The Ridiculousness of Grief

I often think about how fortunate I have been, to have lived 61 plus years and to have had so little experience with grief. I always knew it was coming, and that it will continue to come, over and over again. And so, I’ve tried to brace myself. The older I become, the closer that line gets, that border between before loss and after. But now that I’ve been shoved over that line, I’ve realized that there really isn’t a way to prepare for it. And that time is best spent in the present, enjoying the company of the people we love, rather than fruitlessly trying to figure out a way to make it hurt less when we lose them.

I lost someone to ovarian cancer three weeks ago. We’d been fast friends for years and she was like a sister to me. The loss came slowly, over three years. The time came when the outcome was understood. When that point arrived, I began to hold onto the text conversations between us. I anticipated that those conversations would become important to me in new ways that I couldn’t have imagined. That was one prediction that actually proved true. Reading through random parts of those messages that span more than a year, I think I’m experiencing the “magical thinking” Joan Didion wrote about in her book following the unexpected death of her husband. We know as rational human beings that the person has died and cannot return. And at the same time, we cannot accept something so utterly impossible. For those moments when I’m scrolling through my friend’s gentle, funny and honest words, time seems to shift somehow. She becomes present. The dates on the messages have no meaning. She is there, thank God! She is talking to me.

And yet, her name sinks lower and lower on my phone’s message list. Every day, I have to scroll down further to find her. Our last message sits there, unmoving. It will always and forever be our last message. To me, that is completely ridiculous. In my recent calls list, there’s her name and the date. A Wednesday morning three weeks ago when she called to say good-bye. Remarked in her sage way that we were lucky to be able to say good-bye; it’s an opportunity many don’t get to have.

I knew grieving would be painful and unpredictable, but I never dreamed that losing someone you loved would be so ludicrous. I have been counting the hours, the days, the weeks since she died. It will turn into months, then years. Absolutely preposterous. What am I counting off time for? Is there an end to this separation? Some shorting out part of my brain seems to think there is.

And so here I am without her, smack dab in the middle of the summer she hoped she would get, and never did and never will. I could read her last letter to me over and over, day after day. But I am trying to savour it and keep her words fresh. I wear the ring she left me when it doesn’t hurt so much. I trust that time will quiet that ache–I’ve heard from the seasoned professionals that it does.

And maybe one day, that misfiring part of my brain that insists that none of this is true or right will quiet, too.

One thing I know without a doubt–I would not trade a moment of the friendship we shared to avoid this pain. They say that grief is the price of love. I will gratefully pay that bill until the end of my days.

You Can’t Take it With You

When I was a kid, my family moved a lot. My parents had three small children at that time. Dad worked hard and my mom also picked up jobs when she could, but they couldn’t afford to buy a house for the first decade of their marriage. We lived in a variety of rentals, most of them out in the country. I can recall four of those places.

When I was going into Grade Four, my parents were able to buy my grandparents’ house. I lived there until I was eighteen, and after high school, I spent the next four years as a university student, apartment hopping. Being a very poor student, I didn’t have much to cart around–most of it could fit behind my parents’ couch during the summers when I came home to work for four months.

Once I was married, we moved around, too–most of our moves coinciding with another baby coming and needing more space. We had five abodes before coming to roost in our present home, where we have lived now for almost twenty-nine years. And after almost three decades, the time has come to pack up and uproot once again. We are building a bungalow more practical to this stage of life.

There is nothing like a move to remind one of just how temporary everything is. You can’t take it with you…and so, you pack your historical items away for someone else to look through one day, or you drive down to Goodwill countless times with carloads of junk and leave it all there. Some stuff had nowhere to go but the burn pile out at my brother and sister-in-law’s farm. (We’ve done that fire dance three times so far). This house, the gardens, shed, and garage have to be patched up, cleaned up, all unneeded items packed and stashed and unwanted stuff hauled out by the end of June for when the place goes up for sale.

This has required a certain kind of ruthlessness, and at this juncture, I have found myself more than capable of that. When everything boils down to what you can and cannot take, acceptance has come more easily than I expected–with the exception of one surprising thing.

Plants.

We are moving in November and the builder requires that we do no landscaping whatsoever until the sod comes in next spring. And now, as everything in our beautiful back yard is starting to bloom and grow, I am confronted with the reality that I cannot dig anything up and bring it along.

When my parents moved out of their house four years ago, I snagged a few things from Mom’s garden. It has been such a consolation after saying goodbye to that space, to see her Bleeding Hearts, Solomon’s Seal and an almost blue Hosta continuing on her legacy in my own garden. As I look out the patio door, I see the maple that started from a sprouting key in the side garden, now towering over the house. It hangs onto its green until the end of October, then turns a vivid yellow to light the drear of November. A wildly spreading wisteria vine is blooming over the fence and hanging in front of the bright yellow hobbit door my husband made for one of our daughter’s bridal shower. My favourite lily-of-the-valley are established and creeping through the gardens, making everything smell bewitching. There’s a tree given as a memorial from a cousin’s funeral and two little pines, given to guests as favours at another daughter’s wedding. In the front garden, I have a hydrangea bush given to me at my retirement from Parent Council and a bush that blooms with small pink roses that we planted in memory of my mother-in-law when she passed away. I can barely stand to think about my thirty-year-old peony bushes. These are things that cannot be packed up and brought along. These are things that must be left behind and of everything I’ve had to surrender, the garden beauties are the most difficult.

A new house is a clean slate. Next spring, everything will have to be begin from scratch. It’s fun to consider what kinds of trees and bushes we might plant, to think about where the sun might fall, to wonder if cucumber vines will be happier there than they were here. A fresh start is inspiring, but I just wish a bit of the old garden could become a part of the new.

Blooming

Some unseasonably warm weather found its way to SW Ontario last week, leaving all of us winter-weary people drunk with sun-soaked joy. The buds were barely breaking out on the trees, the grass newly green, a few of the first crocuses popping out here and there. And suddenly, the lawn mowers were grumbling across the subdivision lawns, windows were thrown open, outdoor furniture was dragged onto porches and the supper-time air was filled with the smell of barbecues. I happily hung the laundry on the clothesline and retired to a spot of sunshine to read. And as has happened since 2019, I indulged myself in a little bit of heartache, missing my mom’s garden.

My parents moved out of their house four years ago. Dad was in his eighties and Mom needed a hip replacement. She could no longer manage her beautiful gardens. They signed a lease for a lovely bright fourth-floor apartment with a balcony. I had my doubts. To go from a huge yard filled with roses and perennials and cobblestone paths to an apartment with a little balcony seemed like a big jump. My make-do Mom managed to squeeze all of her patio pots and a clothes-drying rack (my love for the clothesline has obvious genetic origins) onto that little balcony and she stuffed the apartment with plants.

Below my parents’ apartment building is a seniors’ residence, all on one level. The building is older, but quite nice. And each unit has its own yard and a garden plot. After four years watching from the fourth floor with a balcony, my parents have made the decision to “move downstairs.”

I was able to tour the residence and the apartment with my mother last week. She never once in four years complained about her fourth-floor apartment. But while we were going through the new place, I saw very quickly how desperately she had been missing her garden, and as she so succinctly expressed it, having her “feet in the grass.” As the manager showed us the unit that would be my parents’, Mom wondered if she might be allowed to “get at” the little plot of dirt before they moved in. Actually, she couldn’t ask fast enough. The manager was quite easy-going about it and told her to go ahead! And so my mother spent her week of early bonus summer on her knees in the grass, grooming her little plot of earth in front of the empty unit, readying the ground for all the flowers she had been dreaming about for four years.

Just as the magnolias were popping out, I heard the forecast for the coming week. Winter was returning: cold temperatures, even the possibility of snow. The magnolias are sensitive to cold–a taste of frost sends them shriveling, their petals mottled with brown. I worried too for the area’s orchards, hoping the bloom hadn’t come too soon. And I wished there was a way to communicate with all things about to burst into flower. You might want to hold off a week or two, I wished I could tell them. If you bloom now, you’ll be sorry. But the thing is, things that are ready to bloom are never cautious and they are never sorry. They will open spectacularly, whether it is for four hours, four days, four months, or four years. When it is time to bloom, there are no consequences. The blooming just happens. And it’s always the right time.

Food For Thought, But I’m Kinda Full

The first time I went on a diet, I was in high school. It was the seventies. No one talked about eating disorders back then, or about related issues like body dysmorphia. I woke up early in the mornings to prepare myself for a teenaged girl’s typical day at school. I thought all that time-consuming attention to hair and makeup and clothes was perfectly normal. All my friends did the same thing. We were all oblivious to the fact that corporations, bolstered by the media and the patriarchy, were profiting enormously from the insecurities they strove to instill in us. Girls and women were all conditioned to believe that our worth was based on our appearance–which for most of us, could never meet the unrealistic demands of an invisible judge. I weighed a hundred and twenty-seven pounds all through high school and there was no doubt in my mind that I was fat.

Luckily, I never felt the need to starve myself or purge, like many girls do. But the conviction was there–something was wrong with me and it was always at the back of my mind that I needed fixing, somehow.

Through the following decades, gaining a little more weight with each of my four babies, that conviction has stayed with me. I’m into my sixties now, and yup. Still there. If there is an age where women generally shrug this nonsense off, I haven’t gotten there yet.

I do, however, know that I am at the limits of my tolerance for this garbage, even though it persists still within my own mind. The paths in my brain are very well-worn when it comes to diet culture.

But here is the irony–after years of dieting and the proverbial yoyo, I’m now on the higher end of my body mass. Menopause weight gain when I was already overweight (according to the Body Mass Index, and there is some controversy around that these days) has brought me to a place where I could actually use…dare I say? A food plan. Unfortunately, the very word “diet” produces an intensely visceral response. I am completely burned out of counting calories and tracking exercise. I “x out” the Noom and Weight Watchers ads that pop up in my social media feeds, and scroll past the Before and After pictures of women who’ve conquered the fat–until it inevitably (for most) creeps back on. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never be able to mentally tolerate another app, website or food tracker again, nor anything that tries to tell me when or when not to eat. Everything in me revolts against this kind of targeted control. The idea of self-control, restraint and denial just makes me angry. I’m even eyeing those rings on my new Apple Watch with a bit of skepticism.

Yet, there are health challenges that come with age. I am looking at Pre-Diabetes, high blood pressure, IBS and gallstones. If food is medicine, I need to acknowledge the role of sugar, salt and bad fats–common culprits in many underlying and serious conditions. The food industry piles sugar, salt and bad fats into its intensely marketed products. They are after us with the same ferocious intensity as the diet industry is. Eat this! You’re fat and worthless. But, wait–you have to eat this! No wonder so many of us are messed up about food.

It is my thought that this has become a full-circle issue for me. I’m back at the part where I’m one hundred and twenty-seven pounds and feeling like something is wrong with me. This boils down to a self-love issue, rooted in a massive conspiracy to create insecurity and then capitalize from it. The challenge now is to go about self-care from the perspective of a desire for better health–not weight loss. Eating habits should reflect a desire to live a healthy and vibrant life, for as long as we can. It is extremely difficult to untangle that desire from the life-long conditioning to a value on one’s worth set by the scale. It means that I have to trust my body to tell me what it needs–the same body I’ve spent years being ashamed of. It’s hard to trust something you’ve been so conditioned to despise.

Bottom line is that I am bone-weary of these conversations with myself.

Also, kind of connected, I know that the healthiest foods are those prepared from scratch, at home. And I am sick, sick, sick of cooking!

Check out these excellent resources for food addiction and eating disorders!

https://www.palmerlakerecovery.com/getting-help-co-occurring-food-addiction-colorado-drug-rehab/

Eating Disorders

The Subdivision Oasis

When someone my age mutters, “Kids today,” that’s probably a red flag. It must mean that I am officially old.

We were the first house on the street twenty-eight years ago. In the midst of all the construction in the area, there wasn’t much that was beautiful to behold. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but posts with wires wrapped around, heavy machinery rumbling around, foundation pits, no trees, no grass. Dust everywhere. Down the street to the west, a drainage and water run-off area was put in. At that time, it was just a couple of big sewers on either end with bars across and some grass put down, a few saplings and bushes stuck in here and there. When it rained, there was a pond of sorts until the water drained off.

Almost thirty years later, that area has become an oasis. Rushes and cattails blow in the breezes, cardinals sing from the top branches of the tall poplars. There’s always some variety of wildflower blooming in the tall grasses. Right now, there are vivid clusters of goldenrod glowing in the light of late summer. Crickets are singing hello to the autumn. Milkweed stalks hold their buds, getting ready to launch their parachutes of seeds. It’s been a balm to the heart, knowing the milkweed is there for the Monarch butterflies, who have recently been declared an endangered species.

Living in a subdivision, being able to walk through a natural area like this has been much appreciated. I go through there every day. Especially in the last few pandemic years, moving daily through a space like this has been meditative and calming. A few weeks ago, I was strolling over the grass there when I passed a couple coming the other way. “See?” the woman told her companion. “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the neighbourhood’s best kept secret.”

Unfortunately, the secret garden’s cover is blown.

There are responsible teenagers out there. I have known many. But as is the same with adults, there are teenagers who lack respect and those of that ilk have quickly plundered the little neighbourhood oasis. They come in a hoard and sit up against private homes’ fence lines under a tree. While children in their yards behind are bouncing on their trampolines or swimming in their pools, they are treated to various epithets and inappropriate language shouted out from the other side of the fence. Under the tree lies a litter of discarded fast food containers, empty water bottles and tossed Slurpee cups. Torn off branches with withering leaves are strewn over the grass. Much of the milkweed is trampled.

I used to envy the homeowners lucky enough to have their properties connected to this naturalized little stretch of land. This destruction must be very sad and unsettling for them.

Maybe, back in the day I demonstrated similar disrespect. I don’t recall doing so, but I suppose it’s likely that I did. There wasn’t as much onus on environmental respect in those days, although there should have been. But I know that “kids today” have been taught about the threats to our natural world and they should have an awareness that we all need to take conservation and preservation seriously. I was a teacher. I was there for the Earth Day celebrations, the garbage pick-up days, the bulb and seed planting, the read-alouds featuring books encouraging children to love our planet.

And so this burns me up a bit.

What a shame that those who know better don’t do better.

June

     It’s hard to believe that an entire seven years have gone by since I retired from teaching. And yet, the reality is that this last week of June has been full of Facebook pictures of many of my former Senior Kindergarten students graduating from Grade Eight. The math doesn’t lie! Those little whirlwinds with baby faces who sat criss-cross applesauce in the circle and often needed help getting into their snow pants somehow became teenage-tall and have been officially launched into high school.

     Seven years seems ample time for things to get a bit dusty, and yet, those last two years of my career teaching FDK are still so fresh in my mind.

     Also fresh in my mind are the June’s. Oh mercy, the June’s…by far the most challenging of months for a teacher. Perhaps I just speak for myself. I needed the better part of July’s to recover from those June’s. Report cards over Christmas when the weather is generally dismal weren’t such an ordeal. But June reports were an entirely different matter. Once the May long weekend came and went, things always went to a summer vibe for me. The warm weather and the long days called many things to mind, the last of them being report cards. Report cards were due in the office more on the earlier side of June—which meant that everything teachers set out to accomplish for the year was complete and evaluated. By the time reports were handed in, the students were finished, the teachers were finished—and there were still so many days left to pull the kids through, all the while trying to bring the learning forward and keep the focus from sputtering out. This was a challenge because my focus was sputtering, too. The calendar flipping to June was always a milestone reached, but there was still another full month to contend with…and by June, everyone was just plain tired. The end of June often marked moving days for teachers who had to relocate to another classroom. This somehow had to be accomplished while still managing a classroom full of students. If you weren’t moving, you were still cleaning up, organizing or ordering supplies, cleaning and packing learning materials away for the summer. In FDK (Full Day Kindergarten), we had piles of toys and blocks and manipulatives to wash and sort and put away for the following September.

     Thankfully, a massive renovation at my school meant A/C for my last few Junes as a teacher. It wasn’t always so. How well I recall the greenhouse kind of environment of a classroom in June before air-conditioning…all of us wilting and languishing by noon. Teachers brought vast quantities of freezies and popsicles to school, fighting for freezer space. Fans pushed the almost unbreathable air around classrooms filled with sweating bodies and grumpy kids. I remember the upper-level classrooms at my school reaching 40 degrees C. Then, the “shoe rule” came along, and my Birks—my only blessed comfort—were no longer allowed. I used to keep them in my car and pry the “safe” shoes off my sweaty, swollen feet out in the parking lot after school. The air conditioning blasting into my face as I drove home, my feet almost sobbing in relief! Another day crossed off the wall  calendar in the staffroom with a big red X.

     June was also taxing on an emotional level. The children you’d taught and parented and fed and counseled and encouraged and wrestled and nurtured and gnashed your teeth over were divided up on paper into new classrooms, destined for new teachers. They weren’t going to be “your” kids any longer. Graduation sent faces that for years had been familiar and beloved (maybe not in all cases!) out of the building. Good-byes to staff either retiring or transferring were inevitable at end of the year staff breakfasts, sending many of us off into a teaching day with red, swollen eyes.

     I remember the June’s, and all the other months, marking out the school year calendar in their own unique ways. And I think about education workers in the thick of it still, even though I am out of it now (someone remind my brain of that when it’s August and I’m dreaming about the bell ringing on the first day of school when I don’t have so much as a desk in my classroom). To all of you still standing on June 30th, it’s time for a well-deserved rest. May your July’s and August’s pass as slowly as your June’s.

Sprawl

I’ve lived in St. Thomas since I was eight years old. When my family first moved into our house, we had neighbours up and down the street, but the area behind us was fields as far as the eye could see. A few decades earlier, the neighbourhood had been two adjoining farms. The old farmhouse and silo to the west of us were still standing and to the east, the original farmer still tended a few acres in his old age. My best friend lived a good three kilometres away to the south and those same fields connected to her neighbourhood. There was a large area behind her subdivision that sat vacant for what seemed like a long time. There were several enormous sewage pipes that had been deposited there for a future development and a huge dirt hill that was overgrown with grass and weeds. Kids went there on their bicycles or dirt bikes and enjoyed racing around over the bumps and down the dirt hill which was unsurprisingly called “Suicide.” The trails went all the way through the fields back to my house and I walked or rode my bike down them countless times. Sometimes, a boy would offer me a bumpy and thrilling ride to the other end of the field on the back of his dirt bike.

Those open spaces are long gone, filled in now with streets and houses and a mall.

28 years ago, when we were expecting our fourth child, a new subdivision was going up on land that had once been a farm owned by the Olde’s. With great excitement, we hired a builder and moved into the first house on the street. It wasn’t long before the rest of the street and subdivision filled in with new builds.

In all that time as the city grew around me, it never once occurred to me that all this development equated to a loss of farmland. Urban sprawl has been dramatic here. The subdivision where we built our house almost three decades ago used to be on what was then the edge of town. I’d drive out of the neighbourhood onto the nearest thoroughfare and a cornfield would appear on my immediate right. I would sometimes hear coyotes howling in the brush nearby at night and in the spring, if the windows were open, the peepers in a marsh close by would sing me to sleep. An hour reading in the lounge chair in the back yard used to be a quiet interlude, punctuated only now and again by a car driving past on the next street over.

That cornfield and the other fields that used to adjoin it are now a massive new subdivision. That thoroughfare behind us sounds like a highway now, with loud sirens screaming past multiple times a day. I sometimes give up on turning left out of my subdivision and just go the other way. Everywhere I drive, the main streets are clogged with traffic.

The province of Ontario is losing 319 acres of farmland daily. This equates to the loss of one Ontario farm each and every day. When wars disrupt food supply and a challenged economy causes the price of groceries to skyrocket, how can the loss of so much farmland to residential development be justified? I’m aware of the housing crisis, but all these people need to eat, too. It’s not just the loss of farmland that is cause for concern. We are losing green space, wildlife are losing their habitats, our waterways are becoming polluted, and with the construction of all these outskirts developments, more people are driving—a recipe for air pollution which negatively impacts climate change.

These issues are not background ones—we have been urged to do better by scientists and experts the world over for years. And yet, unsurprisingly, the making of money continues to be the priority over everything else.

There are alternatives that contribute to less urban sprawl. Mixed-use zoning would allow for businesses and residences to exist in the same areas, which would reduce demand for these massive outskirts developments and take some of the weight off traffic. Building “up” instead of “out” also helps to cut down on land use. No doubt, there are many other solutions and fixes that the experts out there could detail. It’s time for the people who run things to listen to them more carefully.

If you would like to read more by me, I hope you will check out my book Corners  available to order in print and as an eBook!

Pieces and Scraps

For a brief time when I was a kid, the world was entirely wonderful and beautiful. I was lucky. Not all children get an experience like that. But wonder and beauty are the things I remember best about those days–the joy of sunlight streaming through the window as I opened my eyes in the morning, that first leap off the back step into the fresh green world. I had all the freedom in the world to explore the neighbours’ farms and the apple orchard near by. My parents took us camping up north every summer. Days were spent playing under the trees and swimming in water so clear, you could look down and see your toes. Even when I was very young, I knew when the world was showing me something special–the tiny purple wood violets that bloomed under the swing, the red splash of a cardinal that darted from tree to tree, the sweet fragrance of an apple orchard opening all of its blossoms at the same time.

I have carried this awareness with me through my whole life and it has blessed me over and over. The beauty in nature can be grounding; there is so much peace to be found in the rhythm of the seasons, the quiet sparking of fireflies in the yard at twilight, in an enormous summer cloud field observed while laying back in the grass.

More and more as I age, I find myself moving backwards, trying to rediscover that connection and that peace. In a world where I have found myself caught up in this long, polarizing pandemic, the horrors of gun violence and school massacres, the cruelty and injustice of invasions and wars, and even the small heartbreaks in my own circles, the idea of peace seems almost like a fantasy. Unless one happens to be a Buddhist monk who has devoted an entire lifetime to achieving enlightenment, it is impossible to exist in perfect peace. I am no Buddhist monk and my mind is seldom a peaceful place.

I’m not sure how inner peace is supposed to work. Perhaps there are ways to flesh it out–meditation, deep breathing, music, mantras. These are tools that are easily accessed, particularly useful for those struggling with anxiety.

Those things can help, but I cannot always plan for peace. It is not an issue of resolve or determination. Inner peace is an elusive thing, something that brushes past or lands on me when I’m not expecting it–or even inviting it. It’s a gift, given freely and without obvious reason, by the universe. Unsurprisingly, these moments usually find me when I’m outside. It’s in the droning hum of bumblebees as they blunder through the wisteria, my grandson’s exclamation of delight when the clematis blooms catch his eye, that radiant glow as the sun sinks down and bathes the rose bushes in its last hurrah.

It’s when things are most chaotic that I am most consoled by these unexpected breaths of peace. If it weren’t for the general chaos of existence, these brief moments would drift by, unnoticed and unappreciated. For me, inner peace may never be an entire quilt to lay under, but it can be a few lovely pieces and scraps, caught up and stitched together as they come. Enough to make a start of something.

If you would like to read more by me, I hope you will check out my book Corners  available to order in print and as an eBook!

Hope is an Action

I wish that I could write about something nostalgic or whimsical this week. There has been a lot of stumbling and backspacing and starting over as I have tried to begin this week’s entry. What happened Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas is beyond any words I could write and even the attempt seems trite. Nineteen children and two educators, slaughtered. That “never again” refrain we have heard repeatedly after Sandy Hook and many other scenes of human carnage in the U.S. is just a blatant lie, perpetuated over and over again.

The epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. is horrific in all of its varied settings, but the school shootings hit me the hardest. What teacher wouldn’t say the same? After countless days spent with children in the classroom, the whole scene is painfully easy to conjure. The children at Robb Elementary were dressed in fancy clothes for a theme day at school, all of them together in their classroom–which was supposed to be a safe place. Then, a monster burst in. The terror those children must have experienced and the hopeless desperation of the teachers as they tried to shield their students is far more clear in my mind than I want it to be. It’s like I know those children’s faces and the sounds of their voices. I wrote a novel about a six-year-old survivor of a scene exactly like this one and for the time I spent writing about Callum’s attempts to make sense of what happened and what it took to move forward, I got a taste of that very dark world.

I can stay away from the television and from social media until the cows come home, but none of this horror goes away. My first response to these senseless events is a seething kind of rage, then the hopelessness creeps in–the conviction that the gun-obsessed U.S. will never change. So many are lost in a right-wing extremism that tells them that it’s not the guns. It’s the violent video games, the bad parenting, the mental illness. This ideology, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, permeates all levels, right up through the state governments and their lawmakers.

Turning away from hope at times like these is a natural response; however, hopelessness is akin to resignation. It’s an easy mindset to fall into. Hope, however, is hard work. Hope has to stay alive because it’s hope that drives change. Impossible and insurmountable as the barriers seem, hope demands work at a time when people are traumatized, soul-weary and fed up. It’s not thoughts and prayers that are needed at times like these, but action–the slow, incremental crawl towards change. Like women getting the vote, this process can take decades.

Mass shootings in other countries have been the impetus for change in gun laws. Families are forever devastated, but at least there is some consolation in knowing that the senseless deaths of their loved ones wasn’t for nothing. In Texas, however, lawmakers just double down after shooting events. Four out of ten mass shootings occur in that state. The Texas lawmakers’ response to the natural and understandable backlash and outrage following shooting events was to DECREASE the age to carry a gun to 18 (an age where a Texan is considered too young to buy cigarettes), allow permit-less carry, allow open carry for semi-automatic weapons, and say that no training or background checks are mandated for people purchasing guns. Research clearly states that the absence of restrictions increases gun violence. Money and power obviously carry more weight than the dead bodies of children. The gun lobby pays the lawmakers and the lawmakers do their bidding. And the NRA has the gall to say “no guns” at their convention taking place today. I guess they’re afraid of getting shot. Go figure. No doubt the 110 people a day in the US that are killed by guns were afraid, too. Gun homicides in the US are 25 times higher than other higher-income countries. How can any parent send their child off to school in a climate like this? Do they really think this couldn’t happen to their children? 50% of Americans are affected at some point by gun violence. Half of all Americans. Canada is far from perfect and we have guns and violence and rampages here, but we just don’t have it on this incredible and ludicrous scale. Because we have gun laws!

I was listening to a podcast where Desmond Tutu was quoted: “You can only pull people out of the river for so long before you have to look upstream to find out who’s pushing them in.” It’s clear who is pushing them in. And the lack of action in doing anything about gun control also makes it clear that the lawmakers have every intention to keep pushing. But people are pushing back. For example, Moms Demand Action is a non-partisan group in the U.S. with more than 8 million members (surpassing NRA membership). They advocate for gun safety and common sense laws to protect citizens and they educate others on the myths about gun control, backing themselves up with facts and research. For example, many people think that a person who wants a gun will find a way to get one and background checks won’t make any difference. Since 1994, background checks in U.S. states have blocked 4 million people from getting guns who were not legally allowed to own them.

Home

This is just one example of grassroots organizations in the U.S. who are done with all the preventable carnage of innocent people and children and are working with hope towards educating people with research-backed information, encouraging voters to use their power to get corruption and greed out of government, or to run for office themselves.

Gun culture is so ingrained in the U.S. No-one is ever going to get the guns out of there, but at the very least, lawmakers must get some rules and regulations into place. Citizens must hold them to account until they do.

If you would like to read more by me, I hope you will check out my book Corners now available to order in print and as an eBook!

Child’s Pose

I used to go to a Bikram yoga studio a few years back. A lot of people don’t care for hot yoga and it took some getting used to, but I loved it–especially in the winter. Depending on the instructor, the classes could be challenging, but the yoga mindset is to do what your body allows, and I was pleasantly surprised from time to time by my body’s capabilities. Aside from the benefits of the stretching and the strengthening and the sweating, the best part of the class for me was the before and the after.

I would try to arrive half an hour before the class began. The hot room was dark and humid and there would be some gentle, meditative music softly playing. Talking was discouraged. I would tiptoe in with my mat and quietly do my setup, get down onto the mat and go into child’s pose, my forehead pressed to the floor, clunking sounds coursing up my spine as everything adjusted. Then I would roll over and lie face-up and eyes closed, falling away into a gently meditative state until the class started. Afterwards, limbs all gelatinous and wobbly, the yogis would rest in Shavasana, the most important part of a yoga practice. Shavasana is a state of total relaxation, where one reaps the benefits of the practice just finished. Sometimes, the instructor would come around with cold wet cloths infused with essential oils and lay them on our hot foreheads.

That studio moved to a larger location and included other kinds of classes as well as cosmetic treatments. I missed the tea bar and the hot room of the other studio and never found my niche at the new one. Yoga is for all ages, but it felt really “young” there. But I did discover a lovely country studio where classes were held in a beautiful all-purpose barn with a massive stone fireplace. It wasn’t hot yoga, but the classes were exactly what I was looking for. The instructor was calm and knowledgeable. She would tie the beauty of nature into her classes, bring us through the changes in the seasons with the flow and the postures. Afterwards, she would serve us tea. She grew the herbs herself and blended them.

Then, the pandemic hit and like everything else, yoga classes disappeared.

My third daughter was visiting and she made a nice yoga space for me down in the basement. I have been going down to stretch and strengthen throughout the pandemic–but I wouldn’t really call it yoga. To me, yoga needs to be “no mind” and all body. If I am directing my own practice, that requires me to think and to plan. This requires an instructor or guide. I end my poses too quickly without someone there to challenge me to hold them for a few moments longer or to fall in a little bit deeper. And naturally, I avoid the difficult poses like “Plank” and “Wild Thing” when there is no one there to suggest I try. Still, the opportunity to stretch and move was a good thing–and Shavasana (the best part) requires no instructor.

Now I have my sixteen-month-old grandson here through the week. He is growing like crazy and I can feel his weight in my aching back long after he has departed for the day. So, it has become more important than ever to stretch and strengthen. However, it is not always possible to slip downstairs to the yoga room. Resolving to make yoga a daily practice no matter what, I have been spreading my mat on the kitchen floor, telling Alexa to play some meditation music and carrying on…as best I can.

If I thought yoga was difficult without an instructor, I have to say “difficult” takes on a whole new level when attempting yoga with a toddler.

I wait until he is occupied with a book or a toy, but he seems to know the very instant my forehead hits the mat. Since my back is the issue, much of my practice takes place in a prone position. He is on me like a wet shirt! His first priority is to mess with my ponytail–a task accomplished with lightning speed, leaving me with hair sticking out and hanging in my face as I try to work through my poses. I am beset with slobbery Mmmm-uhhhh’s as I attempt Bridge Pose. My Downward Dogs often find themselves getting overly familiar pats in the tail area. The last time I attempted kitchen yoga, I let the little stinker have at the pantry nearby. I checked all the lids on my baking supplies first and was quite reassured that a toddler’s little hands would not be able to pry them off. When I completed a Spinal Twist and turned my head to do the other side, he was dancing in a pile of baking powder.

I got the wet rags and wiped up the mess. “Alexa…STOP!” Sitars and chimes just seemed to mock me, and anyway, I had to admit that “Baby Shark” was inevitable.

Needless to say, there is no place for Shavasana in these kitchen sessions, but at least I get a good stretch and a pile of Mmmm-uhhhh’s out of my yoga practices. Honestly, I think goat yoga would be easier.

If you would like to read more by me, I hope you will check out my book Corners now available to order in print and as an eBook!