Olympic Love

Dear Winter Olympics,

Though I am not a fan of sport as a general rule. I don't really pick favourites and you'll rarely catch me watching "the game". But it doesn't matter. For you, dear Olympics, instill a kind of feverish sports fan in me. It helps to know that you play host to the world's best and most prepared athletes. And it helps that you enter my home during the bleakest part of winter for me. I wait for you. Every four years with excitement in my heart, a kind of anxiousness similar to what I felt as a child waiting for Christmas. So thank you.

For a little more than two whole weeks I am caught in your rapture. I watch sports such as curling, hockey, figure skating, skeleton, bob-sledding, speed-skating, bialthelon, varieties of downhill skiing and cross country skiing. Sports that I confess I have little interest for, during the many months in between. I might cheer for Canada but mostly I cheer for the athletes. Our television becomes the central focus of our lives and we leave it on even in the daytime. It thrills me and chills me to watch the best of the best compete with only tenths and hundredths of seconds separating them. I shiver when I watch the medal ceremonies, the flags being raised, the bouquets of flowers. I love everything about the Olympics.

So thank you for bringing the best of sport to our home for a few days every four years. And thanks to your counterpart: the Summer Olympics for giving us something to tide us over in between.

Cheers!
Shawna

PS I wrote this post before the 2010 Winter Olympic Closing Ceremonies. In fact, I wrote it before the gold medal hockey game. The game which Canada won, but to be fair the USA should share proudly in, since a great number of those althletes hone their skills thanks to American support. The closing ceremonies were a bit disappointing to me, focusing far too much on our Canadian ability to poke fun at ourselves and filled with cliche after cliche. But mostly I was just sad that the games were ending.

love-hate-love relationship

Love letters number three and four for the numerically minded:



Dear Couch,

Your soft cushiony centre has been so good to me these last few years. Too good. Your central point in my life has allowed my family to sit with me, climb on me, be close to me. Your perfect locale has allowed me to watch many amazing movies, and to develop a taste for television like I've never had before. Your warm chocolate colour reminds me of my favourite food. Your height is just low enough that I sink comfortably into you and have no desire to attempt a return to the standing position. For these reasons I love you and um, also I hate you. You have kept me in your reaches far too often in these last years. Introduced me to far too many interesting television shows. Kept me cuddled close to my husband and children when we should have been dancing, playing, walking, biking and hiking instead. You have made me lazy. That's right, I blame you because the alternative is blaming myself. And it's much easier to blame you, my inanimate friend, than it is to fess up to my own shortcomings.

Things are about to change in our lives. Your dreaded enemy is rejoining our lives: the gym. So this is your notice, that I will be spending less time with you in the near future (except for the daily family snuggles) and more time in the gym. Thanks for being part of my life but you'll have to miss me just a little more often.

Sincerely,
Shawna



Dear Gym,

Hello. I've missed you. I never thought I would say that. When I stopped visiting it was because my family, my babies, my life were more important than you. And because I hated you. With a passion. I wanted to be outdoors and you were keeping me tethered. But since our parting I have come to realize that I hate the cold more than I hate you. Much, much more.  So I will continue to spend time in the great outdoors walking and biking and maybe even running but to the great outdoors I am a fairweather friend. You have been always faithful. There when it's too hot and there when it's too cold. Always the perfect temperature.

And the reason I love you the most: showers without interruption. So I look forward to our renewed relationship and hope that you will understand when I step outside instead of into you. Knowing that I will be back, again and again because it's cold in this god-forsaken land.

Cheers,
Shawna

More Love

In keeping with Momalom's invitation to write love letters I had promised myself ten. Ten because it's a nice number, ten because it's more than nine and less than eleven. It may have been a lofty plan but I haven't given up on it. Not at all. I just let the idea sit and settle for some time while I took my family to Disneyland.

This is number two if one was keeping track of such things as numbers and promises. A letter to my husband. Be prepared to swoon, my love.

Dear Steven,

So many years have passed since we decided to make our lives together. So many years since we decided that our individual and separate lives while important would run side by side and intertwine along the way. We were so young but not by any means naive. We knew what it would take to live inside of each other's lives and we learned quickly how to create it. Trust. I love you the most because I trust you the most. I love you the most because you have opened your whole life to me and made yourself available to me. I love you the most because it is you who taught me that it is good to be me, even when I am visiting inside your life.

I love you the most because I could never imagine this beautiful family that we have created together. And even though I couldn't imagine it, it is more that I could have ever wanted.

I love you the most because we have grown together. We have learned about life together. We have struggled together. We have made big decisions together and millions of small ones that make us who we are.

I love you because you will dance with me in the streets, even now with our aging bodies and our active children. I love you because you sing out loud when a song moves you. I love you because you laugh out loud and laugh out loud some more even when I didn't think it was funny.

I love you for finding a way to make sure that our children are always with someone who loves them. I love you for working so hard to give us this life that we live. I love you for loving our children the most when I am otherwise occupied.

But most of all I love you for understanding me in those moments when it seems that no one else does. I believe that the best relationships in the world are born of this understanding, that we all crave and search for understanding and with you I have found it.

I love you. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Shawna

February is for LOVE

My new(ish) friends over at Momalom are hosting a love letter posting challenge. If I can figure out how to use the button linky thing they've got going on I will add it. I've decided that I am going to take it a bit further and challenge myself to write ten love letters this month. I know I have them in me, some of them have be brewing for months now and some have just started to percolate. So here is the first:



Dear Sarah and Jen,



For two woman that I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting in real life you have made a real impact in my own real life. For this I thank you. Your wisdom, honesty, and wit make me smile on an almost daily basis. For me you are real, in my heart real. You have picked me up when I was feeling down and validated me in the moments when I was unsure of myself.



You have challenged me to think larger and to share larger. And you have shared your own stories in such sweet humble ways so that I have felt connected to you. I rarely read your words without thinking: WOW, me too. I have had those feelings, those fears, those laugh out loud moments too in this journey of motherhood. I think we all long for a little understanding and with the two of you I have certainly found that. Sisters are dear, they have relationships that transcend personalities and personal choices. The two of you have a special relationship which I admire, especially in the way that you are so open to the rest of us. So accessible, and so gentle.



There isn't anyone reading my blog these days because I had to move it, for such crazy ridiculousness. But I want to include links for each of you. Jen writes. Sarah writes. And if anyone happens upon this love note, I hope they will click, and find you and your beautiful hearts.


Thank you both for being a part of my (almost) daily life. I look for to the day that I can put my arms around you, and know more than your hearts.



With much love,

Shawna



PS Sarah, did you get your phone to stop correcting your typing to read "duck" yet?