Providence and Acts of Grace

It may seem trite, but his week has truly been an exercise in living in grace and appreciating blessings.

This fire was massive. It burned for hours before it was discovered, and by then, it was in the small hours of the morning, when we were all deeply asleep. More than a third of the row of units were gutted, the roof over them entirely consumed. Despite that, no one was hurt. Even all the pets in the row escaped.

Somehow, with all the destruction, even in the very next unit, our contents are largely unharmed. We will be able to retrieve essentially everything.

As I wrote yesterday, we've learned that only licensed contractors can retrieve the contents of the house. What I learned only two weeks ago is that my cousin Greg has recently gotten a job working for just such a company. You can call it a coincidence. I call it a blessing. I call it an act of grace. Even though we can not be in there, insuring everything is packed up, that everything we want to save is retrieved, he will be there, looking out for us.

I have a childhood toy, my "lovey" if you will. His name is Bunny. He is, at this point, little more than a rag. To anyone else, he would look like nothing special or important, or even worth keeping. It would be difficult to describe him to be certain that he was found and packed up with the rest of our possessions. But I know that Greg will remember Bunny; he had a bunny just like it. I know that I can tell Greg that Bunny is in there, somewhere in our bedroom, and that he will find Bunny, and bring him out to me. It's just a small childhood toy, but I slept with that rabbit every night until past adolescence, and I don't like the idea of simply abandoning him.

Bad things happen. But my cousin got this job at this time with this company.

I call that Grace.

Condemned

We woke up at a normal hour this morning and had some breakfast in our suite. My sister-in-law brought us some groceries last night, so I was able to have a bowl of yogurt and some grapes from the fruit basket The Man's office had sent over yesterday afternoon. The Man took Wembley out for a walk, and came back about ten minutes later, rushing into the room. He told me he had run into one of the other residents from our building in the hallway, and that there was some news on the building. He recommended we get to the house, so I strapped on Peanut, and we walked over to the site with Wembley.

The official word is in: the city has condemned the building. Because it is condemned, we cannot enter the house. Contractors will be hired to retrieve as much as is salvageable, which in our case should be just about everything.

I will never set foot in our home again.

::

It is certainly true, and important to remember, that there were no fatalities, and that is a very fortunate thing. To call it miraculous would not be an exaggeration, considering the nature of the fire. What I keep hearing and reading is that "no lives were lost". I'm not sure that's an accurate assessment, though. It isn't just about our possessions, even. We lived in that home. It was our home.

We loved living there. Peanut spent her first summer, just a year ago, gazing out that living room window at the trees outside. She had just learned to crawl up our stairs. She had only just discovered, only just last week, how fun it could be to pull herself up at our nearly-floor-length bedroom window to look out, slapping her hands against the glass, and giving it kisses.

The life we built was in that home. We'll build another one, and the construction of that life has already begun, but the one we had is lost. We feel rather lost. As much as I am comforted to know that we'll more likely than not end up with most of our sentimental possessions, and not having to replace everything, I still just want to go home.

And I can't.

Fire, or, Homeless

The Man and I awoke to the crackling sound of fire Monday morning.

I was awake, nursing Peanut, and heard a strange sound, like the tapping sound of rain falling on taut plastic. I lay in bed, nursing, and contemplated the sound, trying to sort out what it could be. I could see a bit of sky through the bottom of our bedroom window: the sky looked to be the dark blue of a clear nighttime sky of the first of summer, not the grey sky of a rainy day. The sound was also wrong: it was the rhythm of it. Rain has a certain rhythm, a certain musical quality - which is why I love it - and this sound lacked that. It was just ongoing and...impossible to place.

Peanut was nursing in her sleep, and I was reticent to wake her in the middle of the night just so I could know what the sound was, so I lay still in the bed, wondering. But every fibre in me urged me to go to the window and look out.

I felt The Man stir beside me, and turned my head to see him wake and roll half-way over, looking toward the window quizzically.

"I don't know what that sound is," I whispered, not wanting to wake Peanut. "Can you go see what it is?"

He would have gotten up and gone to the window even had I not spoken. He walked gingerly to the window, peeked out the blinds, screamed, and ran out of the room. He yelled "Fire!" back at me, as he was half way down the stairs.

I leapt out of bed, waking Peanut, who started to cry, but settled as soon as I picked her up. "Do I need to get out of the house?" I called to him, just as I got to the window and saw the bright red and yellow of flames reflecting off the building which backs onto our bedroom.

"Yes!!"

I ran to the closet and tried to find a sweater, but the one I knew was there seemed to have disappeared. I recalled an ancient and enormous wool zippered cardi in a basket of blankets over near the bathroom. With Peanut in my arms, I ran, found it, and ran down the stairs to our first floor.

The Man had found his phone and dialed 911. He was saying to the dispatcher that there was a fire several doors down from our house. His was not the first call. He hung up. We could hear sirens, I think, though it may have been just screaming in my head. I was hyperventilating and shaking and repeatedly saying "Oh God; Ok; oh God; Ok."

I had a pair of slip-on sneakers at the top of the stairs to the front door. I put them on, and handed Peanut to The Man. I grabbed my favourite babywearing wrap from the hooks, also at the top of the stairs, where we keep them, tied it around myself, and put Peanut inside. He had Wembley on her leash already.

I looked at The Man. It had been maybe 60 seconds since we'd gotten up. I asked him, "Is there a single thing in this house that we want?" because I couldn't think of anything, anything at all. He didn't answer, but ran to the bookcase, about 20 feet away, and grabbed the wedding album. He was right beside the coffee table, where our laptop sits. "Grab the laptop!" I told him, "It has all Peanut's baby pictures on it."

And we left.

Our neighbour was outside, looking...bereft, and clinging to her 10 month old daughter. We stood on the sidewalk, watching smoke pour out of the dormer window a few units down to the south from our townhouse. Fire engines had arrived and were all over the street. Water was spraying through the air. We moved across the street and waited.

I watched flames escape the roof of a central unit. I watched the flames spread further south, along the roof, and the next unit to the south catch, and burn. Then I watched the wind turn. I watched the wind drive the flames north. I watched as smoke escaped the chimney, and then the dormer window to the loft of each unit, moving north. Moving toward our unit.

::

The townhouses are stacked; our upper unit, and the unit immediately below us are the only two without smoke or water damage. Firefighters had to run water lines through the units immediately next to us; they suffered both smoke and water damage.



The Man has been in twice to salvage belongings. On his first trip, he grabbed our kilts - my dancing kilt and his wedding kilt - my wedding gown, including the enormous crinoline, his guitar, some of Peanut's clothes, and the dress form my mother had gifted me for my birthday. I received it on Saturday, two days before my birthday; two days before we woke to fire. An inauspicious beginning to my year, to be sure.

Our unit is untouched. No smoke or water damage. Our contents are unharmed. We are incredibly lucky. We will likely be able to save almost everything, though I'm worried about how things will fare given the refrigerator full of rotting food (including milk, breastmilk and eggs), the half-filled bag of dirty cloth diapers in the bathroom, and the rapidly increasing temperatures in the city.

We're still waiting to hear what will happen with our home. We're in a hotel at the moment, thanks to the Red Cross. We have a lot of friends in the city, and our families are all around the city as well. We have a lot of people taking care of us, as well as an outpouring of support and offers of clothes for all three of us from the women of the knittyboard.

We'll be alright. For now, we're homeless, but not hopeless.

Management, or, Choosing your choice

I've been thinking about birth choices a lot lately. A good friend of mine - friends, in fact, as I first met the husband, goodness! fourteen years ago, while his wife and I met nearly ten years ago when we began undergrad together - is 30 weeks pregnant, having walked a long and hard road to get here. After two excruciating miscarriages, one of which was shockingly late, she and her husband want not only a healthy baby, but a healthy and natural birth experience.

I've been counselling her - over facebook, no less - as to ways she may accomplish this feat. Because a feat it is, when presented with a society that views birth as a medical event, and a medical system designed to take the mother and father out of the equation. What she would like is a homebirth, attended by a midwife and a doula. What she will have, as a result of her small-town location, will be a hospital birth, attended by an obstetrician she will likely not have met previously, and an army of nurses on rotating shifts.

She fears unnecessary interventions. Monitoring, pain "management", epidurals, pitocin, episiotomy, Caesarean section. But it is not a fear of needles or a fear of incisions: it is a fear that she will be denied the opportunity to birth her child, to allow her body to the work for which it was designed and built, to inform her life, including her motherhood, with the profoundly affecting experience of birth. Moreover, she is afraid of being denied choice.

It can be argued that some choices are entirely personal, and others which could be considered far more public. Choices which affect the wellbeing of others are, in a very strong sense, public choices, though they are elementally personal. When we make our personal choices for our lives, we should, generally speaking, make our choices for ourselves, and usually not, I think it is fair to say, as a means of some sort of political activism. Activism is all well and good, and I've certainly done some (*ahem* check out my new banner) but when it comes down to making choices as to how to birth your child, in that regard, all bets are off. We need to make our choices personally, not publicly, if you understand me.

That said, I wonder how the choices made by other mothers in the days, weeks, months preceding my friend's birth will affect her and her husband's experience in that hospital. Will the willingness of other mothers to lay still, semi-reclined, for convenient - and largely unnecessary, though no nurse would ever admit to it - monitoring of the fetus increase the likelihood that my friend will be pressured to do the same? Will the success of nurses pressing the use of pain management and labour management drugs, such as pitocin, on other mothers serve to bolster those same nurses in their almost inevitable fight with my friends? Will enough mothers agree - willingly or not - to these interventions only to have labour "fail to progress" resulting in "necessary" c-sections contribute to the already existent cloud of doubt surrounding natural birth in a hospital environment?

What fights will my two dear friends be forced to fight, while at the same time labouring? How will the choices made by other mothers, by other fathers, affect the establishment or denial of my friends' right to choose for themselves and for their child? I don't believe, truly, that we should be considering others when making deeply personal choices, and goodness knows the choices made regarding pregnancy and birth are deeply personal, but I can't help but wonder these things, and wish to heaven that there were some way to arrange to be in the maritimes when she goes into labour. Because I foresee a fight for them to experience birth the way they are meant to experience it, the way they have set out to experience it, and wish I could stand with them in their battle.

While these deeply personal decisions are just that - personal - I do wonder at what point we must admit that there may be larger societal implications because of them. And, if so, what personal changes must we endeavour to make, in an effort to positively affect the public good.

Happy Birthday, Peanut!

One year ago, at this very time, my midwife was in my home, confirming that I was in labour, that yes, my membranes had certainly ruptured, and I was most certainly having our baby that very day.

One year.









How can it be, my darling girl, that it has been a year? Wasn't I carrying you within me, next to my beating heart, only last week? Didn't I only breathe you into this world on a wave of compulsion and agony and ecstasy only yesterday? Did my ears not just ring at the sound of your first cry, before you were even fully born, only moments ago?

I remember so clearly holding you to me, as you first nursed, and you wrapped your tiny, hour-old arm around my side, gently brushing my skin with your tiny fingers,discovering your new world, your new mother, this new love. I will cherish and remember that moment, that sensation, for the rest of my life. So tender and precious, so new and foreign. So mine.

Twelve months of growing and trial and wonder and learning and amazement as you've grown to be your very own little person. You have thoughts, likes and dislikes, you play games and have a sense of humour, and are one of the sunniest, most darling children I have ever met.

There are days when I wish I could stop the passage of time so that I can just keep you as you are today, so small and cuddly and full of discovery and others when I wish I could go back to when you were so tiny, when things were so difficult, and appreciate you even more, hug you even closer, and know with surety that everything would turn out well.



You are astonishing, dear child, and as great a gift as any could be.

Happy birthday.

Two days, or, Spring!

The weather this week has been exceptional. Warm, but not too hot; sunny, but with a soft breeze, and with grass and leaves and tulips springing up all around. Peanut and I have taken the opportunity to be out enjoying the season.

On Monday, we did a certain amount of 'playing tourist' in this capital city in which we make our home. We wandered up past Parliament Hill, and discovered that it was Music Monday, a day on which school children across the country hold small concerts. A large choir was singing on the steps in front of Centre Block. We listened to the end of their singing, then walked on, across the grass of the lawn, past university students enjoying a post-exam laze-about, and some kids playing ultimate frisbee. This happens on the lawn all the time. It's a truly public space, right amidst the workings of our government, and Ottawans make use of it. I'm not sure that's something you would see in most capitals. There's even noon-hour yoga on the lawn during the summer. I'm sure Peanut and I will have pictures of us participating to share once that starts up.



We walked down Sussex, where the high-end shops in Ottawa are located, and up to Major's Hill Park, hoping to see some tulips. This week marks our annual Tulip Festival, a tradition dating back to 1953, and one which is of particular importance to our church congregation, as it was our church that the Dutch Royal Family attended while in exile in Canada. Princess Margriet was baptised at our font, the same font where Peanut was baptised last August.

Unfortunately, there weren't as many tulips at that park as I'd hoped, but we did spend some time in the grass.









Today was another lovely day, so we walked for hours again. This time we headed south from our house. First we hit the natural supply store for some baby-friendly sunblock (Peanut was a bit ruddy when we got home yesterday; she's inherited my exceedingly fair skin, so it needs protecting!) and then stopped off at a coffeehouse for a sandwich. Peanut entertained everyone who walked by, grinning at them from her armchair.



Onward south we walked, through the Glebe, past Lansdowne Park and over the canal. We walked through Sunnyside, stopping in little baby and child shops and consignment shops, and generally just wandering. We found a pet food shop which sells the brand of food we like for Wembley (it's harder to find than, say, something like Purina) and checked out the new Milkface location. Britt was in, so we got to say hello to her, and she got to exclaim over Peanut and how sweet she looked wrapped up in our babywearing wrap, Ulli.

Then back towards home. As we crossed the bridge over the Canal, I noticed how beautiful it all was: the grass and trees against the water, and all right in the middle of the city. And I thought, why would I ever want to leave? Some days, my heart fairly aches with love for this city, with all its grass and trees and water and arts and music and festivals and old churches and politics and activism and history.

Little changes, or, Still alright?

I've been playing with the CSS for the blog. If it looks wonky, let me know, ok?

A whole month? or, Actual knitting has happened!

Yes, I've actually started and completed an entire garment. Huzzah!

Of course, that garment is a little baby-sized sweater, done top-down and entirely seamless, but hey, it's an accomplishment!

I've also discovered that trying to get photos of a sweater while on a baby who is rapidly morphing into a toddler is rather challenging. She won't sit still anymore!

Pattern: My own
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton-Ease in Lime
Size: 11mo Peanut
Mods: none. The beauty of drafting your own pattern!
Comments: The neckline ended up way big, and the body isn't as long or as loose as I had planned (this is what happens when one 'eyeballs' a knitting pattern). I was hoping it would hit about mid-thigh, rather than just below the hip and that the body would have more of a trapeze shape to it. I plan to get some narrow ribbon and thread it through the first row of stitches to cinch in the neckline a bit. So, not a complete success, but a good first try!

Blocks, or, Post-feminist my ass

I recently saw some decoupaged wooden play blocks on a website and thought "Cool. I could do that." So I've been looking for unfinished wooden blocks, which is more than a little challenging, sadly. In the course of my search, I tried Toys 'R' Us, though I didn't really expect to find them there. I was right. I clicked "Blocks" at the left of the page, then "Building Blocks" of the options that presented, and found various blocks, but no plain wooden cubes. Then I noticed the various "Narrow by..." options at the left. One was gender. I clicked "Girl" just to see what would happen. Instead of three pages of different building blocks sets, creating all manner of different creatures and objects, I now saw only seven items, all packaged and marketed for infants and toddlers. Apparently, girls are only interested in blocks during their infancy: as soon as they are old enough to appreciate that they aren't actually boys, they want to play with dolls.

F*&king gender roles.

Three seasons, or, ten months

Ten months ago, Peanut joined us.

She's a little monster some days, but she's my little monster, and I can't imagine not having her here.

Polywog, or, partially frogged

Just over two years ed ago, the wonderful and venerable Bezzie started a little project known as KAYE: the Kootchie Awareness Yarn Extravaganza. As luck would have it, I happened to have my annual rootin' the very month she began this monthly drawing, and lo and behold, my name was drawn for that very first skein of yarn! Sadly, the yarn sat, untouched and unattended in my stash for quite some time. Fortunately, before I had chosen a destiny for that yarn, and before I had even balled up the hank of yarn, I discovered that the lovely sock yarn she had gifted me was, in fact, some of the notorious Mystical Creations yarn (Ravelry link). A little soak in a bowl of water, and the yarn bled Smurf blood, so I took my first adventure in dye setting armed with a plastic freezer bag, a large portion of vinegar and a microwave oven.

At last, the yarn was ready to be knit, and I decided that some brightly coloured baby legwarmers would be just the ticket. I got to knitting and...I didn't love them. I was nearly halfway done the first one, and I just didn't love what I was seeing. The fabric was lovely and soft, but the I just wasn't feeling the stripes. Thing is, I'm not partial to self-striping yarn most of the time, and these stripes just weren't doing it for me. Besides, Peanut already has two pairs of striped legwarmers: does she really need a third? Still, I pressed on, and decided to make the knees of the legs a little thicker, since the yarn is rather soft, and Peanut is extremely close to learning to crawl. I began a simple slip-stitch pattern on the knees and...



I adored the result! The yarn now, instead of striping, created a gently mottled fabric, not pooling, just delightfully flecked with colour and shade. The fabric was absolutely beautiful!

So I frogged it back to the ribbing and started again, knitting the leg entirely in the slip-stitch pattern. It's totally worth it. :)

Just because, or, The Funnest Game Ever

'Cause I think she's cute. And I have nothing fibre-y to show you.

Why not, or, Watching her world

Why not put your baby in the window?

Obsessed, or, 'Round and around and around...

I've been spending a lot of time on my feet, lately.

I finished this.



I'm busy working on this.



The spindle is currently sporting some Corriedale. I bought myself a total of 200 grams of roving, so I have loads of spinning ahead of me. It's pretty fabulous.

I've already warned The Man that I will need to get a spinning wheel someday. I don't see this obsession abating any time soon.

Nerdling, or, The Traveller

Did I ever mention that I'm a total nerd? Well, I am. Big-time. Like, there-are-maybe-five-episodes-of-Star-Trek:Next-Generation-I-haven't-seen kind of nerdy. I don't own memorabilia or shirts or go to conventions or anything, but I have watched a LOT of Star Trek.

Penny Karma's recent post inspired me to share with you the day I outed myself to anboyfriend.

I had just gotten to his place and he and his roommate were watched ST:NG (see, 21 yo boys don't need to pretend that they don't like ST:NG; they can be all open about it). And then-BF says to the roommate "That's The Traveller, right?" referring to an alien creature on the screen. Before I could think, I said "No, The Traveller is more human looking and greyer." Jaws hit the floor, and I was mortified at what I had just done.

Slowly, the boyfriend and roommate turned away from the screen to look at me as I stared shame-faced into my lap.

"You watch Star Trek??" they exclaimed.

Snack, or, Yum

Hummus on a rice cracker.

The food of the gods.

Done! or, Ugly but awesome

This is an incredibly satisfying sight.



Inconsistently spun, only somewhat evenly plied, with areas of over-twisted ply, broken plies, enormous slubs...it's practically unusable.

But it's mine!!

Because I've got nothing but time, or, Like I need something else to distract me

Let Operation Yarn Barf commence.

A little change, or, Where's the knitting?

As you may have noticed, I've made some little changes to the blog. I'm still not entirely sure about how I feel about it, but it's a start. Change is good, though.

I really wish I had more knitting content to show you, truly. There are things I want to knit but I'm lacking the necessary yarn or needles or both, so they haven't actually happened. Boo. Fortunately, the weather has warmed up, so a walk to the local yarn shop isn't going to result in frozen extremities or necessitate insane numbers of layers of clothing. It's quite pleasant, actually.

I have some posts cooking in my head, but they are unrelated to knitting, so I'm considering starting a second blog to deal with birth choice and other related posts. It would be good to muster all my doula-related thoughts in one place.

All in all, this is a pretty nothing little post, I'm afraid. Here's a gratuitously unnecessary baby picture to make the visit worthwhile:

Once more around the sun, or, Four

Four years ago, on a day which much nicer weather than today's rain - cool and gently snowy - we promised forever.



Happy anniversary, darling.