Everything Girl

“To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal …
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance …
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

In the 1950’s, American folk music revivalist Pete Seeger adapted the biblical passage in Ecclesiastes to create the well-known song “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)”. In my own life of late, there has been a swift acceleration in the variety of unfolding events, with a growing sense of haste and of speeding up which requires me to either flow with it and grow with it or to resist and to have my sails knotted up in frustration, confusion, and futility.

“Life, as we all well know, is faithfully providing opportunity to respond and to learn and to grow, affording us a multitude of occasions to become infinitely more than we were only the year, week or, sometimes, even the hour before.”

Life, as we all well know, is faithfully providing opportunity to respond and to learn and to grow, affording us a multitude of occasions to become infinitely more than we were only the year, week or, sometimes, even the hour before. When I survey my relatively brief existence I see that there has never been a time when change and variety has not presented itself to me on a daily basis – but I’ve not always been mindful, much less welcoming, of it. While I do thrive on the exhilaration of much change, a white-knuckled fear often encroaches if I find difficulty locating my point of reference. During the times in my life where I have felt most lost, I have asked: What is at the heart of all things? Where does everything spring from? Where can I always be sure to place my feet, steady and firm?

Six weeks ago I was installed, albeit tentatively, as a non-custodial mother living on the opposite side of the country from my children. After three years of separation and a year and a half of not parenting full-time, I was making great strides in redefining my role as a mother – a point of reference for almost a decade and a half. My partner Warren and I had been making preparations to have the children with us over summer vacation, when my ex-husband informed us that he was travelling to spend time with his new girlfriend. I had some initial anxiety at this information because I felt intuitively that a long-distance relationship for him could very well precipitate relocation - the relevance for me, of course, being that the children would possibly be introduced to yet another season of upheaval. As it turns out, my intuition was dead on. Their father is moving from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California, for work and for love.

Thursday, June 5 – 10 days ago at the writing of this article – via many, many emotional discussions between Warren and myself and my ex-husband, it has been decided that my children will come to live with us, here, and not sometime in the distant future, but much, much sooner, as in midsummer, 2008. Just like that. Turn, turn, turn…the wheels turned and the mechanisms clicked in place.

6 weeks after – now, in the present – I have gone from reluctantly accepting a somewhat unconventional role as a long-distance non-custodial mother to making renovations to the home and the life that I have been sharing with Warren for just under one year. We are, today, at the halfway point - in a little over 6 weeks from now, we, the bohemian Montréal lovers, will become full-time, permanent, custodial mother and stepfather, respectively, to my quirky, artistic twelve year-old son and feisty, strong-willed fourteen year-old daughter.

And so now, we are moving furniture, and thinking about additional appliances and painting and homework schedules. There is talk of school registration and bus schedules, rules and routines, midsummer activities, step-parenting and parenting again, the future and the past and how we found ourselves here now, where we will be soon, where we hope to be, and where we will find ourselves later.

Wild times, wild times…you know what they say about variety…

In the midst of these changes, Warren’s 94-year old grandmother passed away after a long, vibrant life filled to overflowing with many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. We travelled to Ottawa for the family gatherings, for the wake, and for the funeral, and had the chance to spend some time up at the cottage owned by his grandparents, the same cottage where he cultivated beautiful memories throughout his entire childhood. It is the end of an era for him and for his family, in many quiet, private ways.

“Nothing stays the same; nothing is static. It keeps simmering, it keeps shimmering, and the river continues to flow. “

On the afternoon of the funeral, we waded in the cool, embracing river and, while Warren watched from the rocks on the shore, I swam way, way out and floated peacefully under a perfectly blue sky. Resting there, I listened to my breathing and asked: How do we hold a life when it all flows with its own currents? Even at the end of many years, even in a life filled to overflowing with love and laughter, difficulty and loss, hard work and creativity, it continues on, as George Harrison said, “…within you and without you.”

And so it behooves me to think about what I will season my life with, in these seasons that turn, turn, turn. What will I cultivate in the time that I have? Nothing stays the same; nothing is static. It keeps simmering, it keeps shimmering, and the river continues to flow. The wheels keep turning, and the seasons change from one to the next. So many metaphors are used because they speak of Truth, and so, in the face of this Truth, in the large and the small, with all the variety, what will I season my life with? There is much, so very much to choose from, and in the end, may it be fragrant, and far more sweet than bitter.

Renée Letros is mother to a teenage daughter and a just-about-to-be-teenage son. She lives in Montréal, Canada, with her best friend, partner and Love, Warren, in an idyllic tree-lined neighborhood surrounded by parks, cafés, bakeries, churches, and an open-air market. She focuses her writing mainly on non-fictional explorations of relationships with lovers, family, friends, co-workers, and community and culture

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