Blogging was never something I'd considered. Sure, a cyber journal is a cool idea, and, oh - yeah - I have enough random thoughts in a day to merit storage space...but what should I really be capturing here? Profound epiphanies of biblical proportions? Highly unlikely...earth shattering breakthroughs? Unless my Swiffer wetjet counts - I got nothing of a breakthrough to share...but, on occasion, I have moments of realization that I have urges to write down somewhere. Maybe it's an age thing - I am compelled to make a note so I don't simply forget the thought...or maybe I really want one of my five children to one day have their own moment of realization and "get" their mother. Now there's an ambitious goal for a little blog...Where better to start this blogging adventure than with a recent mini-epiphany to set the tone. I remember waking unusually early one beautiful summer morning. The sun was streaming through the front sidelights, bathing the entrance hall in that orangy-pink glow of breaking dawn. I walked down the stairs from by bedroom, ready to enjoy the morning solitude, and caught a glimpse of a ball cap tossed on the little bench by the front door. My heart sunk. Then, beyond the cap, I noticed a tiny pair of running shoes: white with pink stripes...a black leather baseball glove, a brown hoodie jacket...The "mess" as I would have classified this collection, was causing a lump in my throat. The ball cap belonged to my son Zach - and he had tossed it quickly onto the bench as we were racing to the airport the previous morning . He was leaving for a European Hockey Tour and would be gone for 2 weeks. He realized that he should be wearing the team ball cap that his Colorado coach had mailed him a few days earlier, so his favourite hat was left behind in the bustle of double and triple equipment checks...Later that same day, when Zach was well on his way to Zurich, Samantha went to her first summer sleepover camp - Gym Rep - a lovely gymnastics adventure - ideal for young athletes aspiring to do great things in the world of gymnastics - and have a great camp experience. She and I were discussing what shoes to take - and agreed that gymnastics is a barefoot sport - flip flops and a pretty pedicure was the way to go! So her little sneakers with the pink stripes were kicked off in that decisive moment as we loaded up the van with more gym suits than the Canadian Olympic Team! Ball glove? Same deal - a testament to some fond memory from the previous afternoon where we played catch on the beach at Sam's camp. What would have been my "mess", in that moment became my memory - and instead of shuddering with the thought that "Architectural Digest" would not approve, I smiled at any stuff lying around connecting my memory to my kids...It wasn't a mess, but a testament to a life being lived. Something else happened in that moment! I rounded the corner to my kitchen and yearned for the "happy clutter" of our younger days: The highchairs that used to sit in the corners of my kitchen - once a repository for all things messy; the buckets of lego typically dumped on my family room floor "what a mess" I'd say; the red metal firetrucks lined up under my dining room table (aka the firestation); POGS, pokeman cards, those bean things, the battle tops, the power rangers, the micro machines - all had their turn laying claim to every square foot of our home - and at the time - "what a mess"...but how fast does that "happy clutter" disappear - and how cool would it be to get to see it all again - not as a mess but as a memory...a snapshot of a precious moment in time - that vanishes far too quickly!
After that morning, I started to embrace the little hallmarks of life's moments and realize the brevity of each stage. It took some time to really feel liberated from my "everything in it's place" mentality - working for an interior design company, and one of the finest furniture stores in the world didn't help. I had been on ad shoots where the sets were unreal! I wanted that...but not at any cost! To expect real families to live in houses that LOOKED like the pages from our magazine was completely unreal!!! Especially families of 7. That day, I released any expectation of a perfect interior, and embraced the very things that DID make a house a home - not the fine furniture, expensive draperies, one of a kind accessories - but the ball cap tossed on the bench, the little white shoes with pink stripes, the glove and the hoodie...soon enough, they too will be a distant memory!
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