The New Year is in September

One more day. One more day until bedtimes and awake times become more routine, until homework and studies dominate conversations, until Husband and I once again relinquish our status as Most Visible Adults in our children's lives.

The binders and pencils and pens and erasers and glue sticks and pencil crayons and markers and lined paper and liquid paper and sticky-white-holes-for-when-your-holed-paper-tears thingies and highlighters and calculators and stickies and knapsacks and lunch bags are bought (though not yet organized). Husband has begun assembly line lunch preparations for freezer sandwiches, and today I bulked up at the Bulk Barn with snacks and fillers. Thankfully everyone can take peanut butter and trail mix to school now that no one is in elementary school any longer.)

For the third year in a row, our three kids will be attending separate schools and this year two of them are at new ones. All three on public transportation, with the youngest the farthest to go. I want to ride with them, to walk into the school holding their hands still sticky with applesauce, to give them a hug as they trip over still-too-big and too-white running shoes with their impossibly big knapsacks weighing them down. There will be no glitter glue or popsicle-stick creations this year, but I know instead there will be debates and discussions about big issues and much puzzling over equations that I don't remember how to do. New schools, new teachers, new friends, new subjects, new goals, new ideas, new opportunities: this is the time of change.

It is September, much more the start of a new year than January.

It's not just the return to school, but also the obvious change in season that signals a shift in the universe and brings in me a feeling of joy and melancholy all mixed together. January from December? More of the same usually: cold, snow, weeks and months of winter to come, a brief hiatus for Christmas and New Year's celebrations, and then a quick return to routines. But August to September? The nights darken earlier, the mornings and evenings are cooler, the leaves on the trees carry a dullness in the green -- a green that almost seems brown -- with only a slight hint of the colours with which they will soon present their orchestral radiance in autumn.

The new crescent moon last night, a slice of silver in the quieting sky.

This is the time for change.

Summer Night

strains of an oboe, 

echoes of fireworks,

the buzzing of a fly

trapped on the inside of my window pane

the sounds of a summer night

waft through the screen

the breeze so soft,

holding on its breath the fragrance of petunia

leaves blackened against 

deep sea blue of sky, 

which is not the sea but is of the sea,

as the sea is of it, and on and on in perpetuity

Love, and be loved

Sometimes this world makes me weep
I tell my kids to be friendly,
To be generous
To be kind
To love
And to be confident that they are loved
Without judgement
Without fear
Without condemnation
To love, and be loved.

If there are to be tears,
Let them be tears of joy
In ecstasy
or in the quiet of the night
But let there not be
Shame or violence.
Just love, and be loved.

Is that too simplistic?

Yes.

It really is that simple.

Love, and be loved.

Breakthrough

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way
--Edward de Bono

There is a man in Paris who is stuck in a concrete wall. Is he emerging from encasement or being held back? Is he escaping or calmly moving forward to his next destination? Is he being boxed in or breaking free?

I feel somewhat like this man these days, as I wait to learn what my next assignment at work will be. Our department has a necessarily convoluted approach to job placements. Being a rotational department, with people going out on postings to our embassies or returning from overseas over the summer, or simply moving on to a new challenge at headquarters, means a significant portion of our workforce is on the move every year, like a swarm of bees or a murmuration of starlings. Having reviewed a list of available positions posted in April, and having had numerous conversations with potential managers and colleagues, to strategize and theorize about what the best approach and best fit will be, we have submitted our top 5 preferences and we now await the judgement of an assignment committee whose members presumably have our best interests at heart. It is not an efficient process -- 12 weeks to run from start to finish in this current round. There are still weeks to go. And so we wait, floating and hovering, pushed this way and that by gusts of wind, not yet ready to land and still unaware of our journey or destination.

What am I looking for? I don't mind being busy, but I refuse to do crazy. I want to keep my head above water so I can be present at home and still leave time for writing, reading, listening, meditating, gardening, making wine, exercising (I must get back to exercising) -- while working with good people.

The smell of the fresh air after rain that wafts through my window, the washed-out grey of the clouds that still blanket the sky: I want to remain aware of these, without dulling my senses with the senseless beating and endless churn of forever trying to move forward while being held back. I am where I want to be. I have already broken through concrete and I have no interest in building myself back into it.

When a woman tells you she's fine

When a woman tells you she's fine, she's probably just hanging on by a thread. She may be thinking, "I'm drowning, and don't know which way is up," but she'll tell you she's fine because she doesn't want to worry you, or maybe because she doesn't have enough oxygen in her lungs to explain that she feels lonely and abandoned, frightened and confused. If she feels strong enough, she might say that she's had a hard day, or week, but more than likely she'll tell you she's fine, never mind that she's barely holding on til morning when the sun might start a new day.

If a woman tells you she's okay, she might mean okay enough, even though she doesn't remember the last time she laughed with abandon, or talked to a good friend until the moon set and Orion rose, and felt joy like a nine-year-old girl lying on her back on a beach with the waves lapping at her feet.

If a woman tells you she's hanging in, she's nearing the truth, even though she probably holds her breath every time the phone rings or the Blackberry blinks, and feels like screaming at every email message or query around her, even though it's her job to answer questions, her responsibility to make decisions, her role to provide.

If a woman tells you it doesn't matter, it really does matter so very much because she's letting go of her interest and offering up to you the accumulated savings of her fortune: her time.

But, if a woman tells you she's happy, rest assured she is overcome with an ecstasy that cannot be contained or explained. It is joy, shared freely and completely, wrapped in stardust and presented to you with no strings attached and no money-back guarantee, but with all truth and wonder, her eyes shining and lips quivering as they utter words of simple gratitude: I am happy, thank you.

Weight Lifting

Do not ask yourself, 
when you breathe, 
if the oxygen is better used by another --
someone else, somewhere else, sometime else --
dance, sing, write, create
create! so that others around you may 
also breathe.

Easter saved, thanks to Jewish Challah and my xeno husband

I woke up this morning to the scent of lamb roasting in the oven, with a hint of garlic, lemon and oregano tickling my nose. It's Easter Sunday for Orthodox Christians, and this is the smell I associate with this day.


The Greeks celebrate everything well, but Easter is the best feast of all. Why do we celebrate now, so much later than Western Easter? Easter is marked on the first Sunday after the first full moon of Spring. For Orthodox Christians there is one more caveat: as long as it's after Passover, for Jesus was a Jew and had celebrated Passover before the passion. Every six years or so, Passover falls the same week as Western Easter, so Orthodox Christians wait another moon. It usually means the weather's nicer too, which makes for a better barbeque!

Having married an old stock Canadian, or a "xeno" ("foreigner") as the Greeks would say, my family celebrates Easter twice every year, and my children benefit from the best of both traditions -- they can have their chocolate bunny and eat it too! There was no Easter Bunny in the Easters of my childhood, which were spent dyeing eggs red, not pastels, and feasting at the homes of family friends, where we roasted lamb on a spit in the backyard. The men took turns rotating the rotisserie for hours, basting the meat with olive oil, lemon and oregano. The drippings would sizzle on the coals and lift up a sweet aroma with the smoke. If a youngster happened to run nearby at the right time, about 5-6 hours in, she would be treated to a slice of perfectly roasted meat held out by the tanned hands of one of the uncles. We ate all day, and danced in the back yard, or in the garage or basement if it was too cold. 

My mother would spend the week prior cooking and baking, and we would attend church services every night where my father would accompany the cantor with his rich baritone voice reciting and singing the hymns and prayers in response to the priest. Holy Thursday was a marathon session, with the reading of 12 gospels detailing the Passion of Christ (and one year, just like an old Greek song goes, the priest made 12 into 13, accidentally repeating one of the readings and extending the three-hour service even longer!). On Good Friday we got to skip school, and I spent the afternoon at church with my girlfriends and our aunties and yiayiades ("grandmothers") decorating the epitafio -- a flowered wooden bier that would be carried in procession during the candlelight night service that night, symbolizing a funeral procession -- and snacking on antidoro -- soft, fluffy white bread blessed by the priest. Our fingers were still red from dyeing Easter eggs the day before.

The Resurrection service on Saturday night commenced at 11pm, and carried on until 2 in the morning, with candles glowing at midnight as we shared the new light passed on by the priest, from parishioner to parishioner, one by one until the whole building was alight in a soft glow. Xristos anesti! Christ is Risen!, we chanted over and over again, in song and in word, and, Alithos anesti! Indeed, He is risen!, ever louder, in response. The scent of incense and beeswax mixed with burnt hair, as one or another of the girls' hair inevitably caught fire as the light was passed from one to another. When I was very young, our parish rented the local hockey arena so that everyone would fit -- on a regular Sunday there might be 200 people filling the pews, but at Easter, when every lapsed Greek came out of the woodwork, we needed space to hold 2000!

The service ends with a joyfully welcoming sermon, written by St John Chrysostom in the 4th century AD, and repeated in Orthodox churches worldwide every Easter since: 

Let all rejoice in the splendour of this feast! 

...If any have laboured from the first hour,

  let him receive today his rightful due.
If any have come after the third,
  let him celebrate the feast with thankfulness.
If any have come after the sixth,
  let him not be in doubt, for he will suffer no loss.
If any have delayed until the ninth,
  let him not hesitate but draw near.
If any have arrived only at the eleventh,

  let him not be afraid because he comes so late...

One year, our young priest, no doubt exhausted from the week of services and parenting his own young family of four children, but also overcome by the radiance of the night, was moved to tears and could not complete the reading of this text, so my friend Chris, now a priest himself, took the book from his hands and delivered the concluding, triumphant phrases: O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory? Christ is Risen!

This year, life took over and I was unprepared for the feast. We had house guests arriving, a sick son had just returned from a three-day school trip, and an exhausted family overall, so I had decided we wouldn't do "Greek" Easter this weekend. We had celebrated Western Easter a month prior, and I didn't have it in me to pull out all the stops again. We had guests so we would not make it to church. I hadn't coloured any eggs, I hadn't made tsoureki (Easter sweet bread, which takes at least 8 hours to make, given time needed for the dough to rise) or koulourakia (twisted cookies with sesame seeds). I had bought a leg of lamb but it remained frozen solid in the freezer and would need a day to thaw. I decided to wait until next weekend; since Bright Week (the week that follows Easter) is considered as one long day of feasting, there remained time enough to celebrate.

But yesterday afternoon, the gravitational pull of history, tradition and home overcame my indolence. All afternoon, I felt homesick. "It's as though it is Christmas Eve, but with no decorations hung, no gifts wrapped, no Christmas carols, no church, no plans, no cookies baked and no food cooking!" I wailed to my family, and then pulled myself together. We could at least colour some eggs, I thought. I still had half a packet of red dye from last year. We would dye them in the evening and at least have red eggs for breakfast on Sunday. That would be good enough, right? Oh, but the eggs would taste so much better if accompanied by tsoureki. But it was 5pm! How to make dough and have it rise for 6 hours, knead it, and then rise two hours more, before baking? And then it hit me: I pulled out my bread-maker recipe book, and found it: a recipe for Jewish Challah -- sweet egg bread -- the dough could be ready in two hours, twisted into braids and baked for half an hour. After all, Jesus was Jewish. There would even be time to make koulourakia while the dough was rising. Easter was saved!

"Oh, it smells so good in here," my kids said, one after the other, over the course of the evening, warming my heart. I lit a few candles and sat in easy conversation with my childhood friend, and then I went to bed, sleepy and satisfied. It was the eleventh hour, but my fingers were stained red and smelled of sugar and butter, and the scent of candles floated throughout the house.

I awoke this morning, slowly, emerging from dreams mixed with the scent of lamb. Confused, at first, I forced myself to consciousness. I still smelled lamb: could the smells from a dream cross over to reality? But no, the smells were real. My husband -- the "xeno" -- had bought fresh lamb and potatoes, which he was roasting in the oven with olive oil, lemon and oregano.

Rich and poor, dance together.
You who fasted and you who have not fasted, rejoice together.
The table is fully laden: let all enjoy it.


Indeed, Easter was saved.