where the home is, the heart resides...

Since my last blog post, I dragged my reluctant husband and happy go lucky child along with me to Halifax to find a house to live in while we complete school. My oh my, how much further our money goes in real estate on the east coast! It was such a different experience. Whereas in Toronto our experience of house hunting was frustrating -- most of the detached homes we could afford were falling apart -- the house hunt in Halifax was characterized by a multitude of choices, each as tantalizing as the last. We settled on a beautiful old 1880s home in the heart of downtown.

I am in love. While we looked at a lot of places, some which were bigger, or newer, and fitting the suburban dream to a T, it just wasn't us. This home, with its original hardwoods and beautiful huge windows, it's adorable backyard with a handpump, is quintessentially us. I think it characterizes our move out East well. We have given up trying to be what we're not. We have accepted the good things (having each other, a beautiful child, artistic inclination) and the bad (flippancy, inability to integrate into the Canadian dream, artistic inclination) and we're working with what we've got.

I'm already picturing the giant victorian cascade curtains that I'll sew for the windows.

Ender is learning, slowly, how to walk. He takes little tentative steps, his arms thrown into the air for balance, with a look of perpetual surprise as he feels his body moving forward in a controlled fall, his legs stopping him each time. He smiles at me with a greater joy now at each thing he discovers, peeking his head around a chair to see his daddy, pulling off his left shoe and shoving it in his mouth. So too have his negative feelings begun to reach a greater depth, as he flails his arms in frustration when a chosen toy is decided to be too sharp for play, and taken away. Or, when his mouth aches as tiny teeth break the surface like pearly bubbles.

Both good and bad, I love it all, as it evidences his emotional growth. All I can do is press his arms to his side when he tries to hit me, and give him a sad face. "Please don't hit me." I say. He returns the pout, struggles off of my lap, and is off to the next thing. All is forgiven.

I pray to the fates and the chaos of the universe that somehow in all of this insanity I can continue to appreciate both sides of the coin as part of his learning to become himself. Grant me the knowledge to teach him right from wrong, so that he can eventually realise that there's no such thing. Grant me the vulnerability to cry when he hurts me, so he can learn that conscience is the best compass through a sometimes senseless world.

Fostering a life sometimes seems like too big of a responsibility. As though someone told me I was in charge of telling the frost how to melt.

*sigh*