My Son Turned 18 The Other Day

     My son turned 18 two days ago, and I've been walking around in a bit of a surreal state ever since, which is kind've baffling to me. I mean, I knew this day was coming. Things crept deliberately and consistently towards it, like they always do. Life happened, as it always does, and here we are... he is now 18, and I am now 53. It all makes sense because it happened the way it's supposed to happen. But I'm baffled nonetheless. The boy grew up. It wasn't an instantaneous process. So why does it feel like it was? Why does it feel like it was just last week that I was cuddling his 4 year old self, cozy in his bed, reading a story to cap off the day? I blame my memory. It's playing tricks on me.

    Lately, my memory won't quit. Thoughts, images and feelings have been weaving themselves through me, at random hours of the day and night. A few nights ago, I got up at 3am for a routine trip to the bathroom, crawled back into bed and thought I'd just drift off to sleep again as I usually do, but no go. My memory decided to do it's magic, rendering me wide-eyed in the dark. Suddenly, we were both about 10 years younger, my son and I, and I had a full-on memory of a ritual we had back then, one that I now see as a beautiful thing because of its simplicity.     

    In this particular snapshot, we are both in the living room in our house, on a pull-out sofa. The snow is fiercely blowing outside and we can see its frantic dance through the windows as we look out from our cozy refuge within. The sofa bed is the focal point of the room, and my son and I (and our dog Licorice) are tucked under blankets, propped up on pillows, and having one of our favourite kinds of days: A Stay-At-Home-Day. His 7 or 8 year old hands are holding a DS device, or an xbox controller. I sit beside him, teacup in hand, reading. We are each doing our own thing in this snapshot, but we are doing our own thing together. The feelings this image generates in me are lovely ones- calmness, coziness, contentment- and the act of being together in this space is precious to me. 

    I created this ritual shortly after we moved into the house, so my son would have been 7 years old then. It was something that happened every few Sundays in the winter months. I'd either decide it would be a stay-at-home day, or he would request one. We would pull out the sofa together, set it up with blankets and pillows and proceed to hang out there together for the afternoon and into the early evening. We ate snacks and dinner there, watched movies there, read, played board games, or sat side by side doing our own thing separately. The activities varied, but they all happened nestled under blankets on the sofa bed. Our homebody selves loved it.

    When I asked my son what he wanted to do on his actual birthday (apart from the family celebrations we already had, and the birthday friend outing), his request was simple. He wanted me to order sushi and watch 4 episodes of Game of Thrones with him. I've been watching the series with him for the past few weeks even though my sensitive self doesn't deal well with violence, gore and brutality, partly because he asked me repeatedly to do it and I caved to stop the harassment. But deep down, I know the main reason I'm doing it is to spend time with him, to have him nearby, to be with him in the cozy space of our living room, like we used to do when he was younger. The real reason is because time is doing that train racing thing again lately and I sometimes feel instant surges of panic as I realize my son is one day going to jump on that train and leave my house, likely for good. Although I want him to be able to leave and thrive out there in the world, and will encourage it, part of me also wants to cling and hold him tightly, inhaling the scent of him and not letting go.

    So, sitting there together eating sushi and watching the show the other night, my memory jumped back again to our stay-at-home days together when he was a child, and I was filled with intense love and sadness all at once. My eyes lingered for a moment on his almost-fully grown adult self, while my memory played its tricks, morphing him into that precious 7 year old boy. I asked him if he remembered our stay-at-home days and he answered, "Of course". My hope is that one day, his memories of our ritual will fill him with the same sense of peace, contentment and love that fill my heart whenever I look back to that time in our lives. I hope that the coziness, predictability and togetherness of our stay-at-home days will always remain in his adult self, and that he can turn to it in his memory whenever he needs to. I hope too that he never loses his child self as he ventures out into the world independently, as the beautiful young adult that he has become. 

    

The Truth About Hallmark Movies

     Well it's that time of year again... Hallmark Movie time. For me anyway. I've decided to explore my relationship with this curious thing- the hallmark movie- one that I think falls into the love/hate camp and that I can't seem to give up just yet. 

    To date, I have seen dozens, and then more dozens, of hallmark movies. This has happened over the past five years or so. I was never into these shows in the past, didn't even really know they existed, but for some reason, discovered them later in life. It probably started innocently enough one day with a lazy perusal through the Women's Network channel. I likely clicked on a hallmark movie one holiday season, and I'm not sure I've been the same since. 

    I don't mean this in a cosmically huge way though. It's not like these movies have transformed me, or enriched my life for the better really. I haven't changed fundamentally as a person as a result of watching single people turn into cozy couples over the span of two hours, over and over again. I haven't been the same because my initial hallmark movie experience then turned into a ritual that I haven't been able to ditch, even though I sometimes think it is in my best interest to do so. Which brings me to this idea that I have come to believe I am in some sort of dysfunctional relationship with the Hallmark Movie, one that teeters on that line between love and hate, every time I watch one, or even think of one. 

    Let's start first with the hatred part, shall we, so that I can then end this exploration on a positive note? I hate the sappiness, the cheesy lines, the fake acting, the predictability, the stunning good luck that always seems to land in the main characters' laps, the Christmas cheer, the Mr Rogers neighborhood feel. I hate the syrupy sweetness of it all, in essence the unreality of it all. I hate immersing myself in that sweet bubble of happiness because I know that real life doesn't usually work out the way it does in hallmark movies. I hate it because part of me resents it maybe, resents that it's not real, feels cheated because I want what they have... or I think I do... have been told I'm supposed to want that anyway by the world I inhabit. I'm supposed to want someone to suddenly appear before me and fill me up in all the right places with a wholesome kind of love, one that never ever includes sex (or even kisses for that matter) on a first, second or third date, one that is just simply quite nice. I think that sarcastic, biting, critical me might hate the niceness of it most of all.

    But then... the love... Enter the me who loves these movies, can't get enough of them, apparently. She sits down, on the sofa under her warm fuzzy blankets, in her pjs, with her fake fireplace glowing in the room while she watches. There she is- that me- tuning in for the zillionth time, waiting for the magic to fill her. Is it the magic of the predictable? Is there magic in the predictable? I begin to think there just might be. It dawns on me that this is why I love hallmark movies... I love the predictable endings. I love their fluffy, pretty wrappings and bows, how in the end, everything- and I mean everything- is perfectly wrapped up. I love the final kiss-- which is usually the first kiss incidentally (what is up with that?), and the fake snow falling around the soon to be lovers (because as I said earlier, they haven't been lovers up to this point and may well end up being sexually incompatible, but I digress...)... I love that things always work out in the end, and that everyone is nice and happy and filled with good cheer. Nice, sentimental, passionate and sweet me loves all of that. She exists as much as the previously mentioned critical me does. 

    So there is is, the truth about Hallmark Movies: They are both awful and beautiful all at once. They are gratingly annoying and a balm to my world-weary soul, at the same time. They are the relationship I can't get out of because as much as it irks me, it also fills me to the brim with sweetness. I guess the sweetness overrides the sharp cynicism within, most of the time. This is probably what it's all about for me in the end-- I watch the movies because I need to keep in touch with my syrupy sweet side, for fear that she'll disappear forever if I'm not careful. And I guess that's why I'll no doubt be sitting on my couch tonight, or some other night this week, tv remote in hand and wondering who is going to fall in love with whom this time. And I'll click on the movie, sit back and relax in the delicious sugar of it all.

    

    

Letting Things Be As They Are

     I'm reading "Awakening the Buddha Within" right now and I came across a part in the book the other day that resonated with me, "In Buddhism, there is a rather unique word that translates as 'suchness'. It means vital, living truth itself, here and now, right before our very eyes-- the 'isness' of things exactly as they are" (69). The author goes on to talk about finding the place within ourselves that is "the ultimate refuge, the ultimate practice of letting go-- the art of allowing things to be as they are" (70). Such a simple idea, to allow things to be as they are, and yet so hard to do, really. Such a short and nifty new word-- isness-- and yet heavy with meaning.

    I began to think of my own "isness", and how I deal with it... weekly, daily, by the minute. Do I notice things as they are? Or do I try to cover them up? Or run from them? Pretend they aren't happening? Do I push back against those things? Or do I just let them be? Is there joy in the noticing, when I do notice? I began then to think about all of the people in my life, family members, friends, coworkers... and how they deal with their own "isness". The next thing I knew, I found myself on a tangent of wondering about other people on the planet, entire countries and continents and whether or not they've mastered "the art of allowing things to be as they are". As I thought more about this idea, I realized that often, for many people, we are ok with things as they are as long as those things make us feel good and comfortable. It is only when the things that are cause us pain, suffering and discomfort that we begin to have problems with them.

    One of the reasons I started this blog was to explore the state of life without wine, having come to the conclusion that one of my main default ways of dealing with things as they are was to meet friends in a lounge and order a crisp white, or two, or three. Some days more. The wine blurred the edges of things as they are, and this was especially welcome when those things resulted in uncomfortable feelings. When I didn't like things as they were, I had a ready solution. I could blot out my own isness. I definitely wasn't allowing things to be as they are- not without reacting to them anyway. Because it is one thing to notice things exactly as they are, and to not dress them up or down to suit your whims, but it is quite another to accept those things and to choose not to react to them. 

    A lot of this seems to be about acceptance and nonreaction, and I think this is the hardest part. This is all within reason of course. I'm not advocating that we accept and refuse to react to mistreatment, abuse or other unhealthy situations. What I'm talking about here is the grey, that place between the black and white, between the highs and lows, that place where most of life and living takes place... maybe this is  the "isness". There is a quiet power and groundedness in both accepting things as they are as well as choosing to not react to them in that moment, in just letting things be, and in noticing. I guess if you can do this, then you may well be on the road to inner peace. Enlightened beings have known this for thousands of years, and it's not like they have kept this a secret from the rest of us. But at the end of the day, allowing things to be as they are, without reacting to them is just plain hard. Often. For many people.

    I'm a ways away from achieving this on a regular basis, but I am trying, and I believe I'm making progress. It gets easier as I get older, for many reasons. One of my main tools is meditation, and I definitely wouldn't be where I am in terms of my own personal growth if I didn't have that. So I will continue to sit still, in the dark, breathing in and out, sitting with my "isness" and trying my best to accept it and not to react, because I know deep down that there is wisdom in all of that. I just know.