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I love the feeling that comes from gathering with my fellow town folk to celebrate our community.
We shake hands with our local firemen and women and wave to our mayor.
We clap and dance alongside marching bands and baton twirlers.
We chat with people around us and share in the joy of each other's children.
And finally we all cheer wildly for the jolly man in the red suit.
This is a tradition worth fighting the crowds for.
Because the crowd really is the best part.
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Even though they spend hour upon hour with me each day, my children never seem to tire of my company and always want more of it. One of the places they love to seek me out is in the kitchen and having four kids means it's a place I spend a lot of time.
The thing is, I really like to be alone in the kitchen. My kids are always eager to help and I'm always shooing them out of my space. Lately, I've started to feel guilty about it. Cooking together is such a great thing — learning the importance of healthy choices, working on math skills, practicing cooperation, inheriting family recipes, creating memories.
And I know this because as a child I spent a lot of time standing beside my mom during dinner prep. She wasn't a Betty Crocker — all bake sale items were bought from the grocery store and dumped into tupperware for disguise — but she is an excellent authentic Chinese cook. And I absolutely loved standing beside her sizzling wok, handing her spices or throwing chopped veggies into the sparkling oil.
I was her "taster", the one who told her if there was enough flavour in the dish-of-the-night before she brought it to the table to be served. I doubt she really needed my input, she made those dishes hundreds of times, after all. But I'm sure it was her way of teaching and I did learn.
Years later, I'm making many of her signature dishes for my family and take great pride in knowing how much they enjoy them. One of our family favourites is my mom's steamed pork and egg dish (recipe and photo provided by noobcook.com)
Just the aroma of this dish is enough to bring my kids running in anticipation.
And so I'm going to use it as my inspiration to take my ear buds out (okay, so sometimes I like to bring my ipod into the kitchen for company) and pull up some chairs and start the teaching.
What about you? Do your kids join you stove-side?
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"How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?" ~ Albert Einstein
A Facebook acquaintance of mine recently posted something I couldn't read and move past (i.e. keep my opinion to myself). I felt compelled to speak up because I utterly disagreed and knew she would be open to a different perspective.
Her comment went something like this, "I hope I can teach my children to invest themselves in relationships they consider marriage-worthy and not give themselves or their hearts away to anyone else". It's worth noting she is married to her high school sweetheart and is quite conservative -- but neither are facts that affected my reaction to her statement.
I couldn't wrap my head around her message. Did she mean to say we shouldn't give ourselves over to love unless we know without doubt it's sustainable? And if we do allow ourselves to fall in love, do we have to stay?
Of course, my thoughts flew to my own high school sweetheart. And he really was just that -- a sweetheart. With him I felt beautiful and so loved. We had a good and healthy relationship. During our time together, I did so much growing. I learned about compromises and give-and-take and I discovered pieces of myself worth sharing with another person.
So I wrote all of that and hit reply and she immediately responded with "Why did you need someone else to find yourself?"
I thought of my amazing husband and how easily he might not have been mine. I smiled thinking of how we joke about living in the same co-ed dorm for a full year, less than 15 doors apart, never once meeting because it 'wasn't our time'.
I ended things with my high school sweetheart for no other reason than coming to the realization it wasn't the kind of love I wanted for a lifetime. We were together for a long time. We absolutely exchanged hearts full of hope for a future together. I broke his heart and to this day I shed tears when I think of it. And for me it was a very courageous decision. I am not someone who does the unexpected and I devastated my family and his with my choice to end our relationship. I've since lost his friendship and it's left a sad mark on my history.
But that first love, and the many gifts it gave me, was the reason I was who I was -- confident, self-assured and unwilling to settle -- when I locked eyes with my future husband for the first time. We have been together since that moment. After 17 years, we are still growing and learning from one another. We are raising a family together and living through experiences both joyful and turbulent.
On our wedding day I told our friends and family about my deep gratitude for being chosen by someone who wasn't afraid to be my mirror in life. He challenges me to find my best reflection. He believes in me and loves me and expects nothing less than the unexpected from me. He makes me swoon. He is a beautiful parent. He does extraordinary work in his career and makes a difference in people's lives. He makes a difference in my life.
If I hadn't loved and been loved before meeting him, it might never have been our time. And so my acquaintance and I agreed to disagree with my final comment. "I hope my children give their hearts to people who respect and care for them. I hope they feel brave enough to love whatever the outcome. And more than anything, I hope they know how worthy they are of another person's love, no matter how many times it takes to find the truest one."
~ taken from the vaults of our true love story ~
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I was recently asked if I’ve found my bliss, which technically translated means ‘perfect joy’. It’s a loaded question because joy has shown itself in my life many times and in many ways. A hesitant kiss, trips to the ocean, seeing my parents’ tears as I graduated, falling crazy-in-love, skinny dipping under the stars, being chosen by someone, double lines on a plastic stick, the thumpity-thump of a miracle baby’s heartbeat, the feeling of warmth and weight as my children were laid across my heart and then: first smiles, first steps, first days of school – four times over.
Joy also comes to me without bells and whistles; I find it in the quiet moments too. Like those rare mornings of uninterrupted coffee and the paper. Or Post-it love notes my husband leaves stuck to our always-sticky counter before he leaves for work. The thrill of seeing my name on something I’ve written and knowing that someone I’ve never met might read it. The shy sideways glance of a tiny ballerina as she looks through the observation window of her class and the sweet relief on her face when she finds mine there.
But these are all experiences or moments. And I think to find bliss in them means accepting that even with my many imperfections I am worthy of them.
I was a gangly, awkward girl who has given a very bad haircut at age 10 that had many people mistake me for a gangly, awkward boy; which only served to heighten my awkwardness as I tripped into the teen years, braces and glasses in tow. I worried what people were thinking of me. Or I worried they weren’t thinking of me at all. Second-guessing myself was a full time hobby.
But I left for university determined to banish that girl. I went to parties and made a lot of friends. I joined clubs and tried new things. I even learned to flirt. I met the perfect guy and got married. Then I became a mother and it all came undone.
My baby screaming inconsolably at the mommy-and-me class, what are the other mothers thinking? Did that well-rested looking mother just say her kid is sleeping through the night? I have to stop nursing my baby to sleep. Will my husband ever find me attractive or interesting again?
Hours and weeks of pushing a stroller with a wailing, colicky baby inside or marching up and down the stairs while loudly shushing. On and on it went. Until the moment we quite literally stumbled past a mirror in our hallway. Exhausted and drowning in self-doubt, I crouched low and popped up to show my daughter our reflection. She saw our faces side-by-side and the most beautiful sound was heard – a first deep-from-her-belly giggle.
Greasy hair, dark circles, worry lines; all of that and I was enough. And motherhood has taught me I always have been.
Whether it’s the way my oldest daughter quietly retreats to her room after she’s checked to see what I’m wearing so she can come up with a similar looking outfit. Or how my son always looks at me when presented with a situation he’s unsure about. I am enough. And if anyone else sees me as less, it doesn’t matter.
The moments of joy that show themselves in our every day lives mean so much more when they are unwrapped in front of such an important audience. And where there was doubt there is now determination to let it go.
Have I found joy? Yes.
Have I found perfect joy? Blissfully, yes.
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