The meaning of "Santa love"

Every Christmas, on the last day of school, one of my employees (a Crossing Guard) at a public school dresses up like Santa. He's elderly and fills out the suit appropriately He has a sac and pockets full of candy canes...Vic is probably one of my favourite peopleon the planet but this cinches the deal every year.

I always make sure to drive past him on my way to work on this day and honk and wave. This morning was no different, there he was, jolly old St Nick (St. Vic - lol), handing out candy canes and waving at passing cars...The tears came to my eyes after I pulled through the intersection. A little girl, about 6 years old, was running towards the crossing. I have almost never seen a more beautific smile and more shining, excited eyes than on that little girl as she ran towards Santa this morning....smiling, waving, laughing.....and whether you celebrate or not, that is "love".

And it made me teary eyed this morning.

Am I ready to be over it?

So, at my birthday party, my Mom and Dad sat together. This felt like it was happening thru a haze of jello I had to squint through and I had to keep looking at them to make sure I was seeing what I thought I saw. I explained this to Greg last night, in the dark, so he couldn't see me crying.

"It's like having a knife in you, your whole life. You know it's there, it's painful, but it's what you know. Then someone just walks past you nonchalantly and pulls it out, painlessly like it was never there....and you have no idea what to do. It's like what you thought you knew is now over and now you have to move on and you have no idea how."

I am still processing that along with the coffee date at Mom's the following night. My Dad sitting in my Mom's kitchen, laughing, them sharing stories that I don't remember because we were too young to ever remember them happy....

I wonder what was so much more important to them in their anger than giving us this gift 32 years ago....

A gift.....

Today my cyber-friend Mountain Goddess sent me a poem she had written for me and Liam.

I have no words to express my gratitude.

BC Boy

Scented in cedar

he runs

always in my mind's

eye

Mountains,

gracious towering wall

between me

and love

My heart and his

always

stolen

from our raincoast

home

Let the rain fall

into my open hand

Fright Night

This night and tomorrow I will be decorating the house, getting ready to welcome over 30+ friends, kids and neighbours into our home for HALLOWEEN! My true religious holiday :) I love Halloween, it speaks to the child in me who always wanted to be a princess, no a Troll, no a Donkey, no a Robot....I love that my friends get into the spirit. I love that Greg makes decorating the house an EVENT....I am looking forward to all of the fun in store....and because I can't wait, Quinn and I are going to a Haunted Firehall tonight for some creepy pre-Halloween goosebumps :) :)

Happy Halloween all.

Ladies and Gentlemen....

I give you my brand new tattoo.....which in my opinion turned out beautiful if not a bit bigger than anticipated. I have waited so long to do this that it felt cathartic in making her a reality. My hour+ in the artist's chair could not have been made more comfortable. My sister kept me focused and busy looking at a book of body tattoos that probably took lifetimes to amass. That made me feel pretty humble about my wee girlie here. Tim (the artist) was very accomodating and respectful. He is a talented dude for sure and said he appreciated "popping a beautiful woman's *cherry* so early on a saturday morning"...LOL...referring hopefully to the fact that this was my "first time".

I am so pleased with her. She is as powerful, gorgeous and feminine as was intended.

Thankful

I have always felt that Thanksgiving is kind of a pointless holiday for Canadians. In fact I wonder how we ended up with a version of the American pilgrim dealio at all...However, being a government employee for the last decade I am *thankful* for the extra day off and I really appreciate the fact that NO stores are open so I have no excuse but to lie about digesting the dinner from Sunday :)

That being said this is the first year that I have had “MY” family around me in any sort of numbers for this Faux-Turkey Gobbling day and I have to tell you I got a misty twinge in my eye when all of us said what we were thankful for around that table. Each of the kids said “family” first and foremost with the exception of Liam who was thankful for his dessert fork! LMAO My Sis and I agreed that we were most thankful for the health of our families and I think secretly my Mum was most thankful that her gravy turned out!

So we had Greg’s family dinner on Saturday night and then my smaller version of a family’s dinner on Sunday. A proper family meal in my Mum’s new house with my Sis and her family. What a treat (and I am also making reference to my Mother’s cabbage rolls – of which I have been bereft for a decade).

For that (and all of the above) I am truly thankful.

I should....

I’m trying to scrabble around on my mental floorboards these days and find my “big girl panties”….I’m trying to embrace the idea that I am going to turn 40 in a few months time. When I reflect on this time in my life, mostly I come to the realization that truly in my mind I am still 22. Still irreverent, the class clown, the smartass.

I’m still stringing it together one day at a time, lurching through my life feeling as goofy and as unprepared as I ever did. Which to be truthful, I expected to be over by the time I was 4-0!!!! I mean really, I am the mother of a teenager. For God’s sake I thought the self-doubt and schoolgirl notions would have long past dissipated into a mist of wisdom and inner calm. I was unprepared for feeling like I just left highschool and still had yet to get my shit together.

Grounded as my life seems to be, mired in responsibility and stuffed full of “shoulds”, I think I am ready for a break out moment. A moment that is truly selfish and I have now decided that I will follow my bliss in declaring myself to be my own. My body to be my own. Regardless of the strings and entanglements that are attached to it and me.

So I go into this time with a declaration that although I hold many titles….mother, wife, professional, sister, auntie, volunteer…..I am truly at the core of it all Carla. In that I am decided that I have always wanted to get a tattoo (regardless of what anyone else thinks of them) and that this will be my gift to myself in my 40th year.

My long attachment to water speaks to me wherever I have lived, moved…in the water I have always been truly beautiful and free, emersed in a feeling of warmth, at peace in nature and in my life. So I have chosen a mermaid to be placed in the center of my back so that when I turn my back on myself in the mirror I am reminded that the other side of me, the other side of Carla still swims inside the body of that woman who owns all those “shoulds” and that she is strong, capable, beautiful and is still the same fabulous smartass she always has been.

I am.