Reclaiming My Optimism

I’ve been so unhappy for so long that it’s become my natural state. Only it’s not my natural state; it’s just the by-product of a particularly rough patch in this glorious gift of human experience. I have also adapted to it, disliking how I feel yet feeling powerless to change it.

Then one day I realized that I can change it. So I stood up and declared, “I am reclaiming my optimism!”

And nothing happened.

Oh, life continued. It may even have improved, though it wasn’t reflected in my mood. A week passed and I was still miserable. When I asked myself why this was, the answer came pretty quickly:

“Reclaim  is a verb, Ru. You have to do something.”

Oh. Yeah.

Darn.

See, when I’m unhappy, I lack motivation. I want things to right themselves while I loaf around in front of the TV or snooze on the sofa or complain to everyone about everything. Why do I have to make myself feel better when it’s not my fault that I feel crappy?

Well, “reclaim” is a verb. If I have the wherewithal to recognize that I am unhappy, and that I dislike being unhappy, it’s up to me to stop being unhappy.

But how?

Good question. Simple answer.

Gratitude.

I know, I know. If someone had said that to me three weeks ago, I’d have barfed on them. Problem is, it’s true. When all else fails, employ gratitude. I dragged out my old “shoot for the moon” journal, the one I started in 2010 where the last entry was dated 2016, and I started logging things for which I am grateful. I wrote every day, focusing on little things when big things continued to overwhelm, and gradually, I began to feel better. Happier. More hopeful. More empowered. More optimistic. More me.

Miracles happen all the time whether or not I see them, so now I look for them. I may only find one in a day, but at least I’m looking! And, just as negativity gains momentum, positivity does the same.

It’s a process, of course, and some days are still a struggle, but spark by spark, I’m pulling myself out of the dark.

Welcome back, Ru.

With love,

The Year of Being Human

Twelve months ago, Ter and I stood in our kitchen and proclaimed 2018 “the Year of Transition and Change”. She was on the cusp of committing to retire from the public service, my job had settled down after a major shift in program staff, my wee sis and I were planning to visit our brother on Prince Edward Island. There was some concern over a nodule in Mum’s forearm, but the experts were confident—as was she—that it would amount to naught. In all, the new year seemed full of promise and adventure, and we were ready to tackle all the good things we envisioned.

Perhaps we should have been more specific. Perhaps we should have proclaimed 2018 as a year of positive transition and change.

Ter’s intention to cruise into retirement went south when she was called to be shop steward in an ugly harassment case. I lost my office and was moved into a shared space when branch staff expanded beyond the eighth floor’s capacity. Though Mum’s radiation treatment appeared to be a success in February, after a couple of months of normal, she fell ill and died four weeks after Ter’s last day at work. Wee sis and I cancelled our trip to PEI—she had injured her back while helping Dad care for Mum, and quite frankly, the shock was so overwhelming that we reeled through the summer and well into the fall. That’s when our landlord let us know she was thinking to sell the suite. Ter tweaked a muscle in her neck at Thanksgiving and was laid up into November. The Tiguan went into the shop for an expensive overnight service—twice. The postal dispute threatened Christmas delivery of cards and parcels ... and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something in the continuous monsoon of WTF? we endured throughout 2018, but that’s the gist of our Year of Transition and Change.

Keeping the faith was pretty darned challenging during the past twelve months. It’s easy to believe in a loving friendly and generous Universe when all is going smoothly. The tricky part is seeing the light in darkness. The majority of 2018 was, for me, a battle against a pervading sense of loss. Every night, I struggled to maintain my belief in being loved by a higher power, to trust that things happen for a reason, when they are meant to happen, and to know the rest of my life will not be spent gaping into a black hole. The gauge on my power of positivity has hovered perilously close to empty at times. I have cried more in the past months than I have in past years. I have raged at the heavens and thrown up my hands. I have stormed and begged and dug deep to get through the past turbulent, tumultuous, unexpectedly tragic fifty-two weeks.

And yet I have seen miracles. Small ones, to be sure, but miracles nonetheless. I will always remember the preternatural brilliance of the day after my mother died; how sharply defined and brilliantly hued the world appeared through the Ocean Room window. I will cherish forever the kindness and support I was shown by my friends and co-workers, people who rarely see me vulnerable yet rose to the occasion when I could not help myself. Christmas presents appeared from nowhere at the last minute, as did emails from loved ones after long silences. And others, too numerous to name. Feeling my mother’s presence in the room. Ter’s parking karma. Being able to pay cash for Tiggy’s repairs. Having a beautiful place to call home. Laughing with my office roomie, then going for tea with her because we like each other enough to be more than workmates. Hugging my little sister. The list goes on.

Though I almost lost it more than once, I managed to keep my grip on the thread that binds me to divinity. I still believe in something greater than myself, that all-encompassing presence that some call God. In truth, I’m no longer sure what to call it. I just know it’s there, that I am part of it and it is part of me—and of everyone else who is, who was, and who will be. For me, 2018 was all about the human experience and it truly sucked ... but I survived. I’m not through it yet, of course. The calendar doesn’t control time, it merely marks it. By all counts, I am only halfway through the process of reconciling myself to the tectonic changes that occurred in the past twelve months, so the drama ain’t over yet. I am relieved to say, however, that the light is more evident now than it was even three months ago.

It occurred to me on Christmas Eve, the most magical night of the year, that miracles are like stars strewn across a midnight sky:

The longer you spend staring up at them, the more begin to appear, and soon the entire night is bright with light.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Happy New Year.

With love,

Parking Karma

The dumbest place to be midday is at a shopping mall the week after Black Friday. Four weeks before Christmas and you’ll be lucky to escape with your life, let alone score a parking space. There was even a cautionary blurb on the news one night, stating stats around parking lot crashes at this time of year. There is no good will toward anyone when parking is at a premium. I do most of my shopping on weekday breaks; fortunately, I work downtown. I don’t have to go anywhere near a mall to get it done in December.

So why was I sitting in the Tiguan at noon on the last Friday in November? Going to the mall, of course. Aside from the annual holiday hubbub, Ter and I have December birthdays to contend with, which makes errant trips at inconvenient times something of a necessity.

Ter, who was at the wheel, rubbed her hands together and murmured, “Parking karma, parking karma,” beneath her breath. The traffic light turned green. We had to wait while four other cars turned ahead of us, but we cleared the intersection as the light changed to amber. We landed in another turn lane, this one leading onto the rooftop parking at the mall. I observed that people were leaving (good sign) and people were streaming in (bad sign). “No problem,” Ter said, undaunted.

Having surrendered any sort of control over my life the day before—but that’s another story—I took her at her word.

We almost always park on the roof of Toys R Us, but this time that was likely to be impossible. Glancing over the sea of shimmering cartops as we drove into the fray, there seemed little point in going the other way, though I reckoned our chances were better in that direction. Still, Ter followed her usual course, pausing at the end of one aisle to watch a silver Chevy slowly reversing from a space. My burgeoning astonishment at this unforeseen opening was abruptly dashed when Ter serenely drove on. Perhaps she’d spied the grille of a gargantuan SUV aiming for the same space from the far end of the aisle, or maybe imagined the space too tricky to navigate, else she would have gone for it.

She turned down the next aisle instead—a route we never take, incidentally; I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve driven along that short stretch. I looked to the left at a solid line of bumpers. Not much hope here, I thought.

Ter suddenly blurted, “Is that a parking space?”

I was still looking to the left, where a set of hash marks along the food court’s skylight could maybe sorta kinda have been considered a parking space if we didn’t get caught, and was about to say, “I don’t think so,” when I realized Ter was looking past me to the right. There, next to a mall service entrance and practically bathed in celestial sunbeams, was a space big enough to hold a Hummer. And it was empty.

I couldn’t even speak. I just sat with my jaw hanging loose as she nosed the Tiguan into place and cut the engine. “How do you do that?” I finally demanded.

She grinned at me. “Someone just said to me, ‘turn right down here’, so I did.”

“Praise your guy Jesus!” I exclaimed.

This is an exceptional example, but in truth, parking spots happen to Ter all the time. She simply accepts that she’ll find one where and when she needs it—and I rather suspect when she can’t find one, it’s because I’m with her.

Honestly, for someone who steadfastly believes in magic, I’m perennially surprised when it occurs in front of me. Yet miracles happen everywhere and every day; they exist whether or not we see them. We naturally expect to see them more at this time of year than at any other, however, and this one was most definitely a Christmas miracle. The first of many, I hope.

Season’s greetings,

The Line of Fire

alas, not today's - but a reasonable facsimile

I always expect it to rise behind the clouds. A fog advisory is in place this morning, though no fog is in evidence. Ter dropped me in the village on her way to work so I could get my flânerie in early, and as I hiked back the way we’d come, it occurred to me that if I kept straight rather than winding my way through the little side streets, I might reach Dallas Road in time to see the sun come up.

The fog advisory, however, was not issued in vain. A solid bank of steel blue cloud lay thick atop the water, obscuring Port Angeles entirely and allowing the Olympics to play peek-a-boo with their snowy caps. Above the mountains, the sky was smattered with cotton ball clouds of pink, coral, and red. I walked toward the shifting light. The robust red brightened to shades of orange and gold. Though the sun would rise behind the fogbank, the sky above was open so I reckoned I’d actually see it once it hit altitude.

Sunlight, however, is like water. It finds cracks and chinks invisible to the human eye. As I reached Clover Point, the light had intensified enough to convince me that the sun was already up and I stood directly across from where it would peer over the fog. I stopped, faced the bank of cloud separating me from the rising sun, and waited.

Maybe a heartbeat later, a glittering gold spark popped between the ocean and the cloud. My eye dropped to it, my mind surprised into questioning, Is that it? A thin red line leaked outward on either side of the spark, bleeding red against the cloud as if the horizon had been cut. I’ve seen that spark a hundred times by now, yet I stood amazed as it blazed ever brighter then began to fade. I stared until it was swallowed by the fog, then I thanked the universe for the show and continued my walk home.

I kept looking over my shoulder, though, waiting for the topmost arc to breach the cloudbank’s surface, and when it did, the sky turned pure gold. It was gorgeous and miraculous and I am so glad that my wish to catch the sunrise was granted so willingly. Even when I doubted I would get my favourite moment, I got it anyway.

That’s a gift.

Extraordinary Miracles III

“The Concert”

Gee, maybe I am a fan!

Ter and I missed my niece’s wedding reception because we had tickets with our good buddy Treena to see Sarah McLachlan the same night. I have never seen Sarah live, though I have every album except her greatest hits—which, if you want to be literal about it, means that I have her greatest hits, just not on a single disc. I didn’t even realize that I have all her discs. 

How can someone be a fan and not know it until the night before the show? Maybe because I had not been driven to see her live? Not until last spring, anyway, when Shine On was released and I got word of a tour starting in Victoria on October 18. The email notification came and I debated getting tickets. It’s no fun going alone, and Ter isn’t enough of a fan to make me make her go with me. Treena has some of her albums, though, so I thought I’d ask if she wanted to go. Then Ter said she’d come with us just for the joy in watching us see an icon perform live in our hometown. So I got the tickets and put them away until October.

In a day piled high with extraordinary miracles, the concert was the cherry on top. First, the seats turned out to be most excellent – the only three seats in the second row up in the bowl, just shy of right angles to the stage. The set was modeled after a living room, with cozy chairs, carpets, a couch, and hanging lamps reminiscent of Christmas ornaments. At 8:00, a woman who could have been my sister walked on stage and welcomed everyone to the show. She explained the format, the band came on behind her, and this normal, chatty individual instantly morphed into Sarah McLachlan performing Flesh and Blood off the new album. Even then, it didn’t really register that I was watching her play live until the second song, Buildinga Mystery, which is one of my favourite Sarah songs and numbers among her biggest hits. I think it won a Grammy; the album, Surfacing, certainly did. Her voice is so distinct, so unique, that it stands alone among the voices of her generation, but when she’s talking, she sounds like any other Canadian girl and you’d be hard-pressed to believe your eyes when they try to tell your brain that yep, she’s the real deal.

She doesn’t need a band. Her songs are poems set to music; she can sit at a piano and mesmerize you with a range of emotion that defies description. Treena put it best after the show: with almost every song, I thought, oh, my favourite! Until the next song started and I thought, No, this is my favourite! And so on, for almost two hours straight. She broke to invite a few fans on stage and answer questions submitted pre-show from the audience; I swear, it was like spending an evening with my sister. She was warm, funny, generous, honest, powerful and absolutely perfect.

Well, except that she sang one song in the wrong half of the show. She finished The Answer and launched straight into I  Will remember You, which confused her band though they let her go unsupported and joined when they were meant to. We only knew she’d goofed because she apologized to them.

Yep, every song was a gem. Every lyric a poem, every moment a precious reminder that this woman, this singer/songwriter with the angel’s voice, is actually more to me than a mere nice-to-have in my CD collection. She started to sing Fallen and I realized with a jolt that the Afterglow album was the soundtrack for Reijo’s failed first romance, one of the most powerfully painful stories I’ve ever written. The album Fumbling Toward Ecstasy fuelled the relationship between Lucius and his half-sister Fae, particularly the songs Possession, Fear, and the title track. And yes, she performed those songs on Saturday night. I couldn’t believe my luck. She cranked that voice up to an octave undocumented on Fear—the recording of it is unearthly and haunting beyond chills, yet live (and twenty years later), she nailed it. Effing nailed it! I wanted to scream with her, but burst into tears instead.

So embarrassing.

During the intermission, Treena and I decided we had to hit the swag table. This occasion could not pass without acquiring some memento to mark it. She was as blown away as I was and, in a day of mounting miracles, so was Ter. It’s relatively easy to satisfy a fan. To elevate your status in the eyes of a casual awareness takes some talent.

Will I see her again? Dunno. Am I playing her music as I write this? You bet. She is and always will be one of the strongest musical inspirations for my writing. If I had to see her live to realize this, then her work is done. I am a fan, but in this instance I’m a fan for different reasons. I listen to her for pleasure, but mostly, I listen to her music, her lyrics, and her voice, to write my tales of the human heart in all its conflict.

I am in awe. I am inspired. I am grateful.

Extraordinary Miracles II

“The Wedding”

In all honesty, I don’t know my younger older brother’s kids that well, but what I do know of them, I absolutely cherish. His son is a diehard hockey nut with smarts that make my head hurt and who married the sweetest girl on the planet a couple of years ago. It was a summer wedding, held in the garden and celebrated by the entire Greig clan when my older older brother and his wife flew out from PEI to attend with the rest of us. They’re a good match, both Canuck-crazy and now expecting my great-niece/nephew in April.

My niece is an accountant with a personality, which makes her a miracle unto herself. She and her sweetie have been together for longer than most married couples, so when they decided to make it official, I admit to receiving the news with a measure of huh? I’m not a big wedding fan anyway, having attended enough syrupy occasions during my church days to view the ritual with little more than suspicion and, perhaps, on a subconscious level, a culturally Christian-spawned sense of failure for not having starred in my own. But I love my brother and I love his kids, so accepting the invite to his daughter’s wedding was a no-brainer.

I am so glad I did. It was wonderful.

They were married in a movie theatre, of all things. The same movie theatre, I believe, where they had their first date all those eons ago. The ceremony was presided over by the marriage commissioner, a man with the presence of Shakespearean stage actor and a gentle sense of humour. The stage was lit by a trellis made of stage scaffolding and light bulbs, popcorn was provided for the guests, and I have to say, the seats were comfier than the seats at any wedding I’ve previously attended. No cartoon, my father later lamented, but there was a short film that introduced the bridal party beforehand, and the theme to The Princess Bride played as the procession started.

I don’t know where my head was at because I didn’t figure out why my younger older brother was missing until I saw him walking my niece down the aisle. Despite remembering that his wife was mother of the bride, I’d forgotten that he was the father of the bride! I can only imagine the scene before he and his daughter took that walk—I think she’s very much like him, so emotions would be running pretty high. In any event, he handed her to the groom and the ceremony proceeded as written. The wonder came at the end, with the granting of an Apache marriage blessing and the first official introduction of Mr. and Mrs. Green. If I hadn’t known it before, I knew right then that this match is a true one of lasting friendship, love and joy. It was all over their faces, in mixed radiance and relief at having gotten through the vows without blowing their lines. I have never imagined that any member of my family in any situation could even remotely be considered cute, but these two … they’re adorable. I happily hugged him in the receiving line and he murmured, “I’m in,” with such warmth and happiness that I wanted to squeeze the stuffing out of him. “You’ve been in for years,” I replied. “Yes,” he said, grinning, “but now there’s a paper trail.” He’s so cute, and she is just vibrant. How can they be anything but delightful together?

I missed the reception due to a previous commitment, but I’m sure the party was a blast. If the ceremony was any indication, it would have been the best reception I’d ever attended. As it was, I would not have missed their wedding for the world.

And that is no ordinary miracle.

Extraordinary Miracles I

“Ter’s Bracelet”

Every day is filled with ordinary ones. The sun rises, the sun sets. The cycle of nature rotates in perfect harmony with itself. Life is a gift. These things never change. Once in a while, a day of extraordinary miracles will occur.

I had one of those days last Saturday. So much happened that I can’t squeeze it into a single post, so prepare for a three-parter, beginning today with Ter’s bracelet.

She can’t even remember where it came from; she just knows that she loves it. Three years ago, it disappeared between the house and the office. Distraught, she called me at work to say that her bracelet had fallen off her wrist and she couldn’t find it in the car. That evening, we turned the house inside out in search of the silver-chased strand of faux pearl and sapphire. Costume jewelry, but a piece that she wore almost every day. We were in the cottage then, less than 1000 square feet of space, so it should have been easy to find.

It wasn’t. We retraced the steps of her morning routine, to no avail. We scoured the front lawn thinking that it had dropped onto the grass when she walked to the car. It hadn’t—or if it had, someone had picked it up and kept walking. We went through the Tiguan again, looking under seats, ripping up the floor mats, peering into crannies where it might have slipped while she was driving. We even looked in the hatch, which was absurd but that’s what you do when you lose something precious You look everywhere, even where you weren’t, in hope of a miracle. No luck.

Nine months later, we moved from the cottage to where we are now. Surely it would show up as we packed. Maybe the movers would find it. They actually found a $20 bill behind the armoire—we still can’t figure that out—but no bracelet.

It was gone. Vanished. Ter was heartbroken.

So heartbroken that for the next three years, she consistently wondered where it had gone. And every time she thought of it, a little voice told her it was nearby. No matter how often she tried to dismiss the notion, it persisted. Every single time, she would think, what happened to it? and the voice would reply, it will be back.

Impossible. Impossible.

October 18, 2014. My niece’s wedding day. I had decided to wear my tall boots with my outfit, as Ter was borrowing my bootlets for hers. Of course I couldn’t find my tall boots, because I haven’t worn them since we lived on Rockland Avenue four years ago. I only knew that they were stashed with a new pair of runners in a garbage bag in the closet I refer to as “the garage” because it’s stuffed with everything we don’t use, plus five Rubbermaid bins of Christmas frippery. Ter didn’t even remember the bag, so when I couldn’t find it on Friday and asked her if she’d seen it, she actually looked blank. “We’ll find it,” she assured me.

So, on Saturday morning, we opened up the garage and she glanced around at the stacks o’ stuff. I stood in the hall, racking my brain so hard that I started to smell bacon. Ter wasn’t doing anything notable. Frustrated, I was about to say something when she suddenly dropped down and reached beneath the little table her dad had built a gazillion years ago. Rustle, rustle, and voila! She produced the applicable sack of shoes: My tall boots, the new runners and, as an extra added bonus, the snow boots I bought in 2010 and have worn maybe twice since then! I took the dress boots out back to waterproof them (though, miracle number two, the day had dawned sunny and mild opposed to the predicted rain and wind), and dug in to pull out the wooden shoe-shaper thingies the salesman had talked me into buying with them.

The second shoe-shaper thingy had something wrapped around it. What the …? I sat on the back stairs and blurted, “Oh—my—God … Ter, you won’t believe what I just found!”

She thought I’d found a corpse or something, but because I wasn’t freaking out, she arrived curious rather than on red alert. I looked up as she came through the back door and held out the discovered object.

Her faux pearl and sapphire bracelet.

How the heck, you ask, did it wind up in my boot? Ter now remembers raking through the closet that morning. My boots hadn’t been bagged and tagged at that point, and occupied a spot on the shelf beneath the clothesrack. All we can think is that her bracelet had snagged on something and dropped, unbelievably, into the boot beneath it. Not onto the shelf or the floor, but in-to-the-boot. Mr. Spock couldn’t calculate the odds of that happening, the aim and trajectory to make such a perfect drop surely requires more technology than a Vulcan’s über-brain to calculate and yet … Ter’s little voice was right.

It was nearby and it did come back.

We stared at it lying in her palm and I took it as a sign.

The day was about to bloom with miracles.

Miracles From Beyond

I dare you to convince me that people who move on to the next realm have no influence on what happens here after they’ve gone. Take the Billboard Awards on Sunday night. I didn’t see the show because Thrones was on, but I heard about it later. A hologram of our dearly departed Michael Jackson performed a song from his newly-released album live on stage with a dance troupe that blew-my-mind when I saw it on Youtube the next morning. I’m still astonished by the brilliance of it all, of the idea, the technology, and the endless hours of painstaking work that surely went into producing those four magical moments.

Because it is magic. And because it’s magic, you must know that MJ himself would have been all over it—he loved mystery and illusion as much as music, and he used it all to support his genius. He was always pushing the envelope in life, and while it could be argued that he pushed it a tad too far on the budgetary scale, heck, it’s not like he didn’t have the funds to pay for the product. The man knew how to put on a show. And I am utterly convinced that he had a hand in Sunday’s astounding success. He loved to dance, he loved to sing, he loved to perform—there’s nothing creepy about a CGI MJ, not when he would have loved it as much as his audience did. It’s entertainment, and entertaining is what he did best. I just know he was involved from beyond this realm.

This may seem unrelated, but then there’s Marty’s mother. Over in the hockey world, Martin St. Louis of the NY Rangers had to deal with the shock of his mother’s unexpected passing as the Rangers’ series against Pittsburgh went to game 7. NY won the game, the series, and has moved on to play the Montreal Canadiens in the eastern conference semi-final. (For the uninitiated, the winner of this series goes to the Stanley Cup final against the western conference champs.) Between beating the Pens and winning game one against the Habs, Marty and his teammates attended Mme. St. Louis’s funeral, and the emotional outcome of her loss has galvanized the team around her son. No joke, I’m pretty sure that’s why they won the conference semi; not that she pulled any strings from beyond, but because her son suddenly had greater cause to overcome and his buddies rallied to help him. He’s known for his stubborn perseverance anyway; fire the little bugger up and he’ll move mountains.

The primary reason why Montreal remains in the hunt is their goalie—BC’s own Carey Price, who won hockey gold in Sochi and has looked absolutely unflappable so far in the playoffs. With him in the net, the Canadiens beat Boston in their conference series. Boston, the biggest, ugliest, meanest gang of thugs in the league, was beaten by a bunch of speedy sneaky gnats mostly because Price consistently kept the puck from crossing the goal line, sometimes by the thinnest of miraculous margins.

Alas, Price was injured in the first game against the Rangers, who kicked the Habs’ collective butts by an outrageous score of 7-2. And now he’s done for … the … series. I’m sorry, but the conference is suddenly New York’s to lose. With absolutely no disrespect intended, I believe that Marty’s mother is working magic from above. He’ll probably win that Cup ring this year, a bittersweet trophy for sure, and part of me kind of hopes he makes it because in some mysterious manner, he’ll know sa mere was watching and maybe even manipulating the stars a little in his favour. And I’m okay with that, because I’ll know it, too.

So, if you’re looking for evidence of otherworldly influence in our reality, you need look no further than Marty’s mother and Michael Jackson. Though I do wonder why Ter’s dad has been unable to work a similar miracle for the Maple Leafs …