Someone asked me what we were planning to do and see while in Australia this time. I said we were hoping to sit on a couch and hold a baby, that was about it. I… More
Waiting for baby
A granddaughter. A baby. She holds within her all of her grandmothers, her grandfathers, her ancestors. There are things ordained within her that will guide her life, determine her decisions, show her a way. There are pieces of her that will never change and pieces of her that will change and shed and sluff off every minute. She is as she is meant to be right now. And we have not even met her yet.
Oh yes … I should say that she is not yet born. Oh no. She still lives curled and floating in her mothers belly. She is very happy to be nestled there, soft muffled sounds around her, warm and close, just the right temperature, nutrition supplied, tiny fingers closed and close under her chin. What is it that makes the mothers body know that it is time to expel the baby. Is it the baby or the body? Aviva would love some control over those secrets and that timing. She’s been doing everything in her power to prepare for labour – grinding the mill on the exercise ball, raspberry leaf tea, lotions and walks and spice. She is 4 days past the expected date and a complete mix of calm, confident, wilted anxiety. She and Lachy have gone to another appointment this morning to parse out the next steps, should some outside help be necessary to induce the little one out into the world. Paul and I are going to the Preston Market to prep for freezer meals. When in doubt or waiting… cook ridiculous amounts of food!
Hello Mirianna
There are so many things that keep us from doing what is in our heart.
A rather large event rolled into our world a couple of years ago. It shooed us all inside and away from people. It placed a small crumple of fear in our hearts that would settle in and remain part of us. It took us out of crowds and gave us pause every time we figured we should get out and see someone. You would think the volume of writing, for an aspiring writer, would have increased tenfold during this time. Isn’t that what writers live for, especially those that tend toward the avoidance technique of writing, which is the most popular of strategies for any writer? You would think that we would have written and reflected on being alone, being afraid, being tucked away from the world, a world that was louder and more in our faces than ever before; so much time, so much to dissect, so many days and moments to look out the window, make coffee and ponder on paper. I know I did many other things during this forced aloneness, but the mystery of how few words I shared on paper confounds me. You would think, as someone who wishes most to write, that writing would be something to occupy a few of the hours of space suddenly in front of me when I didn’t have to plan dinner parties or birthday gatherings or visits with other actual people. You would think. And yet, not a word, at least not in this blog space.
My friend Mirianna commented on an older blog post, actually the last one before the pandemic. Mirianna and I spent much of our third decade together when we lived in Toronto. We hadn’t spoken in many years. She wrote, “Hello my dear friend! It’s been a while. How lovely it is to reconnect with you through your writings. Your reflections on being a wife and mother, working full-time and raising young kids, reminds me of the “mini moments” we shared years ago in our small office, supporting each other in our similar roles (teacher, mother). By swapping a quick story about our kids or simply sharing a few jujubes before we raced off to our next class, I always took comfort in the genuineness of our friendship.”
These words give me hope today. I know, again, that our connections, as humans, as old friends, even as writers, are sometimes more like tendrils than straight steel rods; they weave and reach and curl and slither until they connect and attach and stay. They are genuine. It may be a pandemic that takes us away into other worries, it may be procrastination that pushes us to seek anything but that which we wish for, it may be events of life that place walls or stones in our path to connection; but usually there is another day, another way, another push to reconnect, to write again, to call, to get the damn shoes on and go for a walk.
Hello again, Mirianna.
Mini Moments
I watch as my parents move about their kitchen. My mom, who doesn’t see so well anymore, stands staring at the stove, frowning at the oven control buttons. She stands still for a moment, leans in, still frowning. Dad happens to look up at that exact moment, pushes his chair back and shuffles over to the stove. He puts his hand gently on her back, reaches up and flicks on the light above the stove and frowns with her. He knows that it won’t help much. Those oven temperature numbers are just too hard for mom to make out. But he gives her this possibility anyway. Then, in a breath, he says, “It’s set at 350, honey. Is that good?” She relaxes. Her shoulders soften.
They sit at the kitchen island for a bit, lunch in front of them, bread and some carrot sticks. Dad looks around for something he is missing and begins to scrape his stool back to get up. Mom softly pushes the peanut butter jar from her side over toward him. They give each other a wry smile, love and humour in their eyes. Dad relaxes and pulls his chair back in. These are mini moments in a lifetime of learning to be together. It is these small ways of attending to the other that have built their trust level, their love, their romance. My folks are at one end of their lives together, having been married for 60 years this past June.
When Paul and I were much younger, smoother and certain, we lived in benign chaos. The chaos of raising three young children while both working full time. We had to keep our eyes wide open for mini moments, ways to acknowledge our relationship and each other. Our lives were full and loud and child centered, with rare moments for just the two of us. The world had not yet given us cell phones or apps or instagrams. For a few years, I called him every day at the same time from a tethered phone in one of the school offices where I taught. He worked afternoons and evenings in the theatre community in Toronto. Before all the kids were in school, he was the morning caregiver. I knew he’d be home and could answer our own landline at the same time every day. There were very few words in this conversation and it always ended with “love you”. These moments grounded us both in our partnership; mini moments, a reassurance of our commitment to each other and to our family.
Let’s keep our eyes open for moments to acknowledge those who ground us, give us hope and make us feel loved.
Bathrooms as Escape Rooms
I have had some truly lovely moments in washrooms.
In London it’s a loo. In Australia it’s a toilet. In Canada it’s a washroom or a bathroom. Whatever the name, I have had some truly lovely moments in bathrooms. A better name for them would be Escape Rooms. A place to escape. Sometimes it has been my favourite part of a party or a gathering. The few moments I spent in the washroom, longer than necessity would have dictated, were the grounding moments, the only moments of calm, the reason I was able to continue visiting or listening or watching. I often enter a washroom with a great sigh of relief, almost gratitude. I breathe, I rest, I settle.
I don’t have a condition that necessitates I be close to a washroom for bodily function purposes. I am not a decorator, although I have gotten some pretty solid interior design goodies from bathrooms. I don’t hate large gatherings. Well, I actually sort of do. I am a normal person who gets overloaded, easily saturated on talk and noise and interactions. The bathroom can be my social/emotional saviour.
I have been in bathrooms that are nicer than most of the rooms in my house. I have been in bathrooms that are bigger than my bedroom. I have been in bathrooms that I never wanted to leave; they were so beautiful and inspiring. And quiet.
A friend’s washroom, just across from the long white granite kitchen island, where everyone gathers and exclaims and cracks pistachios as they watch something delicious being created yet again, is almost a religious experience. It is a tiny bathroom, but the ceiling is 12 feet above me, almost like sky. The walls are a tall expanse of deep violet, one of them holds a long, narrow frame of Hebrew poetry, direct from Israel, full of soft colour, intricate figures, reaching tall and thin toward the white ceiling. I could look at it for hours. The sink is a glass bowl, slightly off kilter, thick and smooth, a vessel, a collector of drops. There is a violet glass prism both hefty and delicate on the counter beside the soap. I go to this bathroom like I would go into a church, for a moment of solitude and meditation before returning to the conversation outside.
I have been in restaurant bathrooms that are full of wood and wrought iron and gorgeous paintings, enough space to sit and ponder like you were in a gallery. I leave behind all of the noise and chaos and littered tables outside and sit for a moment, remembering who I am.
I remember a mall washroom where everything was white and new, space enough to engage in a full yoga practise if you so desired, or twirl and watch your skirt spin in the gigantic, infinitely clean mirror covering the whole wall. You could sing an aria; the acoustics would be out of this world. The actual toilets were around a corner, there were settees of velvet to recline upon. It was a shopping mall, for goodness sake. I was perplexed and in awe all at once. And soothed.
I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and I love the little bathrooms around the corner from the cream and sugar, displaying the local piece of art or ads for yoga and snow shovelling services. Sometimes they are blank and sweet, with a single succulent on a tiny shelf. Sometimes they are storage for the broom and the box of paper towels. Sometimes they smell really nice, with 3 ply toilet paper. And always, I visit them at least twice as I pour coffee and water into my mouth, punch away at my keyboard, trying to get my word count up; they give me a bit of distance to reflect, to validate and to gather my senses again and go forth, back to the work of being human.
This love of the loo may be a direct result of aging. I am a middle-aged woman, finished with one career and working on another, my children have turned into adults and live far away. My need for action is declining. FOMO is waning. What I want is to be centred, grounded, quiet, alone. Maybe it is just me, my introvert self rising. Maybe it is the path of life. Either way, a washroom can be a beautiful thing.
Keep Your Eyes Open
“Keep your eyes open, honey”.
That is the advice of my friend, Leah, as I left for Australia to visit my daughter once again. Leah is wise and clear. It is what we all need to do. Keep our eyes open. See what is in front of us and study it. Be present. Listen, watch, participate.
Another of my besties, Nancy, decided before a big trip to say yes to everything. She wasn’t advising recklessness or imprudence. She was preparing herself to participate in the whole adventure, to do brave things, to admonish her own small fears and go forth with courage. To keep her eyes open and say yes to the adventure.
Rick Steeves, travel writer, and a fellow Lutheran, says “travel close to the ground”. I love this phrase. It suggests being present in a new culture on the sidewalk, in the dust, in places and ways that are basic and real. Get off the bus and walk. Or ride a bike. Talk to the taxi driver about their life in this city. Ask the street vendor where they would eat.
You will see things you’ve never seen, learn things about yourself and the world.
In Australia, I have learned not to gasp audibly every time we turn right across a lane of traffic or see a ute (truck) coming at us from the “wrong” side of the road.
We went wandering over the orange hued granite rocks of the Bay of Fires in western Tasmania, and found hidden pools of crystal clear water where the white sand is empty, the rocks are warm and you can shed your clothes without worry and just hang out in the sea and the sun for a bit.
As we walked the tracks (trails) of the Cradle Mountain/Lake St. Clair National Park, a part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, we slowed and watched a fat wombat look up at us from below the boardwalk, give us a wink and keep scratching for snacks in the dirt below.
I woke in my Melbourne city apartment that is full of light and listened, serenaded with the beautiful, lilting, warble of the Australian magpie.
There are wild things growing everywhere, some I can identify from home, some that are new and unique. Stopping to stare at a sprawling agapanthus blossom or a familiar, if taller, geranium bush makes a neighbourhood walk slow and pondering.
We paused and watched children squeal and giggle in a village market, riding their pink and green scooters up and down the small incline as their parents sipped coffee. It was if they have been let loose in the world, knowing that every Saturday their parents will bring them here to repeat and relive this magic freedom and joy.
We rode our bikes through the city of Melbourne, along the Capital City Trail to Abbotsford Convent and beyond, seeing neighbourhoods as different from each other as from my own. This new city settled into my brain, wrapped around my eyes and my ears and I got comfortable here. I felt at home.
Melbourne is a city that loves a sporting event or a festival. Close the roads, put up signs, invite the world to come and compete. I counted 5 giant, impressive sporting fields/arenas in a small downtown section along the Yarra River. It’s part of life here.
Today we spent the afternoon at the Australian Open. I have never played and I know nothing about tennis. Last evening, during dinner with new friends, I got a crash course on the rules of the game, given by a true Aussie who lives for sport. You will understand, if you know me, that the most startling thing I learned was that love means nothing. Shocking.
Keep your eyes open, say yes to everything and travel close to the ground. Prepare to be surprised!
Have another cookie and write something
In church on Sunday morning we always start with a bunch of words that cleanse.Words that remind us that we can always start over. It’s never too late. We are not going to be forgotten. God is not going to give up on us. We only need to come back, to say “I’m here” and heavenly heads will turn and arms will open and somebody will put out a plate of cookies and we will catch up. We might have to get through some hard conversations or share some shameful stuff but someone will always be at the table listening.
We moved to a new community this year. Moving is cleansing. It’s also chaotic. I have been through boxes, shelves, little boxes in big boxes, bags, bins, closets. I have moved countless objects to other places, given away, thrown away, recycled. I have said hello to objects that I hadn’t seen for years, had forgotten I ever had and then shortly thereafter I said goodbye to them permanently. I refuse to put anything on the top shelves of my new kitchen cupboards because if they are on the top shelves they are not used often enough to be necessary for our life. Things that used to make me feel guilty by neglect are now repurposed in someone else’s life. Or landfill. Either way I’ve let go. I am lighter, almost weightless, cleansed.
I have also found things that I am happy to welcome back into my life. Boxes full of yarn and half done knitting projects. I sort through the snippets of color, the soft balls of possibility, the knitting needles collected years ago. Even the half finished projects are possibilities now and I can revisit them and work them through to a new future. It is true that I have created something from yarn perhaps only twice before in my life, hundreds of years ago, but I am confident there lurks a knitter inside me now. Some would say this is delusional and that I am not cleansing if I keep, but these yarn boxes are one of the few parts of our life that I have unboxed and embraced. Most of the collections hidden in the basement and closets have been passed on, given away, let go.
We often leave things undone or hanging in limbo while we busy ourselves with life events. Sometimes we leave things for awhile because we just can’t face them. We find or create anything else at all to provide the illusion of no time to do that which we should be doing. I admit that buying a different house and moving from the country to the city is a bit over the top in a bid to avoid writing. But if you have ever done any writing at all, or fancy yourself a writer, you will appreciate the lengths one can go to in making up reasons for not writing.
But, as I am reminded every time I wake up and get to church, it’s okay to come back. Just open the box and look inside and deal with it. Give it away. Or just finish the knitting. Do another blog post. Finally. Just have another cookie and write something.
Running and Hope
Sometimes I want to run away. It’s a blissful or desperate thought now and again when the world gets too close and smothering. Instead, I lace up my shoes, leash up the dog and take to the paths that begin and end at my door, familiar and predictable, bringing me back always to where I began, to where I belong.
Running in three parts.
First I plod, slow and clumsy. It hurts. I wonder why I ever thought I could be a runner. I think that finally my body is done with this. I complain and nag and whine. I consider walking instead. But I don’t. I keep plodding.
And soon the rhythm sets in and my bones become agreeable and cooperative. At some point the movement becomes secondary and my mind kicks into gear. This is when I can begin to solve the problems of my world; or at least see them with more clarity. This is when I am most open to creation, to idea, to hope, and sometimes to emotion. My squirming mind is quiet. The gremlins and squirrels are stilled. I am not suddenly brilliant or in touch with a higher power; I am simply less vulnerable to the chatter in my head that suppresses my authentic self with comparisons to the world around me. I love being outside and I love the rhythm of my nursery rhyme breathing.
Then near the end, I begin to be distracted by wanting to stop, needing some serious inner dialogue to keep going, plotting the exact place where I will finally be able to walk, seeing nothing else but this place of stopping, wondering if I will just fizzle and disappear, almost wishing it. And this is the thing: I find new energy. I always have it in me somewhere and it almost always comes up at the very end. I pick it up, I raise my head, I increase my pace even just a fraction, and I feel good. Whether it is an event, a road race or just a nice Saturday morning on the berm, I always have that little burst at the end, an energy that I doubted. It shows up and carries me to the end of the run, the stopping point.
It is like hope and it’s a good thing to remember when I am feeling empty. The little bit of hope at the end of the day, the end of the visit, the end of the phone call, when the world gets too close and smothering. Sometimes we find it in ourselves. Sometimes we have to ask for it. Sometimes someone is there to help us see it. And sometimes we are so tired that all we can do is stop and wait and listen and believe that it will be provided; believe it will be there because it will be the only thing that makes us carry on.
My Tattoo
Who says I can’t get a tattoo at my age?
Why do I want one?
Purely decorative.
Purely.
Whim, momentary, cute,
Just like buying boots
for a whole week straight, 4 pairs,
and then I’m satiated for awhile.
Happy, filled.
Then eventually wanting something else.
Or in this case – another tattoo.
And soon, before I shrivel,
I will be covered:
small, discreet designs
in hidden places
all over my body.
The criteria for hidden will
have fewer parameters
and one day,
in desperation to
oblige just one more
longing,
I will have placed
a small symbol
– a hummingbird in flight –
in the middle of
my hand, above the wrist
always visible.
It will be these
not so hidden places
that I begin to fill
in my quest to find
ornamental satisfaction:
the top corner of my cheek bone;
each middle knuckle on each hand;
the left temple
– a delicate feather;
the small place at the end of my jawbone,
beside my ear
– a tiny green pistachio.
And will I live to regret this,
realize suddenly
the permanence
of these marks;
the impermanence of my skin?
Likely not.
They are nothing but decoration.
Impermanent remarks
reflecting a moment.
Nothing to do with my soul.
My happiness.
Australia – Close to Home
Somehow Australia no longer seems so far away. I have seen the landscape, I have talked with folks who live there, moved among the eucalyptus trees, been wakened by the kookaburra in the wee hours, driven the highways, bumped along on the wrong side of the impossibly narrow roads in the mountains, had adventures. Aviva will call this southern continent home for a little while, even as she will call Canada home forever. We spent 3 blissful weeks together in Australia in June.
The sweeping vistas inland from any of the major highways between Brisbane and Melbourne are epic just like our big sky views west or east from Calgary. They make your heart feel like singing. The trees, however, on the Australian horizon often look as if they were plopped in place by a close Aussie relative of Dr. Seuss. Trees on our Alberta horizon look more like they were coaxed from the ground by an astral thumb and forefinger and are still reaching for their maker above. In either place, I am awed and comforted.
People in Australia love their coffee and their cafe’s. There is a hard-to-believe absence of drip coffee in Australia. But there is an abundance of milk infused options, my kind of coffee. I take a little coffee with my milk, which usually brings eye rolling here at home. Aussie cups are small, the price is high and the coffee is delicious. I brought my super huge, reusable, Starbucks travel mug and hid it far away in the bottom of my pack, didn’t take it out once. It made me look like I was from Texas and that was not what I was going for.
We rode bikes through the CBD, Central Business District, in Melbourne. CBD is downtown in Australian cities. We found cute little cafes to eat in once in awhile, often on the ocean. We bought chips at the petrol stations when we filled up our van along the highway, road trip food. They did taste different. It took a couple of days, but I eventually stopped feeling like we were going to have a head on collision at any moment, due to the left lane driving.
And then the language. It is my language. But oh so different, musical, smooth. And with many unfamiliar and sometimes funny words to learn. Quick lesson: abbreviate everything. I have a great memory of a ride in Aviva’s ute as we visited the chook farm. We needed our sunnies and chewy as we travelled the coast. We did some good bushwalking along the tracks of the Blue Mountains. And, if you go, you must take in a footy game. Now that’s fair dinkum!
I am back home in my beloved Canada. Travel brings us closer. Australia no longer seems so far away. It is a place that struggles with and celebrates the same things we do here, big world issues and small day to day matters. It is not so mysterious. It is not so strange. Nor does it seem so impossibly distant and clutching. My daughter is as confident and radiant on its soil as she is in our backyard. And I can talk to her every single day if I want to. For free.
Such a Gift
So we sponsored this refugee family in September. A young Syrian family. When you come to a new country and you don’t speak the language, you need help. You look to the person who seems to be the most helpful, or at least to the one that you can understand the most easily, maybe the one that listens the longest or speaks the most slowly. Because you can’t really understand anyone at all, really. Everyone speaks a different language and all of them speak fast, too fast for you to understand. So you latch on to the person that you think you understand. I was one of those people. We developed a good rapport together and we seemed to be able to understand each other fairly well. Or at least we kept going until some kind of mutual understanding was arrived at.
This family lived in the city in a cute little apartment we had found for them, the young adult dad, his still teenage wife and their two beautiful one and three year old boys. It was a ground floor apartment, no stairs for the stroller, a tiny balcony. We lived 40 minutes away outside of the city. Our little family knew that we lived a distance away, they had even been to our house once for dinner with some other refugees, whose 14 year old son spoke passable English and reluctantly translated for us all night.
So the father in this new family called me one day at noon. I was in the north end of the city and had no plans to go visit them this day. It would have been a 30 minute drive across the city in rush hour, in the dark and winter freeways and I was bone tired, eager to get home to my couch and a glass of wine. He called in a flurry.
“Please, Marla, please come.”
“To your house? No I can’t today. I cannot come today.”
“No, please. We see you today. Very important. Please come. Please.”
There were still so few words we had in common. It was remarkable what we accomplished with 12-20 English words between us. But I just couldn’t figure out a way to be forceful about my schedule that day. He was very persistent. What could be so important that he would call and insist that I come. Usually they did not ask for things like this. They were very aware of the time we spent to help them, the hours of our life we gave to assist them in this new world. They did not ever ask for more. What could possibly be so important?
My stomach fell as I touched on the only thing I thought it could possibly be. She was pregnant. What else could draw this kind of request? What else? I knew that they had questioned this possibility a couple of times already. I knew that she was waiting to see her doctor about some kind of birth control. We had had that difficult and delicate conversation already and I knew that, in practical terms, they didn’t want more children because that would just complicate their already complicated life. But I also knew that children are important to them and that family planning often took second place to “what Alla wills” or not-family-planning.
My heart was heavy and I prepared myself for this news and for needing my happy face when I received it. The refugee committee would be flummoxed. Another baby would put English learning on a back burner somewhere for the very young mother. It would up the financial concerns significantly. This was not the news I had hoped for. So I prepared to drive over.
I arrived to the usual very loud “Hello! Welcome! Welcome! Hello!” The kisses on each cheek, the smiles, the nods, the hand over heart. She went into the bedroom, and he prepared me for her news, wearing a great smile. I sucked in my breath, put on my hopeful, happy, waiting face. And she emerged from the bedroom with the biggest poinsettia that I have ever seen.
“Marla, mom! Cadeaux, present, you, Marla, mom. Superstore!”
They had gone to Superstore in a taxi, purchased this super large red plant for me, a pre- Christmas gift. They were all smiles and anticipation and excitement.
I have never been so grateful for such a gift.
tossingwords 