Becoming Fool of Love: snow, mobile

Another winter solstice has come around, and a new year of the Gregorian calendar has begun. It's a bissextile year this one: we'll get an extra day.

That's one extra day for me to slowly send my roots into new ground.

Sainte-Sabine: a small church, a lake, and countless pine trees.

It has been a different type of in-between. In one respect, it is a familiar place; it's not the first time I fly back to Québec to spend the holidays with my family and friends. Though I used to fly back to San Francisco afterwards, and leave the snow behind.
This time, I'm not flying anywhere. I'm settling in for a winter in Montréal. I bought my first pair of winter boots in over fifteen years.

This is a new challenge. Because this time I am not merely passing by; and I have no excuse of being a mere ''resident alien''. Yet I'm not merely ''coming back'' either. I am re-inserting the matrix, it's true; but I have changed so much over the past ten years that I'm not sure how it's all going to look.

I'm even surprising myself: I can't wait to start exploring my new ''chez moi''. For now I'll be spending a few more days at my parents' place, in this suburb of Québec city. Spending time with them is good; it's comfortable (in one way) and nourishing. The place is awesome, the sound system is of good quality (I had been craving surround sound while traveling around!), and my mother's cuisine is extraordinary. But I am waiting for my driving records from the California DMV to come through in order to get my driver's license here, which means that I am currently depending on my parents for transportation...
How radically opposite from the independent space I was in a few weeks ago!

I haven't been able to write as much. Perhaps it's the holidays, perhaps it's the lack of stimuli, perhaps I am blocked by the idea that I am now much more exposed, since I am not running away anymore. These people have known me forever; somehow it is much harder to reveal my inner most thoughts and feelings when I know that I have to interact daily with the people who read me.
I find myself in [at least one chamber of] the heart of the challenge: integrating my creativity and my power, my passion, my individuality and my vulnerability into this new life, within the matrix.

Meanwhile, more amazing blessings have kept gracing my existence. I can barely believe it. And so... my heart keeps overflowing with gratefulness...

My little friend Claire - with her daddy and mommy - came to Québec city!
How freakin' wonderful is that?
We had five days together: December 26th to the last day of 2011.
I had made a list of interesting sites for them to visit: the Vieux-Québec, but we all rapidly accepted that it would be difficult to delve into the cultural riches of this city, since Claire had no other interests than the white snow covering any given street. She wanted to step in it, touch it, taste it, pack it, throw it. She wanted to play in it forever... What a sight to behold!

Snow angel

We all went to Sainte-Sabine, which is an hour and a half south of Lévis. My aunt and her partner have a cabin there, so my parents stayed with them and Claire's family and I stayed in a vacation house nearby. The schedule: sliding outside, drinking Unibroue bottles (or hot coco), going for snowmobile rides in the woods, sliding some more, translating between French and English, eating lots of chocolate, sitting around a fire, sliding some more, watching the stars, reading stories in French...

And on new years' eve, they joined our annual party with another group of French-speaking family friends. How can I describe the significance of this? These people have seen me grow up since I was Claire's age; they are the village that made me who I am today. And there they were, welcoming my family from California with such warmth and such love! I will forever remember the sight:

Claire is exhausted. Her dad and mom have decided it is now time to go back to the hotel (their flight leaves at eight o'clock on january 1st). They are putting their winter jackets on, their boots, their hats. They are telling Claire to say goodbye to everyone. Everyone is standing at the top of the stairs, waving their hand, fighting a tear. I, am standing in between the two clans. I am standing in the staircase, my heart swollen with the love I have for Claire, my surrogate daughter who is leaving me on a jet plane. Or is it me leaving her?
A goodbye, again. A goodbye but such a... bridge! There is such warmth and such emotion in the room. I'm thinking: ''this intensity and this love, it is who I am and what I want to share. I'm hoping it reaches and enriches Claire's unconscious. I hope it can influence her journey in a positive manner.
From a more ego-centric place, I also like to think that these encounters have helped everyone -Québécois and Californians - understand where I'm coming from... that is, where I came from and where I've been. I hope it fills them all with confidence, that essentially.. it's all good.

I am so excited to see it all unfold.