Out with the old

We are moved, though far from settled, into our new home.

There are still boxes everywhere and I have yet to find a million things, but last night Graham returned from a few days at my parents' house to a new room, complete with a big boy bed.

And even though there were a million things I should have done first, I spent hours setting up his room in hopes that its beauty would distract him from the fact that he had well and truly left his old home and his old crib (the crib I often thought would serve as his marital bed) behind.

The room and the bed are spectacular. (As soon as I figure out where my camera is packed I will post pictures to prove it, but in the meantime take my word for it: seriously cute.)

But that doesn't mean I wasn't worried about Graham's reaction. Graham is about as stubborn as your average mule and has been known to loudly declare (sometimes apropos of nothing) "You KNOW I don't like change mommy!"

So last night, just before I switched out the light, I cuddled with him on his new bed and indulged in some gentle reassurances.

"Isn't the new homestead nice Graham?" I asked.

"Yes mom," he replied.

"And don't you like your new room?"

"Yes mom."

"And I just love your new bed, don't you?"

"Yes mom."

"And don't you think-

"Mommy!"

"Uh...yes Graham?"

"Could you please go away now so I can get some sleep?'

Ahem.

Apparently Graham is going to be just fine, thankyouverymuch.

(I'm not so sure about mommy).

Moving

Until yesterday, Graham had never expressed any actual sadness about the death of his beloved Oma.

For months now he has asked me repeatedly, sometimes dozens and dozens of times a day, "Are you sad about Oma?" but when I answer in a manner designed to engage him - "Yes I am, because I loved her and you did too didn't you?" - he has abruptly changed the subject or simply repeated the question over and over: "Are you sad about Oma? Are you sad about Oma? Are you sad about Oma?"

Attempts to break through often result in Graham chanting in an increasingly loud crescendo with slightly different wording: "Are you sad about Oma? Are you sad about Opa? Are you worried about Opa? Are you worried about Daddy?"

For four months now, louder and louder Graham has chanted, drowning out every attempt I make to respond to his questions in a thoughtful and loving manner.

It is the most gut-wrenching thing I have ever experienced.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday his babysitter, the woman he calls Omi and my late mother-in-law's best friend, said Graham approached her during play time with tears coursing down his cheeks.

"I can't help it Omi," he said. "I'm just so sad about Oma."

And so she took him onto her lap and together talked they talked about how much they loved her and how much they missed her and all the wonderful things they used to do together.

****************************

Last night, exactly four months after her death, I dreamed about my dearly, dearly-loved mother-in-law for the first time.

I dreamt I walked into our living room and was astonished to see her sitting at our little cherry wood table sipping a cappuccino. My shock and happiness at the sight of her was so overwhelming I can still feel it now, crowding the air from my chest and stinging behind my eyes. In my dream I fell to my knees and took her hands in mine as tears rolled down my face.

"I have missed you so so much," I told her, over and over again. But she just regarded me with a bemused smile, as if she were confused over my outpouring of emotion.

"I can't believe you are here," I cried. "Don't you know you died four months ago?"

But she just smiled and in my dream I rushed and found a calendar in order to impress upon her what a miracle her presence was. But when I found one, the dates on it had been replaced by a series of nonsensical letters and numbers. All the dates and clocks throughout the house looked the same way, I realized, and so finally I stopped rushing about and just sat with her, clasping her hands and crying in wonder while she smiled benignly.

And then I realized what she wanted.

"Don't go anywhere!" I told her.

I rushed into Graham's room where he was sleeping soundly. I lifted him up, rushed back into the living room and thrust him into her arms.

In my dream Graham's eyes fluttered open as he clasped his chubby arms around her neck.

"Oma!" he breathed, snuggling into her. And she kissed the top of his head.

******************************

I awoke with a start this morning and my mother-in-law's presence was so fresh and so real that I could only lie there and sob quietly for a few moments, as dawn's light and its harsh reality crept into my consciousness.

I did not want to get out of bed and leave her behind this morning but I had to: we are moving into our new house tomorrow and there is much to be done.

We are moving tomorrow from a house that she loved to a house that she will never see.

We are moving. Graham is growing. Our lives are changing.

And yet it seems that none of our forward motion is sufficient to fill the gaping hole her death has left behind.

My tree

I am unabashedly sentimental about my tree.

It is a fir tree and it started as one of more than 125 seedlings, perhaps eight inches in length, that we handed out as gifts to our wedding guests in September 2002.

We planted three of the trees, just days after our wedding, in the backyard lawn of the house that we had recently purchased; the house where we were sure that our dreams would take root and blossom just as surely as our seedlings.

But two of the trees died almost immediately.

And the seedlings that my parents planted at their house promptly died too. And over the next few years as I asked other wedding guests about their trees I learned, to my dismay, that it seemed all our gifts - our symbols of growth and promise - had similarly failed to grow and take root.

It shouldn't have bothered me, but it did.

I started to inquire in earnest and before long I determined that the remaining tree in our backyard is indeed the lone survivor of our marriage celebration, the only tangible evidence of how far we have come and how much we have grown.

And so, I am just a little bit protective of my tree.

I have watched it for almost seven years now. I have despaired about its ability to withstand the sleet and the snow and the rain.

But I have marveled at the way just a day of sunshine has the power to make it seem new and how swiftly nature's warmth and kindness can bring forth tiny, hopeful buds.

But now that my tree is clearly growing big and strong and independently, I worry about how I can possibly keep it close as we move into a new home and a new chapter of our lives.

There is no room for my tree at the new house, but there is no way I can just leave it behind.

Because it is my only one.

And I am unabashedly sentimental about my tree.

Middle-aged crazy

We sold our house on Saturday night.

And it was a relief, to say the least, because we had already finalized the purchase of a different house on Friday night.

But while that window of time in which we owned two homes was excruciating (as were the five(!) days of back and forth and failed offers and complications) the fact that we are changing houses is not the full story.

The full story is that we are changing our lives.

But let me start at the beginning.

I was a bit of a hippie chick when I first met Rob. I did not aspire to a big home or expensive things. I always envisioned my future self backpacking the world, tots in tow, based in a little city house surrounded by art and funky, creative friends.

And that's the way it went for a while.

We fixed up a downtown row house just steps from one of Toronto's main thoroughfares and we backpacked through Africa and South America. Even after we moved out of the city's core to our current huge home, with its huge yard and suburban trappings, we continued to travel and even wrote, produced and directed a short film that had some success on the festival circuit.

But that house, our house with all its attendant suburban trappings that at first we loved, started to become a monkey on our backs.

The thing about living in a big house with a big yard in a suburban neighborhood is that, as much as you might fight the transformation, you inevitably start to become the kind of person who lives in a big house with a big yard in a suburban neighborhood.

And I never felt like that person was me.

I am fiercely proud of my small-town roots. Anyone who frequents this space knows I am as comfortable tooling a float plane into my father's fishing camp as I am socializing at a film wrap party in the heart of downtown Toronto. Cities and small towns: I love 'em both.

But it's the in-between places I'm not crazy about.

A few months back when it became apparent to Rob and I that his beloved mother was very, very sick, it caused us to re-examine our priorities and our lives in short order.

And in short order we realized that we were working very, very hard and experiencing huge amounts of stress in order to maintain a home and a lifestyle that wasn't making either of us very happy.

My parents live on a lake and own a motorboat, a float plane and a rustic fly-in fishing camp. Rob's brother has a gorgeous rugged lakeside cottage. We have a ton of camping equipment that every weekend gathers dust in our basement while we rush to complete hours of yard work and home maintenance in a vain attempt to relax and start enjoying weekend activities before mid-day Saturday.

Our current house is affordable, but just barely so. It's certainly not affordable enough to allow Rob to relax and take in stride the inevitable ups and downs that come with being a freelancer in a volatile industry and it's enough of a stretch that we must remain ever-vigilant on the financial front.

Being ever-vigilant? Is tiring.

In addition to the loss of Rob's mom, during the past 17 months we have weathered the sudden and untimely deaths of three work colleagues and friends who were all family men under the age of 50 - two in separate, horrific, freak accidents and one by his own hand.

In the face of so much unexpected, random loss it became crystal clear to us that life is short and so too must be our time spent pursuing anything not directly related to the health and happiness of our family.

There is stress in life that you can control. There is stress in life that you can't control. We can, and we will, seize control of and excise from our lives, the things that stress us out.

This is our new home.

It is a large, new and (I think) chic townhouse.

It is within walking distance to great shops and restaurants and a short bus ride from the subway. It has a tiny, tiny backyard, but loads of style, a fabulous balcony and a great park with a wonderful children's playground just 100 metres away.

Our new home will allow us to live virtually stress-free financially with a modest mortgage, zero debt and a hefty chunk of cash in a savings account.

It will allow us to shut the door and walk away: to be weekend warriors, to possibly travel longer term and to pursue whatever opportunities life throws at us.

And we are working to create those opportunities.

Our ski chalet, an investment property that we rarely use, is next on the chopping block. We don't need more investments, we need more joy. When that property is sold we will look for a small house in the sunshiney place that we love and for where we are currently arranging work visas.

We don't yet know if me or Rob or Graham or all of us will be there three weeks a year or three months. We don't know if it will remain a vacation idyll or the place where we eventually make our home, but the weather and the strong arts and culture community there is extremely appealing.

And that is enough to compel us to dip our toes in the sand.

That is more than enough actually.

And I don't care if our ultimate plan to follow our hearts sounds middle-aged crazy. We are taking control of our lives and our joy before we lose the nerve or the ability to do so.

We are committed to being fully present for our son and to showing him (and hopefully a sibling that, until now, we have apparently been too stressed and too busy to produce) that there is more than one way to organize your life and that the world is an exciting place full of adventure and beauty.

And to showing him also that his parents, for all their foibles, still possess the courage to live their lives with passion.

Waiting to exhale

More than once over the last few days I have caught myself holding my breath.

I am on tenterhooks.

I am on the verge of a major life change. I am marking time, counting the days (hours?) until I can let it all out here and resume the style of writing that has both sustained me and allowed me to amass quite a large number of readers who I fear are growing increasingly bored and frustrated by my paralysis.

I'm sorry.

I thank you for your patience and I thank my sister-in-law LeeAnne for continuing to write entertaining things for you to read over at my other joint. You can check out her latest by clicking here.