Time

What a weekend, as they always are here. My family was up, everyone but my middle sister, and we spent our days walking, hiking, hanging out at Gun Lake and eating fabulous food under a sun-saturated sky.

As an assignment over the weekend I sent each student home with a disposable camera with the instructions to take pictures of the things they are thankful for. I explained that they wouldn't be able to see the pictures, and showed them how the cameras worked. "Why can't we see them?" one of my Kinder students asked, and I started to explain how photography worked before losing her to the click of her first picture: me.

I had my own disposable camera out and ready to use this weekend as well so that I have images to model some of the writing activities we will use the pictures for. I took pictures of Sanford on a walk with my Mom, of my family doing the dishes after I cooked dinner, of my parents dancing in my dance floor-sized kitchen, of the delicious turkey dinner at my own little dining room table. I realized many times this weekend that I have so much to be thankful for. My life here has blossomed into something very special. I have embraced it, this whole living-on-my-own-in-the-mountains thing, and in doing that I have been open to the many people and unique opportunities that have present themselves. I feel so thankful that I made it though a year up here on my own, and I look forward to the challenges that this winter will bring, however cold and long it may feel. I know that spring always comes, and I've learned to start taking things one day at a time by living here. I feel like the city presses weeks of plans upon my shoulders, but here there is space to breathe; I can just live at the pace of living. The only thing I really should do this week is collect another truckload of wood. And go to work each morning. And there is such freedom in the thought of just having to "do" these two activities. Everything else is open, and I am ready to say yes to whatever my wandering heart takes pause at.

Time. It has a different pace here. There is no traffic pressing me to leave early for work, stopping me from coming home after a long day. No rushing to get to the store or do errands. Time stretches its legs out, flaps like a flag in a light breeze, folding back and forth upon itself beneath a calm sky.

A friend who was over for dinner this weekend talked to my family about the history of this area, about how many thousands of people used to live here. What were their lives like, I wondered, and then I realized that I know many folks who were born here, and that I should spend more time talking with them while they are living here as my neighbours, as the pioneers of this place that I so recently began to call home. Questioning the past makes me think of my own childhood; after this weekend it has a much tighter grip on my memory than ever before.

On special occasions while we were growing up--unbeknown to me until this weekend--my parents would rent a video camera and would record us on VHS tapes. Twenty-eight hours of footage in total. My Dad recently realized that the quality of the tapes would deteriorate and so he had them put on DVD and brought them up here this weekend for our inaugural viewing pleasure.

They are HILARIOUS!!! My parents ask us to sing and dance and for me to show off my gymnastics moves. It's pretty crazy to see myself as a small child, my sisters and their simple yet deeply complex thoughts, my parents talking about how heavy the camera is and what's that blinking red light that seems to be on all the time, and can you sing us a song that you know, Jacquie, and I just belt one out that I happen to know off by heart. A song that I find now, at 29, still buried deep within the bowels of my neurons, not even dusty after a decade-and-a-half of non-use.

There is even footage of us horseback riding, dressed in party dresses imagining a tea party in the backyard, spiders included, me showing off the art in my favourite alphabet book, Northern Alphabet, which I had forgotten about but instantly the floodgates open and I remember. Mostly it is footage of my family and I just hanging out. And I am thankful that we had time to do this, to hang out and be kids, because there are many kids in this world who don't get that time, who don't have all of the things we had plus parents to record it all, how lucky we all were, although I'm sure we didn't know it then.

I realized in watching the few hours that we did how incredibly HYPERACTIVE I was, and how into artistic and dramatic play I was even then. I realize that I was always an artist, even as a child, but perhaps children are all artists until we systematically shut down their creative selves by demanding "right" answers and standardized performances from them; this is a topic for another post.

Thank goodness I found an outlet for my hyperactive self, a place to balance me out: any activity in the great outdoors, which at this stage in my life happens to be in my own backyard.

Before watching the videos I imagined scenes of my sisters and I fighting: over toys, over attention, over a misinterpreted glance. Instead the few hours of footage show that we were actually quite civilized to each other. I was even kind to and helpful with my two younger sisters! I guess it was early enough in our lives that we still got along, because from what I remember of our teenage years the waters in our household were definitely turbulent, and the roller coaster of hormonally-charged, independently-minded teenage girls was certainly full of crashes.

Now the three of us get along famously, but we would have rolled our eyes at you if you had prophesized this when we were younger.

Time. It has crept back into my life in the form of remembered memories. Were they there all along, waiting to be mined, still intact after all these years like the song that lay waiting to be sprung forth from the trap of childhood? Favourite toys, favourite dresses passed down from oldest child to youngest, of songs and rhymes I used to know by heart. In a way I feel I have stepped back, but at the same time I feel further along than ever on this journey we name a lifetime. Each step has made me the person that I am and each has strengthened the muscles in my legs so that I can carry on walking forward to a place that I can not see. All I can see is the path directly beneath my feet, but I can also look back to the places I have been, to where I have come from. For this all, I am thankful.