More pictures, I hope

figuring out photos.

I

Connecticut

First weekday morning in Connecticut, still figuring out pictures and how to post them on this mac but I'll get to it sometime today.

I've never been one to be particularly patriotic but there is something in the make-up of this country that brings out the team spirit in me.

Most of the authors I've admired throughout my life have come from here. Maybe it's the difference in population level, I don't know but people feel more engaged here, more present. I feel less tension about asserting one's individuality or hiding it. Hard to explain and clearly, I've left off blogging for too long, this is all but inarticulate but Margaret Atwood comes to mind.

The United States would never produce a Margaret Atwood.

I like Atwood's work, I've read most of her novels and about half her poems. Her work is suffused with a sense of arch observation, she is the removed observer, always. The perfect narrator, Atwood is dispassionate. She is the ideal, non-judgmental purveyor of irony and cool detachment. She is a turn of the century writer, as I feel is Munro. Technically adept they are emotionally removed and this is perceived as a strength. Ok - in Canada, I see it. Here? Not so much.

The sun is slanting over the snow in outside the house. It is absolutely silent, much quieter than my place in Ottawa or even my family home in Victoria. Nevertheless, there is a palpable sense that life in all its messy, busy, active, bustle carries on just a few minutes away. And it does.

Americans are engaged. It's easy to love that.

And there's nothing detached about my writing, at its best or worst - I'm here, I'm present, I'm involved.

This week I have an essay on adoption to revise and complete, four personal statements to write for my application to law school and a communications plan to sketch. There are dinners to cook, family time to spend, conversations to be had and a Christmas tree to decorate.

Maybe it's always true that our friends know that our friends know us better than our family. It's certainly true for me here and now - this is a kind of homecoming and I am very glad of it.

December in Victoria

I know it's been a while. I've been afraid to write - then there was a new computer and the upheaval hasn't helped.

Anyway, I'm back.

It's December, in five days I will leave Victoria for maybe a few months - maybe forever. In Austin, before I left, an elderly palm reader told me it was important for me to work out my relationship with my mother. At the time I thought it unlikely.

Within days of arriving in Victoria in late September, I decided the palm reader was absolutely wrong. We fought. I was angry. It was clear to me she was still giving everything she had, everything she has, in every way, to my sister. I felt she didn't care anything about me.

My birthday is Friday. I am leaving first thing in the morning to go to Connecticut for Christmas and then back to Ottawa. I've written the LSAT. I am going to apply to law schools this month and next. My grades are good, my resume is strong. I expect to get in.

I feel as though I have put things in order and gotten back on to my own path and somehow in doing that, the relationship with my mother has healed itself. I love her. I want the best for her. I am no longer envious of my sister. I've finally learned the lesson that means so much to me in theory - finally learned it in practice. Love is valuable for the act, valuable for loving much more so than for being loved and when I really understood that the gate swung open and I understood, I have been loved.

So now I will get on an airplane on the morning of my birthday, the day she brought me into the world will be the day we say goodbye. And it might be the last time.

Two months ago I wouldn't have cared about that, now it seems almost impossible to bear.

I pray to keep my heart open. Pray to accept that I am doing the right thing, pray that she knows I love her and that I can remember that she loves me.

Maybe it was cruel to leave on my birthday, it was the only day that worked in every way and so I will have to accept that.

Accept it.

Accept love.

Accept growth and try not to be afraid to cry. After all, only people capable of love can cry over things like this. The trip to Victoria has been a gift of such value, beyond all expectation. It's humbling.