right, you know?

The past few years have been a low-tide scour. An unearthing of what hasn’t been seen or even sought after. An unoceaning, rather. Yes, I like that better. I don’t know what the moon has been up to but the ebbing has been vast and swift and in many ways very necessary, and with every drawing back of the wave, I’ve heard the question: Who am I now?

Who am I now?

Who am I now that we are all so sick, and sick of being sick?

Who am I now that racial violence is erupting, new and yet so very achingly old?

Who am I now that my children are teenagers and nearly-teenagers and eyeing the runway?

Who am I now as relationships unfold?

Who am I now as they fall away?

Who am I now in this body that is both failing and awakening in the same moment?

Who am I now in this moment?

And who am I now in this one?

And who am I now?

And who am I now?

Our collective ebb and my personal, customized-just-for-me-by-the-universe unoceaning have revealed both unexpected treasures and maybe-oyster-like curiosities requiring brave examination: And what are you? And what are you? And what are you?

And through these years of ebbing, I’ve wondered about the flow, and then pleaded with the flow, and then resolved myself to it never returning. But here it is and I want to write again and I have something to say. Nothing earth-shattering, I imagine, but there are words and they are only here because of that profound ebbing. We need to fall away to come together. We need to think before we speak.

I’m excited to share with you all the pretty shells I found and the weird things I got brave about, the sharp rocks I avoided and the ones that I couldn’t sidestep no matter how hard I tried.

I have been happy to make my reacquaintance and I’m happy to make yours, too. Thank you for flowing this way, either again or for the first time. If you’re new, I hope you like long-winded analogies.

And who are you in this moment? What has the unoceaning revealed to you? I’d love if you’d share below. I’ve missed you, kind of a lot.