Parenting – Page 2 – readerwriterrunner.com

I cannot remember the last Saturday morning when the first thing I did after pouring my coffee wasn’t looking at homes on Realtor.ca.

I like our house.

Sometimes I love it.

Our neighbourhood is fantastic – trails and a park – young families and retirees. A genuine community.

And yet, Realtor.ca beckons. Constantly. Not just on Saturday mornings. The app on my phone means constant checks throughout the week.

Chasing the perfect home. An extra bathroom. A magnificent view. Something more walkable too – schools, stores, coffee-shops – ideally would be just a short stroll away.

The next best thing just around the corner. Because the next home will make everything better. Parenting, life, and work stress will disappear when we add another toilet.

It’s ridiculous of course. Most of us grew up sharing bathrooms, in homes without walk-in closets and jacuzzi tubs. We survived just fine. We didn’t know any different.

I think of my grandparents. Children of the First World War. Young parents themselves during World War II. They suffered. Their infant daughter died soon after birth in the dark autumn of 1944 in occupied Holland. War raged while they mourned and battled for survival, and struggled to raise their surviving daughter. My mother.

Many decades later my grandparents retired to a small bungalow in very small-town Ontario. One bedroom, one bathroom. They took pride in that home. My grandfather spent thousands of hours in his garden. Sometimes I helped him. Today, when I work in our backyard – a sun-drenched property with apple trees, pear trees, and garden boxes which overflow with tomatoes – I think of how much my grandfather would have loved this home. I wish he was alive and bedside me. And I feel guilty for ever thinking about leaving.

Leaving a place my daughter loves, adding a hundred thousand dollars to our mortgage, and an hour a day to my commute, all for the sake of looking outside and seeing the ocean and the mountains.

The draw of that view is powerful. The desire for an extra bathroom is real. So is the reality that the things I want come at a cost. A cost that may not be worth paying.

Still, it’s hard not to look.

Addiction.ca

I had a few hours of free time this morning. It’s rare for me to be alone, and away from home.

So I went to a cemetery.

A cemetery, near a forest by a church. A beautiful church. An old church.

Smoke from the forest fires raging south of us obscured the sky.

No one else was around.

It was like walking through a P.D. James novel.

Our world feels very obscured. There is no clarity.

Cemeteries provide clarity. Death provides clarity. The on switch is flicked off. 1 becomes 0. Light is dark.

The cemetery was quiet. Peaceful. Tranquil. Mostly grey with splashes of flowers. Immense trees loomed overhead. I saw an infant’s grave. I saw many birth dates far to close to the birthdays of people I love who are still alive. Loved ones I treasure beyond description. The people I do not ever want to lose.

As I write this, our dog is hours away from being euthanized. I’ve written about her in the past. Not always glowingly. But her absence will create a void in my life. In my wife’s life. In my daughter’s life. I will always remember the golden beauty who was with me when I was alone, and lonely, and a little bit scared of what the future held in store. I’ll remember long walks along the beach, stones thrown into the ocean, and hot summer days laying by the water, a book in one hand, and my Maggie beside me.

I’ll remember this day. Some glorious free time with something awful looming. And yet I’m still enjoying myself. A coffee in a café. My laptop in front of me. Nowhere I need to be for 90 whole minutes.

The where I need to be is my daughter’s pre-school. To pick her up. Earlier this week she was terrified before her first day. My wife and I felt her fear. Agonized over it. Needlessly. Because she came home and told us, “I love pre-school.” She asked to go every day. Kids grow up fast.

Today, when I dropped her off, she greeted her teacher with glee, overjoyed to tell her about the new doll her granny bought her. Almost forgetting dad was beside her. Maybe actually forgetting, because I had to ask for a hug and a kiss before she bounded into the classroom. I was so proud of her. And so conscious that my little girl is growing up.

My days often feel very obscured. The smoke of work, the smoke of stress, the smoke of life. Who has time for clarity when life moves a million miles an hour, Covid keeps us from one another, and fires blacken the sky?

Clarity might be unattainable. Or maybe it is does exist, but it is precious because it is both fleeting and hazy. Like a walk in a cemetery on a day filled with both life and death.