in the woods tonight spring birds are calling. in the open field to the north there are still masses of snow, misplaced icebergs. one in the shape of a foot tall fin slicing through the water/ground. it is almost half past 6 and there is still light in the sky. i love this. every day i think – this is paradise. tonight the trees are windless, a hazy star hangs in the grey blue of dusk.

i spent the last day grieving losses. you know how a new small loss can touch off other larger losses. or not so large ones too i suppose. maybe it’s just that one loss can bring up all the other ones of recent times. ones that perhaps you never quite moved through at the time. so the small loss of yesterday grew in magnitude until tears came and i wondered how something so insignificant and briefly in my life could make me feel such grief. then i understood as it evolved into the loss of the relationship i left behind in winnipeg and the sort-of step-daughter who remains there too. as imperfect as my relationship may have been, he was still someone to do things with. someone who was always there to talk to about everything, from the mundane to profound. i am jealous of people in relationships for the simple fact of always having a go-to person. if you want to go for a hike, or skiing, or a bike ride, or an adventure, or to a show, or need to be held – they are there. it gets harder as you get older, i have been realizing these past years. the older you get, the more likely your friends are partnered up or have families. and once they have families, spontaneous plans tend to go out the window. if you want to do something with someone right now, they would most likely have to be one of your single friends, or at least someone without kids. and i understand this, i want kids of my own one day, but right now when my life doesn’t match the majority of my friends’ lives, it is difficult. it can make for lonely times. especially when in grief and you just want to be held while you cry. still. i have a good tribe. i am so grateful for what i do have. i was able to talk or connect with 5 good friends yesterday while in the sadness (this includes you stenner). whether they have families or not, they were there. and then there is S, jeremy’s daughter. i was together with him since she was 5 until she was 9. i watched her grow up. i am not a huge miss-er of people, not in a painful way anyway. i think this comes from so much loss as a child, my parents splitting up when i was a baby, and then seeing my dad every summer, and going through the loss of missing each parent every year at the hand-off. also lots of relocation to different cities, and losing different sets of friends when i was quite young. i think at some point i must have shut something off so i could handle it. so from perhaps my early twenties onwards i tended to miss place more than people. last night though, i missed S something fierce. i no longer have the privilege of watching her grow up. and who knows how often i will get to see her now, maybe once a year, if that. and how is she handling it? where has she put the loss inside of herself? a healthy place i hope. it is hard with children, we just want to do the best by them, but we are imperfect, we can’t always give them what we want. to be human. i have been missing tickling her until she explodes into giggles and writhes on the floor (takes about 2 seconds) and shrieks out “teenage mutant ninja turtles!!!!” her code phrase for STOP!!! i have been missing smooching her soft cheeks and watching her arms and legs get longer like a wee gazelle. i have been missing dance parties with her in the living room. she innately has kick-ass dance moves. we cannot always have everything can we? there must be sacrifice every now and then. we must be with loss and take it’s learnings with us onwards. but how deeply the smallest things can cut. in a more clear state of mind this is something to marvel at. what are all the past feelings i have experienced that have culminated in such huge feelings for some small loss (and i speak now not of the loss of S in my life but the loss that triggered this deluge).

i titled this post revel, because this is mainly what i have been doing lately, it is a word that has been in my head, and an interesting one, i think. it seems to have two separate meanings. both meaning to take pleasure in a situation, but one specifically raucously and one more internal. once the aftermath of the grief is through, i hope to find there is always something worth revelling in.