everyday is d. day

ode to Henrietta Carolina

i am my mother's daughter. i don't know how pleased she would be with this declaration, but i think it is true.

this short phrase has been resonating and echoing through the curved  chambers of my cranium for years now. it has been getting louder and louder with each passing year since she died almost 14 years ago. every mother's day, every occasion when family usually gathers, it thunders. as i try to gain a better understanding of myself i am reminded of her.

i catch glimpses of her in myself all the time. the sharp angle of my profile, the elegant swoop of my neck are hers. our thin psychic skin; so easily bruised and hurt; our circumspect pride.

make no mistake about it, she was as much a stranger to me at the time of her death as i am sure i was to her. there was an unspoken chasm we never bridged. we never even neared the edge. on a few wine soaked evenings we laughed with abandon, skimmed the surface, but even then she was vigilantly guarded. she never dropped the barricade that protected the pathway to herself. the more i pushed, she further she retreated into a blithe and unaffected cool.  the longer i knew her the further away she disappeared from my view. at one time, in a patch of domestic turmoil, she reached out to me, and with it glimmered a tentative possibility. then, in the blink of an eye, a rabid cancer coerced her into the refuge of the status quo, to what she knew.

with age comes a certain type of wisdom, a more learned perspective (one would hope), i bear the excruciating knowledge that she will always be an enigma to me. the questions i had will forever remain unanswered. i will never gain any insight into who she was, save for the uncanny resemblance i find in myself to what i do know of her.

holidays loom and i find myself caught in a tumultuous grip of acute inexplicable grief and loss, triggered by the season. this is the month that she died. and even more baffling, with each year that passes the more persistent this ache becomes.

as i continue to grapple with my own conundrum i hope that my son won't find himself struggling to gain a similar understanding. i've made my life transparent to him with the invitation to ask any question he needs answered. i've made it known that he has every right to know. i love him without reservation and trust that we will both grow to possess the level of a deep and abiding relationship.

classic vancouver

it's raining with some determination. i walk the short trip from the skytrain home past the park across from our apartment. ran some errands at the mall. (always slightly annoys me, but that is another matter.)

the squidgy grass is alive with activity of a soccer game. i can't even begin to estimate the age of young men anymore, but i'd guess at the top end of regular organized community soccer. there are a handful of onlookers huddled under the trees tossing out damp encouragement from the mucky sidelines.

i remember those days. standing with my heels sinking into the edge of the soccer pitch as i watched Matt and his mates' game evolve from "swarm" ball to proper soccer. sometimes my overactive imagination thought it would swallow me completely, quicksand style. i consider pausing and watching awhile. soccer is my favourite sport to watch professional or otherwise, but i opt out when some slanting precipitation sneaks under my umbrella slaps me soundly across the face. classic vancouver.

got work to do

i arrive home gutted after my day at work. didn't help trundling home on the train standing wedged in the narrow aisle, after hassling my way in, slightly damp but too warm. my wet weather coat is suited to much cooler temperatures.  i did have the presence of mind to plug my ipod in before i got on. i suspected as much. this is the drawback of travelling during "rush hour". last week i had to let a train go by.

it's just one day. i could not imagine having to engage in this every day. in Toronto i avoided the crush by walking to work; simply not an option now.

with some gritty determination, i employed some underused TO commuting skills to elbow past some oblivious commuter blocking the door. (sharp elbows and height are a definite advantage.) however, this behaviour is one i will never understand. we all would like easy unobstructed access to the door, but making like an immovable object when people are trying to get past you is simply the action of....a dunderhead, idiotstick, well somebody that complete lacks the inability to consider the needs of others.

i begged off cooking dinner and made for the sofa and the sweet relief of simply sitting down on something vaguely comfortable. i have no idea how i managed to attend to all the mundane household tasks (including cooking dinner) when i worked full time. it seems an impossibility now.

places to go, things to do

i've not put down a single word here since i had promised myself i would. i haven't even opened up the program and stared at an empty box. i just didn't have it in me. words swirl and fingers stall idle as i search through my cranium for the next words to write. they simply don't come.  i have a few disparate ideas i'll make note of before i sign off, but this will not be my most eloquent collection of words.

i've been trying to create structure in my life, getting up with the man sometime before 7am. i'm not noticing the benefit as such. not yet. it takes me so long to get going that the first few hours are spent staring at some sort of screen as i work up the energy to push myself into action. my plan for each day is ambitious and likely doomed to failure. take today, i've yet to get to piano practive and some self-guided learning of dreamweaver in classroom in a book. my excuse today, is my debilitating nauseated state. i leave the house with a short list of things to do and realize, once on the bus, that i cannot for the life of me, recall all three items written down in my daytimer at home. i attempt to conjure up the image of the list, as this is how i remember things when i am without a physical list. i continue with the exercise in futility and finally give up completely, deciding that the errands couldn't have been that important anyway.

some starbucks contemplation

it's cool out today. the weather is beginning to turn. i had to dig out a sweater for the short stroll down to starbucks for coffee because there is none in the house. it might seem extravagant, but the indulgence has been whittled down a weekly instead of a daily ritual. and it doesn't have that wicked feel of spending when the funds are simply deducted from my pretty little coffee card.  the budget is $25 for 4-6 weeks. when it hits zero i contemplate seriously whether or not to refill it or not. i let some time pass and then i feed it again, right around the time i crave a good grande half full americano.

it is nice to be out of the house. i'm sitting at the sbux in a window seat that sidles the sidewalk, warmed by the late morning sun through the window. there's the hum and buzz of conversations around me and unmistakable hissshhhh of the steaming of milk. i write this remotely thanks to shaun's crappy pc, since my portable beauty has essentially been rendered a desktop not so long ago.  i'm finally making use of a bell hotspot courtesy of that coffee card i carry around in my wallet.

(oh i'd love to replace my beloved with a shiny new beloved. that was the suggestion to cure my woes. if i could grow money on a whim like that i would be hitting the cyber-pavement every day in search of a job.  the problem was supposedly of my own making--a spill--but i don't recall spilling anything on it. bijou, what is it you do in the night, you frisky little feline? the investment of $500 into it in the summer simply made it so the cord into the machine charged it up, but now it doesn't even do that anymore. i can think of a lot of things could have done with that $500. oh well. )

i've scanned the classifieds and updated my facebook status, since i've come out of hiding. not officially. don't tell anyone, but i am somewhat ready to rejoin the living again. tentatively.