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Andrew Pearson
Andrew Pearson

Andrew Pearson

Living in: Toronto, Canada Read more🇨🇦Toronto
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  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Joy

    October 25, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    There's a weightiness to fatherhood that I may have underestimated in the past. I felt it today right down into the bottoms of my feet; as if slabs of concrete were strapped to the soles of my shoes. I was walking out of Oliver's school under this weight that had landed on me with a thud. Meanwhile, my son was clucking and hopping his way to the truck. I was trailing behind, lugging his backpack under one arm. A sleeve from his coat was slung through the backpack straps. It dragged on the ground like the tail of an old dog.

    If someone were looking down on us in judgement, maybe perched up in the branches of a front yard tree, they'd see this carefree child bouncing down the sidewalk and me; a slouching old man dragging his weary bones, one foot in front of the other, staring absently beyond himself, too weary to wonder where his own childhood had gone.

    What a poor soul! remarks the voice from up in the trees as we pass by. How do you do it? Not the life you imagined is it? What a shame! Your body a miraculous collection of molecules, of swirling stardust spun out of nothingness, now lugubriously plodding home at the end of day.

    But, you're wrong, I say into the barren sky. That's enough.

    I am made of the same stuff as the Sun. I'm as ancient as the Big Bang. I don't have to parade around for you or anyone else.

    When we got home Oliver asked for a bowl of water. He went outside with it and I mixed up a bowl of pancake mix. While I cooked up pancakes, my anxious eye on the clock so we wouldn't be late for hockey practice at 5:00, Oliver washed my truck with a nylon brush.

    Behind the tired facade, under the great weight is the joy. A sparkling truck and a little boy bursting through the front door to share with me what he'd done. His little brother grabbed my hand and led me out of the kitchen, outside to admire what his big brother had started. He grabbed my hand!

    I want to share that feeling with the voice from the trees but when I turn around to say, See! This is where it's at! The voice is gone.

    But the weight is still there. The father alone with his weight.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Kim chi

    October 21, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    If you've never had kimchi, you need to check it out. Amazingly it is simultaneously sweet, salty, sour in a vinegary way as well as spicy. I went to Seoul House for lunch and to read a book while Ollie was at a birthday party down the street. As I slurped my kimchi jigae from a stone bowl, steam wafting upwards through my nostrils, past my ears I relished memories of my time in Busan.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Rule for dealing with devil

    October 21, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    If you ever close a deal with the devil, and he wants to take something from you in return - don't let him take your mirror. Not your mirror, which is your reflection, which is your double, which is your secret sharer. - Martin AmisRead more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Love

    October 21, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    My eyes opened in the dark. This peculiar darkness is softened by alternating hues of pink and blue and green cast by a machine that resembles a seashell sitting on the top ledge of Oliver's desk. The pulsing circumambience is comforting to Ollie. It disguises the darkness, lets him keep himself company. It's the weekend and I will sometimes have a sleep over with him. Unlike his mom, he can sleep through me reading or watching a show late into the night.

    Ollie wants to get up.
    It's the weekend, I tell him. No rush.
    I like to get up early, he says. He rolls over my legs and tip toes downstairs to find the iPad. I can hear Toby in our bed next door. He wants Jessica to go downstairs. She is saying no. He stomps downstairs and grabs the iPad Aite gave him. He marches back upstairs past Ollie's room and returns to his rightful place next to his mom.

    Jessica walks in and sits on the end of the bed. She wants coffee. I tell her that I'll make it. I'm just trying to remember something first.
    I want to punch you in the nards, she says.
    The imminent danger makes it more difficult to remember what I'm trying to remember.

    7:30 Saturday. Coffee is now on. Nards are intact. I open the book I just started. It's called Time's Arrow. The morning stretches out in front of us. We're not going anywhere. Time keeps ticking but we don't notice it for a few blissful hours. Ollie is balled up on the couch watching Netflix. Jessica and Toby are lying parallel to each other in bed eating dry Cheerios. I fall slightly deeper into the book. I don't quite reach total immersion but it's good enough.

    I'm interested in the love of togetherness through time. The love that grows from a seed casually, experimentally dropped into the earth by some unseen hand. In time it crawls all over itself to get at the sun and the rain. Like a clematis vine, climbing tangled up some lattice work and tumbling about blooming flowers every spring. Each year it bunches up in strength and doubles down on it's influence across the fence. It is its own monument, a tower of resilience, a testament of patience and persistence.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    A moment leads to a letter

    October 12, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C

    Dear sons,

    No matter how hard you might try to package life into something that looks all neat and organized, you will find that Living is messy and often gets in the way of your tidy aspirations. We are usually taught that the messy stuff, the immeasurable, the invisible, the stuff that doesn't fit into our daily grind, our material expectations, is less valid, not as real. Somehow our pursuit of leisure or convenience trumps all that messy stuff. But the messy stuff is life and all the rest is vapidity.

    I lived like that for many years; avoiding, dodging, evading looking at myself too closely. I wanted to power through Life and I was willing to make do riding the appearance of things. But now at 44, the appearances don't seem to matter much and I am sunk with this fragmented version of myself. In between who I am and who I want to be.

    Except when I'm with my family. That's the only time I know I'm living right. And it's hard. You keep my lid open. Which makes me a lucky dad because I have a hunch if you shut the lid on that messy side (the inside) of Life, you become, in essence, merely an appearance of that with which you were so preoccupied in portraying. An object or an image, without substance, hardly conscious of being human... Don't do that.

    You go long enough without turning the inside out and your subjectivity, your self hood, will grow wings and fly away to become an angel. Your body and brain will be all that's left along with a laundry list of imperative propositions that will have to pass the time until the end of days. This is the definition of loneliness. I want to raise you to keep your wings. Nurture them, love them and let them take you places.

    I know I haven't written you in awhile. My imagination flattened out there for a few days. I lost track of the minutes, the minutiae. During the heat wave in September, Time got scrambled and stretched into a plane of sameness. The days went quiet and uniform like sunlight on pavement. One moment no different from the next. No shape to it. No shadow. It's hard to remember what we did from one day to the next. It's easy to get caught up in a list of things to do. If you're not careful that list can keep you busy for years. It's the same for everyone.

    Writing to you is one way for me to open up my box and peek inside. It's dark in here. It's hard to see but with persistence you adjust. Toby would say there's bears in there. He's right. You don't know what you'll find.

    My thoughts recreate themselves faster than I can think them. Before I reach the end of this sentence I've become someone different. I still get discouraged by how insincere my words seem to me. I'm never who I think I am. I'll see a character on TV and I'll want to be like him. What a great dad! Or I'll hear an author on a podcast and I'll want to be more like her. I wake up every morning and promise myself that I'm going to be the father that does"all the everythings" as your mother would say. And then Life...

    But I guess what I've learned is you don't give up changing. And you might as well learn to love changing. And by the way try and rid yourself of any misconceptions you might have learned about "being" yourself. Being yourself is an overrated trap set by your ego. A vain need for a sense of identity. Instead, think "becoming" yourself.

    So my butt is cold on the hard concrete of the arena bleachers. I'm watching Ollie learning to skate backwards. My eyes well up with water. I'm toasting your beautiful mother at Thanksgiving after she prepared a traditional turkey dinner for Aunt Tina, Uncle Jay and your cousins, Nana, and Aite. My neck hurts under the covers scribbling notes at 3 in the morning. I fill the bath with bubbles. I listen to you read. I pour milk in your Cheerios. I drive you to school. I want to spend every last moment i can with you. I can hear murmuring upstairs as Ollie practices reading with his mom and Toby plays with toys.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonMy professionTraveler

    At the end of two weeks

    September 15, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    Thursday night my phone buzzed with a notification from a CTV newsfeed. ' North Korea fires unidentified missile. Breaking news.'

    I realized that the end of the world, when it comes, will be in an obtuse headline, one of thousands of obtuse headlines that barely register on the panel of my consciousness. I showed my screen to Jessica just in case this was The Headline and then I fell asleep at the same time as the kids sprawled out in the middle of our bed on top of the covers.

    The next morning I reached over to my bedside table and grabbed my phone. I swiped through to the various news stories Google has determined will interest me and I read that the missile n question had flown over Japan.

    By the time I was in my truck on the 401 I learned that South Korea had shot two missiles to the north equidistant to North Korea's launch stations. That's that, for now I guess.

    I have stopped listening to the news on the way to work. This morning I listened to a podcast, interviews with Tracy K Smith instead. I have to listen to the podcast with my phone speakers which aren't that powerful. In this heat wave, with my air conditioning out of fluid I have to roll down my windows, even on the morning commute. The rattling of an old truck engine combined with traffic noise makes it hard to hear every word but I catch the gist of it and no one is talking about nuclear weapons.

    What a bizarre experience to be one of this line up of metal containers, each one transporting a faceless body to it's daily destination. All the cars divided into lanes locked in a direction seeking a particular exit.

    I eventually made it to Victoria Park and arrived in the back parking lot of the school where our office is located. At 8:40 the lot is still mostly empty so I have my choice of spots. The red brick building is divided on the outside by panels of rectangular windows. All the blinds are closed to the morning sun which is shining from behind me. Gradually the lot fills with cars. Teachers and students arrive carrying their bags of stuff they need for the day. I grab my backpack and head inside forgetting about missiles and nuclear war until my phone tells me otherwise.

    The first couple of weeks have been mostly organizational. We moved into a new office so we rolled some freaks around and moved in a book shelf. Spreadsheets needed to be created, forms for schools to request support. My calendar went from blank to coded with events. September filled up and I've started in on October.

    I've been asked to do some training with a new colleague. She likes to question the validity of everything I show her. I get frustrated by the fact that I'm working harder than she is so by the end of today I resolved to leave her alone until she takes some initiative for her own learning. I feel like a grouchy old man but I really don't have time to argue whether the software is any good or not.

    "I didn't make it," I finally told her. "I'm not selling it but you have to use it because this is what is available to support children with special needs. Despite it's limitations which you have so acutely pointed out after 3 minutes of using it there are many benefits for children!"

    "But I don't like it," she said.

    By 3:30 I had had enough. I changed my shirt in the truck before heading back on the highway to join the line of metal boxes, another weary faceless body, waiting for the world to end. Going west at that time means the sun pours through my windshield. I want to hear Tracey K Smith better so I roll up the windows and sweat through my t shirt all the way home.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonMy professionTraveler

    Day 4 Spec Ed Dept Meeting

    September 8, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    Jeewan Chanicka gave an impassioned and deeply personal speech to the special education department. Our assistive technology team was in attendance along with all the consultants, the centrally assigned principals, the autism team, the behavior team, low incidence team, all the coordinators and of course the superintendent, Uton Robinson. Jeewan is part of the senior team of superintendents. He is in charge of anti racism, anti oppression and equity. I highlighted the main points he made below:

    There is one conversation we should all be having as the"vanguard" of support for children with special needs. The evidence is clear. Our system, of which we are all a part, is racist, oppressive and causing harm that it was not designed to cause. We cannot hide behind our good intentions. That is not good enough. We must assess our success as a profession based on our impact. Our plan for dismantling and rebuilding must start with the most marginalized students. Universal design for learning will ensure what is necessary for some and will benefit everybody. At risk students are only at risk of the system. Students don't drop out. They are pushed out by the system.

    We have an Education Act but it is not neutral, not objective. Our systems and structures drive practice but they are artifacts of particular beliefs. They serve some and not others. We need to look back upon the Charter of Rights and Freedom and the Ontario Human Rights Code to advocate for what is best for the child. Challenge the system to be better. Question why children are being disproportionately placed in special education settings based on social identities.

    There are so many groups our system works against. Those of us who benefit from the system have privilege. Privilege is nothing to feel guilty about. People with privilege still have had to work hard and overcome obstacles but it needs to be recognized that there are cultural conditions which others have to deal with everyday that those with privilege do not. Whether it is gender, race, language, being able bodied, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class some of us have an advantage based on forces outside ourselves. Those with privilege have their voices heard but, according to our director, the goal of education, as it pertains to this conversation, is to give the least represented the loudest voice.

    Don't be patient with us anymore, he said. We have been patient for generations and we have lost children. The lack of resources is not an excuse for the oppression of children.

    Toronto leads the province. People are paying attention. He finished by reminding us that the single greatest trust someone can give you is their child. People will die for their children but they hand them over to the care of our schools everyday. The parents of 250 000 children trust us everyday.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonMy professionTraveler

    First day

    September 5, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    Went to the office. Not much to report except I was tasked with creating a proposal for what I wanted my job description to be. I have one day to complete it before I have to present to the supervising principal. Lots to think about...Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    The day before school starts

    September 4, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    Two nights now I haven't been able to sleep. I watched the entire season two of Narcos instead. This morning Ollie found me on the couch downstairs and curled up beside me to watch the iPad. I crawled upstairs into his bed and closed my eyes. Gradually the house filled with noises of everyone waking up. Cluttering spoons on bowls of oatmeal, Jessica chatting with her sister, the canned voices and sound effects of whatever the kids were watching on the iPads... I still had the after taste of kimchi in my mouth from dinner at the Kyoung's last night.

    More spring clean up today. So happy about the garage now that it's organized. Makes me want to start a new project. As I've been ferrying the kids around keeping them busy while Jessica does some stuff around the house, I'm envisioning a new footprint just for school stuff. It would be nice to have a reflection journal of the experiences I encounter. It would likely improve my teaching practice as well.

    "Sometimes you just say what you don't want to say," said Ollie.

    The boys and I ran naked through the backyard during the downpour. The last hurrah of summer!    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Sept 1

    September 1, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    Oliver, Tobin and I got back-to-school haircuts today. And then lunch at Southside Burger before they dropped me off for an afternoon on my own. I wrote for awhile on the sofa in the basement before heading out to try and buy some shoes. I didn't see anything that inspired me so I went to the Junction bookstore, Pandemonium and sat with Rabelais for awhile. I couldn't find my copy at home and I thought about buying another copy. I looked at a Tom Robbins autobiography and some Will Self but I was having trouble focusing on much more than a couple of lively words here and there. David meet me there and we went to Starbucks for a business meeting. We basically only had time to create an agenda for our next meeting before I had to go to an appointment. I had a massage appointment from 5 until 6 and then I picked up some Thai desserts to bring to a pot luck with some old teacher friends.

    The next day we went to to Costco in the morning and Jessica took the kids to the park to give me time to write but I've got nothing in me. Im out of energy or something. I finally found my Rabelais buried in a chest downstairs but without focus I can't enjoy anything. Only a couple of more days until work starts. Maybe my brain needs a rest.

    I didn't even take any pictures of our reunion. Lost!    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Thornbury Too

    August 29, 2017 in Canada ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    When I came upstairs on the second morning of our stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house, Joan asked me if I had survived another night in their basement. Something about the way she asked the question discouraged me from sharing that I had had another sleepless night.

    The fact was I had stayed up late writing about learning. The virtues of learning the names of places and things; about the world outside the self. If I'm honest about it, I don't think I ever took a serious interest in anything outside myself. Whatever meaning I could derive out of my experience was based on very little beyond a material, consumerist impulse striving for convenience and appearance above all else. I was empty of any symbolic or spiritual connection to Life so to fill the void, my imagination nailed me to the center of my own Being thus creating a warped and self conscious world view.

    It was as if a circus mirror was being held before me so I couldn't look at anything without seeing my own demented reflection. The image of the self grew so large and disproportionate to reality that everything else seemed peripheral and illusory in comparison. My dreams were a thousand times more vital and vibrant. I remember mornings when I wrote pages and pages of dream narrative only to roll over and return to sleep in hopes of finding adventure and ultimately the answers to all the questions which i had cynically and ignorantly determined had no place in the waking world. I was, in many ways, a bored narcissist, a coward who was hiding from how unfit he was to see beyond himself.

    At times it scares me to think about how close I had come, circling around that singular point of solipsistic despair, but in the end, it didn't add up, no new information, so with the help of my family and Good Fortune, the mirror was shattered. It was like getting prescription glasses for the first time. Everything became in focus. I could read the world and interpret it within the limits of a healthy consciousness. The signs weren't blurry. I didn't have to make things up about myself to fill in the blanks. I was free at last to choose a balanced life, both physically and symbolically. A choice that must be made every single day.

    So when Grandpa, Ollie and I climbed the rutted utility road up Georgian Peaks, pausing to look back over the bay, pet a caterpillar or squeeze a stream of water to the back of our throats it was as if we were hiking the Elysian fields. When we reached the wooden platform at the top of the hill, inspected an oversized paw print in the mud and elected to explore a small section of the Bruce Trail that brought us into a sugar maple stand, I couldn't be more content. When we took Ollie to explore some abandoned building in the middle of the woods and a critter hiding in the rafters warned us off with an ominous hiss from the back of its throat, the mystery was so fun to contemplate, I was just happy to share it with my son and father.

    I want to know the names of all the trees, flowers and insects. I want to know the stars, the tides, the maps of the world. I want to know the history of the First Nations and all the fables and myths of all the cultures of the world. I want to know more stories, more life, more of everything. I want to know more words.

    'It begins with your family but soon it comes around to your soul' Sisters of Mercy - Cohen

    Now that I'm out of my own way!    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Thornbury

    August 27, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C

    I couldn't sleep last night. I fretted and flopped between beds and the couch in Grandpa and Grandma's basement. When I woke up in the morning my eyes felt like they had rolls of pennies jammed into my tear ducts and my head was shipwrecked in a fog. But the day was rolling on so by 10 o clock we had finished a couple of cups of coffee, some breakfast and I was looking for something to do.

    The whole gang went for a walk up the cart paths between fairways at Lora Bay. The pebbly paths were lined with Queen Anne's lace, ragweed, pink sweet peas, buttercups and long wild looking grasses. Murray and Joan discussed which families lived in which home while the boys tramped through the bushes and over boulders. We wound up down at Lora Bay park watching the Nottawasaga roll in wave after wave against the break wall. We walked back along a path behind the road speaking of pleasant, meaningless things to pass the time.

    I read an interesting thing about grass today. Grass, unlike other plants, has a stem that grows from it's base and not it's tip. The visible tip is only 10% of the total plant. That's what makes it so resilient to grazing animals and lawn mowers and even fire!

    Grass reminds me of people and how little we can tell about each other at a glance. People and grass are always growing from some invisible base that we'd never know unless we got down on our hands and knees and started scraping away at the surface with our finger nails.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    August 26th

    August 26, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    10:00 AM

    The sun is ripening in the sky as I stand alone at the top of the concrete stairs looking over the backyard. A yellow jacket buzzes back and forth one step beneath my sandals. It is frenetic, always seeking, never resting. As I step down towards the grass I seem to provoke the agitated insect into elevating his position and zipping towards me at odds with my mood. I swat it away with a backhand and bend down to admire the alyssum. Each of the little flowers have 4 petals surrounding 6 golden anthers waving from stamen no longer than a hang nail. The flowers grow together in colorful clusters; spherical atmospheres of lilac, white and violet. Not even a small band of flies loitering around the honey scented garden comets can stain their delicate beauty.

    The grapes on our vines have become purple and globular. They always sneak up on me this time of year. I never notice them until their plumpness starts snapping their stems and they fall to the ground in wrinkly heaps. I pluck one off a bunch on the vine. It is covered with a thin haze of powder or dust. I rub it with the end of my finger and hold it in the shadow cast by the garage so I can see my reflection inside its deep purple colour. It's like a miniature crystal ball in the palm of my hand. I pop it in my mouth and crush it between my teeth to savor the sweet juiciness that squirts over my tongue. This year I might blend them into juice and make popsicles.

    Further on in the shadow of the narrow corridor between the two garages, ours and the neighbours, the grass is cool. As I pass back into a patch of sun the dew glistens like diamonds on the tips of the green blades. I recognize red tomatoes on the plants behind the bench and head over there to gather ingredients for salsa that I'll make for our party later in the day.

    10:03 AM    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    August 25th

    August 25, 2017 in Canada ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    Plans with friends fell through today so Ollie and I filled our tires with air, mounted our trusty bikes and steered onto the roads, sidewalks and bike lanes of Oakwood Village. First we stopped in at Al Flaherty's Hunting and Fishing store to buy a gift certificate for Toby's daycare provider. Next, Ollie raced around the field at Rawlinson. He guesstimated he was doing somewhere between 20 and 80 km per hour, as fast as a car. We dropped in on my old friend Josh to pick up the ukelele I left there last night. Ollie got hungry so we went to de Soto's for a margarita pizza, a beer and a chocolate milk.

    The whole day was sunny and breezy. A few clouds floated lazily by but they stayed in the wings graciously giving the blue sky center stage. Under the spell of such a wistful and idyllic production, we took long circuitous routes everywhere we went, never checking my phone, nothing pressing on our minds and nowhere to be.

    Later that afternoon I ordered some maki rolls and udon noodles from Karu Sushi. Dana came over to play with the boys so Jessica and I drank white wine on the back porch. Jessica seemed really giddy for awhile then she passed out. She opened her eyes long enough to instruct me in putting away the laundry and to insist I turn off the light to go to bed. I had a couple of books going at the time so I resented having to use my tiny book light. No great consequence. Somehow writing about it provides me with sufficient revenge.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    August 24th

    August 24, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We notched some wood today,
    Sailing round the block,
    Argy matey! We be pirates!
    Hunting acorn and rock.

    We notched some wood today,
    Cooking the popcorn twice,
    Argy matey! We be pirates!
    Spooning up leftover rice.

    We notched some wood today,
    Out in the summer sun,
    "Shimmery timbers!" says Tobin,
    We pirates never be done!    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    August 23rd

    August 23, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    This morning Jessica showed me pictures of Ollie when he was one year old. I've always found looking back at photos to be a bitter sweet experience. It's painful to be confronted by the passage of time captured in a photograph. Those one year old cheeks flushed with a peculiar kind of earnest exuberance. His deep set eyes pleading with the world to take notice but then receding behind thick eye lashes as soon as anyone does. He's an illusive creature like a heron turning its back to the open water and flying into the reeds. Looking at photos on Jessica's phone, I need to choke down an irrational sadness as if that little boy in the pictures is gone forever and not in the bedroom down the hallway about to wake up and come running into our room.

    When I see myself in a photo I remember being there in a particular setting. I remember what we were doing. I'm reminded of what I looked like but I'm never who I expected. The image of this strange person, my past self, is like a wavering shadow of who I thought I was floating somewhere (I can't pin down) between the past and the present.

    In the photo there is no substance of the moment I'm looking back upon. The substance has vanished and in it's place is merely a sign, an appearance of a body but the picture rarely portrays what I was feeling, who I thought I was beyond and behind the physical environment.

    So there is always a divide when we look at a photo. It's even there when we look in the mirror, although when we're young we usually blink or glance sideways before becoming conscious of it. It's the division of time, the quotient of which is longing and wonder about who we are and what we'll become during this grand finitude we call existence.

    At six years old Oliver's blue-gray eyes are still a mixture of curiosity and apprehension betraying his disbelief in how big the world is. I only wonder why more people do not look upon our world like Ollie does. He leaps across the playground as easily and as gracefully as he does through imaginary worlds, often the two settings colliding in the midst of some ninja or pirate conspiracy. Something about him makes me think he is acutely aware of being alone in the universe and this sensitivity extends to empathy towards others and animals.

    A piece of iron feel on my ankle in our garage. I winced in pain and when Ollie found out what happened he reassured me by saying, "I banged my ankle too dad. Ankles really hurt. Are you ok?"

    He is still learning to take risks. He's reticent in the face of new challenges. Classrooms, water, dreams all cause him to pause and take stock of who he is before jumping in. He will benefit from teachers who don't shame him for making mistakes but still encourage him to test his limits.

    He feels his own powerlessness, how small he is in such a vast universe. This can be a powerful quality but it also makes him vulnerable to being drawn away from himself by others. I'm grateful to his mom for teaching him to recognize his feelings and to trust in us, his family, for unconditional love and support.

    Oliver is so much more than I conceived. And so is his little brother already insisting on making his own peanut butter sandwiches.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonHome boundTraveler

    Solar Eclipse Dufferin Grove Writing

    August 21, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    After a couple of days back I'm still looking for the next adventure. Driving home from camping I was all fired up with prospects for nurturing our freed spirits. The following day we went to a garden party in celebration of the eclipse. A lot of my colleagues were there at similar stages of life to us. Everyone was enjoying the summer off with their kids. It was familiar and comfortable.

    Later we went to Dufferin Grove Park and let the boys play in the adventure sand pit.

    The next day Jessica took Oliver to an indoor play place and gave me a day to write. It took awhile to find that cauldron where fiction churns. Transporting yourself to Imaginary worlds is even more of an irrational activity than camping or journaling. I worked on chapter 5 for quite a long time before finally deciding to start over again. Once I told myself to get to the point as quickly and as clearly as possible words started flowing. I kept freezing up when I realized how monumental a task writing Betwixtia is, how difficult it is to learn something as complex as writing while trying to balance a family, and how badly I need to finish this to prove to myself that I can do it.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonOpeongoTraveler

    The Campsite

    August 19, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    Our campsite was nestled in a grove of Eastern Hemlock. We were well protected from sun and rain by thick trunks rising up to crowns of lacy green foliage. We could stand by the fire in a drizzle and not get uncomfortably wet. When the sun turned the full force of its heat upon us, we stayed cool in the shade.

    The ground was spongy close to the water and carpeted with needles all the way back up the slope to where the forest floor was choked with the enormous three-pointed leaves of striped maple trees. Scattered about the site there were rocks and rotten logs covered with emerald green moss.

    Extending out over the water two white pines swooped up into the sky with feathery boughs growing back towards shore in frozen relief. The needles were bundles of brilliant green that hid our dome tents from anyone on the water until they were directly in front of our campsite. The giants with their delicate crowns grew out of the rocky lakeshore next to a smaller cedar which had adopted the same bow in it's trunk. These three sisters had escaped any competition for sunlight from the droopy summited hemlocks behind them by stretching over the water.

     Ollie put a life jacket on and climbed the stringy bark cedar up to just below its summit. He could perch up there high above the lake and find a few moments of solitude. He came to see himself as a chipmunk and spent a lot of his time scampering around on all fours and climbing trees.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonOpeongoTraveler

    Getting there

    August 17, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    I woke up at 7:00 before anyone else had stirred. I drank a coffee on the couch and mentally sorted through the list of things that needed to happen before we left.

    We drove the truck, windows down, radio loud, up the 400 past the green, golden fields of late summer corn. With the sun rising like a yellow balloon the day was full of promise. As we neared Barrie, the sprawling and abundant farms gave way to a brief interlude of marsh and mixed forest before a swath of industrial and retail parks dominated the landscape.

    Keith and Kieran were waiting for us at the Barrie On Route where I had bacon and eggs and Ollie had pancakes from Arby's. We checked the weather to discover thunderstorms were expected later in the evening so we didn't waste any time getting back on the road.

    Soon the 400 became 11 threading through Muskoka and the craggy walls of pre Cambrian rock. The forest steadily grew taller and the individual trees closer together. We turned on 60 with a brief pitstop at Wendy's and the grocery store to pick up supplies.

    As we drove down 60 the wind was picking up and the condensation was gathering in the sky to form billowing mountains of clouds above the trees. We passed into Algonquin park and hit construction all the way through the West corridor. Finally after 4 1/2 hours we reached the docks at the Opeongo access point. Securing our permits, canoes and firewood in haste we took to the water with winds at our backs and set off to find a campsite before the weather found us.

    Our plan was to canoe past Blueberry Island where we stayed last year and look for a site, still in the South arm, but a little further up the West shore. Kevin and Audrey were going to meet us later so we needed to give them some idea of where to meet us. Without cell service they would need to check all the campsites until they found us.

    We told Kevin we wouldn't go past Bates Island but before we knew it, we had blown past the island into Squaw Bay. The skies were impenetrably gray and deepening with every passing minute. They threatened to swallow the tops of the hills and the water got choppier, aggravated by the invading skies. We paddled back upwind pressing against time, knowing that pitching tents in a storm would make for a difficult beginning to our journey. Relief washed over us when Keith rounded the point of an unnamed bay, calling back to us that he'd found a campsite unoccupied. It was around 4:00 in the afternoon. We had arrived.    Read more

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