Tripping Christmas Style

The fleece is warm enough...(sung to the tune of a christmas classic)
We’re back - just beat yet another blast from this very strange winter, strange in that in this time so focused on the reality of human impact on weather and after a number of near non winter winters we’re getting buried in snow. And snow now falls outside, lots of snow and we’re cozy inside awash in and warmed, imbued by what are already becoming treasured memories of the trip just ended. We are always proud of our children, but never more so then we see their beauty reflected back at us in the loving faces of family. We sit, admittedly, a little out of breath, truly enjoying the safe confinement afforded a lovely winter storm. No pull of a visit or a trip to the store to drag us out from a cuddly and introspective day as we drink in both being home and also look fondly back at our time celebrating the holidays with family.

Now sure, there are moments, moments, for example, when you pack five people with skates and winter gear - two of them girls with the attendant requirement of fashion and function into a too small compact station wagon in preparation for one of the three multi hour legs of your particular christmas journey, moments when this seems not such a rational plan. In the end, even the travel turns out to be fun, with lasting memories for the parents and hopefully the kids. They are children of children of car travelers and it is in their genes. The kids travel beautifully. There are other moments when you dig a rumpled shirt out of a duffle bag, when you wait for a bathroom, when folks long passed being used to living together become re-accustomed to the closeness, there are moments when this just does not seem a rational choice. Those moments pass quickly and then you laugh and feel real love, real connection to family and to place and it seems the most rational of choices, it seems a necessity.

Your generosity was overwhelming, your hospitality inspiring. For those special people we missed over the holiday season, we indeed missed you and pine for a future communion. Thanks, simply, and just, thanks. I did, however, come away pondering two very deep and intriguing questions: why don’t we eat turkey every stinking day; and most importantly, what exactly is ‘Open Season’ for Blooms and Bushes - I mean really, does anyone remember the last time they drove by and didn’t see that damn, ‘Closed for the Season,’ sign out?
Love, all of us

...oh the weather outside...isn't that bad

We head out today for Nova Scotia. We can't wait. In the next few minutes I'll head into the garage, having moved the van out in the yard, door agape, and clean and then pack the Mazda wagon in the relative comfort of the heated garage. I treat the whole exercise like that childhood game, 'Bucking Bronco.' Just keep packing and stuffing in the hope that the car doesn't snap, buck, and dump everything out in anger. We shall see how it goes. Did I mention I miss the old van?

And winter travel is the absolute best: in door clothes, party clothes, workout clothes, outdoor clothes, skates, and maybe this year snowshoes, all need to find their way into a compact car. Given the impending frustration of today, Jennifer gave leave for me to scamper about in the backyard last night while she prepared supper. A lovely woman. So on went the snowshoes and off I went with camera in hand. I really had a great time. Crunching along with the occasional stop as the fancy hit for a quick snap of the sky, or my feet. Just so much fun.

It appears this may be a banner year for outdoor winter pursuits like snowshoeing, pond skating, cross country skiing and the like. We have certainly had the earliest true arrival of winter in many years. And its great. Now, certainly, it needs to end and spring needs to, well, spring in early March, but for now all the snow and the bundling is wonderful, strangely recalling so many great childhood memories of 'big' winters past.

I've got the camera and I'm warning you I'll be using it at every turn. So expect your mug to be plastered all over pictures chronicling the Nicholson Christmas trip to Nova Scotia 07. And do you see the chins, I mean how blessed am I, three whole chins. Does anyone want one for Christmas. Merry Christmas all, and hoefully we see most of you soon.

Love
b

From the update desk...

The Van
The van has officially been shuffled out of the rotation. It now occupies prime real-estate in our heated garage and the family sprints out to the recommissioned Mazda wagon encased in ice provided by what is turning out to be a true Old-time East Coast winter. Lots of fun. The obvious question, springing to your minds is, why, oh why would you not park the dead van outside and move the Mazda back into its rightful place of familial vehicular prominence – all warm and cozy? The damn door won’t close. It’s stuck open; on the van that is. So unless I want to truly destroy all potential of the van seeing the road again in the future – inside it will reside and cold will backsides be for the foreseeable future. Currently, waiting on my guy to get back to me after he talks to his guy, that knows a guy who may or not be some kind of old Dodge van door magician. I shan’t hold my breath. -16 today, the old beauty almost got driven to the woods and left. I’ll give it to Monday and then will not be held accountable for any drastic deeds.

Hockey
One cannot overstate how hockey crazy is the Fair Isle. Impossible. While barely keeping myself awake, and in my addled state trying to decide if my confusion was as a result of having JT on the ice at 6 AM or was it the first signs of hypothermia associated with a core body temperature dropping below 30 Celsius, I was amazed to hear parents near me actually complaining of the lack of ice time the kids were getting. For Novice house league. They’re nuts. In a typical week JT is on the ice four times in three days – and twice a ‘fun’ road game has been added. In house league; novice house league. The kids are getting more then enough time. All families not bank-rolling their future on the one in a zillion chance that their kid will need an agent and make millions - building mom and pop a new house and leaving them a bow rapped car in the driveway - for all of the rest of us, two days would meet the bill. I’m not complaining, and that’s my point, the kids are treated like gold and you could not get a more supportive environment for them to sharpen their skills, including an excess of ice time – ice time that would never be available in Halifax for house league and if so would come in the form of costly skills camps. But more, I am completely and utterly baffled by the mere thought, threat really, of standing in cold rinks more often then I do now. This morning started at 5:30 and tomorrow begins at 6:00 followed by a road trip game that starts at 13:30; Sunday skills camp at 17:45 and a practice at 16:40 on Monday. This is just to give you a taste; again no complaints – just illustration of the completeness of our immersion in Island hockey life. JT continues to love hockey, never once complaining when I wake him or when he’s rushed to finish homework after an evening game and is progressing remarkably fast for a kid who until late last winter never had a puck on his stick.

Used Clothing
We continue to stop by Value Village periodically and have a look-see. As luck would have it, a new funky retro clothing store called, ‘The Green Man,’ has opened recently in downtown Charlottetown. A grand total of $50 dollars later and I have a lovely new suit and Jennifer has a party dress that is nearly as gorgeous as she. Hopefully the holidays will afford the requisite opportunity for us to sport our new vintage duds in your presence; oohs and ahhs, and ‘wow, you two look great,’ s will surely be appropriate. And too the shoppers in our associated families – keep a close eye on the Value Villages, the Frenchies, and hipster vintage clothing stores in your respective towns and let us know if you see anything of interest. Think cool, lovely old suits and funky dresses.

The kiddles
Lily is a tich off, having a hard time this winter kicking completely whatever viral or bacterial bug has affixed itself to her wee passages. Still a ball of fire, and still the light of all lives that peer upon her perfect and round face and become entranced by her mysterious, bright and ever playful eyes, just not completely herself. She spends the bad times attached permanently to her Mom’s side and the good times destroying gleefully whatever room into which she has chased her brothers. JT we chatted about earlier, but I must add that for the last several days if not weeks he has exemplified near 8 year old perfection. A wonderful big brother, a dutiful student and real gamer as he struggles to catch up to his much earlier inducted hockey mates, he impresses both Jennifer and I more everyday. And Matt, ah Matt; well tonight, to site a recent example, we finally got through to the Santa Hotline. Matt after being passed the phone announced to Santa that he would like three things: an electronic carnivore, a phone, and…pause worthy of a stand-up veteran…and his two front teeth (that one caused even Santa to laugh out loud). This is just one of many recent humorous murmurings that spurt weirdly from that sweet and seemingly too young face.

Never a dull moment. Most importantly we hit the road very soon to do some much needed catching up with many of you. We cannot wait. Talk soon and love form us to you.

b

The life cycle of man

Life is about constant failure. Living is constantly dusting yourself off, ignoring the obvious - you'll fail again - and smashing headlong into the world. Further to this profundity is the other side of this rather obvious coin, to not try again is not truly possible. Everyday I fail as a father - raise my voice when a gentle hand was required, let slip an aberration in behavior that earlier had been identified as a trigger for consequence. As a husband, distracted and un-hearing when connection was so honestly sought after, I most wretchedly and repeatedly fail. Nearing 40 I am beginning to see a pattern. My abilities as a human - son, brother, friend, father and husband - seem to peak and inevitably ebb in correlation with my fitness, my connection to a bicycle.

Now this could be accepted as sad, as a sign of a significant lack of character. Or, and hopefully, there is something about a bicycle, at least for me, that is beyond the obvious, wheels and gears, a means of childhood transportation. For me there is something about the shear simplicity of wheels spinning, pedal circle driven, tracing a path over our circular world. The renewal so evident in nature so poetically embodied in a series of simple turnings, wheels, gears, pedals. What started for me as a way to induce adrenal gland squeezing - that adrenaline fed dichotomous connection and detachment from a daily life - with age and even possibly wisdom, has become more.

I no longer get suited up like some modern day gladiator and then launch man and bicycle down near vertical slopes or off manmade ramps. Whether rolling through a gorgeous stand of hardwoods on gentle trails on my faithful old mountain bike or more recently enjoying the speed and and distance possible on the road, the cycling serves a much higher purpose. For me, there seems to be a connection found, a clarity gained, that makes living of life simpler. Weird. And then I stop.

Ain't life grand. Find an elixir that has only benefits and then misplace it on a regular basis. That's what I do with cycling. A cold, a busy time, the change of seasons, these all seem to so easily derail my cycling. To the detriment of all that I am responsible for and to. But we all fail. And some get back up. I get up because of the support of my beautiful life partner and our wonderful kids. Jennifer just says simply, go. She may have been home single-parenting for 10 hours and exhausted; half way into preparing a supper one-handed, Lily on her hip, at the same time directing JT's homework and redirecting Matt's boundless energy, but she simply says, go. No malice, no tone tinged with anger or resentment, just a simple loving push to get out the door and pedal.

Given that kind of support I find myself making better choices. I never feel trapped by my family. The freedom to drop all and ride creates the atmosphere where I chose to sneak in rides to reduce time away from Jen and the kids. I'm cycle commuting this year. Jen authorized the buying of bike, bag and clothes and I started out like gang busters. Recently I failed...again...and have spent the last two to three weeks driving my car to work. Oh, with good reason, a bout of some malingering virus, early winter, but not good enough. Today I commuted to and from work. A whole stolen hour of cycling. -10 C with snow down, sure, but it was perfect. I'm back baby. The wheel turns and I'm back on top. With support like this you just have to try again. I can see our coat of arms forming in my head, a griffin riding a bicycle with some dead language framing - "We who get up."

Van-verted

It seems like an eternity ago, but I did at one time consider myself a car guy; loved the wheeled beasts in facts. I’m sure in my high school locker, beside pictures of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Stevens and other ‘80’s big-haired guitar gods, nestled nicely between destroyed and collaged Honda motorcycle brochures, there were pictures of American muscle cars, Porsche 911’s and Lotus Esprit Turbos. The weird thing is I don’t even remember when it all just stopped mattering to me. But it did. If I had an aversion to the idea of the mini-van it was based more on the stereotypical owner, than any man-ly creed evidenced in a bellowed, “I would die before owning that underpowered, ill-handling snot-rag box on wheels.” Any residual car-guy-ed-ness and the corresponding van-dular distaste were washed aside by the arrival of child number three.

Bringing Lily home from hospital it became painfully clear that no extraordinary ability with packing and spatial relationships was going to allow me to overcome this interesting challenge. It was the tightest of tight fits with all children under 7 and still in booster, child and infant seats. Not only annoying, a kind of almost fun challenge, it turned out to cause physical injury. The grandparents were incapable of the contortions required and both Jennifer and I suffered injuries in the first few weeks with three car seats. We had settled into life in microscopic hell when I got a call from Mom and Dad. Would we take a used van given a very complicated chain of events orchestrated by Dad and a friend that involved somewhere between 6 and 6 separate steps? A quick tour around the interwebby and many phone calls later and I was off on a bus to become the unwilling beneficiary of a new to me Plymouth Voyager.

Jennifer immediately fell in love with our free van. My love was stunted by the cancer barely visible to the casual observer but there forming under the sliding door and around the wheel wells, the engine miss bespeaking a cylinder going down, and a maddening and terrifying clunk in the front end. It was obvious that our family was ready for the space. Like a couple returning from a high school reunion, we exhaled and settled, breathing a sigh of expansive relief. (You see the couple was wearing clothes that were too tight, pining for a life past, for youth lost; and returning home they popped open buttons, unzipped strained zippers and relaxed, realizing that the comfort of their present adult life was good enough and that there could be no going back).

We just fit in that decrepit van. And this family has always been a sucker for the quirky, for the under dog, for the less then perfect or beautiful. The van fit us as well. We’ve had just such a great year in that van. Innumerable trips to the beach, traveling to visit family, the poor old thing managed pretty well, at it’s pinnacle serving as the support vehicle for team Nicholson during Jennifer’s magical first marathon in October. We took a wreck and lovingly wrecked it; the floor usually obscured, a-wash in toys, sloughed off hoodies and toddler thrown food.

Alas, the van appears to be dying. Little things like that cylinder finally dying and leaking coming from every gasket are complicated by seemingly less important but in fact critical things like being trapped by a frustratingly finicky sliding door. Sometimes it freezes open and others it locks you in. Quirky has passed and damned annoying is front and center. It becomes harder as a father, husband and provider to, in good conscience, strap everyone in to a vehicle so very close to combusting it’s final hydrocarbons. It is time to consider replacing the free van with something far less free but far more reliable and appealing. The day will come in the not so distant future when we will be forced to hoodwink a financial institution and purchase a new van. And we’ll be all hyped on the smell, the cool features and the absence of worry, excepting the ubiquitous fear of financial ruin. That new van induced joy will be diminished by a subtler but real and powerful sense of loss for that crappy Plymouth. Isn’t it wonderful how even the most humble of objects can be a part of such rich lives and infuse our memories with such colour and character? Maybe I’ll make a planter out of it in the backyard.

Value Village Pilgrimage

We needed sour creme and whole wheat shells for fahitas and there seemed to be a wee break in the weather, so we went for it. We loaded the van, our lovely old van that everyone now has to enter through the front passenger door, with two reluctant older brothers and a very compliant little sister and off we went. But not just for a quick trip to the grocery store for a few supper items, oh no, we also had in mind a pilgrimage to the land of recycled clothes, the temple of rich folk sloughed accouterment.

I've never been a clothes horse, never overly concerned with my outward appearance, especially from a clothing point of view. Now admittedly I spent a good deal of my formative years in 501 jeans, with OP t-shirts and Chuck Taylor shoes. But, as an adult I worked in an uniform and out of that I wore what was practical or comfortable. My nice clothes were bought for me by my wife or admittedly and embarrassingly by my mother. Poor Jennifer, poor, poor Jennifer; forced into a life of relationship crime, sneaking clothing items into our house and relying on shopping excursions with her Mom or my Mom for the big pieces of her wardrobe. I don't remember when we discovered used clothing stores exactly, but a life changing experience it was.

Well at least for me. Maybe it was turning 39, or I just decided to dress a little less casually at work; heck, maybe it was that I became convinced that if I ever wore another pair of used khakis to work with a golf shirt I'd shoot myself, or more likely go to the nearest bell tower and get comfortable. Or maybe I didn't fall as far from the genetic fashion tree as I had originally thought. I come from good shopping stock. My maternal grandmother, my Mom and evidenced in perfect refinement in my sister, we are a family that can shop. Both of my grandfathers were snazzy dressers, both coal miners, that while not at work and out of the house were rarely seen without a coat and a hat. And I recently realized that if you go regularly enough to Value Village, and remain really picky you can pick-up just beautiful suits, blazers, shoes, ties and shirts. So now, most days of the week I go to work in a suit. And to further this new haberdashery-ic pursuit we make regular trips to VV, even more regular then usual.

I itch the second I walk into the store and a small part of me sees it as evidence that I've failed as a provider, but you can't fight facts. Jennifer and I have increased our wardrobes in fun and dressy ways over the last month at about a tenth of the retail price. It's good for the pocket book, it's good for the environment and it's fun. All hail Value Village and bless the fools that dump the entire contents of their closets on a regular basis. To that guy with a 34 inch waist and 44R jacket, and a love for 3 button suits - hey isn't that Italian thing your wearing so last season - time to donate.

Talk soon.

B