Canada Meets Grits

When we arrived in Clemson for the holidays, the first place we ate was Bojangles.  It's rabidly unhealthy, but it's oh-so-yummy.  The kids were excited to have real, Southern biscuits crafted out of flour and fat, brushed with melted butter and stuffed with fried chicken or country ham.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to this feast as well but there was one thing on their menu that excited me even more - GRITS.  It had been four months since I'd eaten this personal delicacy and when I saw it on the menu I said to the cashier (without really thinking through it), "Ooohhh honey - you've got grits.  I haven't had grits in four months and I want me some grits."  The cashier had to step away from the register to recover her composure and I realized my Southern roots were healthy and whole.  And so it was - my first meal back in the States was a country ham biscuit and grits.  Heaven, with a little side of heart attack, on a plate.  We were so busy on our trip home that we never got around to purchasing grits to bring back with us to Canada - and I was disappointed - they certainly can't be found here and frankly, there are many people who've never even heard of them.  Needless to say, one of my first orders of business upon our return was to embark on a quest to bring grits to our Canadian menu.

With the expansive options on the internet, one would expect the ordering of something as benign as ground corn to be an easy task.  And one would be wrong.  I immediately went to amazon.ca (note that you must search in the Canadian amazon store, not the US store) and hit the jack pot - or so I thought.  I found grits - $4.50 CDN per 1 lb. bag.  Yes - this is highway robbery.  However, I was on a quest and willing to pay a premium.  Premium, though, doesn't even begin to describe it.  You see, as I tried to check out with my 2 bags of grits for $9 CDN before shipping, a little message popped up notifying me that these, actually, were considered an 'add on' item.  Therefore, I had to spend $25 before the could be shipped to me.  Nice.  Being that I was mere seconds away from actually enjoying grits in my Vancouver apartment, however, I was unwilling to let $14 stand in my way and so I shopped for a couple of books to add to my cart as well.  Success!  For a mere $28 I had grits AND books coming my way.  It was like waiting for Christmas morning.

Funny enough, no sooner than I'd written my last post about introspection and how the grey weather encourages self reflection and soul tending, we embarked upon a 10 day sunny streak.  I paused my introspections to enjoy the sunshine - there's something about pretty weather that makes it hard for me to focus.  We walked a lot, stayed on the playground after school for a couple of hours a day and rejoiced that days were getting longer.  And then - the phone rang its funny ring when someone's outside our building buzzing up to get access to our floor and it was as if Santa himself came to my door - he was dressed in a FedEx uniform and handed Philip a box that carried our GRITS!  For a moment, I think I heard a choir of angels actually start singing, but that may have been the Sudafed I was on for my sinus infection.  Regardless, our grits had arrived - and the books, but that's neither here nor there.  Hello grits! Welcome to Canada.  Then I realized I had to figure out some sort of rationing system with this Southern staple - it's suddenly been elevated to a celebratory food that only makes appearances at certain times of the year.  And so I decided then that grits were to be a Saturday food - a day when we can take our time and enjoy our breakfast (or supper as the case may be).

Grits arrived on Monday - by Wednesday we were playing outside daily, Lydia requested seaweed in her lunchbox as her daily snack, we were looking forward to her class field trip to the ice rink, and we were headed to a hockey game which the kids had both earned tickets to through a program at their school.  We were in for a distinctly Canadian weekend - ice skating, hockey, more ice skating and GRITS.  And that's just what we did - this January weekend saw the best union of our Southern roots and our Canadian life that we've experienced yet.  Lydia was a natural on the ice - within ten minutes she was literally running across the rink in her rented skates and helmet.  The hockey game was a blast - both kids sat with friends leaving Philip and me to enjoy a pseudo date night.  Henry sat with most of the boys in his class and they all swung their shirts in the air after each of the 11 Vancouver Giants goals.  We saw two fights on the ice and the kids quickly learned their way around Pacific Coliseum exercising their independence and reveling in their newfound friendships.  We all slept in late on Saturday and enjoyed our cheese grits and bacon breakfast.  And then we walked the 4 - 5 blocks to Robson Square and ice skated on the outdoor ice rink - where Henry hit the ice for the first time.

It was a weekend of relationship - with our 'then and now', with each other, with friends.  It was fun.  And now the fog has returned with its chilly dampness and naps are again even sweeter.  Introspection time seems a more natural focus now, but I'm deeply grateful for a week of sunshine and world collisions.  Life is good, indeed.

Holding onto the railing - just a tad excited...

 

10 minutes later - totally proud of herself and totally brave!

Henry coming off the ice for the first time - yes - he's in shorts!  It's been lovely here :)

Dreams, Lifecycles & Lamentations

In my mind I'm an author - I picture myself leading the exotic life I associate with serious writers - sending myself on writing retreats, pondering the meaning of life and generally exuding an aura of zen.  Yes - I know that this is unrealistic, but it's my dream so I'm going with it.  I know serious writers - some really good ones - and they're normal and lead normal lives but I still see them as exotic because they're living one of my own personal dreams.  That said - this blogging endeavor has become my outlet - it's not a novel, I realize, but it's my words and in some cases my heart on paper.  And it's my sanity.  Getting these words and thoughts out of my head keeps them from rolling around in there and creating all sorts of neuroses and this happens to be the time of year when I head toward introspection.  It's part of my natural rhythm.  I don't know if it's the shorter days or the grey days or the post holiday let down, but tis the season of personal soul searching.  And I must warn all who've been reading - the coming posts may be short on photos and long on philosophy - so I'm not going to be insulted if you choose not to read.  This is my therapy so I'm also not apologetic for turning inward for a bit to get a better hold of how to live into the coming year authentically.  This is my cocooning season - the time when I hole up, dig deep and attempt to emerge with colorful wings and energy for new life ahead.

Life has been on my mind quite a bit this year as many friends have lost parents, spouses, relationships.  And I've paid more attention to natural cycles since we now spend so much more time outside in 'just' nature - not at an event or ballpark and such.  Funny thing is - everything has a lifecycle - and we get stuck on the birth and death parts somehow losing track of the importance of the in between times.  As I've walked about these past few months I've seen many a city employee pruning, clearing out beds, raking leaves in preparation for the rains and the Spring.  What a lesson this has become for me - I owe it to myself and to the people in my life who help give life to prune from within, to let go, to prepare for new life to grow.  The rains have come to Vancouver and while the grey can get tiring, there's always a little glimmer of sun just when I seem to need it most, and there's never a day that's rainy all day - we're always able to take off our hoods, if only for a little while.  And while the rain gets old and sometimes messy it does make our space feel cleaner, fresher, bathed - exposed even.  With all the rain new perspectives are uncovered; as when water rushes over the same piece of land repeatedly.  I'm personally challenged to find entertainment in new ways, to allow myself to get wet and embrace the nourishment.  And just when it feels like I'm taking a turn from clean to mildewed, the sun peeks through with assurance that new life is around the corner.

As I walked for the first time since before Christmas around the seawall this week, the sun did her thing.  She danced on the water - a reminder that new life is coming.  There were even little sprouts of bulbs peeking at me around tree roots along the route back home.  I pondered what I needed to clean out and prune in preparation for new growth - I remembered that everything has a life cycle.  Not just people and plants, but relationships too, and that my challenge is in the letting go - the pruning if you will.  I find myself wondering about friends from the past (some way past - high school and college) and sometimes feeling sad that we've lost touch instead of honoring those memories and accepting that those friendships have completed their lifecycle so that new ones in their infancy can be properly nurtured.  I realize that I'm a mere infant in our family's new reality, a toddler by now maybe, and that I've so much to learn about myself, my family and my marriage.  It's energizing really to accept that we're all somewhere in the midst of a cycle of life and it's daunting to think that pruning is a natural part of remaining healthy.  And it gets confusing because maybe I'm supposed to be pruning in one area while feeding another and helping guide our children in their own development and shedding and it makes me tired sometimes.  But the grey days that bring the rains serve as permissive encouragement to do just that.  They tell me that now's the time to take stock, tend, trim and nourish - this is soul work.  And they validate that this is tiring work and the rainy days make naps so very much sweeter - for this I'm grateful.

I've re read all of my blog posts to date in the past few days and that's been a fun walk through some of this cyclical life we've been leading.  This year it's been incredibly tangible to see how we've tended ourselves, our relationships and our faith.  We've done pretty well, I think - some areas we've tended better than others - but we've certainly done this thing with honesty and, I hope, authenticity.  It's felt authentic.  In reading those posts I've seen the themes of grief and gratitude repeatedly; those two descriptors speak to the tension in which I live walking through various stages of life.  It's always a struggle to maintain balance and there's something about finding a balance between grief and gratitude that pushes me.  I've lamented the loss of the normal we knew but am incredibly thankful for the normal we've now defined.  I've lamented the loss of proximity to family but am thankful for technology that closes the spatial gap of miles and for people who function as family in this new place.  Lamentations are normal - holy even -  there's a whole book in the Old Testament of them and there are 60ish Psalms of lament.  That must make them important too - necessary really.  How can we actually celebrate gratitude in its most basic form if we don't have the perspective provided by lament?  How can we find hope in the midst of dark, grief-stricken places if we don't know what it means to be truly grateful for life and its good gifts?

So here I sit - cocooning, reflecting, turning inward, allowing my introvert her time to blossom into her new self.  And I grieve.  And I hope.  After all, I know that around the corner Spring is coming and that now is the time to prepare.  Now is the time to make ready for new growth and let go of those places that have withered. 

To be Known

I just re-read my post from August 26 titled 'Home' and I vividly remember typing those words from a Memphis hotel room on the night we left SC, bound for Vancouver for the first time.  That was a hard day full of emotions and I now sit in our little apartment reflecting again about the word 'home'.  You see we've done it again - not in the Britney Spears oops sort of way - but in a planned, intentional sort of way - we've left (after a full and wonderful visit).  And it's different this time - we left our old home to come home to a place that it now familiar and dotted with memories - even after only being here four months.  What a difference four months can make!  Don't get me wrong - tears still welled in my eyes as I hugged my parents goodbye and I chose not to speak in the interest of preserving my eye makeup; heartstrings were plucked watching our children rekindle friendships that hadn't been tended daily.  And I realized that when I wrote on that day in August from an impersonal hotel room that the tears and the sense of grief grew not only from leaving one physical home for another, but also from the longing to connect our two contexts to each other.  We had a lovely time seeing friends and family in SC, NC & GA, and seeing our children jump back into friendships without missing a beat over the holidays.  However,  there was no way to adequately incorporate all that we've experienced since our move to Canada into conversation or explanation.  While that's completely OK I wanted to be able to share with family and friends how much they'd enjoy knowing our new friends.  I wanted to take them to the mall where I walk to buy groceries and I wanted them to be able to see the store we're referring to when we talk about the 'corner store'.  And this - this disconnect of places that are home to me and my family - this is the source of grief.  But it's also the source of great joy.

In the next week we're finalizing a target date for my parents to visit and I couldn't be more thrilled.  I want them to come here so we can share with them our walk to school, the views from our windows and our new friends.  Their visit will provide for us the first piece of connective tissue between the life we left in SC and the life we're building here in Canada, and that connection means more to me than words can express.  After all - connection is a basic, primal privilege of being human.  It's in our connectedness to people and places that we understand our own meaning and identity and that sense of being 'known' is truly a spark of the Divine. 

It was my longing to be known that conjured tears when we left back in August - grieving the farewell to folks we'd interacted with day in and day out and wondering how long it would take to encounter new day to day folks.  Today, with as sense of relief, I can report with confidence that good, kind, wonderful people have come into our lives.  Our fabric of connection has grown stronger and has been a blanket of comfort as we endeavor to live authentically in our new reality.  Again we are known - our identities affirmed by our connectedness to other people, cultures and places.  And I look forward to sharing all that our lives have become with people who are dear to me outside of this place.
 
Our family is entering 2014 intentionally grateful - for places like Clemson, Athens, Montreat, Atlanta and Vancouver that feel like home.  More importantly we're grateful for people who are home to us - from all over the world.  And we're grateful for those who help us connect the dots between and among our life experiences.  We also hold close to our hearts people for whom home may not be a safe place.  My hope is that we all may know the contentment that comes from being known and accepted - warts and all.  For this is how I have experienced 'home' and will endeavor to live it wherever life may take us and share it with whoever we may encounter along the way.   And our family has chosen to respond with gratitude - for even in the midst of the grief and sadness that come with change, there are glimmers that sparkle in us an abiding sense of hope and when we focus on what/for whom/where we're grateful, life just seems a little bit better.  In gratitude perspective and grace and sometimes even inspiration.  There's not a single resolution I made this year - I've instead re-awakened to a call to live intentionally with a heightened awareness of how I'm connected to the world around me and how I can celebrate that.  It doesn't take the turn of a calendar page to make this happen - instead, it takes an attitude shift on my part - to choose where I put my focus.  And I choose to focus on life and its good gifts and try to be an agent of home for all I may encounter.  Pollyanna?  Maybe.  Lifegiving?  Absolutely.  Happy New Year from our home to yours.