No beginning and no end

I'm not sure how this ended up falling by the way side but here it is, and here I am. I took a long long walk in the snow yesterday. It provided silence, solitude and much needed time for reflection. Distance from those things that have, somewhat magically, taken over my life since summer: fixing a school, easing out of the security of my job, and following through on a promise I made to myself back in January of last year. The walk outside, alone provided for a few hours of quiet reflection and much needed letting go.

There's anew cast of characters, you'll meet them, no doubt, in due course. For now, they are all hibernating, resting getting ready for the year ahead. They are all shiny and new, and they still seem perfect to me (even in their beautiful flaws.) All in all, it's been good for me the upheaval -- part of me enjoys a desperate and impossible projects.

And this week, I'm trying to remember what I did before all this. Ukuleles, guitar, a few terrible haikus and lots of half started short stories and poems, long walks... Sounds like a terrible personal ad. But in all the change of direction, I am feeling a bit dizzy. Two weeks rest are proving a bit hard on the non-stop whirring in my mind.

The walk helped. Today's massage too. Need to just slow down. Rest. Contemplate. Regroup. Look back.

Tonight, while The Man and The Boy look for an elusive cable of some sort (it's never the right one is it?), I wander back to 2000 and the fear, trepidation and excitement of waiting for The Boy's spectacular entrance into our lives. Play to the cliché, it was 24 hours that changed everything. He was actually born at 14:14 on the 29th. Labour was long and created a whole new checklist of things that can possibly go wrong. Miraculously perhaps, we both made it.

Seems impossible that it was 12 years ago, yet there he is my big little man, taller than I am, growing into an adult. It is one of these impossible and magical things raising The Boy, mostly beautiful and loving but also frustrating and complicated. Yet, somehow, we navigate through it. And in the end, it's all that matters.