older, wiser

I met 2010 whilst counting down over a microphone, on a stage, in front of a few hundred young adults at my home church, TACF, as Andrew and I emceed the final night of the annual conference Heavy Rain. As we "FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWO..."ed our way into the new year I couldn't have thought of a place I'd rather be, an activity I'd rather be enjoying, or people I'd rather be with.

In just over a week I'll be celebrating another milestone, with a very different group of people: a few of us are meeting at the YWAM base where we did our January 2000 DTS in West Sussex, England. It's strange to think that I was 19 when I landed at Holmsted Manor and congregated in the leather room with 19 of my fellow classmates. I don't remember being nervous, but I do remember wondering how to portray myself. Witty? Charming? Analytical? Which Sarah would best suit this situation? Which Sarah would they like to meet?

Since then, and over the past ten years, all the Sarahs have come together to form a more integrated one. The guests at Heavy Rain received the same Sarah, more or less, as my husband does when I get home from work. As exhausting as it sometimes was, I'm happy to report that I've chased most of the Sarahs down and made a mosaic of them.

I find retrospect dizzying. How many times do we reinvent ourselves, over and over, to achieve more balanced, more holistic, more genuine versions of ourselves? Or, vice versa: how many masks do we handcraft to hide the version of ourselves that we rather we weren't?

How many incarnations have you been through, and how are you better for them? Do you like yourself better now or did you like yourself better then?

wifersize wednesday: I <3 you

I have mixed emotions about technology. I tend to glorify the era I spend the majority of my university tuition on: the Romantic era. Austen's books would whisk me away to a time before cell phones (before phones!), before computers, before electricity, before automobiles. Where heroines would read letters from their beaus by candlelight, once, twice, thrice times over and keep them, folded, with their handkerchiefs in a purse. Next to their dance cards, etc.

I signed up for my first cell phone contract at the ripe age of 26. I even survived a year in Korea without one. I figured, if people wanted to get me on the phone, they'd have to call during the hours that I was in my apartment. Or else it couldn't have been that important. And, in the case of an emergency, call the cops! or an ambulance! what am I going to do about it?

Once I found myself in a stable, long-term relationship, and with the idea of not being able to get in touch with me beginning to drive Andrew to acts of quiet desperation, I signed a three year contract with Rogers. If Andrew hadn't been with me at the time, I don't think I could have gone through with it. BUT WHAT OF READING LETTERS BY CANDLELIGHT?

Nearly four years and an iPhone upgrade later, I hardly think of my cell phone except to answer it, text on it, check my email by it, browse the weather on it, call from it, and amuse myself with games I have programmed into it. Recently, I completed Splume's level 20 in 54.8 seconds. EAT IT.

However, I still can't help but wonder if technology has taken its toll on romance. Anyone in a relationship can tell you that most of the Most Important Conversations you have with a partner grow out of times that there is silence and general inactivity: a car ride, a lazy afternoon, or right before bed. Don't you find these moment less frequent since technology has been squeezing its way into them? How many heartfelt conversations have never bloomed, or have been interrupted, due to a call-, text-, Ping-, Google-, or Wiki-related emergency?

And yet, without technology, Andrew and I wouldn't have flirted shamelessly by posting multiple comments on each other's blogs before we dated. I wouldn't have received the adorable emails in the beginning of our relationship, like this:
We wouldn't have the cell phone pictures of us eating take-out Chinese after moving me into my apartment:
We wouldn't have stories about our notorious beepy phones in the early days, we wouldn't have the DVD of our wedding, we wouldn't have the text-banter we now share as a married couple, we wouldn't know how many Rotten Tomatoes a movie had before seeing it for date night, and we'd never know who was right in a grammatical argument without the online OED at our fingertips.

I'd love to know people's thoughts on the subject. How has technology helped or hampered your romantic relationships?

wifersize wednesday: good times and bad

By now most of you will have already seen this year's Gazaneo Christmas card: a second installment in an annual tradition which we intend on keeping for the rest of our wedded lives. The kids don't know it yet, but they're already signed up to participate for as many years as we can use, coax, bribe, or force them. If we can get two 8-month old pets to pose perfectly, I'm sure kids will be a cinch. They will, right?

Since Andrew and I are speeding headlong into the holiday season with all the poise and balance of a kid running down a steep hill, gaining momentum, and realizing that the legs to torso velocity ratio is widening at a exhilarating yet worrisome rate...

...since we have already attended four Christmas events (three of which were church-related), have hosted two of our own, have a few more yet to go, are involved with the wedding of our good friends Jon & Melissa this weekend, have Christmas shopping still to do, and are preparing for an annual young adult conference at the end of the month...

...since our time, energy, patience, finances, and creativity are being stretched in new and (retrospectively) humourous ways...

...yes, since all of these things, and many more, have been a bit of a balancing act recently it's with great admiration and fondness that I reflect on the simple words exchanged last night after I may or may not have burst into a mild flood of tears because of the strain.

Andrew: [hugging me] "Don't worry, La. It won't do any good."
Me: [moping] "I'm already worried."
Andrew: "Well, then...I love you."

Wouldn't it be nice if everything was raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? Or would it? On Sunday, I preached that the word advent came from the same Latin root as adventure. I guess there's a reason. Until I know the reason, it's nice to have someone nearby to tell me that I'm loved. Even if I'm willfully worrying, knowing full well that it won't do any good.

He's one of my favourite things.

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad
"My Favourite Things", The Sound of Music

wifecize wednesday: bluetoothing

We had a Couple (WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS) over to our house for lunch on Sunday. Both of them are friends of ours, which made for amusing witty banter, and the lemon/thyme roast chicken + potatoes/carrots that Andrew made was deeeelicious (aren't I blessed? I know!).

After lunch we "retired to the parlour" (which is our way of saying "let's sit on the couches in our living room which are right beside our dining room table") to consume tea. Solomon, our 7-month chocolate lab, was busy inspecting our guests' crotches, so Andrew went upstairs to retrieve an old T-shirt. He came back down, tied it in a knot, and handed one end to me. We each pulled on our end, never breaking the stream of conversation we were having with the Couple.

Guy of Couple: "What...are you guys doing?"
Us: [pause]
Guy: "With the T-shirt?"
Me: "Oh, we're making a tight knot in the middle so Solomon can play with it. It's his favourite toy. T-shirt-in-a-knot."
[Andrew ties double knot and we resume tugging furiously]
Guy to Girl: "I think this is what we have to look forward to."

Guy was right, I realized. The dizzying phase of early dateship paves way for the romance of late dateship, which then turns into the domestic bliss* of marriage.

I can still remember the morning after Andrew and I reunited at a friends' wedding, danced all night, exchanged phone numbers, and went our separate ways, and I can remember the song playing in my mind as I woke was "I Hear Music" by Brisa Roché. I can remember the first time Andrew held my hand, in a movie theater, as he asked me if anything was wrong because he could feel my pulse pounding in my thumb. I can remember the first time he kissed me, outside University College, and tripping twice on the way back to the car because I felt lightheaded.

What we have now, however, outweighs all memories of what we had then. It's in the bluetoothing Andrew and I do every day together: gelling our thoughts, dreams, expectations, jokes, advice, anticipations, and prayers, until the two start to become one.

It's in silly things like wordlessly handing someone one end of a knotted T-shirt and expecting they'll know what to do with it.

* See this post's disclaimer.

2-in-1: wednesday wifersize & friday foto

Since it's been three weeks since my last post, here is both a belated Wifercize Wednesday and a Friday Foto.

Wifercize Wednesday Friday:
Poking around a blog I frequent (BUT CAN NOT CONDONE), I found a curious question posted on its community section:

If you have them, what are the three "nevers" of your life?

Ignoring the number of people that wrote "never say never" as one of their three...followed by two others (really?), I waded my way through until I found one that resounded: "Never marry a man unless you want your son to be just like him."

I had heard variations of this before - comparing a prospective husband to other influential people in your life, including your father, yourself, your male role models, etc. - but never in relation to a son. Fortuitously, since I did not know about this rule prior to marriage, I won. Andrew has so many admirable qualities and characteristics, I would be proud to have a mini-Andrew.

Understanding that people (even little people) make their own decisions and can choose differ greatly from their parents, and understanding even more than many of the flaws and generational garbage that Andrew and I have can and hopefully will be eradicated in their lives, I still believe in the power and blessing of posterity. In mulling over when and if it should be time to start a family (and, in essence, forever changing the two-person "us" factor of our first years of dating and marriage), I recently came to the conclusion that if our kids would be an extension, an amalgamation, of him and me: knowing him, wouldn't I see him in them every day? Wouldn't I, seeing them, love him more?


Friday Foto:
I'm happy to say I've completed a 10 year old goal. For those of you who commute via public transit, you will be familiar with the graffiti art displayed from Dundas West station to Keele station as the subway emerges from its tunnel.

At the age when I began to use the TTC I lived in the Beaches, in the east end of Toronto. My fascination with and ignorance of the west end was partially due to never exploring the city past Spadina station (that's where Kensington market was and, therefore, as far west as my teenaged heart could desire) unless it was from what I gathered from the window of a subway car, partially due to Old Mill station (I could spot the magical Old Mill itself, where my parents were married and which was familiar to me from old wedding photos), and partially due to this graffiti mural. I naturally assumed the west (especially between Dundas West station and Keele station) was a dark, seedy underworld of crime and violence, pitting itself against the majestic forces of Old Mill.

The trip from the Beaches to Kipling is long. You would not fault me for fanciful daydreaming if you knew.

Ever since those years I wanted to make the time to get off at Dundas West and document the mural on foot until Keele, but never did until recently. Unfortunately, the original mural that I grew up with has been painted over and this is a new incarnation.

There's something about graffiti - illegal (unless commissioned, which these murals no doubt are) and vandalistic - that transforms an otherwise drab city into a palette of colour. I mean, if you're going to break the law, there are worse things you could do.

From west (Keele station) to east (Dundas West station). Click on an image to see a larger version. Please try to ignore any obscenities. It adds to the colour!

wifercize wednesday: army wife

Story time.

Over Thanksgiving weekend I visited my paternal grandparents and uncle's family in Halifax, along with my parents, brothers, and Andrew. For the sake of brevity, the weekend was amazing; Halifax, beautiful; turkey, delicious; weather, fabulous; family, well.

On the way home, The Posse (dad, mom, bro #1, bro #2, and hubby) flew Porter and I flew WestJet. Kisses and hugs were exchanged as they boarded a few minutes before me, all of us joking that we'd see each other in Toronto in just over three hours. Or so we thought. My flight was canceled due to a plane malfunction, all 300 of us were put up in a nearby Quality Inn, and were scheduled to fly out on the next available flight - which was 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

Over the course of Monday night, both Andrew and I suffered from the discomfort of Empty Bed Syndrome. Throughout our (year and five month) marriage, we have slept apart only a few nights and each was an explanatory, premeditated necessity. Never have we been apart by accident or, as the case was, unexpectedly. The Syndrome fed off the nasty surprise. By the time I finally drifted off to sleep (an hour and a half past when I should have, due to tossing and turning) only to wake at 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., etc. in search of a body that wasn't there.

A body that wasn't lying, warm, beside me dreaming. A body that wasn't a reach away. Or even a stretch away. Or even a roll away. A body that wasn't available for me to "plug into"; a habit I have of tucking my hand under a part - an arm, a side, a shoulder - of Andrew just to know he's there. A body that has inspired some of my happiest, most comfortable contemplations.

I don't understand how 27 years of sleeping solo were undone by a few months of sleeping with Andrew, or how I have been conditioned to miss something that I lived without for the majority of my life. I don't understand and I don't care to.

A few of my friends and I saw The Time Traveler's Wife since we had all read the book by Audrey Niffenegger. The movie wasn't brilliant, but then, that was the required response of those who have read the book. As lackluster as we found it, however, all four of us were sobbing happily by the time the credits closed. There is something so raw and bitter about a married couple separated for any reason, for any length of time.

I have a friend who is the wife of a pilot who has been deployed to the Persian Gulf for six months. Six months. MONTHS. I'm reeling trying to even comprehend it. Half a year of Empty Bed Syndrome. I'm following her blog and will post a link here if and when she gives me permission (oh! she did!) but, until then, here is an excerpt that caught my breath:

If anyone out there has ever played the game "Settlers of Catan," then you'll understand this next illustration. In the game you have commodities such as wheat, sheep, and ore. You trade them to build settlements and cities. There is a card in the game called a Monopoly card. When you play this card, you are able to take all of one type of resource away from every player in the game. Then, you usually sell it back to them at a higher price. This is how I felt. The military was playing their monopoly card. They were taking my spouse, my community, my sense of home and were trying to sell me a cheaper version of the real thing at a higher price.

I suppose this post is to reflect on all the beds made empty by business, travel, war, illness, and death. It's not to glorify or vilify the Canadian Armed Forces, nor to wax poetic about the widows and the orphan so try not to get political or theological in your comments. I just had one of those moments that Rob Bell describes so eloquently in Drops Like Stars when I could feel a fraction of someone else's pain, thousands of miles and many more worlds away, because I experienced it in miniature.

Send a little love her way, will you? It will help keep her warm at night.