FOR RENT: CHARMING BRICK HOUSE IN THE HEART OF PETERBOROUGH
My beautiful little house is looking for someone to love it while I’m away in Morocco for the next two years. Might you be the one?
Tag: Natasha Regehr (Page 9 of 9)
Who would have thought that moving to Morocco would arouse a sort of grief?
But it has – a strong and foolish grief that has me paralyzed with inactivity. I call it house grief. And I don’t mean that I’m feeling inconvenienced or annoyed (as in, “This broken zipper is causing me grief”); no, I’m embarrassed to say I am grieving over a carefully constructed pile of bricks.
No, really, I am.
I have been tormenting my friends and acquaintances for days now with cryptic comments about exciting new developments in my mundane little life, and the day has finally come when I can shout it from the rooftops: I’m moving!
I just signed a two-year teaching contract with an international school in the legendary city of Casablanca. I’ll be teaching music to students from Kindergarten to Grade 5: my dream job, my dream climate, my dream of dreams in every way.
Dear Friends and Family,
Greetings from tepid Kingsville, where the Regehrs and Bretzlaffs have gathered to celebrate a green and drizzly Christmas. The task of chronicling our activities will be a simple one this year, since 2014 was not all that different from 2013 for most of us. Charmaine and I continue in our teaching positions at our respective schools, Dave continues his church work, Mary continues her grandmothering and volunteer work, and Nathan and Jocelyn continue with their teenage lives of school, hockey, and socializing. Really, there are just a few minor variations to note.
On the teaching front, I now teach Grade 1/2 part-time at Jack Callaghan Public School, and Charmaine teaches Grade 1 at South Shore Christian School. We both agree that, despite their relative helplessness, the wee ones are a hoot to teach. I have left my morning music position at Rhema Christian School and expanded my piano teaching schedule at home. I have a special affinity for teaching theory, and am blessed this year with a number of super-keen students who share my unnatural fascination with the circle of fifths. What a delightful way to spend five days a week.
Dave continues to minister at South Point Community Church, a contemporary Mennonite Brethren congregation in Leamington. In an age of religious conflict and church splits, the people at South Point have taken a step toward unity, and are celebrating a merger with the congregation of Calvary Baptist Church. The two groups had been sharing a building for some time, and now enjoy a combined service under Dave’s leadership.
Mary continues to volunteer at the MCC thrift shop in Leamington when she is not busy attending her grandchildren’s hockey, soccer, baseball or basketball games. Nathan is 16 and will soon be driving himself to the arena, where he spends time on the ice as both a goalie and a referee. I’m not sure how Jocelyn (13) feels about having her big brother ref her games, but she continues to thrive in sports, music and academics.
I continue my involvement with my choir, church, and synchronized swimming team; Charmaine keeps busy with her fitness classes, books, and puzzles; Dave belongs to a group of avid motorcyclists, who built him a bike in exchange for snacks; most of us enjoy a rousing game of Monopoly or soccer; and some of us have even been on a date or two this year.
As always, we are thankful for your warm and welcome presence in our lives, and think of you fondly throughout the year. All the best in 2015!
Love,
Natasha, Mary, Dave, Charmaine, Nathan and Jocelyn
You may have noticed a funny little game going around on Facebook, whereby people nominate each other to share a few things for which they are thankful. The challenge is to “post three things you’re grateful for each day for seven days.”
I say, PSHAW. That’s no challenge at all. I’ve done that, week after week, year after year, since 2007, without repeating anything.*
It gets a little tricky to do that for seven years running, so I’ll modify the challenge for all of you novices out there: Can you muster up 365 consecutive days of gratitude, and post your list next Thanksgiving?
I did! So here, without further ado, is my (minimally censored) 2014 Gratitude List:
The sun came out and warmed me up
I got an extra hour outside
I made the soup yesterday
Gloria is okay
I made it to the end of this emotionally unsavoury day
And tomorrow will be different
My back yard at night, with stars and wisps of clouds. It gives me cause for deep breaths and solace.
Children who stay home to vomit… Continue reading
A revealing exposé of my secret grad school romance with a hoop:
I am a yoga experimentalist. Or perhaps merely the subject of a greater mega-yoga conspiracy, designed explicitly to stretch my tendons and my temperament in various hypothetically-possible ways. It’s okay. You needn’t worry. Yoga and I have a history.
It began at a weekend synchronized swimming meet in the late eighties, when, as a virgin yoga-attemptee, I worried that I might be doing something dangerously evil by lying on my back and thinking about my breathing when I should have been in church. My spirit emerged intact, however, until my next wobbly attempt, a decade and a half later, in the much safer environs of my local gym. I’ve tried power yoga, yoga fit, hatha yoga, and, in a more audacious experiment, Tai Chi (which I realize is not yoga at all, but I include to convince you of the scope of my yoga-quest). I like to think I have become rather good at it. I can twist myself in all sorts of unprecedented directions. I am beginning to think that Yoga and I are becoming too familiar with each other.
It was with a sort of giddy delight, therefore, that I discovered Hoop Yoga. “What can it be?” I wondered. “What does one do?” I rubbed my palms together in greedy anticipation. There’s nothing I like better than an adventure.
I am a morning writer. I like to migrate directly from my bed to my couch, pyjama-clad, to dump my morning thoughts into my mac.
There’s something fluid about a morning mind. It’s just groggy enough to be unconcerned about the inner naysayer. It hasn’t entirely separated the events of the night from the events of the day. Dreams are still a little buoyant. Words are still a little wiggly, dancing coyly as they wait to be reined in. It’s a game, this morning prose, an exercise in letting go and urging on.
It’s a shame, then, that most mornings I stumble hazily through my morning routine of eating, washing, and dressing for a day of mundane writerlessness. I have this outside life, you see, that requires me to deposit myself at specific locations at predetermined times, despite my unwillingness to materialize in public before noon. Jobs and gym classes are interferences, staving away the freshness of the day and grounding me in socially acceptable self-censorship. By evening, the words have often wiggled away.
Unless…