When he was small, my youngest son had a habit of filling his pockets with treasures he encountered in his daily adventures. I didn't always understand the value he saw in his chosen objects -- really, how many rocks and sticks could one boy keep? In his eyes, though, each one was beautiful and important. Life is just like that on a larger scale, isn't it? We gather up the precious bits of our experiences and save them all to learn from and enjoy later. Perhaps you'll find a little something here that you'd like to keep in your own pockets. Thanks for visiting.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Time for Goodbyes


Our last move brought us back to the same neighbourhood we lived in when we were just a young family. In the first few months of living in our current home, I'd often walk down our old street and pause for a moment at our first Waterloo house, somehow (illogically) expecting it to be exactly the same as I remembered it. It startled me at first to notice how the slender stick of a linden tree we had planted in the backyard when Noah was only a baby was suddenly towering, full and green, over the faded boards of the fence we had built years before.  Of course, this change was not really sudden; it had happened gradually while we were building our life elsewhere.

I'm sometimes caught off-guard by how much we, too, have grown and changed over these years. There are moments during the hectic, full stage of life we're in now where I look up, expecting (illogically) to still find two curious young boys playing Lego in a heap on the floor by my feet.  But the teenaged boys who smile back at me don't play Lego anymore; they're eagerly building futures for themselves, ones that are filled with fascinating ideas and bright promise now that they're almost close enough to touch. It's strange that I feel surprised by all of this growing when it has happened right before my eyes.

We know time is always passing, causing continuous subtle shifts that eventually result in significant changes from how things once were. I suppose it takes an absence of some kind to be able to really see them. I know now, after being elsewhere for awhile in my writing life, that I've grown away from this blog. I kept thinking one day I would come back to it and it would all feel the same, that I'd just pick up writing about our lives and my thoughts again when I had time. But when I stop in here now, I feel more like a nostalgic visitor, peering through windows to catch a glimpse of a place that I loved, and that we all have moved on from.

As the boys have grown older, I've felt less and less that the stories that involve them are mine to tell. I've shifted my writing energy in recent years to focus on one of my earliest loves: children's books. I'm thrilled to have recently signed my first author's contract -- Kids Can Press is publishing a non-fiction book I've written for young people. I feel it's time to say goodbye to this blog, along with the sweet stage of our life that fit within it.

I'm glad for the many joys I've found here since Pocketfuls' beginning: a personal creative outlet and a way to grow in writing and recipe development, the chance to record moments in our family's life, the opportunity to help others, the sense of community that grew from people sharing their own experiences and thoughts in comments. Thank you for coming and reading. Though I won't write in this space any longer, I plan to keep the old posts here. They're a touching (sometimes embarrassing!) reminder of who and where we once were.

I hope people who are now living in the stages we've grown out of might still come and feel at home here.

xo Lisa