Cat Skinner Club

While I Was Out…

These days are feeling a little surreal. Life is hectic, but the home front is peaceful, and I have felt for almost a week now that I am not in my body, but am watching myself move through the world from a far off location. Like a dream. This is very standard fare for November.

I don’t go out the way I used to. I have two friends with two brand new babies, and I’ve been afraid to see them because I keep feeling sniffly, and I live with a three year old who has a wet nagging cough that hasn’t gone away. Do I stay away indefinitely, or do I get a surgical mask? I just don’t know the protocol and I’m feeling neglectful.

I have an appointment with a therapist on Wednesday. I want to talk about anxiety, and trust, and grief, and I suppose about patterns. Patterns of thought, patterns of behaviour, patterns of life. I want to be stronger, better, more assured about my abilities to receive love.

Giving love is easy, for a Schnoo like me. What seems to be incredibly difficult is accepting the idea that someone could love me enough to always want to stick by me, watch me grow old and wrinkly, and say goodbye to this lifetime by my side. That’s hard. So hard in fact, that merely typing this is making me choke up. Why? For the most part, I think I have fairly good self-esteem. I’ve done a lot of things with my short time on this planet. I live well, and with a kind heart, and I love people, genuinely. Why is it so hard sometimes to believe that I am loveable?

Long bike rides in the waning sunlight of crisp autumn afternoons buoy me up like nobody’s business.

My partners are working crazy hours to get over the hump of some back-logged inventory that needs to move in time for the holiday season. I’m on domestic duty which is kind of awesome. I’m working from home and swapping out loads of laundry between emails and assignments. I’m planning meals and e-marketing schedules, and organizing crafts and data bases. Tonight I think we’ll bake cupcakes, make a pizza and then the little monkeys will splash in the tub. I will use that time to write some copy for a sponsorship proposal. Yeah for the modern woman. What I am learning is that the girls exist most peacefully if they are occupied with something that involves spending time with one or all of the adults until they are asleep. TV or movies don’t really cut it either. It needs to be an activity, or a task. They have a real interest in helping in the kitchen, so I’ve been trying to pare down our food prep and assign each of them things to help with. They really love this. It’s so cute. Last night the six-year-old set the table without even being asked.

Yesterday, she spontaneously told me I was her family.

I have a family. Just like that. No more lonely brunches, yearning for little hands to reach for bits of food from my plate. No more enviously watching sleepy couples bow their heads together over coffee and commiserate about the night before.

The other night, I forgot to pick up one item on the grocery list, and made a joke about getting fired. Our six-year-old looked up, startled and said “Why would you get fired? We love you!” I explained my joke and she reiterated, with a worried little frown “We would never fire you. We love you.”

I’m not getting fired. They love me. They aren’t going anywhere, and they want me to stay. In fact, I may even be in line for a promotion.

After oh so many years of loss, lies, break ups, divorce, death, and heartache, it’s really hard to come to work each day and not expect a pink slip.

Am I sounding like a broken record?

Morning Pages

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I’m trying to post something here every day, but sometimes when I wake up in the morning, my head is so full of cobwebs, I have nothing really to say.

This morning, we’re listening to music that is slightly too loud for my morning ears, our three year old is laying on the sofa looking up adoringly at her daddy who is trying to get her dressed, our six year old is very slowly eating her cereal, my girlfriend is unloading the dishwasher, and all five of us are drinking kale smoothies.

“K for kale.”

The little one has been home from school for three days now, if we include today, due to a runny nose and a nagging, liquidy cough. Despite these symptoms, she seems her usual self – just as much energy, and I learned yesterday that if you don’t want to be bombarded in the shower, you must lock the door. I didn’t even have a lock on my bathroom door at The Fortress.

Our older one is looking forward to a big event at school tonight that involves the children exploring a magically transformed classroom in the dark, on their own. It’s supposed to be quite magical, but I have to miss this because I have a meeting this evening.

It’s slightly overcast, but I can see lots of blue sky, and I’m wondering if I should ride my bike today. I’m also trying to decide if this is physically possible because my boyfriend switched up my workout yesterday, and I can barely move. I think I’ll decide to push myself anyway. I have no clothing that fits me anymore.

Sometimes I sit here and marvel at how much everything in my universe has changed.

I went from being a lonely, single girl who took the occasional solace in her dog, to a girl who is constantly surrounded by people who love her, who no longer sees her dog because of the petty nature of his other owner, who is in the best shape she’s ever been in, and who is watching every single thing she’s ever wanted fall into place.

I miss my dog. I miss living close to the park and the trees, particularly because I know how much the girls would love that, sometimes I miss my things, and every once in a while I’m aware that I need a quiet place to retreat to. I imagine we all do. Our current home has no walls. The rooms are divided with a series of sliding glass doors, and you can hear everything around you. When I’m not at home, I hear everything around me in a different way. This dam-bursting amount of change, and joy, and love has me casting a critical eye at all of the things that are wrong in my own head, that have been preventing me from feeling such joy all along.

This weekend will be about family. (I’m looking at my girlfriend right now who is talking to our six year old from the fridge. Her hair is all tied up and she is wearing a fitted oatmeal sweater. She looks so gorgeous and delicate this morning. I love how fairy-like she is.) Last weekend, we hit the dollar store and bought a whole bunch of craft stuff and spent the day working on home made decorations for the Christmas tree. I’d love to do more of the same. We were hoping to get in a visit with my friend Ming and her new baby, but I think with a sick little one, and the rest of us exposed to those germs we’ll have to forego that.

Tonight we’re cooking dinner for two of my friends who have been so generous lending their talents to my cabaret company. They will get to meet the girls for the first time, and I’m always delighted by this because they are so utterly charming with new people.

Sunday I’m hoping to connect with my aunt who I haven’t seen in a while, and Sunday evening we’re descending en mass to the Muslim equivalent of a baptism or baby naming ceremony. Oh yes. There’s the element to our relationship that I haven’t shared yet. It’s going to be a big one, I think. A whole new world to discover and negotiate my way through. I’m looking forward to this. I love ceremony and religion.

The sun has gently pushed aside some cloud cover, and is streaming over my shoulder to illuminate my hair in a fiery halo. Our littlest one has been released from her first time-out of the day, my girlfriend is finished packing up lunch (which is supposed to be my job), my boyfriend is hard at work, and I’m off to fold some laundry and send our six year old off to school.

See how normal life can be? We’re not so different, you and I.

From our three year old: “Daddy, can you put rock and roll on?”

No More Clamato Before Bed

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Last night I had a dream about a baby. A fat-cheeked, red-headed baby girl that was mine. Except I wasn’t convinced that she was real. I kept seeing her when I was alone, but she was never around when I was with other people. I held her, smelled her sweet, sweaty neck, kissed her, sang to her, and decided in my dream that I had completely lost my mind and made her up.

I was in the mall near the house I grew up in with my friend Kathryn, and we were shopping for baby things, and I was nervous because I realized that I would soon have to tell her that there wasn’t a baby to meet, and that she’d come all the way to Hamilton to learn that I’d lied to everyone. Then my cell phone rang, and it was my mother calling to see when I’d be home because the baby was getting hungry.

This dream continued through the course of two alarms going off in my real world.

Presently, at my house, we are working together to concoct the stories we will tell the rest of the world about our relationship and connection to one another. Various facets of our life will hear various elements of our reality. Each story is crafted to allow for the most inclusion and involvement in each other’s communities, and to protect the children as best we can.

I know I’m idealistic, but it’s so frustrating to think of all the kids I’ve known over the course of my life in two-parent households that were so, so lacking in even the very basic things that humans require. I had a little girlfriend when I was nine who used to come to school reeking of her parent’s chain smoking, always with matted hair and a Kool-aid mustache, wearing the same clothes every day until the teacher had to send her home to change. It’s maddening to think that someone might raise an alarm because our household has three loving parents who would do anything for these girls growing up here.

This is our reality – we cannot be exactly as we are anywhere we’d like to go. I, who always like a good fight, must realize this more than anyone. There are compromises to be made for the sake of protecting ourselves and our home. It’s just such a shame after spending 33 years not fully realizing myself that I can’t always shout it to the world.

Silly prideful lion.

somewhere i have never travelled…

runaway

This e.e. cummings poem has been scrolling through my head for the last several days:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

My iScope Horoscope for Today

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“Could circumstances beyond your control be turning you into a more jaded person? Today, before you lose sight of the wonders of the world, unearth some of your old idealistic tendencies. They aren’t gone — they’re still deep down inside of you. They’ve been sleeping, just waiting for a time when they’ll be necessary and relevant in your life again. Let yourself be impressed by the magic that surrounds you every day. “