Happy Birthday Canada

This is my country, the one my parents chose over 33 years ago, the one I was born in, the one I think about when I'm somewhere else and homesick. This is where I huddled in bed as a child with my sisters, having impromptu sleepovers when our parents had asked us long ago to go to sleep; where I learned to ride a bike in the yard of the Catholic school on our street, my dad holding on to the back, holding, holding and then letting go and leaving me pedal off; where I met my first best friend and felt the rush of little girl secrets exchanged, of exclusivity, then had my first fight, spoke my first bold insult, felt my blood rush to my head with anger and shame as I stood alone in yard with the minutes of recess dwindling away and the wind whipping at my face, wanting to go back inside and do addition and subtraction; where I memorized Quran while sitting on a mossy rockface near Perth Ontario, reciting verses of Yaseen and looking at the trees and the lake in front of me; where I decided I loved hockey after Mr. Falls took us down to the library to watch the Olympics, where I watched Peter Forsberg score that goal and win the medal for someone else and felt my first of many sports heartbreaks; where I wrote my first rhyming poem and had it shown to the principal and got an extra sticker and decided I always wanted to write; where I stayed up nights finishing my writing portfolio for arts school in eighth grade, reading and re-reading the character profiles, the poems, the short story and agonizing over words, replacing "white" with "ivory" and switching back to "white" before finally printing; where I spent 4 years sleeping and reading and writing on the 90 minute bus ride to arts school instead of going to the school 10 blocks away; where Mr. Fitzpatrick gave us books to read and told us to study their tone and their voices, and I fell in love with "The Shipping News" and "The Wars" and wanted to write like Timothy Findlay; where I met Katherine and May and Brenda, whom I don't see for months or sometimes years but still fall back into easy conversation with when I do, and love like sisters, and hope and pray for regularly; where I met M at my sisters Katb Kitab; where I fell into easy conversation with him and knew, and waited some more and still knew; where I watched my other sister become a mom and carried my niece and nephew for the first time and learned to bottle feed and change diapers and pj's and hush a crying baby and tiptoe like I'd never tiptoed before.

Where I grew up and became who I am, and am still trying to become who I want to be.

It's not perfect here, and we make mistakes and maybe don't treat each other as well as we'd hoped we would, but at least we have that hope, have that intention to be fair and good with anyone who wants to come live here.

Happy Birthday.

Heartbreaking

Have you heard about this family's death in Calgary? There were children involved, and one has survived. I'm not even sure what to say, really, just that I'm upset and shocked by it.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to take another life, add to that taking a child's life, and now add to that the possibility of taking the life of a family member, a loved one. Police aren't looking for suspects and have called it a "domestic homicide" so doesn't that essentially mean they think one of the parents did it before taking their own life?

I'm reminded by a verse in the Quran which says something to the meaning of "anyone who kills a soul, it is as if he has killed the whole of humanity, and anyone who has saved a soul, it is as if he has saved the whole of humanity."

Life is precious.

Thanksgiving

Warning as we start this post: schmoopiness ensues in the following lines, and if you're a reader who can't handle sop and a bit of cheese (what are you doing on this blog exactly?? I've always been sentimental) then I would recommend proceeding - or not - with caution.
So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving (for you Americans, Canada's Thanksgiving is the first weekend in October, not in November), here's a random list in no particular order of importance of things for which I am thankful:

• A long weekend. Being able to get up late and wander down to see my beautiful mother reading Quran in the black chair at the far end of the family room; having snippets of the random conversation we've become so good at - pieces of meaning distributed and distilled between laughter and anecdotes, interspersed with inside jokes, dotted with queries of concern (Me: how's your back today? Any better? Her: Have you slept enough? Eaten enough?)
  
• Walks with my sister. Both the power-walks of the someone-else-is-watching-the-little-angels variety, and the slow motion walks where my nephew is strapped into the stroller, eyes roving, the sky visible through his plastic sunroof, and my niece is ambling - dawdling really - beside us, so slow we stop walking and start strolling, walks where my back is perpetually bent at an odd angle so she can grasp three of my fingers in her tiny hand; that hand, held fast against mine, letting go to run ahead and discover, hold gravel, hold dirt, hold wild flowers and grass, small enough that the world spills through the cracks between her fingers, off her palm. On those walks, the contents of her hand are her world, and she is my world.
• The joy of opening my inbox to find a message from M in a secret language, decoding only in my head and inventing new terminology, a secret etymology no language professor will ever teach, no scholar will ever translate.
• Riding in the car with my father, an easy silence around the grip of the steering wheel, in his furrowed brow as he directs us home or away, here or there, a stop at Timmy's in the back of his mind and always at the next exit. He is our Captain because of the way we fall asleep and the car keeps moving, the way we wake back up and have our best conversations in that car and our best silences and still the car keeps moving, the way he pushes us, gently, to do, to act, to push the world a little bit forward ourselves in the same smooth way he pushes the car with all its passengers to our next destination. My father is not the passenger not because he cannot let others lead, but because he understands the burdens - as opposed to the privileges - of leadership.
• Reading the story of Prophet Yusuf in the Quran, and feeling that lump in my throat at the end when he embodies forgiveness, when he succeeds, when he sees love in his brothers and they feel it for him and imagining having all that to hold over someone and wondering if I would ever be able to forgive. and hoping I would. and praying I would.
• The thought of a poem, or a line of a poem, or a line of beautiful wording, unprompted, popping into my head and staying there long enough that I am able to write it down, that I have not lost it.
• All the cleverness, all the emotion, all the "aha!"-ness of a good book on a long afternoon in a coffee shop with comfortable chairs. Reading with a sense of both urgency and lightness. Having all afternoon.
• Grace. Not my own, because I do not yet think I have it, but finding it in others at unexpected moments, and being inspired by it.