So I haven't posted on here in a very, very long time. But I wanted a way to document this and figured to trust what all the security guys say and believe that anything posted on the net is here forever.
Everyday miracles guys. Every freaking day miracles, thats what kids give you. That may make me sound like one of those kitty cat shirt wearing, Chicken Soup For The What Ever Soul reading woman, but its true. Today Isla said “Coltrane”. Now I know that wouldn't mean much to those out side of this house but here, where John Coltrane is the go to guy for background music its a big deal. She also sang along to her first REM tune. Ok, ok it was off a reality TV show and the guy singing it needed Isla to find the melody, but still my jaw dropped.
Kids this age are so intrinsically musical. Its in every cell of their being. We spend at least 10-15 minutes a night now dancing to something. Tonight it was to Coltrane and me doing the 'Manamana' song.
This all connects to what I have been thinking about a lot lately. What is our specific families culture? What defines our family as being different from another? I listened to a CBC radio program months ago, before Isla was talking, about how the misspoken words of children often become a marker in a families culture.
I hadn't ever really thought about each family having its own distinct culture and yet now I think we are making one day by day. Its in the Coltrane that plays in the evenings, the Lady GaGa (referred to in our house by Isla's name for her, Ba Ba Gace) that plays on the way to and from daycare every day in attempt to sooth the savage toddler beast. It's in the way we listen to Lou Reed on repeat during road trips and read Where the Wild Things Are, On The Day You Were Born, and Mama Mama until everyone in the house can recite them. I now call Macaroni and Cheese, “Cacamoni and Cheese” and strawberry flavored milk as “Bunny Juice”. Both of which are now served faithfully as every Saturday's lunch.
Although they maybe mundane details everyone of them seems to be creating this incredibly beautiful, detailed, multi-layered picture that I had no idea we were making. I guess instead of calling it an everyday miracle it should be called an incidental miracle. Because through all the mundane; pay the mortgage, pick up dog crap, throw the garbage out, trying to find at least one flipping pair of matching socks, no you can not eat that and don't put it in the dogs ear, the three of us have created something breath taking. Complicated as anything can be, as hard as hell, and as draining as a person can imagine or stand but still oh so precious.
Three years ago when I peed on a stick, saw two lines and then almost passed out on the john (and yes again I am shocked I am putting that into the technological ether) at the time I was focusing on how totally unprepared I felt to begin raising another human being. I questioned what right I had in creating and then developing another person when heck, “I cant even manage to make my bed or put my dirty clothes in the hamper.” what sort of credentials did I have for child rearing? But what I failed to see was that I wasn't creating a person like a plant. She wasn't going to be some sort of automaton who I had to mold into this perfect image. What we were and are creating is so much more beautiful, simple and possibly more terrifying, we are creating a family for Isla to grow up in.
Every single morning from the moment we put our feet on the floor in the morning Regan and I are creating family. Every morning when Regan makes Isla and himself toast and jam from the jam we made last year he is creating our culture and ultimately our family. Every morning when I run around begging the sock gods to find me just one blasted matching pair and finally settle on Isla going to day care with one florescent pink one and one stripy rainbow one and I wear a old mismatch pair of Regan's, I am creating culture. OK, its a culture of stocking feet chaos, but one to be proud of none the less.
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