Happy Birthday

I wanted to wish you happy birthday.

I started to write
I'm so glad my childhood included you.
Sounded stiff like a Hallmark card so maybe

I love you. 
Too mushy, or maybe too weird without any context, and it's been ages since we last walked around the block watching our shadows darken while the stars came out, so maybe

I miss you.
I miss running through the woods with you, the way the earth felt spongy and strong underfoot.  I miss building whole-basement forts and doing homework and watching TV with you. The way I could dial your phone number without looking. That time you called to let me know my favourite song was on the radio. Sleeping out and catching fireflies. Hide and seek in the dark. That time we went to the store with your mom and at the checkout she realized her pants were on backwards and we laughed and laughed. (By the way, I understand how that's possible now.)  I always felt a twinge of pointless jealousy every time you told me about a new girlfriend but they came and went and I wouldn't have traded our endless adventures for a few months of holding hands at the movies anyway.
I hope my kids have friends like you. I hope their childhood is full and sunny and happy, like ours. I hope they have good friends who tell them when they find frog's eggs clustered around cattails in the brook, who bike with them to Ripley's for ice cream on hot and boring summer days, who build homemade teeter totters and - even on rainy afternoons - knock on the door and ask if they wanna play.

I miss you. I love you.  I'm so glad my childhood included you.

Happy birthday.

No, Actually.

This past weekend, in the wake of too-tempting Easter chocolates, the kids were struggling to get along and needed some quiet time.

We sent them upstairs to do whatever they wanted, as long as it wasn't with each other.  Kachi cuddled up on our bed with his blankies and a story, Sam puttered with Lego in his room, and Vava stretched out on the bottom bunk with her paper and pencils.

She wasn't feeling well, so I lay down beside her and rubbed her back.  After a few quiet moments, she broke my heart with this little bit of news:

"Some girls in my class called me a loser."

I felt a rush of mama-bear anger and defensiveness, tempered with pity for the kids who had heard that term at such a young age.  Most of all, I felt a stab of fearful sorrow that she would believe them, that such an ugly label might have kerneled into her heart to grow into something crooked later. 

And I couldn't help thinking of all the insults that I've just let slide right into my heart and make themselves at home.  Even started using them on myself.

Ugly. Embarrassing. Stupid. Fat.

They've become part of me like dandelion roots.

I didn't want to overreact or give her the idea that she should hate them or use mean words in response, so after sputtering through a few false starts, I just asked her what she had done when they said that.

She told me that she had corrected them with, "No, actually; I'm an author-illustrator."

RIGHT?!

Isn't that the best response ever?
She didn't even give their insult air time.  Didn't twist her own heart to insult them back. Just shielded that attack with her own definition of herself instead. 

So now I've got a new strategy in my pocket. Next time I hear an echo of some ugly label in my heart, I'm going to slay it with a line from my favourite four-year-old author-illustrator: No, actually.

Emptying the Garbage Can

No matter what task I'm doing in the kitchen, my first necessary job is always emptying the garbage can.

Always.

Putting away groceries, washing dishes, making supper, cleaning the fridge, packing lunches ... I always need a fresh trash can.  If it's full, it's the place where everything stalls.  Junk piles up on the counter instead of getting tossed, then my work space grows cluttered, and I get cranky.  Because I need to empty that garbage can.

And you're like ... um, big surprise, Janelle. It's kind of a daily task.

RIGHT?!

But I'm over here trying to juggle my life and adding new activities and new humans and new busynesses and 

never emptying the garbage. 

So things build up and I've got about a hundred things I would like to be doing at any given time but I can't because it's full, the garbage can is full, so the counters are full so the table is full so the house is a mess and ...

You get the idea.

And the metaphorical overflowing garbage can? Migraines, or running late, or scheduling two things at once, or being unreasonably cranky (apparently, that's my overflow go-to).

So how do you empty your garbage can?  How do you clear your schedule, clean out some mental space, keep internal tidiness? What works for you, friends?  Give me some pointers.

xo.