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Five Surefire Winter Blues Beaters

Yes, it’s that time of year again.

The New Year isn’t so new and fresh, anymore. The Valentine’s chocolate is (mostly) eaten. But no matter what the groundhog proclaimed about spring a few weeks back, where I live we’re just settling into the real endurance run: another month, if not two, of cold, slushy, unpredictable weather.

I call it the long tail of winter.

Now, if you happen to live in Victoria, or even Vancouver, you may be wondering what on earth I’m talking about. The cherry blossoms are out on YOUR trees. Gloat your heart out: you deserve to. Our trees, out here in the Atlantic, won’t see buds ’til May. Our shoveling season is just getting started.

Sigh.

I love where I live: it is my home, and my roots go deep here. I lived elsewhere – on both the west and Arctic coasts of Canada, in Asia and Europe and in other parts of the Maritimes – for fifteen years. By the time I moved back to PEI seven years ago, I was more than ready to appreciate all the familiar quirks the Island had to offer. But every February for the past seven years, as the winter drags on longer than is civilized, I’ve had a fleeting moment of wondering what the heck I was ON when I packed my bags and hightailed it home.

It’s lovely in Thailand this time of year. Just sayin’.

If, however, you – like me – do not have the travel budget for a respite from winter, I offer some relatively green and inexpensive suggestions to warm you, heart and soul, while the snow still howls.

1. If you can’t beat it, join it. Go sledding.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/caseycanada/4314851216/

Yes, I realize the snow is chilly. And wet. And dries out the skin. And that none of these things is particularly pleasant, in and of itself. Strangely, though, getting outside on a sparkling winter day can actually be quite exhilarating. Add to that the high speed, I-could-expire-at-any-moment thrill of careening down a hill on a tube/crazy carpet/meal hall tray (ahem) and the rosy cheeks from chugging back UP said hill in the cold, and you have good clean classic Canadian winter fun.

2. Have a hibernation party.

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/jenkim/4230741504/

If the days are gray and slushy, sledding may not sound like such an entertaining prospect. Those of us more inclined towards indoor pursuits in the first place have an advantage, in winter: our hibernatory tendencies become more socially acceptable. But you don’t have to hole up alone: invite friends over for a cozy afternoon or evening of totally, shamelessly sedentary amusements. Play poker. Break out the old crokinole board. Walk on the wild side and convince people to try a round of charades: in short, do things that people did for generations before TV and social media and hyperscheduling made our winters not entirely socially distinguishable from summer.

3. Purge the winter flab of your living space.
I know, this one may not exactly sound like the equivalent of a beach vacation. And no, housecleaning isn’t entirely my idea of a great time. But as somebody wise once said about writing, I don’t like the writing, I like having written. Me, I like having housecleaned, especially on a scale grand enough to clear out a previously unusable corner of my home. A new perspective – even on the mundanity of, say, your sock drawer, really perks things up, and when better to achieve that than when the long tail of winter has you stuck inside anyhow? Plus you can list the things you’ve outgrown on, say, your local usedeverywhere site! And save the profits towards a winter vacation NEXT year!

You can thank me with a postcard.

4. Cozy up with a hot drink.

Photo credit (replete with recipe): The Kitchn’s hot apple ginger toddy: perfection.

There’s nothing lovelier than a nice hot mug cupped between chapped and chilly fingers, and a wintertime drink warming your belly. Summertime can keep its gimlets and its iced tea: I’ll take something toasty anyday. Especially if there’s a fire to curl up in front of, while sipping.

There are creative and delicious hot drinks for almost any palate: I happen to love Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice tea, Korean yu ja cha, and this recipe for bittersweet hot chocolate. Don’t be stingy with the citrus. Or the whipping cream. Whatever fits.

5. Get some light.
Many of us struggle during these long winters because our bodies simply don’t get enough Vitamin D. Supplements don’t necessarily cut it: it’s light that seems to have a positive impact on the aptly named Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. My practice: when there’s light, I get in it. I take a short walk, or I sit near the window, sunning myself like a cat.

Then I eat the dregs of the Valentine’s chocolate. That helps too.

Still, winter gets loooooong. Sometimes none of these efforts quite succeeds in beating back the winter blues and blahs.

If all of the above should fail, I have one final weapon in my arsenal.

It’s for special circumstances only. It’s not for the faint of heart. But it works.

When it all gets too cold for comfort, I remind myself of the inevitability of spring by singing. Specifically, by singing the last verse of my very favourite never-fail campy classic, the under-rated Bette Midler inspirational hymn, The Rose.

Very loudly. Also, off-key.

When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember, in the winter, far beneath the winter snows
Lies the seed, that with the sun’s love, in the spring becomes the Rose.
(Songwriting credit: Amanda McBroom)

Try it. Guaranteed you’ll either believe it by the end, or you’ll be laughing so hard you’ll feel better ’til March.

Words to Live By

Every now and then in life, you come across somebody who changes you.

Five years ago next month, a woman stopped by my blog and left a comment. I clicked back. Her post, that day, happened to be about sitting up rocking her baby through the night.

I’d been sleep-deprived for nearly a year, then: I was frayed and tired, and frequently overwhelmed. Yet here was a woman who wrote a post about sitting up all night with a newborn, a newborn she’d spent months in pain and on bedrest to birth, and those facts were all mere sidenotes.

The post began “Psst…over here. In the half-light of morning. I have something to show you. Someone to show you. Someone wonderful.”

It closed, simply, with”Because I am his mother. And he is my last child.”

Sometimes, a few words can alter your perspective entirely. Hers struck me, and humbled me. There was nothing sanctimonious or saccharine in them, just gratitude and an endurance and appreciation that I am still, five years later, trying to emulate.

This was the first thing Whymommy taught me.

Her name, though I wouldn’t know it for almost a year, was Susan Niebur. A NASA scientist and mother to two tiny boys, she blogged as “Whymommy”: why is the sky blue, Mommy? Why is the rain cold, Mommy? She knew the real answers, Susan did. We became friends.

And then, four months later, she was diagnosed with cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly rare and deadly cancer that tends to strike younger women and presents mostly with skin changes – rash, redness, dimpling – on the breast, not with a lump.

She started chemo. She had a double mastectomy. Then another cancer. Lymph side effects. Recurrence.

She lived through hell and she wrote through it, honestly and in detail. But without lamentations.

All through it, Susan’s tone reminded me of that first post: genuine, enduring, appreciative. And all through it, she taught. She used her platform to educate, and to encourage. She altered – and opened – my perspective a hundred times.

She taught me that what matters for cancer patients is research: time, science, hope.  She taught me that cancer awareness needs to translate into action. She taught me that the stars – and the planets and the music of the spheres – are poetry, as well as science, and can be fascinating to even the smallest of kids. She taught me that every day is worth welcoming. And she taught me, again and again, as she had that first time, that the way you choose to look at a situation has an impact on how you experience it: even when it’s grim. Especially when it’s grim.

Susan stared grim down, unflinchingly. And then found beauty where she could, in the gifts of the moment. I have never had a better teacher.

I got to meet her in person, last April. We had one afternoon, running in the rain, gazing at the wonders at the Library of Congress. She bought me my first – okay, only, ever – hoagie. We talked. We laughed.  She was one of the most present people I’ve ever had the privilege of being with.

My friend Susan Niebur died last Monday. She wasn’t yet forty. Her boys – those boys she prized and loved above all else, those boys she endured so much to be here for, as long as she could – are only seven and five.

It is an incredibly sad story. That isn’t why I tell it.

I tell it because, sometimes, just a few words change lives. Susan believed – and stated openly, in our conversation last spring and in the mantra posted on her blog – that all that survives us is what we put into the world: our words and publications, and our love for other people.

She gave me, through her writing and our years of correspondence and friendship, a view of life that I’d never had access to before. She made me think about my parenting – and my time – as more precious than I’d realized. I was lucky enough to have the chance to thank her for these gifts. But to really honour them, and her, I need to share them, put them back out into the world.

Maybe one of you needs a new way to look at the stars.

Maybe one of you needs to taste the wonder of motherhood again, for a minute, rather than the exhaustion.

Maybe one of you needs to remind someone you love to go get a rash or a skin dimple checked out, now.

Maybe one of you just needs to know that even someone struggling and dying believed, with all her wise heart, that the world is a good and worthwhile place.

Maybe one of you needs to be inspired.

(I’ve had the good fortune of being inspired by Susan for almost five years now. It occurred to me this week how profound her impact’s been on how I see my life, and I felt her absence like a hole.

Then I found her Pinterest account. I don’t use Pinterest (yet); I hadn’t seen, til now, what she’d spent hours pinning. Or her commentary. It felt like finding her all over again.)

And so I share Susan, and her wisdom and her words and her life, lived by example. As her husband wrote in the final post on her blog, Toddler Planet, last Monday, “She is survived by her family, friends, achievements, and the indelible marks she made on people around the world.  In lieu of flowers, please consider furthering Susan’s legacy through a contribution to the Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  Or please choose to make a difference somewhere, anywhere, to anyone.”

Words to live by. Now go, do just that.

Homecoming

We moved this week. Hold me.

The chaos. The dust bunnies. The boxes. The sheer volume of miscellaneous garbage nobody recognizes. The “holy sweet meatballs why do I have no underwear??” The BOXES. Mercy.

I have come to the realization, my friends, that moving – no matter how many times one has done it – is not a whole lot like riding a bike.

Rather, it’s like labour. It’s a world unto itself, a time bracketed off. It’s extraordinarily painful, but the endorphins of the result block your memory of the exact details until the next time you find yourself in the throes. And by then, it’s too late to back out.

While my recall is still plenty gory, let me state clearly that I plan on never ever moving again. In this life. You can pry this house from my cold, dead hands. But I’d rather you just unpacked it for me.
***

In the midst of the madness of sorting and packing and carting and trying to reorganize, though, there is incredible sweetness.

This house we bought, this lovely Arts & Crafts bungalow that I plan to die in, many decades from now, was my grandmother’s newlywed home. She was born across the street, and lived there again all through my childhood. But for a period in the late ’30s through the ’40s, she and husband – who died before I was born – lived here. Where I sit right now, roasting my tootsies at the fireplace.

I am the only child of an only child. When my grandmother died, well into her nineties, I was the inheritor of many of her treasures, including and especially her wedding presents. I wear her rings on my left hand. I have her black-paper wedding album.

And this week, I got to bring her things – the fancy and the mundane – back home.

Her Art Deco dishes, cream and silver:

Her glass citrus juicer, which can slaughter even a grapefruit:

A handy jar – alas now empty – for dealing with colic. The horse kind, not the baby kind. Apparently also good for flesh wounds, and spavins, whatever those are. Too bad it’s empty. All this moving is probably bad for spavins.

Her pansy bowl – my grandmother loved pansies. I’ve never seen another of these: does anyone know if they were common at one time? You fill it with water and place a small purple flower in each hole: beautiful.

Her flour jar, which I plan to finally fill with flour and start using myself.

But THIS is the crowning glory. She was given this as a wedding present by the parents of the man who built this house. It had apparently been given to THEM as a wedding present, years before. Regifting? Not new, people. But seldom this daringly fabulous.

Here it is, atop an old speaker cabinet her husband made by hand. In what was once their living room.

I love these old things. I love their elegant lines and their quirkiness and the solidity of their materials.

But most? I love that they are stories, tangible family history. That when I hold them in my hands, or catch sight of them in my kitchen, I hear – for a second – the sound of my grandmother’s voice, speaking my name.

And here, in this house that was once hers, I love that the ending to these things’ stories is that they’ve come home.

Well, perhaps not the ENDing. But I swear, once I get this house unpacked, I’m not going anywhere for YEARS.

Just Keep Skating

My kindergartener has dreams of playing hockey.

Oscar is five. Hockey is big in Prince Edward Island: recent statistics suggest 14% of kids here play organized league hockey, as opposed to 9% nationally. So once a week, in preparation for living his dream, we cart him off to CanSkate lessons, suit him up in snowpants and a helmet, lace his skates, and set him loose on the ice.

Sure, we tried teaching him to skate on our own. The year he turned two, we bought bobskates – the little double-bladed ones – and a tiny helmet. We have video of him standing in the middle of the ice, holding my hands, chirping with laughter. Then promptly plonking firmly down on his diaper.

The next two winters? More or less a repeat. He’s a kid for whom new physical skills don’t always come easy. He has to work hard just to coordinate himself. When really engaged in something, he frequently forgets whole zones of his body: he is a danger to neglected coffee cups everywhere. Smash. Oops.

I sympathize: I remain the same, to this very day. On the other hand, his father skates like he was born on a hockey team. But alas, sometimes the apple falls from the less optimal tree.

Still, he wants to play hockey, this kid. So off we went to skating lessons.

The CanSkate classes have been good for Oscar. When he started back in October, he could barely walk on his skates. This month, he actually graduated from the beginner to the intermediate group. He came home that night with a badge and shining eyes.

This past week, though, I brought him to his first intermediate class. The beginners had been mostly four and five, like him. The intermediate group? Gargantuan children of seven, most of them. Lined up next to them, he looked distinctly out of place, smaller than he’s seemed in years.

And when the group began to skate, the gap only grew. The teachers led the group around a small circuit of pylons, and the kids followed, gliding and working on their backwards skating. Oscar hasn’t really mastered gliding yet. Within forty seconds, some of the bigger kids had lapped him.

But he was game. He didn’t stop, or disengage, even as the class wore on and it became clear he was by far the slowest in the group.

He just kept skating.

He worked away diligently at the circuit, trying to learn to turn his body backwards. When he fell, he picked himself and dusted himself off, and started again. He wobbled and struggled, and once one of the bigger kids nearly took him out as he flew by. Oscar just kept skating.

I sat in the stands, watching, biting my lip. It’s hard to see your kid fail to keep up. Our culture doesn’t leave much room for it, anymore: we leap in, we mitigate, we try to make sure no feelings of inadequacy are ever fostered.

But Oscar, left to himself, didn’t seem to feel inadequate. He just felt like learning to skate. As I watched, I found myself swelling with pride. Of all the kids speeding around on that ice, he was the one having to work for every step, every last-second-save of his balance. But he wasn’t daunted.

Just keep skating, I found myself chanting under my breath.

He eventually mastered a tuck, and he got up some speed just in time for a spectacular crash. He laughed. I nearly clapped. And then my head cocked, and I looked at him and thought, I want to be like you, kiddo.

I turned forty last week.

I also started two new professional gigs this month, on top of my full-time student status. The learning curves in my life are high, right now. And that’s hard for me, sometimes. It’s easy to notice the people younger than I who’ve already gotten where I want to go. I notice when I’m being lapped by people who started at whatever endeavour after me, but are still racing ahead, making it look easy.

I’m a perfectionist by nature. Most of my life, if I suspected I was the last in my group? At ANYthing? I didn’t do that thing anymore. Enough came easily that I focused where I excelled.

But at some point in life, that’s not enough. At some point, doing what comes easy loses its entertainment value. At some point, if you’re lucky, you start realizing you have something more to gain than lose.

There’s something freeing about forty.

And something wise about five, apparently.

I have things I want to learn, and the learning will take some humility, and some doggedness, and some willingness to put myself out there and probably fail, in public, a few times. I will blush. I will feel exposed, likely, and silly. And I will be tempted to stop.

I need to take a page from Oscar. I need to just keep skating.

I’ll try. I’ll keep at it. And hopefully I’ll occasionally stop and remember to play triceratops with my skates now and then, just to make sure it’s all still fun.

Are you finding yourself more free to learn and grow, as you get older? How have the kids in your life surprised you with their wisdom?

Not Available in Canada? Think Again

In two weeks, we move houses. Our first move in seven years. Our first move with kids.

I’m a little daunted.

Not just by the chaos of packing up a life while still, erm, living it. Sure, I have nightmares about losing all the kids’ snowpants in the transition. (Actually, the nightmares are more like premonitions. It’s likely. Possibly inevitable. Perhaps my children should just sleep in their snowsuits the entire week of the move).

But our biggest challenge so far has been an unexpected one: the SHOPPING.

While we’re keen to do this move as economically as we can, recycling and upcycling and making the most of what we have, we’re still moving from 1200 square feet to 2200. And we’ve bought a house that has a particular style; a style we both love. It’s a Craftsman bungalow from the 1920s: a low, quaint, story-and-a-half home with strong architectural roots in the Arts & Crafts tradition.

Exhibit A: Cute house-to-be.

Photo credit: Century 21

We’re not making too many new furniture investments right now, but I was excited about sourcing some cool, era-appropriate accent items.

Well, source ‘em I have, only to find out I can’t ship ‘em here. Oh Canada. It’s all like a terrible flashback.

I’ve spent most of my life in regions of geographic underprivilege, when it comes to shopping. I grew up in Prince Edward Island in the ’80s. Vacation paradise, yes. Shopping mecca? Not so much. You remember those ubiquitous Benetton rugby shirts and Beaver Canoe sweatshirts that any girl worthy of her spiral perm was sporting, then? I coveted those. You couldn’t buy ‘em here. And online shopping hadn’t been invented yet.

In my mid-twenties, I lived in the Arctic. You couldn’t buy a whole lot there at all, unless you had it shipped in on the annual barge. I owned a single frying pan and a very warm goosedown parka, and not much else. I would’ve been an excellent candidate for online shopping, except that my region, uh, had no Internet. FAIL.

Then I moved to South Korea. Plenty of connectivity, but Amazon wouldn’t ship there. Neither would most clothing companies. I learned to weep at the sight of those seven cruel words: “shipping only available within the 48 contiguous US states.” I also learned to read my own star chart, in excruciating detail: Astrology for Dummies was one of the few English books available in the local bookstore in my town. We Aquarians like to make the most of what opportunities we have at hand.

Seven years ago, I came home to Prince Edward Island, partner in tow, ready to build a longterm life here. Retail-wise, the place had improved drastically in the decade or so I’d been away. And my needs have been simple: baby items and books in English and clothes that fit me and the kids have all been bounteously available, both new and second-hand. Glory.

I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to feel on the outside looking in, when it came to stuff.

Until now.

The Arts & Crafts movement was a reaction against Victorian overdecoration; its principles are based largely on simple lines, natural materials and William Morris’ famous dictum, “Have nothing in your home you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Words to live by, and ones that seem particularly wise as we sort and pack our current little house and the flotsam we’ve gathered over our years here.

Exhibit B: My new fantasy life, minus the, erm, “Intermountain West” part.

Photo credit: debaird via Flickr

But here’s the problem: the Arts & Crafts-style items that we’d love to buy to compliment the house? They’re not available here. They’re not, for the most part, even easily available in Canada. The majority of remaining Craftsman bungalows seem to be located in places like California and Chicago. Or the Intermountain West, wherever that is. So I spend hours sourcing pretty things like these:

Exhibit C: the most fabulous Art Deco house numbers EVER, from Oak Park Home & Hardware.

…and then sniffling into my coffee when we get to the shipping costs or even the possibility of shipping to Canada. If I see the words “shipping only available within the 48 contiguous US states” one more time, I’ll have to break out my faithful old Astrology for Dummies and see which upcoming day is auspicious for miracles.

It’s going to be hard to have nothing in – or on – my home I do not believe to beautiful if I can’t procure any of the items I want for it in this country. I have Googled myself silly: are there really no Craftsman or Deco-era house numbers available to Canadians? I mean, I just want to buy some, America. I’m not trying to steal ‘em off the Chrysler Building, or anything.

Exhibit D: I wouldn’t steal them. They’re the wrong street address.

Photo credit: sfgamchick via Flickr

More sadness: our new back entry is in the kitchen. No mudroom. We’re going to be tripping on shoes like a clown show. But even the Craftsman-style shoe cupboard that’s mass-produced and mass-marketed through Home Depots in the US? The one at a sale price I couldn’t refuse?

Well, I had to refuse. They wouldn’t ship either. And when I talked to Home Depot here: they don’t carry that line, and have no intention of bringing in any Arts & Crafts, Craftsman, or Mission-style items, thank you very much. I weep.

However, as I said, we Aquarians do like to make the most of the opportunities we have at hand. When I signed on earlier this month to work with Used Everywhere, I wanted to spend some time exploring the usedpei.com site, getting to know the market and the community. And lo and behold, there it was. “Retro sideboard,” the ad read. Real wood, in reasonable shape, perfect for the era of our home and just down the road. We don’t have a truck, but the owner kindly agreed to deliver it for a few extra dollars.

Exhibit E: SUCCESS. See the detailing on this beauty? When we eventually get it out of our shed and into the bungalow, you’ll be able to admire it in its proper habitat!
 

There are downsides, sometimes, to living off the beaten path, even in this glorious age of internet. Major markets will likely always have more choice when it comes to new items and specialty items. But there are treasures everywhere, just waiting to be unearthed, and small upcycling networks and sites can harness access to these treasures. Turns out I’m no longer so geographically underprivileged after all.

Now, if somebody can just direct me towards some gently-used 1920s-style house numbers for sale, I’ll be golden.