Relationships

The Magic of Alice At Naptime

It’s so close to Mother’s Day and I want to share something that’s not about these turbulent times but rather universal truths and wee ecstatic bits of joy. Let me tell you about Alice at Naptime the loviest, easy to order gift for new moms, older moms, moms to be be – dads too of course.

Naptime- those words evoke a sense of peace and calm. Calm if you are the one indulging in a nap – but even more tranquility if the sleeping person is your busy little one.

Alice at Naptime is the sweet and dreamy latest book by Canadian artist and mom, Shea Proulx (full caveat – my daughter). Moms with children of all ages will delight in pouring over the colourful depictions of the sleeping child and lose themselves in the narrative carefully created for adults and children. In this graphic story a baby’s naptime gives the mom a welcome chance to turn away from its need of constant attention but the artist can’t – the baby is her muse.

As Shea Proulx says, “At its core, Alice at Naptime tells a universal story, of a parent pining for past freedoms, while simultaneously descending down a rabbit hole of all-encompassing maternal love.”

It’s the perfect gift for new moms, artist-moms, moms we’re grateful for – and admirers of all of those. Anyone really – moms, dads and children – can lose themselves in the artwork that winds around itself in an ever changing pastel wonderland. There is a limited edition gift set that includes a signed hard copy, two charming pins, and a special chocolate bar – a Mother’s Day present extraordinaire. Support a Canadian publisher (and artist) and order it here https://renegadeartsentertainment.com/product/alice-at-naptime/

This lovely and captivating book can also be ordered from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Alice-at-Naptime-Shea-Proulx/dp/1988903521

Watch for a new book from Shea Proulx to be available soon.

You Couldn’t Make This Up

Is it still the pandemic ? Yep it is. Get out of bed and and try to find my vitamin C. Fail but spot the Vics Vapour rub. Put some under my nose. I’m not in need of vapour rub but the scent makes me feel safe, as if my mom put it there. Go back to bed. Thought hubby was asleep but he’s reading. He reads/sleeps/ reads all night. Don’t look at my phone. Don’t look at my phone. Don’t look at my phone.

Decide I need a to-do list. Fall back to sleep preparing a mental one. Wait to hear adult son making coffee. Adult son is finally sleeping in (or lying in bed making a mental to-do list.) I wonder if point number one for him is to remind himself to not isolate with parents at family cottage in the future. Make the coffee myself.

Eat toast and peanut butter. Watch grown daughter – also likely wondering how we all decided isolation as a partial family group at our lakehouse was a good idea – watch her preparing totally healthy yogurt and fruit and nuts for breakfast. Add honey to my coffee and eat 12 blueberries. Wander out to the deserted beach to talk to my dad in his senior’s residence. He has dementia and I’ve already decided it’s morally ok in this situation to be less than honest with him about how long this forced separation might go on.

Adult daughter is already yakking away to her sister on not deserted beach. Try to take photo of six beautiful geese taking flight in unison from the lake.
We hear a man’s voice and wave at our neighbour – also talking to someone on his phone on this decidedly ‘not’ deserted beach. Follow daughter, who is talking to her big sister, home. Phone my own big sister. Talk about what we always talk about – pandemic or not – how to make our elderly dad happy. Phone my other sister – she is out walking too. Lots of walking. Talk more about dad – who is beyond miserable but can still give us a chuckle with his wry (the guy invented wry) humour. Return to find husband having loud work phone calls in his new kitchen office. None of us have talked on the phone this much in forever. Like since texting was invented.

Decide I can contribute to cooking, though adult kids have taken over the kitchen. We are running low on many (ok I’m lying) a few items. Argue with husband and adult son whether it is necessary to make trip to grocery store yet. Husband wants boat gas – he has a strong need to social distance in a dingy in the middle of the lake. We offer to get the gas with other items.

Daughter and I drive to town – store has new rules posted (everyone has new rules) only one member of family allowed in. Keep your distance. No reuseable bags. (Hah – I figured they were germ infested – feel better for consistently forgetting mine). Daughter says she’ll risk the grocery shopping. She’s the original germ-aphob. I’m ok with that.

We need some healthcare items (don’t ask) from the pharmacy across the road. I put on my gloves and wait for the only customer to exit and cautiously go in. Grab the goods and spot the hair colour kits – eureka!! My hair has been my hairdresser’s responsibility for years. Which one of the ageless beauties on the boxes do I hope to resemble? I pick the happiest looking one. The clerk tells me how safe and clean the store is, holding up the cleaner and reading from the label the zillion types of bacteria it will destroy. It’s the sort of nasty germ killer I wouldn’t want in my house. I ask if I can buy some – for my house. (No way José. It’s for store use only.)

The clerk confirms that there has been a run on hair colour. She tells me everyone says there will be a lot of babies born in nine months. She thinks there will be a lot of divorces. My credit card ‘tap’ doesn’t work. I have to key in my payment card which makes me exit the store feeling paranoid. I get in my car, touching the steering wheel with possibly (unlikely) contaminated gloves. Damn. Put hand sanitizer on an old Kleenex from before the virus time which would have been too yucky to use in that other life. I wipe off the steering wheel. Take off gloves. Decide to wipe off my favourite little leather wallet. Shit. Hand sanitizer isn’t the freind of the dye on my wallet. Wipe off bank card. Daughter gets in the car as I’m trying to decide if I should get out and wipe off the outside car door handle? I’ve become a crazy person. I try for a laugh from my daughter with the story of my sanitizing. She gives me a half grin and I realize she loves that it is socially ok to wear protective gear now. We drive home talking about how dating just got really messed up and much trickier. We wonder if the dating ap Bumble will add a new category for your dates germ awareness level. At home we wash our hands to an off key duet of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star . We unpack the groceries quickly so the survivalist son and husband won’t realize we felt we needed these chocolate chips and feta cheese to survive. (Honestly commenters/trolls – these were not the items that sent us out into the germy world.) We haven’t seen the bearded man’s video of how to clean groceries yet.

My small yoga group is doing Zoom yoga. I can only get the audio. Our amazing and zen instructor offers to be very descriptive so I can follow without the visual. Turns out that I’m not an auditory learner – I find myself twisted like a pretzel in positions defying downward dog. Big yoga fail.


We drift into the far corners of the house or property, the younger generation distancing themselves further with ear buds on. But then usually around four o’clock we find ourselves together again – shaking our heads at this strange life. We cook clam linguini and gather for dinner. We talk about the virus news we’ve seen all day on our phones. Talk about movies. Talk about movies about viruses.Hubby falls asleep rewatching The Lord of the Rings. I feel the need to watch You’ve Got Mail. Instead I watch the bearded man’s video about how meticulously I should have cleaned and unpacked my groceries. Damn.

Go to bed early – fall asleep making that darn to-do list. Decide that I’m-going to plant seeds in little jars in the house. I Decide this will become a movement along with all the bread making that must be going on. Fall asleep wondering how I will look as a redhead?

Sent from my iPhone

A Different Sort Of Summer

It’s been a different sort of summer. I’ve been living the dream, as they say, staying four long weeks at our lake place in the North Shuswaps. We’re on the shore on a stretch of water that carves up this forested place with arms that go off for miles in a multitude of directions.

My kids, and granddaughters, and my younger brother, a niece and a nephew, a dear cousin, and good friends have circled round this stretch of lake this summer, through little villages that burst with seasonal energy – to swim and boat and break bread with me. Odd to say me, not us. But I’ve had to host alone this year as my husband’s had a strange summer too – an extremely arduous aspect of his work has unfortunately landed smack in the middle of normal holiday time.

And the summers had another weight to it – my elderly parents have had a lovely family member as the live-in caregiver they require, but she needs to move on now. My siblings and I have all spent time trying (oh man, we’re trying) to convince both our mom and dad that moving into the nice, comfortable, sociable, well managed … seniors residence we helped my mom find will be a better choice then the house they can’t manage any more. Honest dad, it will be.

So I’ll bring up the beach chairs, tie the kayak high on the shore, wash one more load of towels, close the blinds, pack the hanging planters into the car with my suitcase and big box of BC peaches and wind my way around this giant lake towards home.

It’s been a different time as times go. And I’ll surely blog about the time to come.

Looking for another read by Candace Allan – check out the book Text Me, Love Mom, Two Girls, Two Boy’s, One Empty Nest.

September Takes My Breath Away

The leaves start to drop. The air is fresh. A school playground fills with shouting kids, and pick-up soccer games – and I feel melancholy, but on the edge of excitement, too. More than January, isn’t September the time of new beginnings? New grade school? College and university? Parents and kids fill backpacks with crisp notebooks and coloured pencils, then head to the malls looking for squeaky new runners? There are anticipatory trips to Ikea to deck out tiny dorm rooms or studio apartments full of furniture with funny Swedish names.
But there’s boo hooing all across the country too, for all those kids heading out the door with hockey duffles converted to super suitcases, and back packs hiding that favourite worn out stuffie, or that last  pair of sandals hopeful for another month of warm weather?

I have four young adult children who are just now getting used to my having written a book about this next stage of parenting, about all those Septembers – those goodbyes until Thanksgiving.  When Zoë, the eldest, left home, her copies of Love In the Time of Cholera, Harry Potter, and Dragonquest gone from the shelves, her colorful collection of shoes gathered from the closets, and her vanilla-scented products stripped from the bathroom, I searched the self-help sections for a manual on how to let go. Now that I’m a true empty nest-er, it seems a bit odd. After all, I still had three hyped-up teens in the house. One of them leaving home should have given me a little more room to breathe. But it didn’t. It took my breath away. photo

I was able to relive it all, writing Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two boys, One Empty Nest.  (Hey kids – I gave you pseudonyms – relax.  Nobody knows who this Zoë, Cole, Hudson and Lily that I write about are.) If you’ve been following my erratic blog, I’d love it if you check out my book.  It’s been one hec of a ride. And if one of yours has packed up and will be spending winter and spring in another part of the country, or maybe another country – it’ll be okay.  Really.

 

We Shot the Messenger and Seat 11E

 

The whole thing started with a red-haired guy being in 11- E – which was my seat – on a flight to Vancouver. This dude had a friendly face and told me to take the seat beside him, because someone was in his and the attendants would work it all out. Ergg, I was already frustrated because I had just left the book I was immersed in, about staying in your creative zone (news flash: turn off your cell), at an airport coffee shop.  As the plane lifted into the early winter sky I heard the guy tell the woman to his left that he had a company called Creativision.  What? Creative what? My ‘a synchronistic thing is about to happen instinct’ was tingling.  His name was Shawn MacDonell and he gave me details about his company @_creativision sparking my curiosity. Shawn has the gift for releasing your story from you in a simple manner and soon it was me telling this stranger in 11 E enough about my family of six for him to catch-up to me in the luggage area and say, you and your kids should have a web site. People like stories like yours.

We all thought it was a fun concept but who would have thought that wrestling everyone into agreeing to a name would be such a huge biggest hurdle. That alone made us realize that  www.weshotthemessenger.com would require a whole lot of familia give and take, and devine amounts of patience.

Life is funny, right? The people that we seem destined to meet come to us in novel ways.  I must have told Shawn in 11-E about Text Me, Love Mom; Two Girls, Two Boys, One Empty Nest – my book about that stage of life when you switch from taking care of a kids-me-on-boatbunch of rambunctious, hungry, lovelorn teenagers in your home – to instead longing for their attention, or guiding their insane mishaps as they stretch out into the world alone.  But over that pack of teeny pretzels and a peppermint tea I yakked more about how those four kids were now all in some way or the other involved in the arts, which led him to suggest the web site for our “genetically intertwined media group”.

Rose, my youngest daughter, had a childhood dream to be a singer, her brother, Levi, aspired to be the person at the drive-through window who gets all your money, her brother, Kyle, imagined being a stuntman as a kid, and my eldest daughter, Shea, was an artist from the moment she picked up her first purple crayon. 4-kids-rose-baby Click, click, click into the present and the would-be singer is a photographer; the McDonald’s window guy performs stand-up comedy and writes for film, the stuntman became the guy filming the stunts, and is now a filmmaker, and the eldest, well, she never really changed. They all thought the web site was a compelling idea, (er – I think they did – nothings easy-peasy with five bosses) but in the mean time we hired Shawn and Creativision to push us to define our goals and to create fun promotional tools on earlier projects.zoecolehudsonlily icons

Fast forward three years and finally the web site exists. My kids are an independent lot and work solo or with artists in their chosen fields, but remarkably they do come together – even across long distances to share ideas, applaud new creations, boost each other’s brave artistic egos and have been able to collaborate occasionally – the best of these was a daring comedic film, Disabled and Dangerous, written by both Levi and our funny friend, Barry Varga, to raise funds for ALS, which Barry has since fallen victim to. Kyle and his company filmed the short comic movie, Shea did storyboards and Rose, Levi, and I mobilized a community of stunning volunteers. Their dad acted in it (quite valiantly) and was an executive producer.D and D leaving bank with cops

The kids (aside for supplying me with two-hundred pages of ‘Oh my God, she’s/he’s where? Doing what?’ in Text Me, Love Mom, also made hilarious promo videos for the book. Shea painted the wistful cover and Rose flattered me with her photograph for the back. Rose takes photos for all of us when asked, Levi writes scripts for Kyle, Shea storyboards for the guys, we must all be part of Levi’s stand-up muse.  Babysitting Shea’s little girls so that she can make art, also results in a lot of art, though the little girls and I do not have dramatically different levels of raw talent. It all goes round and round in a whirl of cooperative artistic nepotism. Shea says, that even when we’re busy on our own projects, We Shot the Messenger’s purpose is so that they can cross-pollinate.  Need a photographer?  Check out my sister. Want to see Vancouver’s funniest comic – you gotta see my brother?  Looking for a film maker? Turns out I have this other brother. Need a mural? A painting? Or the most unique grownup colouring book? I have an older sister. And our mom – she wrote a book about the bunch of us.  4-kids-on-driveway-best You have to see the ABOUT page and the BIOS.  We’ve each independently worked out how to assemble a website over the years, but this one was put together by Shea because she’s the easiest of my children to bribe into doing things. I just dangle a night without her darling daughters under her nose, and bam, look who shows up in my kitchen ready to work.easter 2012-ish-22

It took forever and a day to come up with the name –  www.weshotthemessenger.com  Click on CONVERSATIONS in the menu to read that wild funny ride.  It will give you a feel for the stubborn, comedic, annoying, love we bounce around. The site will grow, it’ll change, we’ll argue some more, I’ll post dumb mom things and risk being booted out. Like us on the www.facebook.com/weshotthemessengermediagroup/   and follow us on Instagram @weshotthemessenger and twitter @weshotmessenger. It’s been a delicate operation, encouraging my kids to create all this, because actively endorsing something taints it with uncoolness. But they’re not afraid to shoot the messenger. As long as I’ll let them mock me every step of the way, they’ll take an idea, and run with it.

*a gazillion thanks to the guy I married, who stands behind us all.

Mother of the Bride – a Fun Ride

Cover of "Wedding Flowers"

Cover of Wedding Flowers

Wow – five days until my daughter’s wedding!!  For the last three  days I’ve admitted to some people that I’ve been “oddly emotional” and they all reply – “What?  Of course you’re emotional – what’s odd about that?”  But I think I was surprised by my own tears in the pompom warehouse (no kidding – millions of pompoms under one roof) and even, can you believe it – over the phone to the indifferent desk clerk at the honeymoon spot (making sure that they acknowledge the honeymoon couple in some nice way – and they do  – with chocolates and wine) because except for a very few, very mild panic attacks (breath deep, in through the nose, out through the mouth)  I’ve enjoyed almost every minute of helping my daughter plan her hopefully lovely, ‘ smallish’ wedding.

My husband and I like to entertain – small scale in our home or cottage, with flowers from the garden, homemade food (okay – yeah, I cheat a bit on that) drinks, and the right music on the iPod.  My daughter’s guy has a similar background, and she and the wonderful young man she’s marrying  have the home in their community that friends spontaneously  gather at and so they regularly put on impromptu dinner parties as well.  So come on, tell me – how could we not have crazy fun planning a party where we don’t have to cook or clean up – but get to set the stage, make it dazzling (we hope) choose the menu and dance lots?  She’s an artist so indulged her passion for drawing by designing invites and seating charts (her small obsession), and programs and thank-you cards and EVEN those signs at the side of the road that say “Wedding this way” – paying no attention to my, “But honey, those don’t have to be art – they might get rained on and people are just speeding by.”

What were my obsessions? I admit I did tromp all over two cities looking for the right lacy socks for the flower girls -all women of a certain age will know the ones I refer to, I’m going to start importing them.) But I also was stuck on retro qualities from cousin’s weddings back in the day – the ones  where we ate homemade Ukrainian food and polka-ed and did the stupid chicken dance.  This wedding is on the coast on an island that takes two ferries to get to (just ten minutes each, honest).  There won’t be perogies, and maybe not the chicken dance, but there will be bright pompoms on the cars and match books with the couple’s names on them (if they arrive in the mail this week) and flower petals sprinkled down the aisle by tiny girls – the bride and groom’s niece, as well as their own fourteen- month-old toddler who may or may not help her cousin with those petals (okay – not).  There will be flowers grown on the island by a local young woman – dahlia’s and whatever else grew this summer, and groomsmen who have never been groomsmen before and bridesmaid’s in the same category, accept for the one whose done it five times this summer (bless her). There will be lots of young people who have never even been invited to a wedding or maybe one way back, but not a close friend’s.  Both families will walk down the grassy aisle and my sister will perform the ceremony.  There will be a cousin playing Davie Bowie songs on his guitar as the bride walks towards the groom with her dad, and I guess, this is the part that is making me cry, because I’m crying now, is that it’s been a hec of a fun ride, helping to put this together – fun, of the sorts that makes me happy.  That’s what we’re supposed to pursue right?  So now, after so much anticipation I’m tearing up.  Our two families have worked together so that the guests  that we love (even those slow to RSVP) could be well taken care of on the day that we join each other by the seaside, while our dear daughter and the good man that she is marrying stand together, with their little baby girl nearby and promise to keep loving each other for a very long time.

And the best advice that I can give the new couple is to cherish the day, to let others entertain you on Sept. 24th but most importantly –to  have fun on your day.   Just remember, we’ve got your back.