He is versatility, strength of both character and muscle. The physical world seems to extend naturally from him as the gravitational centre, as though he owns it and it owns him. Implements to help him move through that world are extensions of his limbs, unfailing partners. He is at home with them, and anyone with him is calmed by the grace and respect of his handling.

At first, some kinds of people think he doesn’t have much to say. Most of the time I think he prefers it that way.

I’ve never met anyone so constant. To those he loves, and to himself in that he is always Justin in the purest, most concentrated, most uncomplicated form. He is a soul immediately recognizable as being full of truth and authenticity.

He kicks it on the dance floor. Rare these days, but unforgettable.

The beard, lord bless it, the beard. Rare these days, but unforgettable.

His relishes his eccentricity, enjoys surprising those who take him to be shy.

He is understated, without ego. He has nothing to prove. He is selfless and thoughtful and without vanity. He is focused and quietly unafraid in everything he does (except at his wife’s corporate christmas parties).

He doesn’t play games, and is bewildered by those who do.

He indulges my hopelessly cornball passion for halloween (and secretly likes it too).

He doesn’t need people to treat him a certain way.

He exasperates me with his upstandingness, makes me feel hopelessly flawed. I am a bigger person thanks to proximity and osmosis.

He is my son’s father, and a completely equal and inspiring parent. As overwhelming as it can be, I never want this new road to distract me from us, make me forget what I treasure about him, just him.

He was born in the wrong era, but I’m glad it happened to be mine.

He sees me arrive on the playground, shrieks with joy and runs to me, full of hugs and tall tales. When we get home he spins, incapable of decompressing from such excitement. Wrung out, wound up, hilariously wild.

We’ve mastered the daycare gig. That was my contention, my relief. Until 5:00 PM today.

He monkey-clings to me when we arrive, wails when I leave, literally torn away. But apparently, I’m hardly out the door before he collects himself, turns to the party and says Hey, dudes! Pass the raisins!

He’s made it his own. He charms the caregivers with his stories and smiles. Busy, busy, busy, all is well, detailed in every day’s report: Played with trucks. Hopped. Ate two helpings mac & cheese. Had big poop. Sang at circle time. Made paper kite. Had great nap. (!!) All is as it should be.

But then, today, added to the news: Bit two children.

Typing that makes me not want to post this. There’s a shame in it, no matter what they tell you—it’s age appropriate. He doesn’t have words yet to express frustration. He’s so sweet, we just need to watch him more closely. It happens to everyone at some point.

Pleaseohpleaseohpleaseletitnothappenagain.

A fruitless wish. But not making it is resignation.

The winter driving. The ice storms. The power outages. The selling of the firstborn to pay the oil bill. I’ll relish it all compared to the advancing autumn’s doom:

The Damn Cat will want to come indoors soon.

We’ve had upwards of six months of fuzz-free paradise. She finds shade under the deck, skulks through our chin-deep, shaggy lawn and kills the dumbest and slowest moles in the entire province. A grand deal by any standard. But it’s getting cold at night. Before long, we’re going to be de-turding the box and de-fluffing the.. frigging everything. She’s going to whine and scratch and get underfoot and climb in to the cupboards and make crashes and bangs at night (in which case, she will be punted like a football into Hurricane Juan itself).

We used to let her sleep on our bed. Under the sheets. Stranger still: we used to like it, bed-borne litter clingons and all.

Justin:  What smells?
Kate:  Don't worry, it's just the cat's ass.
Justin:  Oh. Okay. <tousles cat's ass affectionately>

We were one of those annoying cat-baby couples. I remember once being concerned about the state of her butt-dreadlocks. The time she caught on fire from walking too close to a candle, I suffered from guilt-induced ulcers for a solid two weeks (this Damn Cat is so furry, she hardly noticed).

Those were very different days. Her demotion is marked by the food we give her now: Wal-Mart brand <shudder>. It’s called ‘Special Kitty’, and consists of 55% rusted paperclips, 10% broken elastic bands, 25% recycled newspaper globules, 5% cornmeal and 5% brown food dye, ground up and spat out in indistinguishable crunchits. A far cry from the organic, free range chicken-cranberry-garlic heart-shaped gourmet she used to get.

It’s not her fault. With all the baby hububb, she could have been much more of a handful than she was. She simply disappeared, accepted the benign neglect we suddenly gave her. It’s not that we don’t want to deal with her anymore. We just don’t want to deal with a cat anymore.

The other day on outdoors play-watch, Justin and I stood over the Damn Cat who lolled belly-up on the gravel, soaking up the sun. She’s almost the same colour as the pavement, he said, hopefully.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. We’re despicable. We laugh at it because most of the time, we don’t mean it. Can you?

I first mentioned freewheeling’s Cathy, our incredibly fit, glowing, yogic friend, in this post. Cathy recently sent me an email, part of which follows with her blessing:

I think if you polled my friends, they would not tell you that motherhood came naturally to me. It cut me up into little pieces, chewed and chewed, swallowed me up, and spit me out again. I became reformed, reborn, reconstructed in motherhood. I did not know how my kids would turn out: but really, I had no choice but to do the things I did because I was a follower of my heart. If you don't follow your heart in this work, you are lost. You know this is true.

Here is something I feel I proved to myself about motherhood that I will share with you. If you really want your kids to live a happy, fulfilled, wonderful life, you have to live this way yourself. They have to grow up around people who are doing it, and then they will pick up on how it's done. You have no doubt recognized that saying 'don't do this' and 'don't do that' is useless. Babies, even from the womb, have been watching and listening, developing their own cues for management.

If you don't believe a wonderful life is possible, then your kids won't believe it either, unless they are lucky to learn it from others. Kids are so damn intuitive! You cannot fool them one bit! So to be a good parent, you have to live all your dreams, have social consciousness, love, laugh…

What Cathy wrote makes me bubble and stew in a most wonderful way.

First—the presence of self-doubt indicates a soul that aspires. If I was completely, blindly confident—buried all insecurity, never mulled on anything—I’d be mediocre by default, frozen in perfect paralysis for the rest of my life. If we pay attention, doubt always tells us what to do. Even if it’s not what the books and the bystanders say. That’s heart-following.

And second—from the moment I learned I was pregnant, the only instinctual truth I knew was that everything of me would be transmitted across the uterine wall. Food and drink. Sensation and emotion. If I indulged melodrama or tension or bitterness or frustration, so would he. I favour nurture over nature: the peace and respect we give him will help him to grow into a peaceful and respectful man. It was a truth that guided my pregnancy more profoundly than whole grains, kegels and folic acid combined.

Pregnancy past, our home is now the womb. This sets the unspoken rules and rituals of our house—sometimes effortless to follow, sometimes not. But we try. We want a son full of awareness and possibility and gratitude and zest. So we must be ourselves.

That’s the great thing about inspiration. It’s contagious.

It’s settled. We’re countrified. We go blackberry hunting, sand castle building. A snake named Simon lives in our basement. It’s almost time to stoke up the woodstove again. I’m hungry for the scent of it.

And perfection? Justin in his boots. Something about it reminds me of his constant usefulness, his industrious ethic. He is of such substance, quiet and smiling and steady.

It's an irresistable sight. The country man’s stiletto heel.

If men wore heels.

Which some do.

You get the idea.