I haven't been writing. I started this post in August:
This summer I found myself in an unpleasant state. I was back to feeling bitterness and jealousy and anger toward my ex. I had moved past all of that months ago. Why was it back?
I don't even know why, honestly. And nothing I did could shake it. As I'm writing this, I realize I'm ok again, but I think that's the thing about grief. It's not linear. Stages aren't absolute.
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Last winter I decided I needed to take the kids to Manitoba to see where my mom grew up. It's my oldest's senior year of high school, so who knows if we'll get a chance to go after she graduates? At first I was super excited - yes, the 14-hour drive was long, but I loved the time I spent at my grandmother's house at the corner of 3rd and 3rd in their small town, and out at the family farm, and at our aunt and uncle's place in Winnipeg.
When I started really thinking about planning it in the spring though, I realized it wouldn't be the same for my kids.
I had book club tonight, and we were lucky to get to have a Zoom call with the author, Julia Alvarez. We read her book The Cemetary of Untold Stories. I can totally relate - none of my stories have survived. Anyway, it was a great discussion - she was lovely. One thing she said, which I've heard before, is that writing is a habit, a practice, a discipline. Going to try to be better about it. Again, ha.
First, by finishing the post above.
When I started really thinking about planning it in the spring, though, I realized it wouldn't be the same for my kids. For me, going to Manitoba meant hugging my grandmother, staying in her home, eating her delicious food - homemade buns, cookies, and nanaimo bars, along with fudgcicles and mini sugary cereal assortment packs. Playing Ante-Ante-Aye-Over, Werewolf, dark tag, croquet golf, freeze tag, hide-and-seek with my cousins. Meals with all our aunts and uncles and cousins crowded around tables that had been set up next to each other to fit everyone. Seeing wash hanging on the clothesline in the sunshine, digging in the soft, rich dirt in the garden in summer. Playing in 2 feet of snow, dragging sleds to the toboggan run at the park in winter.
My kids were going to a place they'd never been before. They were excited to go to a different country and eat "foreign" food, but meeting a bunch of people they didn't know and not really having much to do was not enticing. So I cut the trip down to three days - one in Winnipeg with a trip to a few Folklorama pavilions, one in Carman to see where my mom grew up and hang out at my cousin's house, and one at the lake to go fishing. That was the only thing V wanted to do - go fishing. Unfortunately, my cousin who was going to take us, got sick, so we didn't get to do any fishing.
I don't think they loved it. It's a long drive with little payoff. But now they've been. They know a bit more about their heritage. Maybe someday we'll get to go to Scotland where my mom's grandparents emigrated from.