Dear Michael

February 1st, 2012

Dear Michael~

It's coming again. You know, that time of year when the storm looms in the distance...and I throw back the curtains of my life...and watch it approach. There's no way to stop it, or avoid it...it will find me wherever I am, because it's not something I can outrun, escape, or turn my back on. It's that day...and I will live it, and remember that there have been 2 years with you not here. The briskness of winter winds whip around me..and my memories. They feel hollowing, and comforting all at once. I embrace the sleeping, frozen world at this time of year...because it reminds me of when you left, and somehow, that feels like the right correlation between the living, and winters suspended consciousness of life.

My sister met someone who knew you yesterday. She told me the story of this elderly lady who was your Sunday School teacher a million years ago...and how you were the most charming child she has recollection of. She said how proud she was to know you, and to witness all of the good work you did in those few short years, reaching out to the worlds forgotten ones. She spoke of how she felt when she said goodbye to you on that unthinkable February day...how her heart shattered...like the rest of us.

I think of you often when I am left to care for my nieces and nephew...and how your world too, revolved around the little ones in your life. I love them more, in your abscence...because I know you would advise me to do so. I picked up 5 bags of clothes yesterday to pass onto an out of the cold program. I will speak of you with gentle fondness, and fierce pride...my fearless, dear friend who left a countless number of hints behind...for how to live...who to be, what to believe, and where to go.

There's so much I want to tell you...so much I hope you now know. I loved you unendingly, my friend...and that doesn't stop. Life has moved on in ways...but that magic spell, that Michael impression is forever appearing my life...like drawing a heart into a frost laden winter window. You've left me with a, "do it now" attitude...whether it be to reach out...reach up, say something, or to create something that didn't exist before..it's you who has shaped me into the Jenn with 2 n's I am today.

Keep finding me, in your way. You know I am still looking for you...and trust my gut when I feel you around. I know you're still present...I know you're okay. Thank you for what it was that we had...for what we were. Thank you for the honesty...I have yet to go there again with anyone...you were special Michael...very special, my kindred friend.

You've become my go to answer for so many of life's questions. Why do I: Care about the homeless? Walk through grief with people? Choose to do what's right, and not easy? Tell people I love them? Give second chances?....Pick up pennies?

It's because of you, Michael...and always will be.

Miss you much kiddo..every moment, every day.

J. xo

The Tangibles

Some set goals. Some resolve to be resolute. Some make promises, either private or public...and some don't venture into commitments they feel they may not be able to uphold.

At the beginning of a new year, I don't make resolutions. I do step into the newness though, mindful of where I want to be at the end of these 365 days...and where the past 365 have brought me to.

I spent 2011 choosing to be mindful in the big and small moments of my life. I'm becoming progressively more and more aware of how the past can either paralyse your future...or it can prepare you for it. I am 100% choosing the latter. Choosing to forgive others, and myself for imperfections and flaws...indifference and lack of awareness. For I am trying to believe, that we really are all doing the best we can with where we are in our life.

One truth that has become brightly lucent and luminous, is the fact that all things tangible, when related to people...are of the highest worth. Relationships that are lived out loud...in real life, face to face. Those good, bad, ugly and sometimes confusing exchanges...are still better than any kind of cold and empty text message, email or contact through social media.

We live so much of our lives in places that actually aren't real these days. We talk about Facebook like it's a busy, happening place, and Twitter like it's the coffee shop serving up hot, steaming 140 character shots of caffeine to our ever insatiable habit for information. We are relentlessly bombarded with the endless pressure to be happier, wealthier, thinner and more fashionable..and funny enough...we're doing it to ourselves.

I have chosen, in 2012, to be present in the tangibles. The conversations, interactions, heart to heart moments...unforgettable songs, hysterical laughs and all of those blissful moments that life is throwing my way. I have in the past, often chosen to picked up the phone to check a bbm message, or check my Facebook, when a real- live- breathing human being is sitting in front of me, and engaging me in aunthentic relationship. That kind of disregard is to me now, painfully rude, and unforgivably selfish....we are all worthy of 100% attention when we are spending time with those who we do life with.

Choosing to be present is hard work at first. It requires moment to moment decisions to be out in your life...and not creating a semblence of a life on a laptop. With 2 small children now in my life, the recognition of my role in their development of self and worth is paramount. They need to know that what they say, do, dream, and believe is all important to me...and that I am 100% passionate about the quality of their lives. Truth be told...I hope any and every person who is in my life feels that way, from my family, to my friends to my co-workers and clients. I am craving authenticity...out there, in that place we call the world.

So go get it my friends. That life you're dreaming of...I assure you, is just past the other side of your first step towards it. There is a great big, marvellous, spectacular world out there...now stop reading my blog, and go get it already!

The Auntiehood

She has wet hair. It looks like unravelled rope, and hangs wrecklessly almost to her waist. She is indigo eyed, with a perfect little girl giggle... she liked chocolate and can't wait for Ho Ho to get here on Christmas Eve.

He is a toe head. A term I had heard a bazillion times..even when explaining me, and mine. But trust me when I say, you will n'er see a more ideal specimen than you will in this boy. He prefers white chocolate, and likes ketchup on his Kraft dinner. He's one of the sweetest souls I know.

I live with them. My niece and nephew are under the same roof as my sister and I, for an undetermined amount of time...and life is perfect.

As someone who has wanted a family of my own...a home a flurry with plastic cups and dishes, milk before bed, and unceasing, brightly tinkling laughter - I was certainly at a loss on the timeline of the arrival of these things. When life spun a wee bit off course, and circumstances presented...life fell into place. It's not in the manner of my expectations...but it's exactly what I have wished for.

Children change you. Any parent would tell me I surely don't know the half of it. Perhaps because they are fluttering through that brief, yet flawlessly radiant time in life when all things are new...expectation is paramount, and disappointment lasts about as long as it takes to kiss someone on the end of the nose - I am aware pretty much every moment with them, that I am priviledged to be a part of this. The shaping of their ideas on happiness, and security...what is right...and what is wrong... all of those fundamental core beliefs about life are being formed...right before my eyes, right in the very shadows of my grown up life...every minute...everyday.

As I watch the precious littles dance in my room, often to music far too complex for their minds... I am breathless with the realization that they have had no disappointment...no one has told them they're not good enough, pretty enough, or too chubby to do it...they just feel it, and go. My nephew thinks he's an A1 breakdancer at 4 years old...and my niece is the baddest little spinner this side of the talisman in Inception. Perhaps I am biased? They, along with my other 2 angelfaced nieces are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Christmas will come in the wee hours of the dark just a little more than a day from now. We'll create our traditions for them...we'll be the fearless memory makers, just as our parents were...and theirs before them.

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. ~Neil Postman

Let It Be

Sometimes I find life quietly lulls along...it feels as if it's bobbing lazily along with the stream of my life. Of course, things are plodding along as normal, but those "shake you awake moments" seem to be sitting dormant and silent on the sidelines. And all at once, I seem to be whirling and buzzing with the bittersweet beauty of clarity...and those snapshot moments that I wish so desperately I could put on the inside of my deepest, most secret pocket.

Goodbye's. Or maybe those moments you realise something is, in fact, over...are rarely happy. October presented a chalk full 31 days. A television appearance...an unforgettable vacation, a car accident, 2 brilliant concerts, a double dose of goodbye...and a night spent with 2 children caught in the wonderment of Halloween. I can say the month didn't end without my heart brimming to uneqivocal overflow.

Those perfect moments of the month keep everything in perspective...and the good surely does outweigh the bad. But with honesty, the goodbye's are bruising. They leave dull, aching pain and reminders of when life was a little less complicated...and when the unknown was exciting, and not scary. Learning that things aren't as you thought they were...well, who is prepared for that?

Goodbye means change. Sometimes it means a reboot of sorts, and a chance to start afresh without the constraints of ankle weights holding you to the past. It frees both sides to grow...if they weren't meant to grow and intertwine together. It inevitably, administers relief to one, or both parties. Sometimes, amidst the release...there is still the unresolved, hanging in the air like wispy smoke. Sometimes...you choose to live with the "why"...because "why" lives in a place called 10 minutes ago...and it just doesn't matter anymore.

So, now 5 days into a new month...I look back on October with a grateful smile...a renewed sense of what I want for my one and only life...and a few tears that I won't wipe away just yet. I accept what is...and I will let it be...whatever that may be.

Fair Trade

Everyday we trade things. I began trading stickers in primary school. Two scratch and sniff stickers were fairly negotiated for a puffy Scooby Doo. I was an avid reader as a girl. Library books were traded and consumed over and over again. Global economies are upheld by a trading system of commodities and stocks, and our financial stability is waged on the culmination of good and bad, long term and short term decisions.

I traded 2 days of travel for an adventure between the Sea and Sky. I spent many hours in airports and airplanes, so to visit my incredible friends on the west coast, and one hell of an amazing city. As I flew across the country last week...over mountains and prairies, through cumulus clouds and time zones...I thought about the trade off.

If we place the highest worth on those things that are most precious and impossible to duplicate, then the expense of our time should have the highest trading value in our lives.

Sometimes we realise after a transaction, whether it was financial, emotional, spiritual or an increment of time, that perhaps, we made an unwise decision with our investment. As it may be, the pay off wasn't equal to the contribution. Or we realise what exists, was bound to change and develop...and the initial investment grows into a very valuable and strangely prismatic personal masterpiece.

We don't get our time back. Hopefully, we mindfully trade into those things and people that are going to provide a continual and flourishing return. A fear faced and conquered provides the most gratifying return on your trade. A fear faced and failed at, still provides valuable lessons and tools for the future. When we know better...we do better.

So think about what you're trading...your time..your heart..your money..your peace. Choose honesty. Work to follow your heart in your trades. Be fearless. Even if the only outcome you land with after the leap is clarity...I venture to declare, it was worth it.

“You have to let go of who you were to become who you will be.” ― Candace Bushnell

Keys

I am somewhere else. I am sitting in the apartment of someone I know, in a city on the other side of the country...and I feel somehow like a newer, more attuned me.

I found a key on the sidewalk yesterday... in this city that I don't live in...in a place I haven't been before. It's unusual, and like no other key I have seen before. It is slightly tarnished, and a shape that I am not familiar with. It's now on the inside of my red purse, and I will string it around my neck when I get home as a reminder of my vacation.

It somehow serves too, as an even bigger reminder that keys are falling in front of me all the time. That new things are being opened up to me as I step into life with just a whisper of faith sometimes...believing that those magic, crazy kismet moments I hear about...those moments that seem to happen to everyone else...well, they may just be springing up as my toes hit the pavement.

No one needed to tell me that there is a certain amount of clarity and calm exhale that comes from taking a break. I remember a break I took last year after the worst loss of my life...and truthfully, and with 100% honesty, that escape to another country and into the arms and company of my deeply kindred and most beloved best friend saved me. Being away and being home with her all at once, was more soothing and cleansing than any church I could enter. I found peace...protection, love and understanding in that hiatus from my chaotic life.

And now, in this moment, I am in a city that boasts sea and mountains, and houses some amazing people I am lucky to call friends. I am renewed again. I will head home in a few days, and somehow feel rejuvenated and wildly excited about the next chapters of my life...new beginnings as I step off an airplane headed East, and home...

and a key to remind me to always chase new beginnings to open up my own happiness.

Not Me

I used to bask in the naivete of youth. There was a quickly fleeting belief in the unbreakable chords binding my safety. The long list of things that happen to other people was neither read, nor considered by me to have any capability of impact on my life. Funny enough, the list included both good, and bad things...unconciously, perhaps my expectations of life were low, and high, all at once.

Surely, no one in my immediate family will ever experience a divorce. We aren't that kind of family. Coming from a long heritage of Godly and strongly moral people, this concreted my belief that it would never impact our family. But it has. It is in front of my face daily as we, the unequipped due to lack of experience, wade through that which is so unfamiliar and chaotic. The lessons learned already are many...the blessings too many to count...we are sheltered by an incredible network of praying family, friends..and strangers. One persons selfishness ripples out from the initial strike...but that which was intended to harm, debilitate and destroy only makes us stronger...and we are thankful for the beauty that rises out of ashes.

Surely, I won't lose someone I love in an untimely manner. Surely, those I love will live to be old, and we'll live out our years with health and prosperity and all die in our sleep. Surely, if an untimely death is to occur, it won't happen as a result of suicide or addiction or a raging disease. Of course..it's knocked on my door, time and again...deeply kindred friends...beloved family members, parents, children and siblings of those I love so much. Not me, doesn't apply. The unparalleled joy of loving people is far greater than the fear of losing them...we are blessed to love each other and to share our lives...no matter how long we get with each other.

Surely, I won't have a house...children in my life...my dream job, my dream car...or someone to cherish me. And of course...I do. They've all come to me at different times in life, but each one has arrived at the right time, when I was ready to receive. Having enough presence of mind to recognize the value of each good thing has humbled me. While I feel undeserving and somehow unprepared at times for the life I am in fact, right in the middle of...I know it's all working together for my good. Those are His promises. So for all of the good things around the bend, I am cautiously optimistic as I raise my hand. The response is no longer, "Surely, not me", it whispers confidently in my ear:

WHY not me??