...a pail full of diapers.

Who knew that I would find all the answers to my life, in this moment, in a pail full of dirty diapers. But as I opened the lid on the diapers today to add another to the pile I noticed it was almost full. Almost time to wash....again. And just before bed last night I had folded and put away the last batch. It is an endless circle. Never the smug satisfaction of having everything tidily finished and put away. It's like a finish line that keeps moving just out of reach. Even though I know that I will never get on top of everything I still feel this burning need to "feel" on top of most things. To have my surroundings tidy and uncluttered, to clear out the junk, check things off the list, put everything away in it's place. But this is just an illusion anyway. Arbitrary at best. Like those diapers in the pail, swishing in the washing machine, snugly wrapped around bum, folded on the shelf... they are all in the middle of a process. No start, no end. Surely I can live more of life in "process".

The only real finish line in life is death and I am certainly in no hurry to get there so I guess "unfinished" will always be my state of being...

...teeth, teeth, teeth.

For a week in December I felt the heart-tugging, hot tears that come when one realizes that her babies are growing and nothing can be done to slow the process. And it came in the form of a seven day toothapalooza. On December 11th, I ran my finger along Lola's gums to soothe the ache of teething only to find that that razor sharp tooth had finally sliced through her gums.

Why was this so jarring to me? I knew it was coming. I could feel the raised line of the tooth straining against the tissue of her lower arch for weeks. She was approaching 6 months. She had been drooling, red-cheeked and a bit off her game for weeks. This was not a surprise. But still I was jarred by it. I sat on the sofa in a bit of a stunned, silent moment of disbelief or perhaps denial.

Five days later Meg lost one of her front top teeth. I pulled it out in fact and then proceeded to sit on my knees in the middle of our living room with her little stump of a tooth in between my fingers and a tear in my eye. What had I just done? This was the tooth that would make her say "toof" instead of tooth. This was the tooth that would change the shape of her face and soon be followed by an adult tooth that will look awkward, and misshapen and ten times too big for her little mouth. And here I was holding it in my hand.

Closely on the heels of this, on the 18th of December, Lola's second tooth popped through her tender little gums. This was more than I could bare...

My mother has often spoken tenderly of her time spent with her fourth baby. She knew that this would be the last of her brood and she relished every little moment of that little ones first years. She held her, rocked her and cuddled her more than any of her three previous babes. At that point she had a 7 year old and three children under four years old. And yet she managed to create the time and space to give this baby a little more... Or in fact to give herself a little more of this baby. She has spoken about this so much in my lifetime that I wonder if she feels a little guilty that she never did that with the rest of us too. It comes up again and again when we are holding our babies as they sleep in our arms. I think she is trying to tell us that we will never be sorry that we did that. And as I hold this baby I now see the depth of what she was speaking. She was saying "don't be in such a rush". "In your joyful exuberance of motherhood don't wish away these precious days for the can't-waits of tomorrow" Meg cut her first teeth at 3 and a half months. I was proud. And I "couldn't wait" for the next great thing she would do. I was in a rush.

Now I am clutching at the moments and holding them close. The pendulum has swung wildly in the other direction. I am melancholy and wistful with each small change that takes Lola closer to becoming a little girl. I am so thoroughly ensconced in her infancy that I am forgetting that she is growing. One day a few weeks ago I sat her up to see if she could balance. She had it mastered in a few minutes. She had been ready for that weeks earlier but I had been blind to this fact. In my heart and mind she was still a newborn.

I absolutely and completely adore the people my two girls are becoming. Lola has a quirky charm that brings a smile to light on my lips hundreds of times a day. She looks at her sister with complete and total adoration ... Meg is a truly creative and independent soul. She loves deeply and does not hesitate for a moment to show it in any situation. She makes me laugh a lot and I admire her in a way I did not know was possible. When asked in the past who my hero was I would have answered "my mother" but now I would have to add that my daughter is too. This is a surprise to me. So I do look forward to seeing more of the people they will become. I really do... and for now I will try and find some balance. I will hold fast and let go. Or maybe for a little while longer I will just hold fast.

Tonight Meg lost the second of her front top teeth. She worked away at it herself all afternoon. It was hanging on by only one side and when it was very nearly falling out she lost her courage. She said she was scared and she didn't seem to know why. I was too. She called my mom and asked if she would come over. She wanted her to pull that tooth. Nanny is the go to lady when it comes to teeth. She pulled every last one of mine. I remember it clearly. Most of the time she was sitting on the lid of our green toilet seat with me standing between her legs. She would expertly squeeze my tooth right at the gums and it would painlessly pop out into the tissue she had used to get a grip. Tonight was no different. And immediately my big girl's face was changed. She looks beautiful. The huge gap in the front of her mouth making her look incredibly vulnerable and yet more mature. She made quite a production of the tooth fairy preparation tonight. Insisting that we leave her a snack, a small gift and a note. She has an absolutely blind obsession with fairies at the moment so this is almost a spiritual phenomenon for her. She mindfully prepared a beautiful alter on the bathroom counter for her fairy to behold. A snack of tiny chocolate covered sunflower seeds in a very tiny dish, a small piece of soft fabric that she found after a soulful search in her room (she imagined the fairy could use it as a sleeping bag), her tooth floating in a small dish of water, and a lovely handwritten note with pictures.

She will wake tomorrow to find that her fairy has taken her tooth and in doing so has dipped its wing in that dish, revealing its colour by tinting the water green. We have kept the water from each tooth she has lost in the freezer and in the spring we plan to water some flower seeds with it in hopes that they will grow with a bit of magic inside. Kinda like my girls...

...growing with a bit of magic inside.

...sliding doors.

It's funny how the mind works isn't it. I'm sure we all have our quirky little way of partitioning and filing our thoughts and beliefs. More specifically about time and space. For example I have a very graphic picture of how I lay out the year in my head. I can't describe it really but I can see it perfectly in my own mind. There aren't really starts and finishes so much as there are turning points and there are months that are grouped together for some reason and parts that go up and other parts that go down and some that are static. Does this all sound a little weird? I presume that everyone has these little quirky ways. For that matter there are ways we must be doing this with our lives as well. Grouping certain years together or imagining certain steps that might serve as a marker for a shift in our psyche or a rite of passage. I may be way off here but I bet if I asked you to draw the timeline of your life the way you see it in your head it would not be dots on a line. OK so where am I going with this? Well in my life "timeline" I have a few points where I have little nubs.... Like the starts of paths I chose not to take...or the impossible dreams that I kinda knew would never happen but I wasn't willing to close the door on so I just drag them along with me... They kinda feel like my "sliding door". Like there is another dimension where I am living out those dreams or walking those paths. But over the course of the last couple of years I have come to view all of that a little differently. Call it maturity, enlightenment, maybe even cynicism.... But I have decided that I don't have to leave those nubs in my timeline unanswered. Because the truth is that this is the "dimension" I am living in and I only get one kick at the can so I might as well kick the living daylights out of it.

Last week I turned one of those unanswered, silly, little dreams into a reality of minuscule proportions! I went to an edge. It was uncomfortable and exciting. But the opportunity was there and I took it. I have a dear, dear friend (more of a sister really) that makes me feel cooler than I am. She is like Audrey Hepburn, Nigella Lawson and Georgia O'Keefe all rolled into one skinny-jean-wearing, red-lipsticked, groovy, artist mama. And I adore her! She makes me think I can do anything. Her husband is a musician. He is in the middle of recording a new album and I have been teasing him for months that he can call me when he is laying down the background vocals. Last week he told me to be at the studio at 10 am on Thursday morning. I thought I was calling his bluff when I agreed. But the truth is that he called mine.

He has heard me sing a hand full of times. Happy Birthday at our kid's parties, a bunch of children's songs while bouncing around a kindermusik class and maybe I have squeaked out a melody or lyric when trying to pick his brain about an artist or song title. None of these would qualify as an audition and yet he was quite serious about giving me this chance. Was he crazy? Tone deaf? Really, really polite?

I don't really know how to describe the experience. I couldn't shake the image of all the bad American Idol auditions I have seen. All those people that really, truly think they have the voice of an angel. They genuinely do not know they suck, do they? All I could think of was how much work he was going to have to put in to make me sound half decent. But he kept encouraging me and telling me that it sounded good... It still makes me feel a little queasy thinking about it all. But I did it! And I would do it again if given the chance... Because maybe in one of those "sliding doors" dimensions I am a smooth and sultry lounge singer or a bad ass rock and roll diva or my personal favourite, a long haired, barefoot, acoustically inclined folk singer with flowers in my hair.....

Thanks Chris.

...a lemonade stand.

Last week Dave watched this video and decided to share it with Meg.

http://www.theburiedlife.com/index3.php

They talked about what it meant and dave asked her what she would like to do... Would it be an adventure, a journey... It could be anything. She seemed delighted at the idea of doing whatever she wanted. Animated with the possibilities. First she said she would like to take a long car ride "back to that river that we went to with Nanny and threw rocks in". We played hookie one day this fall and went on an ambling drive West past Genesee. There is a beautiful spot down by the river where we spent an hour or so. Nanny showed Meg how to skip rocks and we just let the day pass. It was blissful.

She liked this idea and wanted to explore some more. Dave then suggested that she could do something new. Something she had never done before. "A lemonade stand" It was that simple and that fabulous all at once. I never had a lemonade stand. Dave never had a lemonade stand. He pointed out that it had been in the video they watched and then there was no stopping her flood of planning and brainstorming. We started that night to try out homemade lemonade recipes and we will work to perfect them while we wait for the weather to cooperate so that our lemonade stand will be an oasis in our little neighbourhood and the customers will flock to have their thirst quenched.

What do you want to do before you die?