Aidan Wuz Here!

If one stops paying attention, one could miss some of the magical and carefully orchestrated transformations Aidan makes to the world around us.

Last week, I finally got around to packing away the rest of the Christmas decorations. As anticipated, Aidan noticed the change the minute he came in the door from school. He stood back from the mantelpiece, sizing up a strategy, then proceeded to pluck things from here and there to assemble his shrine.

When I left him, he was repositioning the mast on the sailboat he had made for Skye as a Christmas gift.

Then I got busy with corralling kids, breaking up fights, tidying up, preparing and serving dinner, working on the computer and preparing for my practice review. When, around midnight, I finally looked up from my busyness, I was greeted by a peaceful and heart-warming scene above the fireplace.

Aidan had arranged a photo of himself with Jazz, perched atop a terra cotta flower pot he has painted for her. A pine cone adds a bit of style and the candle brings aesthetics to the collection. To the left is the sweet pink ceramic urn which contains the ashes of our beloved pet. It gets even richer when he describes it, as for him, everything has meaning. The candle represents the flame. Aidan wants to grow a flower in Jazz' flower pot, then set it alight when it is done flowering. He plans to find a special final resting place for Jazz and Garf (our ginger tabby who passed away in 2010) in our garden in the spring. He seems to have an intuitive honouring of ceremony and an attuned sense of what would be appropriate.

And Aidan has insisted on including my childhood pet cat, Furina, in our family of cats. He gave Furina special mention in the shrine. At her feet lays the cat I formed out of modelling clay when we visited the Creativity Museum in San Francisco together last October. Aidan knows Furina was special to me. He loves to hear stories of the crazy things she got up to, when I was growing up. And he especially loves the story of how I convinced my dad to let me keep her when I was only 4 years old.

Beside the photo of Furina, is a picture frame from Yellowstone National Park. Aidan removed the printed paper from the frame and neatly placed it in front. Beside the frame is a little ornament of different types of paddling boats - something Aidan got from Deep Cove Daze last summer. He lined up everything, just so.