All's well that ends well.

Yesterday was not a great day. I was tired, and Aedan was trying, so there was a lot of yelling and more than a few bouts of tears. This whole "terrible twos" business is terribly misleading...all of toddlerhood seems to be full of frustration and flexing of wills and also wonderful, burgeoning independence and personality. Aedan is almost three, and I'm beginning to suspect that things aren't going to magically change at the stroke of midnight on his birthday.

I guess it's me who must change, become even more patient and understanding. 

But I digress. Yesterday I was neither patient nor understanding. And then P got home from work and he wasn't much better. When bedtime (finally, thankfully) rolled around, Aedan said he wanted to sleep with Daddy. So P came up to bed with us.

I lay on my side in our bed with Colm, nursing him to sleep, drifting myself in that in-between place, while P snuggled Aedan up. After a few minutes, Aedan asked, in his tiny voice: "Want Daddy to sing to you?"

"Okay," P replied. And softly, he began, "Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed."

I perked up a little.

"A poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed.
And then one day out shooting some food,
up from the ground came a bubbling crude."

Fully awake now, I joined in:

"Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea."

(is this familiar to you, too?)

Then we started laughing, and Aedan thought it was time to get up and play. We settled him back down, and P finished singing him the theme song from The Beverley Hillbillies ("it's the only song I can think of!" he told me) and we all drifted off to sleep, the day's hurts forgotten.

Of rain and raspberries

We've had an abundace of these two things around here lately. The rain is taking its toll. With such a short summer, we tend to feel cheated if it's less than perfect. And though this rain has only been a thing of the last two weeks or so, it's taken over our telling of this summer's story. We'll remember it as the rainy one, even though it started early and crept on slow and lovely. We'll only recall that it ended abruptly, with lots of puddles.

The raspberries are in season, rain or not, and the clearing around our house has been overtaken a bit more each summer. In another year or two I think we'll be hacking back the canes just to get into the front door.  Usually I pick all that I can, and make jam or freeze them. But this year I am feeling decidedly unmotivated. Aedan and I venture out every day, grazing along the little hillside like a mama bear and her cub, combing the small red fruits into our mouths without discrimination for under- or over-ripeness. We store what we can in our bodies and leave the rest for the birds. 

The rosehips blush scarlet, the ground is wet and mushrooms silently explode out of the forest floor. It feels like autumn is here, but I'd never say that out loud for fear of being run out of town.

Long Haul

I realize that there are many women who do this alone, either some or all of the time. Around here, their partners work at remote mine sites. They fight wildfires, stationed in the bush in the territory or flown out to help in other provinces, sometimes gone for weeks. 

Women's partners are long-haul truckers, or in the military, or just not there at all, ever. So many women do this all alone, all of the time.

After a day like yesterday, where P is out the door at 7:30 a.m. and doesn't pull into the driveway until 7 p.m., I find myself wondering how these women do it. How do they go for days, or weeks, or years as the primary caregiver? As the only adult in the house, all day long? How do they make time for that mythical beast called self-care? How do they fill the well? How do they not lose their minds? 

Or maybe they do. 

Lose their minds, that is. I know I feel close to it on these particular days. I find myself resenting being stuck out here alone for such long stretches of time. I pace within these log walls, or without, in the clearing around the house, swatting at mosquitoes and wishing someone would pull into the driveway, anyone, and not just to turn around and drive back to the gas station at the corner. I'm armed with tea and a wild 3 year old and a sweet baby. I'll invite you in, I swear!

In the absence of (grown) human contact, I find myself spending too much time on the internet, never really making much of a connection there, either. I sing "Mr. Lonely" in my head and feel sorry for myself and then tell myself to cut it out, shake it off. I wash the dishes, I build a block tower and watch the baby knock it over. I count the minutes until. 

My Tiny Guru

I recently read somewhere on the internet that "mothering is the shortest and steepest path to enlightenment."

I've been trying to keep that in mind lately as I navigate this sometimes maddening world of life with an almost three year old. Because there is no sense to those little people.

For example, Aedan has recently decided that spitting is really hilarious. Especially spitting on me. And there is nothing that enrages me quite like that. The anger is instant, and intense, and I just don't know what to do with it sometimes.

Last night, on my own because P had to work late, I cycled through all of my "tools". I told him sternly that we don't spit at people, that it is disrespectful. He laughed gleefully and spat upon me again. 

I told him again, with the same result. 

I tried ignoring him for awhile (which is really hard to do). No dice. 

Then I wanted to smack him, but I'm pretty sure that's not allowed, so instead I put myself on time out. I told him that Mama was really angry, and she was going to sit upstairs for a minute.

As I sat on our bed in the loft--with Aedan crying and banging on the gate across the bottom of the stairs--I wondered: what would the Buddha do if his almost three year old wouldn't stop spitting on him? What would Jesus do? Would they be calm and peaceful? Would they not react at all? I started to calm down a bit.

And then I realized that if the Buddha or Jesus ever had a child, it was likely home spitting on its mother while the enlightened ones were out meditating under a tree somewhere.

In the end, I declared bed-time. As Aedan flopped around in the bed, not at all tired or ready to sleep, I lay beside him, thinking about enlightenment and hoping that that anonymous person on the internet is right, and that I am on that path right now, my little guru cracking the whip over my shoulder, and spitting on the back of my head for good measure.

Just doing something...

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Back to your regularly scheduled programming shortly!

DCMF 2014

Oh, Music Fest. The weekend I've loved to hate since my first summer in Dawson, when my boss offered me a pass to the entire festival, and then asked me to work double shifts all weekend. Maybe my dislike of the festival is really just me being crabby that I can't just relax and enjoy it.

Anyway.

"Kid's Fest" happens on Saturday, from 11-2 or something like that, in the main tent. Tante Cat wanted to come with me and the boys this year. At 9 am Saturday morning, I receive the following message from her:

"I'm just going to bed now. Should be good to go for noon."

Tante Cat is a bartender at the Pit. She also loves to party. And she loves my boys.

After some back and forth about meeting at the tent vs picking her up at her house, she finally writes:

"Let's be honest here. Can you just pick me up at the Pit?"

So with that determined, I commence operation Prepare Aedan to Leave the House. It takes a lot of warning and discussion to get an almost 3 year old ready to leave. I had to make promises of balloons and a "treat" at the festival grounds. But it worked, and we were on the road by 11.

We hadn't been on the road for more than 5 minutes when Aedan said: "Uh oh. He's scratching his face!"  A moment later, Collie began to wail. I pulled over, jumped out of car to assess the damage, and began to wail myself. The whole side of Colm's face was covered in blood. His hand was covered in blood. His shirt collar: covered in blood.

We turned around, got him cleaned up at home, put on the sock mitts for the first time in a long time, and then got back into the car, headed to town for the second time. I was dreading the festival now, because taking a baby with a severe eczema flare out into public means you either get lots of unsolicited advice, or people awkwardly not mentioning it at all.

However. The balloons. And the treat.

After a quick stop at the farmer's market, I swung by the Pit, making my way past the gauntlet of drunk people from Whitehorse to find my friend and drag her out to the car. We headed over to the festival grounds.

As soon as we set foot in the tent, full of little kids and their parents and face paint and balloons and a woman playing a ukelele, I panicked. I froze.

"Okay," I said to Cat. "I'm good. Let's go."

But the balloons! The treat!

The look of joy on Aedan's face as he ran into the fray and stole a red balloon from some kid was enough to make me choke back my panic and relax and even enjoy myself a little bit.

I chatted with other moms (and eczema only came up twice, not bad) and nursed my baby and watched Tante Cat enjoy her buddy and then we got Aedan some mini pancakes all covered in maple syrup because he loves maple syrup. Then I took Cat home so she could sleep, and we all drove home again. Both boys passed out before we were even out of city limits.

Maybe after 9 years and 2 kids, I'm finally getting the hang of this music festival business. 

Learning to accept where I'm at

While I was recently back in Ontario for a visit, I flipped through a few of my old journals. The ones from high school were just plain embarrassing. So much angst! But most interesting was the journal from 2005/06. That was the year I first came to Dawson--and then went back to Ontario with my tail between my legs.

That first summer was a confusion of emotion. I was exhilerated by making such a huge change in my life. I was also incredibly lonely. In reading through that journal, I was struck by how badly I wanted to go "home". I stuck it out because I felt like I had to. I was also under the infamous "spell of the Yukon". That fall, when I went back to London, all I wrote about was...wanting to be back in Dawson.

Since then, I've alternately felt completely at home here, and like I can't get out fast enough. And here I am again, dissatisfied with what I've got, yearning for something else. It seems to me I've spent much of the last 10 years in this mental state. What an exhausting waste of my energy!

I've said it once before here: I'm not happy on the Dempster. I know there are people who thrive on this kind of lifestyle, who would give anything to live exactly where I do. But it turns out I am not one of those people. I long to go for a walk and pass people on the street. To take the kids to the park when we're all losing it, without having to pack the car for a "town day". I miss friends dropping by for tea. It makes fir a great story to see a wolf in the yard, but I miss having human neighbours. I want to live in town again.

That being said, I don't live in town. Moving to town is not  going to happen any time soon. So, for myself and also for my kids, I must choose to accept what we've got here, and to thrive where I've been planted. It's okay to feel how I do, it's okay to want something different, but it's not okay to react with sadness and anger.. It's not okay to feel "stuck" here. This is where we are right now, but I need to remember that all things are in constant flux. Nothing is fixed; not one single thing about life is permanent and unchanging. Even the mountains around me are very slowly changing, worn by wind and rain and freezing and thawing, by the slow and subtle shifts we can't see. 

For now I must try to relish this unique life I'm living, these moments that will never exist again. To focus my energy on embracing each day, accepting it as it comes, no matter how it comes, and seeing the beauty in that.