This fall we bid farewell to the girls’ play structure. They’ll be 13 soon and agreed that they were not playing on it very much anymore, so it should go to our neighbours who have a 3 year old and new baby. It was a bittersweet moment, watching it being dismantled and moved down the street at a stately pace on top of a trailer. I got positively teary. The removal of the play structure seemed to symbolize the end of their childhood somehow. I read a book last year where the author lamented that so many of the milestones in her children’s lives were about the last time. The last time they needed their night lights on, the last time they’d hold your hand in public, the last time you’d read a bedtime story to them. And while life certainly does feel like it’s speeding by on fast forward, I tend to take a more glass half full approach. On the girl’s path to adulthood it’s the first times that strike me as worth holding on to, the episode with the play structure excepted.
We’ve had lots of firsts this year. It was the first year Caroline did not get homesick at camp. That was a huge first. It was the first year we allowed the girls to be home alone without a sitter. We started slowly by letting them come home from school instead of going to a sitter – which worked out very well. The fire department only had to come out to the house once. On a related note, this year Sarah started baking on her own. This year they left their elementary school and started grade 7 at High School in Orleans. That’s a big and very busy first. It seems they have something after school every night of the week, band, art, knitting, riding lessons. Actually, the last two are not school-related. I started a knitting club on Tuesday nights for 4 of the neighbourhood kids, plus our two. The girls’ friends had been wanting to learn to knit so I finally buckled and started a Tuesday Night Knitting club. What started with 6 little girls sitting around the fireplace learning to knit, end up with 6 kids, 2 mums and one dad (not Murray) sitting around the fireplace every Tuesday knitting up a storm. Murray says I’ve started a cult, or maybe a coven. Not quite, but a lot of people will be getting misshapen scarves and wrist warmers for Christmas this year and I can’t help but feel a little responsible. I’ve been busily knitting Christmas gifts as well, with slightly better success than my students. I’ve done hats, felted cloches and ribbed beanies, as well as another batch of Swedish Santas, although time is running out on my being able to sew them together and stuff them, so someone may get a box of tiny woolen body parts, which I’m sure will be a little disconcerting.
Oh, and one last thing, as I’m sure you all know by now, the girls have been asking Santa for a pony every year now since they were 5. Well, you will be happy to hear that he finally came through. Oliver, a 12 year old registered paint, arrived a little before Christmas, and was greeted with much rejoicing. So most of our time this Christmas will be spent in a stable, which is just as it should be.
Merry Christmas everyone,
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