It doesn't unfurl like silk, release a scent, flutter in breeze. A stem draws moisture, a channel of nourishment as well as fortitude. A stem feeds something beautiful. A stem is a backbone.

Nurturing isn't just about hope or prayer, as welcome as those gestures are. It's about resources and food and water and shelter. Literal, tangible, everyday caring—the very same we do as parents. Picking up and putting away. Wiping and lifting and stirring supper with one hand while tussling a scruffy, three-foot head with the other. This is the nurturing that makes souls safe, keeps bellies from rumbling. It is plain and often unseen and yet it keeps whole families straight up and down, growing taller.

For a while, until we need not be, we can be Haiti's stem.

+++

Bright and early this morning, the virtual doors opened at To Haiti with Love, an online fundraising auction and gathering of creative spirits.

René came up with the idea six days ago. She emailed me and I responded by cannonballing into it, landing on top of her head. The generous people at Squarespace agreed to play host and within hours, emails were fast and furious and our community of artistic friends responded without hesitation.

With all proceeds going to the St. Joseph's family of homes for children in Port au Prince, Haiti, we're selling a Mondo Beyondo pass from the lovely Jen Lemen and Andrea Scher, a parade of beautiful (and many familiar, in these parts) photographic prints, original artwork, clothing, a coveted Shutter Sisters flash bulb necklace, my mother's unspeakably wonderful bird mobile, homemade maple marshmallows, and a ski getaway in a historic cabin in Telluride, Colorado. The Dread Crew's own Sydney Smith has even contributed an original, one-of-a-kind illustration that you're going to have to pry out of my sobbing, wanty hands. That's just to name just a few of the treasures up for bidding, and more items will be added every day—so visit often throughout the week. We've got such fabulous items waiting in the wings I can hardly keep my grinning mouth shut.

As photographers and authors and painters and toymakers and quilters, we offer what we know. Useful things, beautiful things. All tangible. Perhaps it's not the same as being able to pick up, dust off, offer embraces and warmth as proximity would compel us. Perhaps it's much, much better. It's the means and the resources from which self-nurturing springs.

Go there now, and browse, and bid. Tweet about it. Share it on Facebook. I'm being bossy because it's for good. The Canadian federal government will match our funds raised if we can get it into Haiti's hands by February 12. Shout it, cheer it, shop it. Are you an artist? Have something to offer? Let us know.

St. Joseph's nurtures Haiti's future innovators and artists and leaders. It creates family where there was none. Let's nurture them in that good work.

This post was borrowed from today's Shutter Sisters, because I've been up past 3 AM for three nights now, and I have cut-and-paste tendonitis and blogging cramps and look like a wild boar. So forgive the self-piracy. Off I go to collapse, and to dream of Rungi Chungi.

No more. On Monday, February 1, René of Fruity Fantastica and I are hosting an online auction of fantastic photography, art, papergoods, books, and crafts to benefit the St. Joseph's Family, a home for boys in Haiti with both Canadian and American roots.

St. Joseph's is a truly incredible group of people. What you see here has been hit hard, with many of their resources and buildings destroyed.

The auction will last one week only, a fundraising blitz to meet the deadline of the Canadian federal government for charitable fund-matching. Watch this space and twitter and facebook and all other means of yelling and cheering and stamping, and forgive me all of the above, but it's something I can do. It's something you can do. Pass it on, and make an offer, and get gorgeous loot in the mail for your effort. For Haiti.

Just a tease of what's to be listed on Monday, February 1 to benefit Haiti, starting top left: Everything is going to be alright photographic print by Dutch (a.k.a. James Griffioen) of Sweet Juniper, but you'll have to armwrestle me for it; a gorgeous print by painter Erin Darcy of Starving Artist Ink; a coveted pass for the sold-out Mondo Beyondo, the fabulous do-anything online workshop with my Shutter Sisters Jen Lemen and Andrea Scher; a flat of custom-made organic soaps from the Dominion Soap Company (shown: café au lait); and the Fortunes book of poetry and vintage-style photography by Brooklyn writer and photographer Jen Lee. Also to be included: one of the very last remaining copies of The Dread Crew, author-signed, as well as a few very limited-edition Dread Crew t-shirts, and big, juicy sweet | salty photo prints along with much, much more.

(This just in: my wonderful mother, founding member of the Nova Scotia handquilting mafia, is making another one of her swoon-worthy, multi-level bird mobiles. Ours hangs near our front door and spins in the breeze. The art coming in for this - really, I can't wait to show you.)

The To Haiti With Love auction site will be launched in the next day or two, with new items added (and accepted) daily. The incredible people at Squarespace (my elegant, robust, easy-to-use blogging platform) have agreed to host us, and so we're working feverishly to bring it all together in time to make Prime Minister Harper pony up as much as we (and you) do.

Heck. I'm even thinking of offering a one-night getaway in a one-room log cabin on Nova Scotia's beautiful south shore, complete with brunch of blackberry french toast and automatic morning wake-up call by way of double-toddler tackling. Any takers?

Six months ago our dentist said that Evan had a "tiny" cavity, and instructed us to come back in six months or so to get it fixed. Today, it took a mirror on a stick and all of fourteen seconds for her to step back from him, pull me aside and tell me that she suspects he is a werewolf. A werewolf who drinks too much Pepsi.

Then she told me what she saw in his mouth, other than half-chewed accountants.

Five large cavities so far gone that one tooth is half lost. A referral for two root canals, two stainless steel crowns and three fillings. For a boy who just turned five. Heavy sedation at best. Hospital and general anesthesia at worst. For a boy who JUST TURNED FIVE.

Two root canals. He's five. I can't even joke about it.

+++

The lady across the road dropped a can of Mountain Dew into his bag at Halloween and he pulled it back out and gave it to her and said, "Thank you nice lady, but I don't drink beer."

"It's not beer!" she replied.

"Oh. Thank you nice lady, but I don't drink wine."

Yeah I know. Move along. The point is, Evan doesn't know what pop is.

We are unfun (see exhibit A: video game meltdown). We don't buy ice cream or sweets or Sugar Crisp cereal (dammit, Justin) because if you don't have them in the house, they don't cause tantrums. It's easier that way. The kids get dilute juice, if at all, except on special occasions like Christmas or birthdays or Parliamentary prorogue parties.

Alright. So I guess I can joke about it. Mostly because I don't want you to think we're prissy and due for comeuppance. We're responsible, but not uptight. We're cautious, but not unfair. So I show you evidence of Evan's one and only slushie to prove... what, exactly? That we're neither better nor worse than any other parent? Maybe. That I can take my preschooler's two root canals in stride? That would be a lie. I can't relay the news to anyone without crying and asking to be tied up to the nearest whipping post.

Most of the time, we're beyond unfun. We're demented. We pour All-Bran onto yogurt and call it Stick Soup and bring it over to the table singing and ooohing and aahhing like it's gold-leafed croquembouche. They think it's dessert. We slap five and cackle behind our hands.

We brush no less diligently than anyone else with the exception of that family in Blue Rocks that has three sumo wrestlers living in their upstairs bathroom. We do marginally less well than they do at enforcing oral hygiene. Fair enough.

My story, the one I'm still trying to sell to myself? As a rural kid, he's never had a drop of fluoride. We're on a well and always have been. Combine that with naturally soft or cavity-prone teeth and you end up with a kid with a stainless-steel grill who can bite through electrical cable if required. In case that pesky British spy shows up trying to seduce an almost-37 year-old mother of highly dubious performance, we have an in-house villain.

From here we go to a specialist, and urgently. Then the possibility of the hospital to fix it, and then what? I know. Carrot sticks and water until he goes away to university. Clothes made of styrofoam popcorn. Payouts to witch doctors and the mafia. Jesus Christ himself nabbed in one of those Holy Ghost traps that you bait with marshmallow fluff, then tethered to my kid with velcro like an inhuman shield.

+++

This is just the beginning, isn't it?

Doesn't matter if you're babylost or not. Come over and watch Lhasa laugh, and watch her sing, and hear her words. See those people in the audience who brim over with love for her. Like me, you might wish you'd been there to know her. Then listen to Lhasa share a story from her philosopher father—a sensible, sublime bit of thinking that feels like a home.

Because we all wonder. Don't you?

TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES WAAAGGAAHH TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES TITTIES !!!

That’s not to say that boys and men are objectifying neanderthals. It’s simply how they’re wired. It’s physiological. It’s got to be some kind of delicious, confusing hell. It’s the male hormonal equivalent of the teenaged female internal monologue which is, of course, in falsetto, and more along the lines of:

WAAAGGAAHH I WANT I DON’T WANT I WANT I HATE MYSELF I LOVE MYSELF OH GOD OH NO WHAT WILL THEY THINK OH NOOOO (BITES KNUCKLE) OH MY JESUS CRAP I CAN’T STAND THE AGONY AARRGGH WHO THE HELL AM I ANYWAY I DUNNO WHO THE HELL SHOULD I BE ANYWAY AARGGGH I CAN’T TAKE IT OOHHH MY SKIN CRAWLS ALL OVER WAAAGGH (COVERS FACE WITH HANDS) OH YUMMY OH THIS SUUUCKS !!!

Needless to say, having had both very small titties and very uncomfortable skin, I don’t get sentimental about high school.

(Not that I wanted very big titties combined with very uncomfortable skin. In high school, when you're both stubborn and small-titted, the meatheads call you a lesbian and leave you alone. Which is handy.)

+++

George Washington said, "We are soldiers so that our sons can be farmers, and so that their sons can be poets." Maybe that’s what it is. We are poets now, on the backs of our founding mothers. And so we write poems about being soldiers.

Well. I don’t, but only because explicit statements about what it is to be a woman or struggle in being a woman or gnash teeth over being a woman or rejoice in being a woman don’t resonate for me.

My poetry is not of soldiery and battle, but of earnest indifference. I write about opportunists whose genders do not factor in how they’re measured. The individual women among them are indispensible, as are the individual men. Females that resonate for me go ahead and create what they want in life. Not because they’re trying to make a statement about a woman’s right to create.

Missy doesn’t know she’s a girl. She couldn’t care less. On her quietest day, Meena’s louder than you at your loudest. Gretchen wields a bale of stinging devil’s club, but never has to use it. Ewsula’s just fucking tougher than you are. But don’t take it personally. She’s a Viking from the wilds of Labrador.

+++

Female empowerment has most often manifested itself to me in one of two flavours.

1. The Wounded Activists. We are unlikely, if ever, to feel ownership over our bodies. We are victims. We are used and abused. We are second-class citizens. We are unheard and angry. Because we are women, we must fight.
2. The Romantic Activists. We are goddesses. We bleed! We bear fruit! We are divine and special and ancient. We cradle our own sex. We are blessed voodoo and pheromones. Because we are women, we must dance naked together in moonlight.

Both of these stories—because that’s what they are, after all, stories—are cotton candy. They are compelling, but they dissolve in my real life. Or they give me hot pink cavities. I keep thinking I ought to adopt one or the other. But, respectfully, I don’t want to.

Short of bad fortune (i.e. groper in crowded pub, giant Italian hockey player who gets off on coercion) and inherited socio-economic factors (i.e. repeated cycles of poverty or abuse, self- or otherwise), we are more poets now than we ever have been.

We can be, pretty much, whatever we want. We have autonomy. We choose our partners and our family life. Sometimes unwisely, but we choose all the same. The same goes for the way we get off and love and express ourselves and learn and seek justice and make money. Some of us are pathological. Some of us are serene and kind. Some of us employ crutches. But we are self-directed. We are no more subject to unhealthy or unfair influences as the next kid, male or female.

We are poets.

+++

In university—a womens’ college specializing in womens’ studies, and also, by chance, offering one of the only Bachelor of Public Relations degrees in Canada—a woman came into our sociology class to speak about her struggles with infertility and how it strained her concept of herself as a woman. The speaker was raw, thoughtful, generous. After she left, my classmates tore her to shreds.

Seething Feminist Mass:  That woman was pathetic.

Kate:  I thought she was nice. I liked her shoes.

Seething Feminist Mass:  That woman has no self-worth whatsoever. How pathetic. God. We never want to be that way.

Kate:  That’s pretty mean.

Seething Feminist Mass:  Did you see her talking about how badly she wants to be (snorts in unison) a mother?!?!

Kate:  Is that a bad thing?

Seething Feminist Mass:  You’ve got to be kidding.

Kate:  I’m looking forward to meeting someone and getting married someday. And when I do my dress is gonna be, you know, not too BIG. You’ve got to wear the dress. You can’t let the dress wear you. But it’s got to be extraordinary in some way, you know? It’s not like you get married every day. Maybe a little bit of pouf. Just a little.

Seething Feminist Mass:  (snarls in unison)

Kate:  I’ve always taken for granted that having kids would be a chapter in my life. I’ll have a career, I hope, and a husband, I hope, and babies, I hope. I think it’ll be, you know. Neat. I’d be pretty crushed if I tried to have babies and couldn’t. I’d figure something else out for my life, but I’d be sad for a while. Like that woman. I’d be sad.

Seething Feminist Mass:  You’re brainwashed.

Kate:  (stares blankly, breathing with mouth open)

Seething Feminist Mass:  You’ve been socially conditioned to believe it’s your duty to breed. You’re so brainwashed you’re not even capable of having an informed discussion about the burden of your own womanhood. You are in shackles and you don’t even know it.

Kate:  Okay. So. I’m gonna take my bagel and go and sit over there.

That’s what it was for four years, with the exception of my public relations courses. 

The Marginalization of Women In Religion WS101
The Marginalization of Women In Film WS103
The Marginalization of Women In Birth WS104
The Marginalization of Women In Literature WS112
The Marginalization of Women In Art WS108
How to Gloss Over The Ethical Stumbles Of The Corporate Glitterati PR306

You know. That sort of thing.

I absorbed it all knowing it as a shared history, though not my history. At least, not the way I’ve ever told it, even with my own episodic misfortune. I nodded at our past. I acknowledged its cumulative effect. It just never felt like my present.

Then I probably took the bus home and hung out with my friend Daphne so we could make fun of chicks who watched Friends. While we watched Friends.

+++

My gender has never been anything but quietly irrelevant. I’ve never felt strong. But I’ve never felt not-strong. Except as it relates to telemark skiing, which has nothing to do with femaleness and everything to do with this here couch.

Women do not hold a monopoly on hurt. Nor vulnerability. Nor specialness. Nor disadvantage. Nor ancient sageness. Our bodies, when cooperative, can bleed and grow babies. So what? Men, when cooperative, plant those babies with performance art.

I am not a woman first. I’m not even a woman second. ‘Woman’ might even be fourth after person, writer, and Maritimer. Chances are better it’s fifth after Perpetually Dehydrated. Or sixth after Crap At Math.

+++

I am a feminist oaf. I wander in and shrug and wave and wander off and knee Snoop Dogg in the nuts—by accident—on my way out.

The only thing that matters is who we are. Not what we are.

I’m comfortable moving around in various shades of fog. Are you?

I imagine every person within a fifty-foot radius weeping for the future.

These visions translate into the current-day as for every fifteen minutes you spend sprawled on the couch playing Pokemon’s Revenge, you’ll spend three hours splitting wood, reciting French conjunctions, and hosing out the compost bin.

Not that my kids don't sprawl. I'm a little ashamed to admit they both know that the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. But television's different. Television is big. Heavy. Not pocket-friendly. Only operable by grownups. Almost always accompanied by lego construction and crayola art. Television is pot. Pot makes you relax. Video games are heroin. Heroin makes you think you're a rock star. Then it makes you a ward of the federal government.

Game-addicted kids bleed time, plugged in at the expense of formative input. Screw fresh air and conversation. Those things get in the way of… what? You tell me. I can't imagine how anyone articulates the perceived value of video games other than it's awesome, all I do is charge up the PSP and the kid won't eat or speak for a week.

Actually. That does sound kind of awesome.

+++

Wait. That's not the right one.

Christmas morning. He saw this and became an instant addict. I was busy lolling with my pants unbuttoned, because that's what Canadians do on Boxing Day, and my conviction followed suit. By the time I snapped out of it, ready to take it into the woods for ritualistic drawing and quartering, it was too late.

I hid it in the car. He broke in with a crowbar and disappeared with it for three days. The police picked him up slouched against a construction site on Agricola Street at level 27 of WALL-E's Axiom Adventure. So I set a timer for fifteen minutes or twenty or five. After the beep he would convulse and wail and post-extrication, there was a mushroom cloud above our house and a toxic stench. Tantrum fallout.

For Evan, there is no such thing as justified moderation of what he thinks is fun. Not this kind of fun. So we hid it again. We are officially on pause, not knowing how to proceed. Ban it outright? Hope he forgets? Let him have it and hope the novelty wears off? A video game built to ensnare five-year-olds—and marketed with the tagline 'MAKES KIDS REAL SMART-LIKE'—is buried in my underwear drawer. But it smells a five-year-old. And it wants to return to its master.

+++

DISCLOSURE: circa 1986. It's how I learned to type. Doesn't matter that this is the most recent video game I've ever played. I've seen enough to know it's NOT THE SAME THING. If today's gaming is heroin, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was ketchup.

+++

My kids can have blue hair and moderately discreet tattoos as long as they're not I LUV KAYLEE 4 EVR or I AM A TOTAL KNOB in ancient Mandarin script. They're welcome to explore who they are in any flavour or colour they prefer as long as they're healthy and kind. They're in the living room right now moshing to Stiff Upper Lip. But if they turn out to be chronic gamers I will send them on a Yukon gulag and I will send the bill to fucking Disney.

+++

DISCLOSURE: With the exception of anything that simulates blood-splatter, no ban applies to the arcade in the basement of Gepetto's restaurant at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine. Because they earn it with sore muscles and rosy cheeks. Because it's totally skunky and vintage and gloomy. And because you can't fit the ride-on Miami Motosquad Racers into the palm of your hand and take it with you to play while you're sitting on the frigging toilet.

+++

Just before he falls asleep, Evan whispers up a perfect balance of sweetness and defiance and OH MY GOD evil has taken root and all is lost and would it help if we became Mormons? Or hippies? Or Newfoundlanders? We will move to the wilds of Labrador. That is what we will do. In the wilds of Labrador there is no such thing as blipping electric green. Only brown.

"I might not have my Leapster, mommy, because you took it away, my Leapster. But you know what about my Leapster, mommy? I still have my Leapster IN MY HEART."

(My own, my only, MY PRESHUS...)

+++

If you're bristling at this because you let your kid(s) play video games, let me be completely clear. Yes. I do believe that you are equipping the next generation's parking lot attendants with everything they need to be productive and interesting people. KIDDING.

I waver, both hysterical and justified. Video games are probably not as bad as I think they are. Video games are probably not as okay as some think they are.

Does everybody do it? Will his friends in grade five talk of nothing else? Will we make him feel excluded? Are principles doomed by osmosis? Am I too fucking prissy? Does this amount to me presuming to dictate his interests? Is it ever okay or fruitful to do that, or at least to try and nudge? Am I wrong about ketchup and heroin?

May all living beings everywhere, on all planes of existence, known and unknown, be happy, be peaceful, be free from suffering.

Borrowed from a metta (loving kindness) Buddhist meditation. Hopeful. Sensible. Simple. It doesn't matter how you identify, or what you believe. It's all semantics for this one wish, this desperate want and longing.

Liam feels distant. That window has closed, the one through which everything sparkled and vibrated with knowing after his death. Life trudges. My time to post comes and goes and I've got very little other than a vague sense of being grateful that people who need this space continue to find it, that the embrace is so vivid.

I wish you quietness, and the kind of rest that has you wake up feeling calm. And warm feet and glowing embers, and shortbread cookies or latkes and rosy cheeks or whatever sustains you. And tears if you need them, wet and cleansing.

These words render me mute by being all that matters.

And so I pass them on, and nod to you.

+++

What's your wish?

This little post is borrowed from Glow in the Woods, a collaborative community which continues to embrace bereaved parents with sensible and entirely cherub-free contemplations on walking again after loss. I add it here because those words might belong to you, too.

At this time of year we notice those who don't join the table for, yet again, an obscene heap of mashed potatoes among sparkling lights and stockings and a chugging little woodstove. We miss them, don't we? We look out at a blizzard's blanket and no matter how long it's been, grief is still that boomerang that clubs us with disbelief. Grace is noting the ache and sending out that wish, even if it feels unheard.

It's not unheard. I don't know how, on what plane, or in what capacity. I just know it. We are all accompanied. Mystery. Unexplained strangeness. Phosphorescents. We live among beings that glow electric, swirling and glittering in swell. How can there not be magic? How can we not be heard?

It was just Ben and I, a date, and for two hours he jumped and splashed and squealed and had an all around most-amazing-ever time. To the point where every time we leave the house, he picks up his indispensible, commercially repugnant, beloved Lightning McQueen Johnny Suit With Built-In Muscle-Shaped Floatation Device and starts whimpering We go swimming? Swimming. Swimming? Swimming? Mama? Swimming? Swimming? Swimming. Swimming? Mama? Mama? Mama. Mama? Swimming. Swimming. Swimming? Swimming? Swimming. We go. Swimming? Swimming? Swimming? (EXCERPT)

As is natural in all Canadian cities the place where you go to recline underneath fake palm trees is the same place with a giant billboard that says HOCKEY TOWN. Not SWIM TOWN or FAKE PLASTIC TREES TOWN or FOAM NOODLE TOWN or 'DON'T WORRY THE CHLORINE KILLS THE TODDLER PEE' TOWN. Oh no. What counts is the zamboni, friends, and the rest is the dressing of windows.

Trailing a chemical steam, hair still wet, my youngest baby and I toddled next door, beckoned by the smack of pucks and the shriek of whistles. We opened the door and marvel! HOCKEY PLAYERS. We chose a bench, alone but for the team and its coach, and we sat entranced, heads on swivels. They were choreographed voodoo, skates sweeping the ice, sudden outbursts of sprints and laps and slapshots. Every time someone would score we'd (quietly) yell SCORE! and every time someone would get deflected we'd (quietly) yell GOOD SAVE! and every time someone would miss we'd (quietly) yell obscenities. I explained, and he listened. And we sat. And sat. And sat.

Finally, pitch black outside at 5:00, we toddled back along the arena deck and before going back through the doors to the parking lot, he turned around and (not quietly) yelled BYE HOCKEY PLAYAS.

+++

The earth wobbles on its axis. Butterflies pause. Newborn puppies startle. Change is afoot in the 8 PM department.

ULTIMATE LULLABY CHAMPIONSHIPS, 3rd PLACE: FOR PERVERTS ONLY*

Enter the underdog of recent fame, slipping from its first-place spot.

*worth watching all the way through.

ULTIMATE LULLABY CHAMPIONSHIPS, 2nd PLACE: UNMOCKABLE PERFECTION

Enter the throat-choking stuff of NICU legend, the standby.

ULTIMATE LULLABY CHAMPIONSHIPS, 1st PLACE: BENCH-CLEARING BRAWL

Enter the new champion of bedtime's peace, the classic that appeals in the depraved, not remotely deep or dark but actually kind of close-to-the-surface part of every Canadian's soul.

In a great flash this morning it occurred to me to search for the proper lyrics and before I knew it Ye Olde YouTube delivered us 100% authentic, verifiable Stompin' Tom. Enjoy. Add it to your own 8 PM repertoire. Learn each word with reverence. Deliver with gusto. Think fondly of Canadian thuggery. Share this archival, cross-cultural footage with your own impressionable loved ones. Borrow this accompaniment for the under-5 set: THEY'RE JUST HUGGING and THEY'RE JUST REALLY, REALLY HAPPY and THAT ONE GUY IS HELPING THE OTHER GUY WHO HAS AN ITCH ON HIS NOSE. Employ at will.

$23 for a measly triangle, half of which is rind, and I'm standing on Spring Garden Road wearing a sandwich board that says WILL SMOOCH FOR CHEESE. The same scene plays out repeatedly: I pause in front of the dairy case marked RICH PEOPLE ONLY, PLEASE and sigh eleven times in a row, and then I push my cart over to anything on sale for $1.09. Dented lentils. Week-old iceberg lettuce. Antisocial tuna.

Every Christmas Justin and have that moment. We look at each other and shrug and I say bright green socks from the irregular bin and he says an InStyle magazine from 1998 that I'll swipe from the dentist. And lo! Our gift-swapping expectations are set. So that when I chuck a pair of boxers into his lap on Christmas morning, he's thrilled and touched. And likewise, he surprises me with that combo pack of multi-coloured post-it notes I've been eyeing.

Every Christmas I say the following, with gusto, regarding our children: I really mean it this year. It's going to be small and quiet and Cratchitty. We will make crumbcake. We will braid toilet paper garlands. We will give the children two ice cubes and a flat of corrugated cardboard each.

Every Christmas this gusto softens to I couldn't help it and Justin raises his eyebrows and says Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles Shaving Set With Squirtable Neon Cream Soap? and I hang my head and say I also was held at gunpoint in the dollar store in front of a display of Transformer knockoffs and last week I went to Wal-Mart on my way home and all those smiling yellow faces confounded me and I came home with five bags and I don't know how it happened but I'm deeply ashamed not only because of the Third World and corporate America's pillage of the proletariat but also because I am a snob.

How much did you spend? he says.

Only $12.99 per toy, give or take. It'll be good. There will be a mountain. They'll freak.

How many toys?

I calculate. Thirteen battery-operated pieces of shit. One imitation NERF foam rocket set that Ben will probably eat. Two cheap books that I can't stand already. Plastic pretend food that smells like arsenic and comes stamped WHO NEEDS A HEALTHY LIVER WHEN YOU HAVE FRIENDS?

He sighs, anticipating his annual February 12th circuit to the donation bin, the recycling depot, and the dump. So what you're saying is you spent $250 on cheap pieces of shit for the sheer illusion of quantity so that you'll feel like a better parent on the morning of a religious holiday we don't recognize in any other way other than to call it CANDY CANE TIME?

...

...

I stare at Mount Plastmore, enshrouded in crinkled white with red letters that spell VALU.

Right.

+++

We saw our quiet little boy, especially amidst the holiday kerfuffle,
actually forget how to play. He would sit, staring about him
at the massive plastic extravagance,
and not even know where to begin.

Where DOES one begin in the midst of a small toy army that plays FOR you?

Well, from my experience from years of working with children—
they either smash it,
or look at it boredly, and watch it do its thing.
The dilemma of the modern child in a nutshell.

~ Tout est des roses

I'd like to say it was a Waldorfian Awakening that inspired this year's righteous grinchness. It wasn't.

More so than any other Christmas, the dawn of das spielzimmer made it impossible to contemplate shoving a whole new generation of never-played-with, shrieking, singing, flashing junk into our brand new Grand Central Station Of Fun.

So. Despite being utterly starved of Italian bliss, our Christmas mantra became this: more is less.

There will be no Wal-Mart this year. No aimless wandering through toy departments. No impulse buys. Zero. It's one trip to a good, local toy store for ONE major present for each child, plus stocking stuffers and a book. That's it. All chosen from the kind of high-quality, ethical toys that would usually have me muttering What the f*ck is this, Beverly Hills? and send me beelining for the happy yellow faces.

(The happy yellow faces, and all their ilk, you see, are a trick. You see lower prices, you disregard the film of chemicals and crap and commercialism that clings to everything in there. You want to give your kids a mountain. You binge. Then you purge.)

Not this year. It was NOT EASY.

No mothereffin way. $73 for A TRUCK? Unbefuckinglievable. I circled the shop nine times wringing my hands before buying it, telling the cashier to hurry up before a Scotiabank clerk arrived to put me in chains.

I know. I know. But this is Ben's IT. There is nothing else. He won't notice the lack of mountain. He'll be so thrilled. And you know what? It feels good. Really good.

Until now, lego has gone under the cedar daybed to spawn on its own. This is first time we've ever bought any lego kit for more than $12.99. I stood there staring at the jaunty little price tag on the shelf for a solid three minutes. $69.99. Blink. $69.99. Blink. Still $69.99. Seventy bucks for compromise lego, the actual 'Rock Monster Cave Crusher' rig he wanted sending my wallet into epileptic fits at almost $100 a box.

I know. I know. But this is Evan's IT. There is nothing else. He won't notice the lack of mountain. He'll be so thrilled. And you know what? It feels good. Really good.

Plus pretty much the coolest, very special book ever. I was so captivated, it had to be had. Canadian, my Woozles-veteran mother later informed me. And that's pretty much it. Almost. A copy of Wallace & Gromit's Grand Day Out, found in a bargain bin for $6.99. And a colouring book based on the stories of Oliver Jeffers, all of which we have and love, because I've heard he's, like, totally hot.

Plus some of that candy that explodes in your mouth. That's it.

Plus British marshmallow sticks. Chocolate coins. That's it.

Plus two durable, kid-sized snow shovels, because snow shovelling puts hair on your chest. That's it.

Swear.

+++

More per toy, but less overall. By a long shot. This house is officially declared a Crap Mountain-Free Zone.

More is less.

Except in the case of British marshmallows.

We did not find Jesus.

We did not buy a George Forman Grill. Well. We did buy a slow-cooker, which I'm told will result in a similar awakening/enlivening/delicious effortless buoyancy, but it's still in the box. Every time I walk past it, it gurbles under muffled breath and cardboard ME WANT BEANS and I shudder a little, daunted.

I'll tell you what we did.

We went to a post-Halloween party at a German household, which naturally involved sausages and fireworks, and marshmallows roasted in an outdoor fire pit, which I burnt to a carcinogenic crisp, which I think is less about traditional festspiel and more about typical Inglis buffoonenschtien. So I go inside to scrape the coagulated burnt off my hands and I follow childrens' voices upstairs and I see what the Germans have been keeping from me, from you, indeed from the entire world, those sly schutzengels.

In Germany, apparently, they create spaces called SPIELZIMMER. All the toys go into these spaces. And they stay there. And the children go into these spaces. And they stay there, playing, being cool, with names like Gustav and Felix. And the adults sit wearing black turtlenecks with legs crossed in contemporary recliners, sipping Weihenstephaner and conversing animatedly about architecture to the accompaniment of Wagner and synth-pop. IN ANOTHER ROOM.

Did you know this? Mmhmm. Yeah. Me neither. Say it with me (air-quotes): PLAYROOM.

Until our Deutsch awakening, our kids pretty much played wherever they wanted. Overlooking the toilet. At the teetering lip of vats of boiling acid. On top of my head. And so, thus, there were disembodied lego people and talking *@$&#%^!! Iggle Piggle dolls and dinkies underfoot everywhere. Great heaps of toys that would go untouched for months until the day Ben would upend the whole basket with a crash, lie down in the middle of it, and make like a snow angel in order to ensure the maximum blast radius of Chinese plastic. The kids had no space that was theirs. We had no space that was ours.

Then we discovered the SECRET OF DEUTSCHLAND.

The next day, we set to work dismantling beds and heaving dressers and vaccuming up surprised squirrel colonies and dustbunnies the size of medicine balls and three fossilized banana peels. We commandeered the guest room, which, until this point, was a guest room in which the guest was Ben. Seriously. This soulless, sparsely decorated void otherwise known as The Room Nobody Else Wants featured one small bed shoved into the corner, atop which Ben was unceremoniously plunked.

We made this guest room into a Little Boy Dormitory: two matching hand-me-down beds, a bookshelf. Still minimalist, still ripe for unceremonious plunking. But still. Theirs for sleeping, boys and brothers and now midnight conspirators.

Then we made Evan's old room into their spielzimmer.

AND MOVED ALL THE TOYS INTO IT. ALL OF THEM.

After the boys' heads stopped spinning at the sight of it, they went into it and we haven't seen them since.

THE WORLD'S WORST TRIPTYCH, ACTUALLY A FOURTYCH, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS A PHOTOGRAPHIC DOG'S BREAKFAST. BUT STILL. BEHOLD DAS SPIELZIMMER.

When we bought this house, it was 982 square feet. The day my belly exploded and we landed in the NICU with twins in dire straits, an excavator dug a hole for an addition. (Indeed, nothing amplifies the fun of prematurity and loss quite like an ongoing renovation that you can't afford. I recommend both experiences highly, and even more so, simultaneously. Only stampeding elephants and uncontrolled wildfires could have made those two months more enjoyable.)

What with our infestation of self-spawning hundred dollar bills, we splurged and made the addition ridiculously small, bringing the grand total of our living space to 1367 square feet or so, the calculation of which includes the four pallets that hold our woodpile, the grass space taken up by the canoe, two adirondack chairs and a hammock.

Which is to say we live in a leetle, leetle house. With leetle, leetle rooms. And a kitchen that is actually a hallway, but I'll save that foaming-at-the-mouth rant for another day.

Which is to say that having a playroom does not require you to have a Bavarian villa. As long as you don't mind stacking your children like lego.

Which is to say that the reign of the Chinese plastic is over, friends. Victory is ours.

When we gave the toys a home—and organized them so brilliantly that the children now LOVE TO CLEAN UP—we culled the herd. Trashed and donated anything that would burst into spontaneous renditions of "WE DID IT! WE DID IT! WE DID IT! YAY!" at 3 AM for no apparent reason. And, like that filthy hooligan Panic Room Ryan, we noted that they failed to note the absence of a whole damn lot. Which gets a newly liberated parent to thinking, as we stare down the relentless march of Christmas...

Tune in next time for Part Two of 'Scrooge Is The New Green', in which I will save the planet; ensure the continued health of our economy; ease the pain, itching and embarrassment of your financial pustules; and espouse the true meaning of Christmas. All in one fell swoop.

SPIELZIMMER DECOR IN THE WORDS OF THE ARTIST, EVAN: Look. Aliens and robots. The robots are just being robots. The aliens are at their water pumping station. They are getting water. One of them is mad. Look. There is grass.