A Mighty Nut

 

The last time an acorn got my full attention, I was seven or eight years old. I disguised one in a wax candy wrapper and presented it to my older sister while she was walking with her schoolfriends. She opened it and Gotcha! I don’t remember if she threw the “candy” at me once she unwrapped it, but she should have done. I was kind of a brat.

That momentous prank occurred in Sorel PQ, where autumn differs vastly from autumn in Victoria BC. Many trees shed leaves out here, but cedars, pines and firs generally dominate the landscape and so do their cones and needles. Horse chestnuts often nail unwitting pedestrians on Cook Street, and I code-named the mystery trees along Bushby Street “cereal trees” for clogging the gutters with a windfall resembling Kellogg’s “Special K”. Victoria is also known for harbouring (or should that be “arboring”?) Garry oaks in sundry locales, but I have never noticed an abundance of acorns in any of the ’hoods I’ve called home.

Until this year. At some point in the last few weeks, acorns have appeared almost everywhere. No street seems exempt. The main drag is choked with them. The parking lot is sticky from acorns crushed beneath car tires. Walking anywhere is chancy when you can’t tell by looking if the shell is soft enough to give underfoot. Some are, many aren’t. No wonder the squirrels around here are so tubby; they can’t possible consume every acorn they see, and storage becomes a problem for everyone once the attic is stuffed.

Now I know why it’s called Oak Bay.

The most memorable card my mother ever gave me was very simple. On the front, a watercolour sketch of an acorn and encouragement to stand firm. “Remember,” the message read inside, “each mighty oak was once a nut that stood its ground.”

Mum was a riot.

All For Not

Forget-me -uh ...

I’ve been told that the English language is loaded with more potential for negative connotation than any other language in the spoken world. This may be true – the info is unconfirmed because I’m too lazy to conduct real research but I trust my nerdy friend to get at least some of it right. I am also familiar with the phrase “we have no word in (insert language here) for that”, which seems to apply during foreign translations to equally foreign English. That could be considered ironic, given that English has been cobbled together from numerous other languages over millennia. Humans being human, however, I imagine backhanded compliments are frequently delivered in a myriad of native tongues all around the world.

The first of Don Miguel Ruiz’s “Four Agreements” is (paraphrasing) “Be impeccable with your word.” My interpretation is to mean what you say, say what you mean, but be mindful of how it sounds, i.e., be positive where possible. And it’s usually possible. I’ve never been more aware of this since a colleague in the Before Time responded to my water cooler rant with a confused, “There were so many double negatives in there that I lost your point.”

“Double negative?” I’m still unsure how to define one (or is it two?) Now I just try to avoid the word “not”. It’s a fun experiment, actually. Try it! You’ll be amazed at how often you use it even when you intend to sound positive.

Granted, the search for positive alternatives can get silly. One of my favourites? Referring to weakness as undeveloped strength. In context, I get it – humans tend to judge themselves – and each other – harshly. So-called “negative” words take on a whole new destructive meaning where self-esteem is involved. An undeveloped strength is a more hopeful trait than a weakness, a word which is likelier to discourage rather than encourage improvement. And we all want to do better … I hope.

And I have yet to figure this one out: the Universe is allegedly unable to hear the word “not” so when it hears us saying what we don’t want, it gets the reverse message. Saying “I don’t want broccoli for dinner” results in the Universe lovingly bestowing broccoli for dinner. It could be so, I suppose, though I tend to believe that the universe responds to the feeling rather than the phrasing. Everything is some form of energy, words included, but the statement of a single word – in English, no less – missing from the all-knowing Almighty’s vocabulary seems highly suspect.

If you’re still with me and wondering where this is going, thank you and I have no idea. I thought I knew when I started the post, but apparently a point can be lost even without the double negatives.

*sigh*

Flim Flânerie

 

Last week I decided to play “left right” on my afternoon walk. The premise is simple: walk a bit, then turn at the first right. Then turn at the first left. Turn at the next right, next left, and so on, until you’re done. I intended to play it for a half-hour, but my route got out of hand.

The number of dead end streets in Oak Bay is astounding. The area is riddled with narrow lanes and crooked offshoots that lead to gated driveways if you ignore the “no exit” signs – I discovered this when daring to approach a grand old house at what I thought was the end of the road but actually wasn’t. The pavement wound past the house and up the hill, where it forked in two directions, each of which led to an aforementioned driveway. So I trekked back down the hill and resumed my walk along a known through road – but that was on a different flânerie.

This one involved passing no fewer than three “no exit” signs before I got to a sort-of main road, where I turned left. I walked past grand old houses and gorgeous gardens in search of a right turn It took a while. By the time I finally got to one, I was flagging pretty good and still had to get home. So I turned left instead.

I walked a bit then turned left again, on to what I thought would be a shortcut because there was no “no exit” sign but was in fact a cul-de-sac bordering a tiny park with a creek running through it. I recognized the creek and decided to follow it west, toward the avenue and home. I heard voices ahead, lots of them. Kids’ voices. The path trickled through a scrim of trees and I found myself on a running track behind a school. I had no idea which school; there isn’t one near my place.

But there is one – two, actually – at the main intersection a significant distance from home. The rec centre is also near that intersection, and that is where the kids’ voices were coming from. I had somehow made my way around a hella long loop and come out further north than west.

And, since I had left both my phone and my limo pass at home, I had to walk the whole way back. Which I did, and happily, but no wonder Ter looked at me when I came in and said, “I was about to send out a search party.”

Just when you think you know where you’re going …

When Life Gives You Lemons …

… eat ice cream!

My introduction to lemon ice cream – real ice cream, not sorbet – happened at Vancouver’s Pacific Centre Mall in 1985. Ter and I were over for yet another rock concert and always spent time shopping whenever we were in the city. It was also our first encounter with a Baskin-Robbins outlet. Never had we seen such a variety of flavours in one freezer. The options are countless these days, but back then, choosing from 31 was mind-boggling. I don’t recall what Ter picked, but they had me at “Lemon Mousse”.

It was creamy and sweet and tart and I’ve always remembered it. Perhaps memory has embellished the delight in taste and texture, but no matter. It took decades for me to find another ice cream joint that featured lemon anything other than sorbet. Not that I have anything against dairy-free, but that B-R Lemon Mousse was unlike anything I had ever tasted. I never got past it.

Artisan ice cream shops are ubiquitous forty years later. I have steered clear of dairy for some years on account of arthritic flares, but I have consumed more ice cream in the last two months than I’ve eaten in decades. The summer’s been hot, I’ve been happy, and exploring the neighbourhood has revealed an alarming number of small-batch retailers in dangerous proximity, each of which features a unique spin on lemon ice cream.

Better Acres “Italian Lemon” set the bar last year. Then I discovered Parachute’s “Lemon Cream” this summer. Last week, I happened on 49 Below’s “Lemon Swirl” and I am here to tell you that one knocked the others out of the park. I’d never have gotten through the ridiculously misnamed single scoop without Ter’s help – it was huge – and once the burn wore off, my tongue hurt like it had been sandpapered but, oh man, was it worth it!

Best of all? They sell it by the pint! And online! Click!

Fresh Start

Last year I decided I wanted to live in Sidney. A lot of change was happening at the time – I had also decided to retire and moving from Esquimalt was becoming imperative (but that’s another post). I wanted to start my new life in a new home in a new community where my old routine had never been and therefore establishing a new one would be easier. I envisioned a slower pace, taking long walks along the water, hanging out at a café with a chai and my book or journal or card tag, baking cookies, rebooting my library card … Basically letting life happen at my speed rather than struggling to keep up with it.

Sidney seemed a perfect choice. It was different without being unfamiliar, close enough to town without being in town and far enough from town to be somewhere else. The “somewhere else” is key.

Turns out I actually wanted to escape. I wanted to put distance between me and my past life, which was a good life but a demanding one. I was buckling under the stress of carrying on with limited Ru time – my self-care practices were aimed solely at surviving and, as Star Trek TNG noted, “survival is insufficient.” Retiring from the public service was one thing, but I also felt the pressure of staying in touch when I really wanted to go dark.

And Ter and I absolutely had to get out of our living situation. She was at her wits’ end coping with the troll above us and I was losing my mind trying to compensate. But that’s another post. Maybe.

Decision made, we proceeded to scout possibilities in Sidney. Weekend road trips were inconclusive. If we were looking for a definitive yea or nay from the Universe, it wasn’t coming. Vacancies were scarce and the rents as ridiculous as they are in town. We had a few pleasant visits – it’s a tourist town and folks are friendlier than in Victoria, plus the bakeries are notoriously good – but as the summer wore on, it seemed less and less plausible that we’d find a place to call home.

Then, waking up one Friday morning, in the 17 seconds of neutral space before my mind kicked in, I distinctly heard the words “Oak Bay.” Oak Bay? Yeah, right. Oak Bay is the one part of town we couldn’t afford and therefore hadn’t considered when discussing possibilities. Yes, we love the area. It was a favourite haunt when we were at Rockland and in Fairfield, but it’s Oak-frigging-Bay. Land of the whining rich, the privileged few, the upper tax bracket. It wasn’t, well, possible.

But the Universe knows better than I do, and I know enough to pay attention when I think I hear something. I also know to bounce these things off Ter before I dismiss them. So I mentioned this to her, whereupon she confessed she was okay with Sidney but would really rather stay in town. In fact, she’d become more nostalgic about the area since we – I – had decided to leave it. That was my second hint.

The following Monday I started looking and immediately saw a listing for a 2-bedroom flat in Oak Bay that we could actually afford. It was an older building, circa 1969, and we’ve always shied from cookie-cutter situations, but I told Ter about it anyway, figuring she’d dismiss it sight unseen.

She didn’t. In fact, her little voice warned against dismissing it. Long story short, after a series of minor miracles that propelled us forward, we arranged a viewing, went to see it and signed a lease the next week. We moved in on June 12, six months to the day from my last day at work in December, and while it doesn’t really look like what we envisioned, it certainly feels like it. There is no doubt it’s where we are meant to be. In fact, it recently occurred to me that it is exactly what I asked for: north and east facing, lots of light, right on the main drag, walking distance to everything … pretty much what I imagined in Sidney, only not in Sidney.

It's home.

64

 

It doesn’t feel like it looks. It doesn’t look like it feels, either. I wonder what the Beatles envisioned when they wrote “When I’m 64.” I wonder what the next generation sees when they look at me. Do I look like an old lady?

I’ve joked about having the body of a 70-year-old for most of my life but my face is catching up. It’s not there yet – I’m only 64 – but now I get what Mum meant when she said she’d wake up feeling 28 and “get an awfy surprise” when she looked in the mirror. I suspect it depended on the day: some days I feel pretty good and look it, but if I’m stressed or tired, yup, it shows. “More wrinkly about the face,” as the Leppard King once put it. Meh. It happens to everyone and I’d rather age out gracefully than bolt for the Botox and end up looking like Barbie with a turkey neck. I’ve always said I don’t care what it looks like so long as it works, and bless the old bones, my compostable container is hanging in there. She’s all stock except for two finger joints and her back teeth. She still has the extraneous parts like tonsils, gall bladder and appendix. She’s even got me through menopause without help. It’s been a fun ride for sure, but at least I’ve avoided the side effects. 

So, here I am. 64 and counting. Since this time last year, I have officially retired and am on a fixed income. I have a part time gig managing the social media posts for a local author who happens to be the same boss I had when I wrangled numbers for a living. Ter and I are back on the east side of the bridge and happy as clams in our new/old ’hood. Life is finally moving at a pace I can match, and if I happen to wake up feeling less motivated than usual, I am free to spend a day on the couch with a book and a bag of chips. I gotta admit, it’s pretty darned sweet. 

My trippy hippy attitude has taken a beating but through it all, I acknowledge the Universe’s assistance in providing everything I needed – and need – to keep going. Life is not meant to be easy and trust me, it hasn’t been easy since 2018. I’m not whining, I’m just speaking my truth. I’m not alone in the struggle to make sense of it all, to overcome the obstacles and find ways to maintain some sort of balance in this increasingly unbalanced world. Everyone struggles. We have different challenges, of course, none more or less than anyone else’s – it’s relative. On the night before my surgery to replace those two finger joints, I recall my dad telling me it wasn’t that big a deal compared to other people’s lives. I replied, “Maybe so, but it’s the biggest thing in my life right now.” The wisdom of an eighteen-year-old, perhaps, but the sentiment holds true considering how no one is given more than they can handle. I can handle a lot – but could I handle living in a war zone or an abusive relationship? Could I endure not having “enough” – food, shelter, income, etc.? I’m singularly grateful that the Universe thinks not! 

I hope it continues to think that way. I kinda feel like it might, for a while anyway. It’s strange. I’m on the threshold of a whole new phase in life and unsure how to manage it. I’m excited to embrace whatever comes, trusting as ever that I will be sustained through whatever awaits, but I dunno. When I was younger, I figured when I reached this age I’d have seen it all. Now I’m here and it feels like I haven’t seen anything! 

Well, as my favourite Bachman-Turner Overdrive song says, “Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet!” 

Happy birthday, Ru. With love,

63

Early last week I realized that I am not – and maybe never have been – wild about my birthday. Anyone whose natal anniversary comes this close to a new school year can probably relate. I didn’t dislike school; it was just hard to fit in, and once my bones crashed the party, being a teenager got significantly harder. We also moved around a lot, so I was often the new kid in class ... but this post isn’t about school. It’s about accepting a truth formed over sixty-two years and only acknowledged in my sixty-third.

I have patchwork memories of birthdays past. Some were good, a few were great, and many were anticipated with more anxiety than excitement. A couple were so crushing that I recall them in more precise detail than I do the most-excellent ones outnumbering them. When contemplating the inevitable occasion a week ago, I felt like my birthday has historically been more stress than celebration, and I wanted to forget the whole thing forevermore.

Then the modem at home crapped out and I had to work at the office for five days straight. I was already compromised by a week of bad technology karma, so losing the wifi was a grandiose WTF? Thinking of my birthday on top of that just made me crabbier. And I mean crabbier.

I can’t tell if it’s a blessing or a curse that the people I work with are amused by my moods. They certainly aren’t daunted, although they are quick to respect when I answer “How are you, Ru?” with a warning to approach with caution. Last Monday I ranted freely about my wifi woes, to which none of them were genuinely sympathetic, as apparently a whole week of my on-site presence is a perceived win (should have been my first hint).

When I arrived at the office on Tuesday, a bunch of balloons was tangled in the tree outside my window. Our office is next door to a hotel and three different, um, drinking establishments, so, obviously the balloons had somehow got loose from their original owner the previous night ... but for them to end up outside my window when I’m flanked by glass on either side seemed like a pre-birthday sign from the Universe. I definitely felt the love, which was rather humbling considering my attitude.

Throughout the week, my peeps made frequent reference to my approaching happy day, which I was actually dreading though it would have been mean to say so. And on the last workday before my birthday, I walked into a fully decorated office, down to the tiny party hats made for each of my critters. My morning chai was bought for me, our executive director brought me flowers, everyone on the headquarters roster had signed a birthday card, and once our office manager arrived (coming in specially on a vacation day), she brought a black forest cake and led the team in a round of “Happy Birthday to Ru”. We partied and laughed and hugged and got a little work done ahead of my birthday long weekend.

How could anyone stay miserable in the face of so much love? Not me, that’s for sure. And on the home front, the technician from Rogering Shaw got us back online with a new modem to replace the dud they’d sent us a week earlier (but that’s another post). By the end of the week, my treed balloons were wimpy and shrivelled ... and so was I.

My attitude had to change after all that. And it did. I’d been so fraught with anxiety and, yes, feeling unworthy, that I almost denied myself the joy of being loved by people I love. They might not be family, yet they mean as much to me as any blood relation – and I mean as much to them. Today (the 2^nd), I’ve been inundated with texts and emails, and Ter has been her usual over-the-top generous self. I’d say I’m luckier than I deserve, but that might send the wrong message to a Universe that exists to give back what I put out.

As I wrote in my note to the HQ folks who signed my card, thanks to them, I’ve decided my birthday is okay after all. The only ones I’ll dislike now are the ones that make me older.

Happy birthday, Ru. You are so very loved.