New leaf
Back to school (of life)
This summer was a season of habits. New ones.
I have always read to my son before bed. But early in July we crossed a big literacy bridge when Frankie announced that he wanted to read a novel this summer — by himself. A new nightly routine evolved where I didn’t read to him. Instead we read side by side in his bed. Silently. A decade-long bedtime routine: shifted. Together we were spooked by separate ghosts, as I read The Watchmen by Louise Erdrich while he read The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier.
More habits were formed in our kitchen, or more accurately our small yard. On the Reframeables podcast my sister and I share five things we are reading or doing or thinking about with our Patreon listeners. At the start of the summer — in the midst of the late June heat wave in Toronto — one of the things I was thinking about was surviving dinner prep in my hot kitchen. There and then, to our loyal listeners, I announced publicly that I would be barbequing all summer, eschewing the need to turn on my stove.
When you say something aloud like that to an audience there’s an accountability factor. So, I felt compelled to stick to the plan for much of the summer, thumbing my nose at gendered notions of who is deemed capable of handling the grill. Even today experts have to continually problematize the ongoingness of the west’s sexist social relationship to food. Grilling, in their well-research opinions, is “not only gendered and steeped in diet culture, but it is also deeply connected to consumerism.” Since I love to push back on social constructs (and in our household my husband makes sushi and overnight oats, not meat!), I happily claimed my newest role this summer: Grill master.
My birthday wish this year is now a smash burger press.
Beyond silent reading and grilling, my hope for the Fall is to keep forming new and healthy habits…that’s the plan anyway. Because the season to come is going to be a busy one. There are book reviews to publish, chapters to be edited, and courses to be taught.
And all the busier wearing my Ceres Productions hat: we have a short film to premiere,
a documentary to screen and conferences to attend from Halifax to Mumbai.
With so much on the go this September, I find myself inspired by others who do hard things. Maybe they can be sources of habit-forming inspiration for you too:
Flo Meiler (90-year-old track and field start who started training at 60) — I’ve got no excuses.
Ana Victoria Espino De Santiago (25-year-old is the first Latin American lawyer with Down Syndrome) — She says, “I want to pave the way so that all people who live with a disability can occupy decision-making spaces.”
Aurelie Rivard (28-year-old Canadian Paralympic swimmer who has won gold and silver medals in past competitions, and just won a bronze medal this week in Paris) — when I get frustrated with my health issues athletes like Rivard inspire.
In her poem “September Tomatoes” Kristina Borowicz writes of cleaning up her garden at the end of summer. She says,
It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready to let go of summer so easily. To destroy what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months. Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.
I like that metaphor. Cultivate new (healthy) habits and then harvest them or risk dying on the vine. Adage activated — fall forward. Did you dabble in any new habits this summer? Or have some goals that need an accountability partner?
We can turn some new leaves over together.