And I Could So Happily Be A Beach Bum For The Rest of My Days...

Yes, a beach bum living in a little beach hut who goes out every morning searching for bits of driftwood and beach glass and lovely whimsical seashells. Feet splashing in the cool water, sand between my toes. Sun shining radiant beams of light and color on the endless, stretching water. The smell of salt and sand in the air. Dried starfish. Waves lapping gently at the shore. Eternal. Insignificant. Tiny in a huge world. Meaning and art instead of business and money. Ah, I could have been a marvelous hippie...



Or a gypsy queen. A wanderer. A traveler. Eyes shielded against the sun. The exotic jingle of an arm full of bangles. Sleeping under the stars, catching trains to unknown destinations. Not knowing where in the great wide world I'll end up. Wild colors and irregular patterns of life. Free and powerful in that freedom. What if I would have been born a gypsy queen?

Or a writer. A poor, penniless writer. Sitting in dark, smoky Parisian cafes. Like Ernest Hemingway. Indulging in my own movable feast. A gormet feast of people watching and words...sights and explorations...I'd certainly wear a dreary hat and have a steaming cup of coffee before me on the scarred wooden table if I could afford it that particular rainy morning. I'd watch. I'd write. I'd wander the city streets in deep thought. Serious and obscure. I'd buy baguettes and drink too much espresso and wine and create my own world view and never buy into society's norms...

Ambitious undertakings, all of the above. Ah well, somewhere inside myself, I'm a little bit of all those things...and a little bit of an artist as well. ;)

And now to say thank you to Lidj from
Crown Of Beauty for thinking of me when it came to the following award:



I appreciate it so thank you dear Lidj!

The rules of the award are:
1. Link back to the person who nominates you for this award.
2. Pass it along to 7 other inspiring bloggers
3, Share 7 things about yourself.

2. Here are seven very diverse blogs that I enjoy. They express interests as varied as the sharing of adoption stories and the struggles and joys of waiting for the "big call" to the expression of self through lovely and creative dressing to creative work with scrapping and card making to just incredibly inspiring and uplifting writing.

Ka Du Trur?

Life With Kaishon

Modesty Is Pretty

Ellinor's

Totaxidi

Hobbyresultater Fra Playa del Sviland

Crown Of Beauty

3. Seven fascinating tidbits about myself you'd probably live quite happily without knowing:

- If you're assuming this part is difficult for me because I only speak/ write about myself with great reluctance as is obvious throughout my blog, you're quite right...;)

- I have a collection of flavored teas that has grown so huge as to be a source of great embarrassment to me.

- I love brightly colored scarves, shoes, bracelets...etc., etc., etc.

- I wear glasses every waking moment and if for some reason I don't have them on, not only can I not see, but I can't hear or walk or speak either...or at least it feels that way.:)

- I have an aversion to TV. It's often mindless, dulls the senses and generally I feel it's a case of "Garbage in, garbage out".

- My language of love is communication. I don't care much for big, fancy gifts, give me conversation any day. :)

- I always prefer that people talk to me and find out who I am and what I think rather than make incorrect assumptions based on well...nothing...;)

See? I'm just so shy when it comes to these things. ;)

I'm Sure My Make-Up Wasn't As Perfect When I Landed As It Was When I Set Out

(2004)


Six years ago today, I stepped off the plane in Sola airport, clothing wrinkled from the long flight from Winnipeg; hair in disarray from catching brief moments of that sleeping one does on flights that isn't really sleeping; feelings all a jumble, an uncertain mixture of excitement and nervousness. Somewhere inside I knew I wouldn't be going home again. Maybe that sounds more ominous than I intend it to. What I mean is that I was sure, confident in fact, that I had arrived at a threshold and found the door to my future wide open. I had no choice but to walk on through.

Even so, I delayed awhile collecting my bags, loitered suspiciously around the customs desk. Took a deep breath and walked out into the public part of the airport to meet my future husband.

You may well think I was a mail order bride from Canada but in fact, I wasn't. I was however, a 24 year old traveler meeting my best friend, my very soon to be husband after three years of going our own ways in the world. I had spent a good portion of the flight wondering how to take friendship turned gradually to love gracefully: "How will we greet each other? Will we hug? Will we just shake hands? Or...maybe we'll...kiss?!" It was a bizarre scenario for which no rules of proper etiquette had been written.

Matters were confusing at best. Here goes: We'd first met when we were 18 in Iceland, became good friends, traveled by train far and wide with other friends through Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland together during several summers. Per eventually came to Canada. I traveled several times to Norway. And all the while we remained friends. A couple years later I was living in Germany and he in Australia and we decided to see if our relationship could work as something more than "friends". We hadn't seen each other for a couple years at this point but hey, why not? Not everything has to make sense, right?. So after my year in Germany was finished, I hopped a plane back to Winnipeg and stepped out into a February night so cold I couldn't breathe and Per left Australia for Norway several months later. I worked for a few months and set out for Norway on July 16th, 2004. Per met me at the airport. (We kissed by the way.;) and we were engaged by August 27th and married on October 2nd.

I've never really been a big planner. It's served me well. :)

So today is my own little anniversary. Let's have the clinking of glasses and a resounding:

Cheers Darling! ;)

(2010)

Forever Capturing Castles

(Southern Manitoba)


"I decided then that beauty was sad
And always eluding us
Because we don't know how to care for it
Or cherish it as we should.
I decided none-the-less that I would wait for beauty
Because it was worth waiting for." (Verse 3 from a poem I wrote in 2003)

"Perhaps he finds beauty saddening--I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly."(pg. 147, I Capture the Castle)

I love beauty. I struggle with beauty. With its transience. Its brevity.

Where I'm from:

Occasionally where I'm from, there's a quality of light on a summer evening, soft and silvery, ethereal. When I sit outside in the evening, it speaks to me of childhood and purity. It's the same sky overhead. The same sounds of insects chirping in the fields. The same scents of the prairies and lakes that breathe stories to me of the days when I was closer to the earth. All around me, land. I can breathe so freely here. It has always made my heart ache.

Sometimes I struggle with sadness because I miss these things. Easy laughter and soft conversations into the night. A gently creaking porch swing. A different depth. A different way of living and being. I breathe so freely here.

Where I am:

I search for different beauty here. I must seek out different joys. I have to put more of my soul into my faith because breathing freely doesn't come as easily for me here. Some days I have to remind myself to breathe, to be who I am without apology. I have to remind myself of what I wanted, the life I sought and how blessed I am that it in fact is the life I've found.

There is wonder in the sound of the horses hooves pounding the earth as they race each other in the field beside our home for no reason other than joy. There is beauty in our lush green garden in which the sun dances on a beautiful Northern summer day like today. There is contentment in those I treasure...the family God has blessed me with. Who make this slightly shabby, charming house on the outskirts of town a home. I can love this life. I can do my best. I can bridge two worlds and be at peace in both.

How can I not be thankful for that?

Maybe I Could Snap Her Up In A Butterfly Net?

I am horrified at myself. And slightly amused. But mostly horrified.

I confess, (chances are that many of you have long suspected this), I have an active and well, imaginative, imagination. When I walk with William, I make good use of this time when he is most relaxed: I think profound thoughts, I make up wild, impossible stories and scenarios in my head. Some days I get a lot of looks from people I pass on these walks. I usually smile brightly in return, putting these looks down to the fact that I'm just absolutely irresistible in my crocs and baggy brown shorts and tee. Today though I realized that they're looking at me because I'm actually mumbling my thoughts, in all their profoundness, aloud as I walk.

My goodness, they might say, there's that nut from Canada again. Children, if she comes close, just come inside and shut the door quietly...

And in the shop today I couldn't find diapers. So I asked the cashier where they were. Like this (except in Norwegian): "Excuse me could you please tell me where to find diapers? Childrens diapers?"

Sigh. Why in the world did I feel that question needed to be added to? I'm not yet 30, I doubt they thought I meant diapers for myself.

Ah well, a day in the life, huh?

Strangers on a Plane: A Little Brush With A Lot 'O Crazy...

There's a woman across the aisle from us, she's maybe a few years older than we are, mid thirties perhaps. She's watching us from the moment we take our seats and and sit William down snugly in the space between us. She gets up several times, walks up and down the aisle slowly.

A few hours into the flight she leans over, asks us, "Where are you going?" "We're going to visit my family in Canada." "Oh?" she turns her lips down and asks in an intimate tone "Out of duty?" There's a pause while we consider what that even means. "No, not out of duty, for a visit." "Where do you live?" she continues. "Norway." "Oh Norway! Lovely! And tell me, how do you feel living in Norway where it's so rich when there are so many suffering people in the world? And have you seen the Northern Lights?" "No, not where we live..." is our puzzled reply. Her eyes widen and she stares at us and says in an innocent voice full of disbelief as though we were lying, "But...I thought you said you live in Norway! Oh! What a beautiful child you have!", she continues in a flash smiling sweetly at William, "Where is he from?" "Sri Lanka", we reply cautiously. Again her eyes widen, this time in exaggerated delight, "Sooo...how did that work? Did you just go there, pay his mother a lot of money and take her child away from her? How wonderful that you did that!", she says in a bright, falsely sweet voice.

Obviously something is very wrong. (We probably should have stopped the conversation dead in its tracks but easier said than done.)

"No, we adopted him legitimately."
She puts her hand under her chin and leans forward as though we're old friends sharing secrets over tea and asks in a voice dripping with honey and sarcasm, "But how did that feeeeel for you? Taking him away from his mother like that? What a good thing you've done! How selfless you are!" She shakes her head in a parody of exaggerated admiration.

I sigh. This feels overwhelming and is made all the more difficult by the fact that she is so manipulatively sweet and not blatantly hostile which is a world easier to deal with.

After about an hour of conversation in this vein, we turn away and begin to feed William, hoping this will signal an end to this bizarre, invasive and dark conversation.

But nothing deters her and she stands up and comes over and sits down beside Per, almost clapping her hands together in mock pleasure and says in a bitter, cloying voice "I just had to come over here and witness this beautiful little moment of perfect family happiness!" She carries on "So what was wrong with you anyway? That you couldn't adopt a child from one of your own countries? What sort of marriage do you have anyway?" Finally I say "I don't want to answer those questions. Why don't you tell me what sort of view you have on adoption because you sound very negative about the entire issue." She gasps in surprise, as though entirely taken aback at my rudeness and answers sweetly "No, no, no! It's only that I admire you and what you've done so much!" And then she mumbles something that sounds as though she is asking me if I am religious. So I answer hesitantly, "I am religious..." And she looks at me with such naked dislike and says in an ugly voice "I didn't ask you if you were religious but since you feel the need to talk about it, go ahead then, tell me..." I reply, "Actually I don't want to tell you anything. We need to lie our son down now, would you please go back to your own seat?"

My heart is pounding and my hands are shaking in my lap and I'm hoping she doesn't notice. She stands up and says very loudly "Well, it's just that I think your little boy is so beautiful and that what you've done is so wonderful...imagine that, ripping a little child away from its home and its mother! It's so absolutely wonderful! Look!", (she says while gesturing to people in the seats around us), "Everyone's smiling at what you've done, they're just so happy you've taken a little baby away from it's mother!"

I reply, "We didn't do it for anyone else's approval."

She smiles condescendingly "I know, I know, you're so purely selfless! Such a good person! Well let me just tell you one thing before I sit down and that is that there is no one, absolutely no one on this plane who cares at all about you and what you've done. Alright? No one cares."

And that was that. This went on for well over an hour and there was far more to it than I want to write but that was the gist of it. I think it's the only time in my life where I have genuinely felt harassed and it was so overwhelming that all the logical responses (as in, stop talking to her altogether, ask a flight attendant to intervene, etc,) just flew out the window.

But live and learn, right? If we ever have to deal with such an atrocious person again, we'll be much better equipped. ;)