Super Dad

It's 9:23am and I haven't got a lick of work done yet. All that's been done so far is: boys washed, clothed, fed, brushed, rainproofed & walked to school; two playdates arranged; lunches packed; dinner chicken thawing; bed stripped, 2 loads of laundry washed and hung to dry; yesterday's clean dishes put away and this morning's dishes stacked; cats and cows and chickens fed; fire lit.

Remember long ago when I bravely stated that things go smoother when my wife's away? Well it's still true - this same stuff would have been done but by two adults instead of one. Housework expands not only to the time allotted but also to the people allotted.

Part of my unspoken new year's resolution is to step it up another notch of responsibility in the house. Instead of looking at the dishes, just quickly do them - last night it took just 22 minutes to clean a full day of dishes, including Sarah's Mama Renew class. Cook more dinners, sweep more floors. If I can do it so easily when she's gone, I can darn well do it when she's here.

Anyways, it's now 9:31am and I've got until 2:30 to do Me stuff - webpage design, basement reno, emails, yoga... After that I'll be full-on dad - pick-up, bike repairs and bouncing zekiah's new ball from the dentist like we planned this morning, animals, then inside for the usual dinner-bedtime routine. 22 minutes of clean-up and I'll be a free man once again by 8:00.

Could it really be this easy? 2.5 hours in the morning plus 5.5 hours after school of full-attention parenting and housekeeping, plus 5 daytime hours and 3 nighttime hours for Me/Us stuff? If I can stay intentionally in one or the other realm for each block of time, not flitting back and forth between roles, perhaps I truly can do each more efficiently and fully and Joyfully. Perhaps, just perhaps, the key to achieving balance is to just do it.

Missing: One Man-Cave

I love photos on the walls. I love going to friends' houses and seeing what and who matters to them, what journey they've been on, what they find worthy to display of themselves and their world. So why are there no photos up in my own house?

An online article about "The Decline of the Male Space" contends that

the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other; instead of creating a world that’s friendly to both male and female space, we’ve created one that benefits female space at the expense of male space.

I left the article to wander room to room, looking vainly for anything of mine on the walls. Any African paintings on recycled cement bags, childhood or travel photos, Guatemalan tapestries, carved wooden masks, even ski posters with inspiring quotes - things that had adorned my life for the 25 years since I was strong enough to push a tack into a wall. I found things I like, things we've created together, our wedding vows, but nothing that is Me. Just a lonely nail where my dream-catcher, given to me by dear Aunt Sally in my rocky adolescent days, was removed yesterday when Sarah finally revealed that she loathes its heaviness in our bedroom.

Just walked around again, counting 9 (nine) wall hangings that are Hers. I do like most of them, but that's not the point. The point is that the author is right, that men have lost their power in the home, settling instead for a mutual agreement practice that ends up usually with the man ceding to the woman's "better taste." Just ask any man who's been asked for his "input" on paint colours.

This is why I get belligerent about not accepting input about my reno projects, my outdoor projects, MY projects. With a chainsaw or a cow or a sledge hammer, I'm in my realm, I'm the boss, I can just Do it, follow my vision and passion without checking in with the other half or my boss or the board. Down comes that tree, just where I'd planned (OK, a bit closer to the chicken coop than I'd planned), and in flows the sunlight just as I'd envisioned. Me and my pitchfork just go ahead and scoop up that manure and lay down fresh straw, and only the cows know. My home may no longer be my palace, but gosh darn it I'm the undisputed King of the Cowshed.

I suppose I could be stronger, demand that the dream catcher and photos etc go up. It's half my house dammit and I should get my own nine hangings. But the reality is that I love my wife and the harmony we have in our shared home, and if an item truly oppresses her then it can't make me happy. If upon reading this she offers to put the dream catcher back up, I'll have to refuse - not out of bitterness, but I could genuinely not feel Joy from it anymore knowing how she feels about it.

So I guess it's time to finally organize my workshop and re-hang all my treasures there, as they have been in the garage or basement or laundry room of all our other homes. I don't need an escape, don't need to drink behind the woodshed or cuss and spit at an all-men's gym. Just need a space (other than my wardrobe) where I see my corny, outlandish, awkward and even sometimes tasteless Me-ness expressed freely. I need my man-cave.

In Praise of Wasted Creativity

I was deeply, grievously wounded today. Our friend had the audacity to forget to come pick up her milk. Instead of the usual "oh i suck" email or phone message, she shared a considerable amount of energy, talent, and time (probably the same time it would have taken to pick up the milk) to write the hilarious email copied below.

What a pure treat to have a friend who takes the time to just be fun. No need to maximize the impact or spread of her work (ie, blog), no question of whether it's worth the effort to tap that creative energy for a seemingly unimportant communication. She felt a creative spark and just went with it, not caring what it ignited. And in the process made us feel cherished and entertained and deeply deeply impressed.

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GOOFBALL HOUSEWIFE FORGETS MILK AGAIN
Lets down family and friends

Associated Press
January 7, 2010
Duncan, Canada

In a development that surprises no one, Chantell Foss, to all appearances a typical Canadian housewife, has revealed the depths of forgetfulness achievable by a truly scatterbrained specimen. Having confirmed her milk pick up no less than 4 times with her associates the Juliussons and her husband, she could not explain to reporters how she managed to forget her three substantial jugs of valuable, farm-fresh local milk. “I had carpooling today! It’s our first day back to school! It just slipped my mind, okay?”, said Foss as she tried to get her younger child out of a minivan with his lunchbox and mittens.

A disappointed Justin Straker, Foss' husband and partner of many years, just shook his head when confronted with events. “Well, it’s happened before… so no one really… counts on having milk around here…”, he revealed when pressed.

Sarah and Rick Juliusson, whose standard-size kitchen fridge is currently burdened with Foss’ milk overload, couldn’t be reached by phone for comment. However, we received the following text message from an unconfirmed source calling himself “Galen”:“Y no room 4 my pickles? Mummy 2 sad 2 play.”

Duncan mayor’s assistant Yasmeen Coco Figwit-LeClerc made this statement. “Elected officials and community members are appalled. We take this kind of thing very seriously around here, rest assured. After the rain flooding we had in November, we are very concerned with the renewed threat of level three flooding in Cowichan Station and are monitoring developments closely. If Foss does not retrieve her milk within 24 hours, we will feed it directly to the Juliusson’s cows.”

- Rita Skeeter

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For this compulsive blogger, this was a good reminder that I write not just to share, but primarily to write. To bring my insides out, shake them up and dust them off, then put them back in a new order, to a new place of understanding. In my first ever blog entry I wrote, "hoping and believing that these disparate splashes of paint will all come together into a portrait with meaning, with hope, and above all, with questions." Four months later I was already questioning "What/Why am i writing?", wondering if it would all turn into a book or something worthwhile. But along the way I've learned that merely writing is worthwhile. Just developing and exploring these parts of me and our shared experience has been a rich, growing personal journey. Sharing it has been an equally beautiful journey, and gives it a different flavour and light, but is not the necessary nor even necessarily the primary focus of writing. That would miss the point.

One of the random books that survived our purge yesterday made the same point about farming - a point that I discovered and embraced much faster in farming than in writing. In "EarthLight", Brian Swimme talks about being ready to bask in the beauty of being human in this universe:

If a person is working with food and agriculture, say permaculture, and the primary motive is to produce the food, then there's something missing. The primary motive has to include the opportunity of being stunned by this amazing reality in which we're dealing.

So thank you to my dear friend for reminding us to just Be, to just Create because we can. I share her email with my narrow bandwidth of the world because she and her work deserve a spotlight, because it made me laugh, because she reminded me once again of that lesson from the Indigo Girls song, "and the best thing you've ever done for me is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all." And also because i'm utterly defeated in my intention to actually write a worthy come-back (It would start with a letter to her husband, "Dammit, I'm still holding your wife's jugs...").

Cherishing and Clearing our Bustlings

We're clearing. Again. Sarah's been on the rampage wanting to get rid of things, so I figured I'd better get on the bandwagon and agree to eliminate 5 items per day for the month of January. "Only if I can blog about it" was my deal.

This isn't new, this decluttering. We offloaded about 3/4 of our worldly possessions when fleeing the Dubya regime and claiming refugee status in Canada. Then after making the deadly mistake of buying two successively bigger homes (the latter of which we filled with five newly donated couches on move-in day. Five.), we once again downsized to a single 20' moving truck to come to the island.

That process was made easier by the intention of living for a year in a yurt. We held each item up and said, "Will we need this in a yurt?" If the answer was no, the next question was, "If we can live without this for a year in a yurt, do we really need to store it for when we buy a bigger house?" There are precious few things that can stand the double-edged yurt test.

Instead of a cosy yurt, we spread our few surviving things out around this 1300 square foot house, plus the dangerous out buildings for non-essential storage. But we honestly haven't re-accumulated that much, so the idea of shedding 155 items was a bit daunting. OK, not so much daunting as unnecessary, or not where my energies really felt needed. For me at this point, decluttering/simplifying means getting some major projects off the list. Like finishing the luxurious 49 square foot basement office for Sarah so we can reorganize our living space up here. Finally laying that plastic down in the crawlspace. Finishing the foundation wall insulation to get our eco-audit rebate. Those are things that will free up my energies much more than saying goodbye to an extra egg beater or unworn sweater.

As it turns out, the process has been creative, freeing, and bonding in the quirky way that Sarah and I always come together when organizing (on our second night ever together, I helped rearrange her bedroom furniture, and in that moment she Knew i was Mr. Right). We zone in on a shelf or cupboard or collection, waltz together through the memory or energy each item holds, then either release it into the sunlight behind us or place it back down with conscious intention into the ongoing flow of our lives. Then we pat each other on the back as we gaze lovingly onto the cleared, clean, clutterless space we've created.

Tonight was book night. 17 books gone. Some we'd intended to read since as far back as 1998. Some well-meaning gifts we never intended to read, and some that would be good but we just don't need to read (atleast not as much as the ones we did retain.) Then a reshuffling of the survivors into front-room books to remind/inspire us daily, and back-benchers in the office for reference or future indulgence. Not only does it look and feel better, but I feel a renewed desire to read, and renewed clarity about where to start.

In the process we re-opened some old classics, sorted through files of beautiful letters and scribblings, and made the first hand-written entries into our boys' journal since 2006. We also found a Quaker philosophy book that describes this whole obsession of ours in a beautiful phrase, "avoid bustlings."

Ah, still curious about which 17 books are about to be released? OK, I'll leave you with the list, while I go snuggle up on the couch with either "Gardening at the Dragon's Gate" or "Storey's Guide to Raising Sheep."

Buddha Mom; The Wars; Living Simply with Children; Kiss of the Spider Woman; Momfulness; The Bhagavad Gita; Classic Ghost Stories; Draft Faith and Practice; From Poverty to Power; Grow It!; The Time Traveler's Wife; The Upanishads; 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting; Race Against Time (Stephen Lewis); Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers; Love in the Time of Cholera; Between Interruptions.

Simply Swimming

The new Duncan pool has it all. Slides, floating river, waves, squirt guns, music, trees... It also has all the people, the noise, the stress and over-stimulation that leaves our whole family exhausted afterwards.

Today we chose the little hotel pool in Cowichan Bay. Little as in 10-front-crawl-strokes end-to-end. No games, no balls, no nothing except water, edges to jump off, and a papa ready to play with his boys.

And play we did. In the big fancy pool I'm trying to keep up with the kids as they bounce from attraction to attraction like Disneyland first-timers. Today was pure quality family time: cheering as they showed off their strokes and tricks, holding Zekiah as he learned to paddle, catching crazy divers, marvelling as Galen learned to swim underwater between my legs, fixing goggle straps.

Why are we so excited about a big pool that distracts us from being together? Why do we want to pay twice as much for half the family value and twice the overload?

This was the simple, basic pool of my childhood, and I was my frolicking playful dad. The boys have announced that it's now their favourite pool. Mine too.

a Barry Manilow new year

Started this new year with two smashing lessons about attitude and openness. The first came at 7:04 when Galen burst into the bedroom and said "There's broken glass." Emerged bleary-eyed to find an impressive round hole in our heritage-glass front window, and a sad Zekiah explaining that his home-made tinkertoy catapult invention had shot backwards instead of forwards. Too tired to be angry, I found the bright red tucktape to cover it up, then the beautiful origami star from our neighbour to beautify it. So we start the new decade with a bright red star sparkling in the middle of our living room window.

The second came when I took our friends 10km up the mountain to the historic Kinsol Trestle (highest wooden train bridge in the British Commonwealth), the only mud-splashed car in the little parking lot, then out of nowhere a man appeared on the path. A man with a speech impediment, cognitive/social challenges, and a medical marijuana card he proudly showed me. I understood about half his talk about Vietnam and hippies, but tried to respectfully connect then disconnect with him so I could focus on my children and friends.

But walking on the same narrow mountain path makes it difficult to politely ignore a man who desperately wants to talk to his "bro", so I had to let go and try to enjoy what I could of him, and let my friends at least enjoy their walk in Peace.

Then as we neared the bridge the sun poked through the rain. I exclaimed something thankful, and he broke into an operatic cover of Barry Manilow's "I made it through the rain." Being one of very few people ever to hike that trail who knows all the words, I instantly joined in. We finally connected, laughed, and saluted brother sun who'd miraculously come out to greet us for the first time in 2010.

Then just as miraculously, when we reached the bridge he said, "Happy New Year" and turned back up the path. All that time I'd been afraid to engage because he wouldn't ever detach, and really he was the one who knew just how to connect and when to end it. He walks that path every day, and as I said, "I'm sure I'll see you up here again," I meant it.

Will this be a year of being open to what life and accidents and strange mountain men have to teach me?

Naked New Year

The year ended in a hot tub with three beautiful women, under a full "blue" moon and a meteor shower. It's a good life.

Well, almost. At 11:45 the reaction to walking in the cold rain across the garden to the tub was mixed. After a minute in front of the mirror literally mouthing the words "Let Go", I did indeed let go of the need to push friends beyond their limits as my last act of the decade. Instead, we four dear friends gathered in front of the fire and blew out the candle on the tree of life, kissed our partners, and drank in another year of beauty and growth and - at least once in a while - knowing when to just accept and be thankful.