Paradise Lost Bit by Bit

My son got really intrigued by a box that I was hiding for the last 9 years. Up until yesterday, my son said he was able to resist the curiosity. So I finally let him see what was in it. We have many of those boxes on our shelves. Some are with memories from Japan, some are with memorabilia from our travels, things from our past, and one is with keepsakes from my son's babyhood.

He sat down on the floor by the coach and opened it in Hollywood style, slowly with great care and suspense. So finally the angel from the box cover that was guarding the secret spilled the beans! My son took our each object from his past. There was a pit from his first solid food, avocado, a piece of the dried up umbillical cord/belly button that fell off, champagne cork from the time we celebrated his first New Year, and bags and bags with my son's baby teeth. I kept every single one of them. My son looked at me and said with a great confidence but not without a note of disappointment, "I knew it! I knew there was no Tooth Fairy! You are the Tooth Fairy!" We laughed, but right after that I fell like something was lost to me and to my son. Paradise lost perhaps. The world full of Good and fairies was fading from us? From now on there is only dry taste of adult rational ways? I hope not!

Today again, right before bedtime my son whispered to in my ear that he had found all his letters to Santar. So he knows there is no Santa?! I refuse to admit it to him. We argued half - seriously, half - jokingly. But at the end of it he made me feel all warm and happy when he said, "but I still want to write Santa a letter. Can we do it tomorrow?" YESSSSS! And thank you! At least I get to hold on to that tradition this one more year!

I want to finish this post with a memory that has been written down in a special notebook we have. There are my son's funnies and interesting words written down for future reference. We read it every once in a while. The last time was when my son found his box. Here go three of the notes, my personal favourites.

October 20th, 2012, Japan
There is a poplar way of expressing in Polish that you don't understand something. This is relating to that expression. I use it all the time.

Olo: Mama! It is not fitting in my head! It is very much not fitting in my head!

Then there is a long silence. I am stunned by how well he uses this expression. I wait for more. So after a while...

Olo: But Mama! What does it mean that it is not fitting in my head?

February 17th, 20013. Japan
We are coming back from one of our day trips. We are driving through Nagano mountains . It is already a dark night. My little one at the back is still not falling asleep. You can see he is thinking and looking through the window, observing the Moon.
Olo: Tata, how much does it cost to go to the Moon?
Tata: About 20 million dollars.
Olo: Oh! So we ALL can go!

October 19th 2012
The same Moon  over Japan but a different date.
Look Mama how the Moon is riding with us! How come He has no hands?

Happy Wednesday, my friends!

Childhood Unfulfilled Wish

I don't know why this came to my mind today. Actually I do know. I just realised. One of my friends told me about a picture from one of her Christmases as a child. She told me about this special kind of candy that people used to have, or rather not have ( I will explain) as children in the Communist Poland. They were called icycle. They looked just like them. Long, slim sticks of candy, wrapped in shiny, colourful wraps like nothing else in the Communist Poland, which made it much harder to resist for kids to steal from Christmas trees. They would hang there all holiday season if not hidden away for years and years to return to the ornament collection. Now when I look at it I understand how hard it was for our parents to get anything at the stored and make the season special. Therefore, grown ups just tried to extend the lives of these items as long as it was humanly possible.Because no one knew when one would have a chance to buy hem again. And so my friend remembers these icycle candy hanging there while it was strictly forbidden to take and devour. I had none of those on my tree as a child. And it was ok with me, but my god-mother had a full tree of them and she was usually generous to give me one or two each season. My personal favourites were the gold ones!

So here I am utilising my mental abilities to contemplate about unfulfilled childhood wishes. I remember very often before falling asleep I would lay in bed and think, and create scenarios on how wonderful it would be to have a power to freeze the world and people in time while I go around PEWEX and pick up some items essential to my childish happiness.  For those who have not grew up in Poland, PEWEX was a store owned by the government where you could buy foreign items with dollars or bony). My dear! Just think about all these amazing things like coke cans, Swiss milk chocolate, Lewis jeans, wool, peanut! All this in one store while Polish reality was 1/4 of rye bread and a slab of bacon/lard in a newspaper line up for fresh bun!  I don't think I was the only one to have these thoughts. And I am sure you would find a few grown up thinking the same thing!

I remember one summer when there was a carnival and circus in town. I was about 5-6 years old. My mom bought two tickets for us to go and see the show. I remember how incredible it all looked through the eyes of a child. Elephants that stank in their cages outside of the circus ten, people wearing colourful clothes, beautiful ladies pass me by and I wanted to be them, every one of them! And the most of all, I loved the places where you had to shoot to aim I you could win prizes. There was this one and only that I wanted. I remembered how hard my mom tried, my poor, beautiful and loving mom. But it didn't matter how much she loved me, she was not able to shoot so well to win this monkey puppet at the top of all the shelves. The ultimate prize! The prize of all prize that no one was able to win! Now I know it. But then, all I wanted was the monkey with a drum puppet with strings that moved it's arms and legs. At one point my amazing and innovative mother offered that she would just pay the attendant for the puppet but every time the attendant took me in his arms and over the counter to show him what i wanted I couldn't not see my monkey with a drum! And each time i came back to my mom's arms I could see it vividly! It was frustrating. Now I am thinking that it was probably much higher than me, blocked by a shelf, hence visible only from a distance.

You can imagine my disappointment when both my mom and the attendant got fed up with me and we just left the carnival. I cried all the way home. And then before falling asleep i lay in my bed thinking...yes! You guessed it. I thought how wonderful it would be to freeze the world and people and just jump on the shelves, grab my puppet and ruuuuuuuuuuun!

Today I don't remember if the monkey had drum plates or drum sticks in it's hands. But back them it was the top of my dreams. The unfulfilled childhood wish. Today, there is no more PEWEX, and a little monkey with a drum would not suffice. But you know, if i ever see that kind of puppet, you bet your shoes I will have it! And while it graces my top shelf, it will remind me of the importance of dreaming!

How about your childhood dreams. Dig deep. Go back to it? What was it? Did you fulfill it as a child? As an adult? Just for the sake of fulfilling a dream?

What Is Important in Life

Today I would like to think about things that make this dream called life worth living. I was prompted by a few of very important people in my life to think about it. When you stop and think, and list things that made you feel good in the last, let's say, 24 hours, you come up with things like this.

What makes life worth living:

1. A good conversation
2. Two or three friends that make you think about important things in life
3. A nice meal prepared with love
4. A good drink or two
5. Good memories
6. Compassion and understanding
7. Someone waiting for you
8. A well-mannered and loving pet
9. A warm home and a cozy evening on the coach
10. A moment of silence in peaceful meditation.

This is what one can come up with just on the spot. This is just things that I experience in one day. It doesn't get more important than this! Yesterday I had a conversation with my son about being rich and what it means. I explained that there is a very misleading concept of being rich in material things in today's society. To my son's incredible surprise, I told him that I was very rich because I had him and his dad as my life companions, I had a baggage of amazing memories and experiences, I had a small yet tight group of friends I would trust my life with, I had a warm home, amazing food not even daily but three or more times a day, I had winter boots,summer shoes, high heels, flip flops, clean water in the convenience of my tap, I had an amazing cat, furniture that I chose to have. But most of all, I had faith, hope and love.

What I wanted to convey to him was that all these things make me real enough to realise how much riches I have. I have all that is important in life. And the things I can wish for... well...I could wish for more encounters with real people. But it is a story for another post!

Have a Happy Wednesday!

On Being Wonderfully Different

I first moved to Canada at an unfortunate age. I came to Toronto at a transitional stage of a teenager. I tried to find myself, who I was, who I was not, who I wanted to become as an adult and boom! I found myself in the middle of the unknown land, unknown people, new identity.  All of a sudden me being a teenager and trying to find myself presented a whole new meaning. It was a brutal struggle and a battle but I got out of it in one piece, victorious. Thanks to many wonderful and kind people who helped me understand the world around me and to understand myself. So this post is about that point in my life.

I attended Lakeshore Collegiate on Kipling in Toronto. Immediately after enrolling I registered for ESL classes that I had to take. But it didn't take me long to figure out that since I had the freedom to choose my own classes I could finally dedicate my attention to arts and other wonderful things I enjoyed. I discovered that not only I was good at playing guitar but I could compose my own music! I took up keyboards. Not to mistake with keyboarding - typing, I studied how to play keyboards. I discovered that it was possible to play with two hands somewhat complicated pieces of music within two weeks if you study everyday! I took French, Visual Arts, and loads of history classes! I LOVED high school in Canada!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UUWkr4FUlo
Van Morrison, Days Like This

One day my keyboarding teacher, nota bene, Mr. Morrison (!!!) who heavily resembled Sir "Van" Morrison, decided for the entire class to take a test on feelings and music. We listened to many pieces of music of different origin and genre. We were supposed to mark a feeling to each piece of music. The next day we got our results. I watched as Mr. Morrison gave out the results to all the classmates. At the end he came to my desk and said, "and here is your answer sheet. You got them all wrong. Which is ok. I don't want you to worry about this. But you didn't get even close to the right answer. This just means that you feel differently." It has been 27 years since that class at Lakeshore Collegiate. I have grown to understand that that I do feel differently. I learnt to feel happy and proud of it. And I to celebrate and respect every person. We all are wonderfully different and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!

Sketch for My Husband's Portrait, October 2017

So every time I get hurt, misunderstood, rejected, dejected, ignored or disrespected, my husband comes to me and with the softest voice he says, " they don't get that you are different, unique. They understand things in their own terms, however small or vague they are." It is good to hear these words. Really, they change my point of view and motivate me. They build me anew!
So the moral of this story is that it is incredible to be different. And you don't have to, you shouldn't have to change. You are not required to change to be understood and appreciated. You just need to find a person who does!!

Have a great week my friends!