All in Good Time

 

This happens to me a lot.

The alarm wakes me up at crap o’clock. I lie half-asleep, thinking dark thoughts until muscle memory animates my body and I find myself sitting upright in bed. From there I shuffle into the bathroom and bumble through my morning ablutions, then stare at my closet until some sort of business casual ensemble jumps out at me. It’s a struggle getting into my pants one leg at a time, but I make it. Bling is then coordinated—earrings and pendant, maybe a nifty scarf to complement the fake gems in my studs. Pulled together and starting to wake up, I go to the bedroom door, open it—

—and the alarm wakes me up. It’s crap o’clock and I’m still lying in bed. I’ve dreamed the whole thing, and the first word to mind is a naughty one.

Sound familiar?

Years ago during coffee at the Wall, Boy Sister announced that he’d had a idea but couldn’t remember it. Then he wondered where ideas go when you forget them. My wee sister suggested that, in a parallel Universe, a light bulb had just gone on above his alternate self’s head so it wasn’t really gone, it had just skipped dimensions. Pretty heavy talk for my wee sister, by the way, but maybe she was on to something. Quantum mechanics, you know.

A thought is made up of energy. When a thought is acted upon, the energy of the thought becomes matter and therefore subject to the rules of time and space in this dimension. In my imagination, I’m already up and dressed. In reality, I have to haul myself out of bed and go through the motions, which takes time and (monumental) effort. Still, it’s the price of admission to this estate. Nothing happens instantly in the third dimension. Thoughts do, of course. Thoughts are easy. They pop into being without, well, a second thought. Wishes, dreams, intentions—they’re all energy. Each may be made manifest given physical time and space.

Or not. What we envision isn’t always what’s best for us, and the Universe only coughs up what we need to gain experience. It doesn’t always look like what we intended, though in retrospect it can often be seen to fit the original idea. It may take years before you realize that something happening now is actually something you thought of way back when. And then there are times when something you think becomes real within days, maybe hours, of you thinking it.

The point of all this, you ask? Patience, Grasshopper. All in good time ...

Gardening

 

When Ter and I lived on Rockland Avenue, our little deck between the gables was bright with baskets of fuchsias, pots of pansies, and assorted other vessels containing greenery of some ilk. One year, pepper, tomato and strawberry plants jostled for position with the petunias, azaleas and marigolds. The yield wasn’t great, though what fruit we did get was delicious beyond description, and my lasting memory is of fighting to remove the strawberry plant at the end of its season. The thing had sent runners beneath the planks of the deck and what looked like errant strands of twine actually possessed greater strength than a pair of human hands; alas, we resorted to shears when pride was on the line.

I say “we.” I mean “Ter.” Gardening is a spectator sport for me, but she helped her dad grow veggies in the back forty when she was a little girl. And she enjoyed it! So the Rockland rooftop garden was her doing. As has been my habit from the start of our relationship, I merely enjoyed the fruits of her labour.

Genetics can’t play that big a role in the colour of one’s thumb, however. My wee sister would have a garden to rival Buchart’s if she had the time and energy. She once told me that she enjoys planting random things just to see what pops up, and last spring she created a box garden to grow her own vegetables. I can’t imagine where that impulse comes from. As far as I know, none my other sibs are horticulturists, and the family front yard was rarely more than mowed. I think Mum might have done more, but she had her hands full with everything else domestic, and Dad was not at all interested.

It seems Ter and I have each followed our fathers’ examples. I can’t be bothered to water one indoor plant let alone a bunch of them, yet any time we’ve been house-hunting, she’s hoped for a balcony or a little corner in the yard where she can tend a few herbs and flowers.

I am happy to report that—ta da!—we now have a balcony! It’s not a big one, but Ter has kept it vibrant with a variety of plants that gets switched out as the seasons change. She’s out there every day, watering the tomatoes, trimming the mint, and deadheading the pansies. As one flower fades, she brings another home to replace it. She’s never happier than when she’s puttering with her ... I want to say “pot” garden, but in BC that means something entirely different.

Let’s go with “container.”

Stuff It

I love single servings!

When I was a kid, the only time Mum cooked a turkey was at Christmas. That means we had stuffing once a year, and I’m here to tell you, though Mum cooked a beauty every time that I remember, the bird was not the star of the family holiday feast. Mum didn’t go in for the homemade sausage/cranberry/chestnut/kitchen sink dressing; for expediency’s sake she knocked out a box of Stove Top and we were fine with it.

“Stove Top or potatoes?” The answer was a no brainer in our house:

Both!

However, if forced at gunpoint to choose one over the other, my younger younger brother once said he’d be content with a bowl of stuffing and gravy—and I completely, heartily, vehemently agree. And while one might argue that a boxed stuffing mix is cheating, you can’t really call it substandard because the bread should be a little stale anyway and most of the herbs in a homemade version are as dry as they are in the commercial product. Fresh herbs just don’t pack the same punch; not in stuffing, anyway.

Mind you, my older sister made a batch from scratch at Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, and I would have devoured the whole pan except there were seven other people at the table and it would have been rude not to share.

So this weekend, Ter was debating about veggies to go with our Easter dinner. “You’re doing sprouts, right?” I asked, because we love Brussels sprouts and apparently can’t have them too often.

“Oh yeah,” she concurred, “but instead of carrot/turnip mash, I’ve got a couple of squash that I haven’t used, so maybe the acorn ...?”

That’s a lot of cooking and I try to spare her where I can. “I’ll forfeit the mashed potatoes for squash,” I said.

She knows I’ve never met a spud I haven’t liked, so she was sufficiently dubious. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Because it’s really all about the stuffing.”

Stuffing with gravy, sprouts, squash, and a side of turkey.

Happy Easter.

Pas des Deuce

Best in Show IMHO

When they were last here, I only got a few photos before the batteries in the Canon croaked.

This year, I was aware when the deuces rolled into town; even if I hadn’t caught a clip on the evening news, I couldn’t miss the roar of the engines or the slew of candy-coloured paint jobs cruising up and down the main drag at the end of the workweek. Boy Sister and I sat outside the Blanshard Street Starbucks and watched them trickle through the intersection, unable to blend into traffic because they are made to stand out. He got some great snaps of rear bumpers and front fenders, or whole delivery vans and local SUVs – taking pictures of a moving target takes some practice and more time than we had on our lunch break.

They also rumbled along the road outside my living room window. I spent Friday evening deuce-watching from the sofa, gleefully noting that the event known as Northwest Deuce Days brings a plethora of restored classics out of the garage. So much chrome, so many brilliant shades of wow! ... and the sound! That glorious, deep, rich, beautiful baritone grumbling purring roaring bellowing sound! No earplugs, please – if I’m going to lose my hearing, let it be to a vintage rod.

It’s the best weekend of the year.

On Saturday morning, I made sure the Canon was juiced for the deuce and took it over to Clover Point for the Poker Run parade. I found a plum spot at the crest of the hill and started snapping. Sure, I got my share of back ends and front bumpers, but eventually I got the hang of when to press the button. I came away with 55 photos worth keeping.

I may have deleted a few more than that, but my favourite rods stayed within the frame:

And when all was said and done, I would have taken this one home:

I know. Sue me.

Mercury in Retrograde

Though I am a Queen fan, I don’t consider myself to be a Queen fan. Not truly; not like someone who has followed the band from the beginning and has every album they ever made. Nope, I’m what’s known as a casual fan. Queen is featured on my life’s soundtrack, but not the way Duran Duran or Def Leppard are. Queen were red hot when I was a pre-teen, so of course I knew of them. I just didn’t know about them.

My older sister introduced me to them simply by asking one night in 1973 if I’d heard the song with the opera chops on our Top 40 radio station. I hadn’t, but since I shared a room with both sisters and my elder tended to switch on the radio when she came to bed after the wee ʼun and me, it was inevitable that I would hear “Bohemian Rhapsody”.

It took me years to figure out that the band responsible for those opera chops was the same band who’d done “Killer Queen” (which I actually liked better), and whose name was—huh?—Queen. They were strange and wonderful and Elton John was my favourite artist at the time, so while I couldn’t help but be aware of Queen, I owned none of their albums and bought none of their singles. I just liked it when I heard them on the radio.

“Somebody to Love”

“You’re My Best Friend”

“Bicycle Race”

Freddie Mercury’s voice was captivating in that one-in-a-million manner; you knew it when you heard it, and the things he did with it were remarkable. I had no idea what he or his colleagues looked like because rock videos as we know them didn’t exist in the 1970s. I only knew their sound. Since I was a kid who collected Elton and America albums, over-overdubbed Queen was apparently not going to win space in my record collection.

Which was okay. I had to mature before I could fully appreciate the intricacies and nuances of both the music and the vocals. Maybe they had to strip their sound, too, because the first Queen album I bought was The Game, featuring lots of bass and Freddie’s off the cuff delivery of “Another One Bites the Dust”. Then, the 80s happened. I became a young adult as Queen’s star began its descent, due in part (so legend has it) to the video for “I Want to Break Free” but probably more because they were an older band and the new wave was happening.

That’s why I didn’t take particular notice of their iconic Live Aid performance on July 13, 1985: I was waiting to see Duran Duran. When I heard a few years later that Freddie was ill, I was saddened by the prospect of the world losing such a charismatic talent. Freddie was more than a rock singer. He was a rock star.

When he died in 1991, I fell in line with industry marketing and bought up the collections. Classic Queen I, Classic Queen II, Queen’s Greatest Hits – and the utterly fabulous, my hands-down favourite, Innuendo. I guess when he learned his time was limited, Fred threw himself into recording as many tracks as he could, and he didn’t hold back. His work on that album is wrenching. Powerful. Tender. Funny. Courageous. Wistful.

Magical.

It seems timely to say all this now, after the much-hyped movie’s success and the Academy Award going to the actor who portrayed him in it. I may not have been present in Queen’s heyday, but I’m grateful for the technological marvels that enable me to catch up on what I missed the first, and even the second, time around. Thanks to Bohemian Rhapsody and Rami Malek’s stunning performance, Queen and Freddie Mercury have come around again.

Long—live—Queen.

The Red Bag of Courage

It’s my favourite colour. The colour of passion, of life, of rage and the root chakra. Its palette ranges from shell pink to cabernet, but my favourite hue lies somewhere between crimson and garnet; a rich, sanguine, luscious red, deeper than ruby but brighter then blood.

While my hair was dyed fire engine red for years, I was not self-conscious about it, probably because I was standing underneath it and couldn’t see myself coming from half a block away. It never occurred that I might be brave to be so bold. I literally didn’t see it except in the mirror, and even then, my stylist is so adept at her art that the colour was stunning, never shocking.

I admire women who wear red, especially in coats, hats and/or shoes. My older sister has a red wool coat that looks absolutely awesome, but when I remarked on how cool she looked walking up the street, she replied that she felt like she was screaming for attention – something no one in my family (my hair antics notwithstanding) ever does deliberately. I assured her that she wasn’t as loud as she feared, it was the proximity to herself that lent the illusion. The same thing happens when I wear my Flyers jersey: no logo is larger than the one on my chest.

This past weekend, my sisters and I convened to sort through our dear mother’s clothes. Mum was always well-dressed, accenting a neutral outfit with a flashy scarf, a bit of bling, or a pretty cardigan. She wore lots of blue and green, cream and taupe. No black. No grey. Her cardies were mostly floral prints. There was not a lot of red in her wardrobe—yet she accessorized with it brilliantly.

A scarlet car coat hung in her closet. I pinched her crimson pashmina. My wee sis opened one of a dozen (I kid you not) shoeboxes and exclaimed, “Her Christmas shoes!”, a pair of low heeled pumps as red as the slippers of Oz. Mum wore them during the holidays. And then, the purse. The cavernous, multi-pocketed satchel that she carried with her on many a lunch date with Ter and me over the years. It’s red. Cardinal red. I’d have claimed it on the spot but didn’t, not because it’s neon bright, but because it’s far bigger than any bag I ever intend to carry. It’ll be a splendid addition to someone’s collection, though. Someone with the spot-on fashion sense my mother had.

At the end of the day, surrounded by boxes stuffed with sweaters, scarves and shoes, we reminisced with wonder about Mum’s style and my older sister observed, “She wasn’t afraid of colour.”

Mum was right. Be bold. Be brave. Wear red—and if you can’t wear it, accessorize!

Pay No Mind

As I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I am not making the same one again this year. I am not promising to write more. I do not resolve to clear my mind and let the Muse do her thing; I will not try harder to be creative and I do not promise to finish any of the projects that have sat half done for the past xxx years.

Xxx years? Really? Augh. And I call myself a writer?

Well, yeah. I do. I just don’t call myself a prolific one.

In keeping with my ritual of non-resolution, I don’t plan to change my status and become more prolific. I haven’t spent any time perusing incomplete stories with an eye to changing their status, either. Yet one has begun to resume forward motion. I had stalled, as usual, when my head got, well, ahead of me ... and the quote above this post came at the best possible time.

Now I have something new to practice: cultivating no mind. Thinking is okay, but doing too much of it is not my friend. It’s not conducive to art of any ilk. Or to life, when it comes to that. How often do you change your mind before choosing something at random off a menu? How many playlists do you agonize over before picking one just to make it stop? Do you ever wear what you planned to wear? I admit to a perverse pleasure in anticipating my drink for Thursday cafe with wee sis and boy sister, but even then, I’ve been known to toss my plan out the window when I get to the counter. (Okay, that’s mostly to throw the barista, who prides himself on knowing his customers’ “usual”.)

One week into the new year and my non-resolution is already in danger of being broken. The story I mentioned is almost done. Once I gave it some serious attention (not thought), it started to write itself and now I know how it ends. I just have to write myself there.

Never mind.

Piercing

Wee Sis holding me together - I couldn't stop laughing

The hardest part of dressing for work is figuring out what earrings to wear, then allowing for time to separate the winners from their fellows. When I was a kid, I had no inclination whatsoever to get my ears pierced; neither my mother nor my older sister had theirs done ... but my wee sister was different.

She had hers done at sixteen. I think it gave her something of her own, something that wasn’t emulating either of her older sisters. Of Dad’s three girls, she played more with makeup and was constantly rearranging her room—if anyone in the clan could have been an artist or an interior designer, it’s my little sister. She has the eye for it. She’s also responsible for my daily bling dilemma. She’s the reason why I got my ears pierced.

She won’t remember it this way, but here’s my story and I’m sticking to it:

I was nineteen and had a summer job with the CNIB, so it must have been 1981. One day wee sis met me at noon and we went somewhere for eats. I don’t remember where or what, but it was fast enough that we were left with a half hour before I had to get back to the office. She looked at me and asked, “What do we want to do until then?”

“Let’s get my ears pierced,” I replied.

I was joking, but when she lit up and said, “Okay!” I was—gak!—committed. We have always loved each other, but we could be brutal when we were younger, and if I chickened out, I’d never hear the end of it. Actually, that may yet be the case in some circumstances. Anyway, we got into the car (she was already driving; I had yet to get my license) and headed to the shop where her ears had been pierced a year or so earlier.

The place was empty. No customers and, better yet, no staff. To impress wee sis with my pseudo-sincerity, I made a point of perusing the merchandise as if contemplating my first purchase. In truth, I was counting the seconds in hope of escaping with my lobes intact. I almost made it, too. I was about to suggest that time was running short when the clerk appeared like a phantom menace and asked if we needed help.

I opened my mouth to say, “No, thanks.”

The words never left my lips. Wee sister took me by the shoulders, turned me to face the salesperson, and said, “My sister wants to get her ears pierced.” She gave me a little shove for emphasis and I was officially doomed.

I vaguely remember hyperventilating in front of a mirror while the clerk drew dots on my earlobes and my sister watched from a strategic spot near the door, no doubt in case I decided to make a run for it. Make a run for it? I could barely breathe, let alone make my limbs work. I closed my eyes as the loaded stapler hovered near my right ear. A sharp pop!, and warming blood rushed to the offended lobe. A few seconds later, the entire deed was done. As we walked back to the car, my little sister put her arm around my shoulders and declared, “I’m so proud of you!”

So tomorrow morning, when I’m pawing through my tangled box of studs and snarled hoops, I will remind myself of those precious words and how good it made me feel to hear them.

Impressing your older sister can be tricky enough. Impressing your younger sister? Now that’s a coup!

Love you, wee ’un.

Lemons

When someone’s life goes sour, I’m the first one to spout a platitude. When it’s my life, I’m the first one to want to clock the first one to spout a platitude.

Like this oldie but goodie: “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

If all had gone to plan, this weekend my wee sister and I would have been halfway through visiting our older older brother on Prince Edward Island, and today I’d have been on an in-person artist date with Nicole. Alas, life had another plan that, by ripple effect, changed the original plan, plus a couple of others.

I spent the summer mourning my “sister trip” as well as my mother, and even though the flights were fully refunded, having to do it still hurt. It also gave me a different song to sing when I tired of lamenting Mum. There were a few tracks on the “2018 Summer Sucks” EP, and I played that baby thin. I may even have incurred an eyeroll or two by writing this post, but stick with me – it gets brighter at the end.

It may be human to cry for what might have been, but it’s also terribly unproductive. “What might have been” is as unreal as what once was; all we truly have is Right Now. And while in the Now, even what seems real is merely transient. Sadness is as fleeting as happiness if you choose to make it so. Denying what we feel in a given moment doesn’t make it go away – in fact, it’s more likely to come out sideways when we’re not looking – so by all means, take that moment and relish it. We’re here to experience contrast; however, it’s equally important to remember that we can change how we feel, good or bad, according to how we want to feel.

I didn’t know it before, but I know it now: I don’t like grief. While it’s necessary to the human condition, it’s no fun at all and eventually I got tired of it. I slowly started thinking about other things. Happier things. Creative things. I love and miss Mum no less, yet now that I’m facing the sun again, she’s even more present in my awareness. (How can she be gone and still be present? Only the Universe knows for sure!)

You rarely nail the recipe on the first go; you gotta keep tasting the lemons to get the sweetness right – and while some folks just plain like their lemonade on the sour side, others have no idea that adding the sugar is up to them. Henry David Thoreau said, and I’m paraphrasing as usual, it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

I hated that wee sis and I had to postpone our trip. I hated the reason more, of course, but we certainly haven’t cancelled it. We’ve simply changed the dates.

So Thoreau was right. It’s about perspective. And when you get right down to it, you can’t make lemonade without those darned lemons.

Soul Mates

Many years ago, I took one of those silly quizzes that asked me to name five people who were important to me. They had to be people I knew, i.e., no rock stars or favourite authors. I didn’t want to think too much, as overthinking can mess with the results, so I followed my instinct and wrote down five names.

Ter was one of them.

The next task was to assign a colour to each name. Again, without thinking too much, I pictured each person and let the colour assign itself.

Ter’s was white.

In the end, the colour was said to determine what role each person played in my life. One of them was an outright WTF? and I don’t remember the other three—but I have always remembered Ter’s because white meant “soul mate”.

Well, duh. If course she was—and is, and always will be. She and I are irrevocably linked and likely have been so since before The Big Bang. We will likely be so into however many futures are left to us, until we say “enough already!” and move onto our next gigs as technicians, planners or spirit guides—whatever other employment opportunities exist in the Great Beyond.

Even then, we’ll always be friends. Sisters. Soul sisters and soul mates. I can’t imagine any life without her, and I’m fine with that. I’ve never been so fine about anything, in fact. She is simply as vital to my survival as air, though I won’t take her for granted until I can’t breathe anymore. Nope, she’s a part of me and I’m a part of her and there you go.

We have this limiting misconception that a soul mate must be the one you marry. I could very well be wrong, but I only know one couple where that seems to be true. I know of many more folks who thought they’d married their soul mate, then met someone else and immediately gone, oops. Serial weddings ensue as romantic misconception reigns, but here’s the kick: A soul mate can be anything in one’s life—not necessarily a spouse, but a friend, a sibling, a co-worker, a neighbour, a poet (*waves at Beanie*), a healer or a hairdresser or a barista. It can even be—get this—your arch nemesis. Yes, Virginia, your worst enemy may very well be your soul mate. After all, lessons are to be learned, and who better to teach them than a soul who has known yours from the dawn of Time?

There is a theory that suggests we exist in “soul groups”. This is especially plausible if you believe in reincarnation or parallel lives, or any of the other trippy hippy alternatives I’ve encountered during the past few years. Everyone in this group can be considered a soul mate. This explains why I feel more connected to a select few than I do for the entire cast of characters I will meet in this life. These are the people with whom I have solid, enduring (sometimes frustrating) relationships, but the term “soul mate” also includes the handful of power people who have crossed my path during their own journeys; those individuals who drop in to make a difference ranging from improving my day to testing my boundaries to changing the course of my entire life.

It took me twenty years to find my Ter. I wasn’t without soul mates before then, but those who served their purpose in my childhood and teenage years had moved on to make room for her. She got into the car one fateful evening, we started talking, and we haven’t stopped since.

Soul sisters. Soul mates. Forever. What a wonderful thought!

With love,

Wordplay

Boy Sister does double duty as my wee sister’s elf. She’s not a particularly harsh master, which means he can get a bit uppity. One day at the Wall, he acted up to the point when she finally demanded to know what was wrong with him. He shrugged and tried to look innocent.

“He’s just being obstreperous,” I said.

“What does ‘obstreperous’ mean?” she asked.

“Difficult,” I said.

She gave me a Why didn’t you just say that? look. Aloud, she muttered, “Writers.”

“Sorry ’bout that, kid.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I just prefer words with four letters or less. It’s quicker.”

Not to mention more effective.

But it got me thinking. I tend to throw big words into a conversation, mostly to keep it interesting rather than show off, and a recent metaphor likening employee service seniority to divorced parents switching out the kids at Christmas got big laughs at a staff meeting. “I vote for ‘the divorced parents’ model,” one of my more comical colleagues remarked to me the next day. (I’m lucky she thinks I’m hilarious, as she gives me good reviews when new people join the office.)

I don’t restrict myself to conversations in company, either. The title of a favourite CD gave me something to think about while I was waking up one morning. It’s called “Nightbound” (an instrumental collection by David Lindsay now in heavy rotation), and while the train tracks on the cover photo suggest a traveller heading toward night, it occurred to me that the word “nightbound” could also mean one being tied to – or bound by – the night. Or shade or shadow or the Dark Side, or any of the other synonyms for “not day”.

Which gives me an idea for a story ...

I know, I know ... Writers.

Gender in Spirit

During an episode of Philosophy Quest at the Wall, Boy Sister once asked me if I thought souls are gender neutral. I replied that I thought not. My being female in this phase, I reasoned, is a physical manifestation of my soul’s essence, therefore “Spirit Ru” must be female. We debated this for a while, ending the session – as usual –with more questions than answers.

Later on, I reconsidered my response. Perhaps I am presently female simply because my biology dictates it; that perhaps Spirit Ru is not specifically female, but is either a perfect blend of both energies or a singular form of neither. Biology colours so much of our experience in life: how we perceive ourselves, how we react to others, and how others react to us. It also provides the setting for our individual stories, i.e., I’m playing a female character in this particular tale (though I admit, I haven’t yet sensed an existence as a man). Boy Sister’s experience in the same circle is different because he’s got that pesky Y chromosome – and thus, you’d think, the advantage in our patriarchal he-man culture. Yet he also exhibits care, compassion, and self-sacrifice; traits which our patriarchal he-man culture has labelled feminine in nature and thus derides as weakness in a man.

Let me say here that, as boys carry the X chromosome as well, a balanced XY won’t fear those “feminine” traits within himself and will be, I believe, a better man as a result.

Anyway, on recalling high school biology and releasing my identity’s ties to my ovaries, I grew more comfortable with the notion of Spirit Ru being genderless. I have no idea what form this would take, and I get entangled in the logistics when engaging in speculation: Am I an orb? An angel (but wait; angels are gender specific ... aren’t they)? Or am I a single cell that fits with other single cells to create a greater whole? And what does that whole look like?

See what I mean?

But then, if our souls are neutral and our gender biologically determined, how do we explain folks who are transgender? Why would a neutral soul in a male body be convinced it should be female, and vice versa? The Universe doesn’t make mistakes, but if wearing the wrong skin is something you sign up for in Experience 301, then, geez, am I glad I majored in “Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis”. Philosophical course load aside, I suggest that people tasked with gender identity issues as their primary challenge in life are among the bravest of souls. Perhaps these conflicted folks chose the wrong skin to teach the rest of us about tolerance and compassion, an uphill battle that’s approaching the perpendicular despite our “all-inclusive” modern age.

On a less complicated scale, the lesson for everyone is always love. Love is not about biology or chemistry. Love is not passion or romance. In its purest form, love is gender neutral – and if the Universe in all its majestic entirety is composed of a trillion-bazillion-googillion tiny souls like you and me, then perhaps we are, too.

That’s the beauty of Philosophy Quest. We don’t solve anything, but the mysteries make us think.

Traditions 2.0

Before Christmas, one of our local radio curmudgeons did a bit about the importance of tradition. During the holidays in particular, we treasure the rituals that make us feel safe and secure in a world getting nuttier with every headline. Many of our rituals come with us from childhood, and new ones develop as we establish our own homes and families. For me, it’s alcohol and TV shows. I don’t drink so much at any other time of year, and it’s not Christmas until we’ve watched Charlie Brown.

Even at the office, we have seasonal traditions. On the day the fireplace went up, one of my colleagues paused when she saw it, broke into a grin, and announced, “It’s official! Christmas is here!”

It seems Ter and I have ton of them. The house gets decorated first. I get the cards done and gone by mid-month. The big tree goes up on the first Saturday in December (or the last one in November). We watch Jim Carrey’s Grinch on that night, and every other holiday movie/TV show we have between then and the 23^rd, when A Christmas Story kicks of the holiday hat trick that includes Alistair Sim on the 24^th and Jimmy Stewart on the 25^th. We stock the kitchen with Imperial cheese and garlic sausage, mincemeat tarts and eggnog (and my annual bottle of Prosecco). We visit my folks, friends, and a sibling or two ahead of Christmas Day, not to mention getting presents bought and wrapped for distribution at those visits. Our holiday CDs go on heavy rotation in the house and in the car.

You get the picture.

Well, this year something happened. A bunch of things, actually, that interfered with our nicely organized, pre-scheduled, comfortably familiar holiday hoopla. Some switchups were deliberate, like Ter deciding to bake fruitcake for the first time in a few years, but others were, er, forced upon us. We were too bushed after wrestling with the tree to watch Jim Carrey, so the Grinch got put off for a week. My parents were unavailable when we hoped to visit them, and we were unavailable when my older sister invited us to tea. (Happily, those visits happened after the 25^th, though it felt weird having to reschedule them.) We got hung up on some other oddball things that escape me now, but despite some of our traditions being waylaid by circumstance, other things happened to make holiday magic.

It snowed on Christmas Eve. It started within seconds of my return from dropping Treena home after her ritual holiday visit, and it didn’t stop until the street was thick with frosting and our view of Oak Bay had disappeared. Ter put on the cheeseball Christmas tunes channel, and we sat in a candlelit Ocean Room with wine and popcorn, watching the snow and revelling in the unexpected hygge.

We spent the next morning in the same room, opening our presents in the glow of the penguin tree when our habit is to spend Christmas morning with the big tree. Neighbour noise caused that one, but it worked out in the end. In fact, all the adjustments worked. The OR is my favourite room in the house; why not open our presents there? Visiting parents and siblings after Christmas Day was more relaxed than if we’d crammed it in ahead of the 25th. I survived without my jar of clotted cream and discovered the joy of vanilla and cinnamon Bailey’s. Limited rotation of Christmas music didn’t kill us, though it’s too bad we missed running Blackadder’s Christmas Carol and Nation Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Maybe new traditions were born of the pre-empted old ones; I won’t know until next Christmas. I do know however, that despite the hiccups and with the gift of snow on Christmas Eve, ours in 2017 turned out to be quite festive. Traditions are important, indeed they are, but when conditions are right—though they may seem wrong at the time—traditions can also be improved!

Park Plates

Ter and I have long considered putting personal plates our vehicle. The problem is, what to put on them? She wouldn’t be any keener on DURAN E or HOK E HOS than I’d be for FOOD E or WIK N WU. We’d thought of putting JULES on Jules, but it’s good that we didn’t because Jules is no longer with us. As it was, Tiggy inherited his predecessor’s plates, which were at insurance time this year, over twenty years old.

The dilemma would have continued indefinitely had ICBC not ridden to the rescue. Earlier this year, in cooperation with BC Provincial Parks, they’ve issued a number of license plates featuring four “super, natural” vistas—mountains, lakes, forests ... and a spirit bear.

Well, shoot. Problem solved.

The bear plates have been cropping up on cars all over town. The numbering sequence started at PA000A. By the time we got our plates, so many had been sold that the sequence began with PB. “ ‘Peanut Butter’,” I said to Ter at the insurance agent’s office, where we were both required to sign the changeover from our old license number.

She glanced at me, pen in hand, and said nothing.

“Or ‘Panda Bear’,” I continued, musing.

That got a slightly better result, but still no hats and horns. Since our brains are not geared toward accepting blends of letters and numerals, it’s always helped me to use either the phonetic alphabet or make up a word association of my own. For instance, our old plates began with “JBM”, which, in the phonetic alphabet, translates to “Juliet Bravo Mike”. Thanks to my wee sister, who suggested it when I asked what she’d use, it also translated to “Jellybum.”

Anyway, we signed the papers and took our shiny new plates out to the strip mall lot, where a freshly-laundered Tiggy eagerly awaited his new tags. Getting them into the plate holders proved a tad challenging, as the holders have been bashed about but good over the past seven years, but Ter persevered and eventually they slid into place. Affixing them to the bumpers required new screws to replace the old rusted ones (our first stop on this little adventure was the hardware store), and no small skill in lining up the holes. Ter hunkered by the back bumper and spent a while doing just that, with varying degrees of success. Eye to eye with “PB” while her patience gradually thinned, she finally looked up at me and said, “We could also use ‘Pooh Bartz’.”

That did me in. I howled. “Pooh bartz” is an interjection originally coined by my older sister in lieu of a metaphor more colourful while yet residing in our parents’ house (both my sisters have an odd gift for coining words/phrases/sayings), and it’s stayed with me deep into my relationship with Ter. That she would blurt it out in relation to our prized new plates slew me right there in the parking lot.

Later, she tried to override the option with “Polar Bear”, but I fear I was ruined for anything else when it comes to remembering my new license number.

Pooh bartz.

Shadow the Sun

Everyone was talking about it. The news constantly updated us on where to go, what time to be there, and what degree of eye protection was required to view last week’s solar eclipse. It was such a significant event that I almost took the day off to watch it from the beach across the street. I would have done it, too, had Monday been Ter’s scheduled day off. As she’s been an integral part of the HQ wildfire response all summer, taking an errant vacation day wasn’t likely to be approved, so off we went to our respective workplaces, me trying to convince myself that it wasn’t such a big deal, it was only an eclipse, for Pete’s sake, the world was not going to stop just to watch a shadow fall over the sun.

Only it kinda sorta did.

Happily, the timing for totality in Victoria coincided with mid-morning coffee. If I couldn’t experience the event with Ter, I decided, the next best person was my wee sister. The library courtyard where she takes her breaks (and where we have coffee on Thursdays) faces east. The sun would be in full view when it all went dark.

Only it didn’t all go dark. At around nine-thirty, the sky went a little weird, like the planetarium light before the show starts. Half an hour later, I headed to the library, where wee sis was indeed parked in place on the wall. The light hadn’t changed much. In fact, the sun seemed as bright and furious as ever—to the naked eye, anyway. People had gathered in groups for the momentous occasion, equipped with NASA-approved dark glasses, projectors made of cereal boxes, or the infamous paper with a hole poked in the middle (I’ve never understood how that works). Wee sis and I were unarmed. I had my phone to track the timing, but she only had her coffee. She seemed less excited about the event than I was, though she smiled when I said I wanted to share it with someone I love. I wasn’t so driven to see the eclipse itself; I wanted to feel it. You know, to feel the wonder of dwindling daylight on a mid-summer morning, and to experience a rare and extraordinary event in the company of my fellow humans.

Canada was outside the so-called “band of totality”; in Victoria, the sun was only ninety percent obscured by the moon. As peak time neared, wee sis shaded her eyes and risked a peripheral glance in the general direction of the sun. “It doesn’t look any darker to me,” she said.

I concurred. Despite knowing we wouldn’t get a total eclipse, I’d hoped for something more dramatic in the light department, like a ninety percent drop from what’s normal for the time. I, too, chanced a glance at the sun, but all I glimpsed was the usual glare. “It’s gotten cold, though,” said the friend who had joined us.

She was right. A definite chill had descended though the light remained the same. In fact, the temperature plunged in those few minutes. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t anticipated a chill. That was—literally and figuratively—cool!

Back at the office, folks were a little disappointed that complete darkness hadn’t dropped on the day. A couple of my co-workers were discussing it when I stopped in the kitchen to make tea. After listening to a minute of them puzzling over why it didn’t go darker outside, I suddenly said, “It’s a good metaphor, though, don’t you think?”

They looked even more puzzled. “How do you mean?” one of them asked.

“Well, the moon blocked out ninety percent of the sun, yet the light was as bright as if it had only blocked ten percent. So, metaphorically, one bright spirit will shed more light than nine cast in shadow. ‘How far that little candle throws its beam’, you know?”

Admittedly, I got a couple of odd looks, but after they thought about it, they also got my point. It was later said that, for a couple of minutes on August 21, the violence and hatred stopped as everyone looked up at the sky in a shared moment of purest awe. We are all connected. We are all rays of light. Ninety percent of us can falter in the shadows, but so long as the other ten stay strong, the world will not go totally dark.

With love,

The Ties That Bind

My older older brother and his lovely wife recently dropped in for a visit so short there was no point in them adapting to another time zone. A couple of weeks before they arrived, my older sister put out an email saying they’d been in touch with her and hoped to connect with as many of us as they could while they were here—a trickier notion than it sounds, as three of the four west coast siblings still work and the visit was smack dab in the middle of a workweek. Big Sis suggested an early evening potluck at her place. No problem since, while a couple of us live in the sticks, we all work in town. Why not stop by before heading to our respective homes?

I naively assumed the gathering at Big Sis’s place would be attended by the siblings and perhaps our significant others. I couldn’t imagine my parents tackling rush hour traffic so late in the day, and though we love our nieces and nephews, how big a bash was this going to be? I admit, I hoped for something more intimate. I am an introvert. Large social occasions intimidate me and, as my wee sister observed one day at coffee, “when all the Greigs get together, we can be kind of overwhelming.”

No kidding. My parents arrived with my older older brother and, as staggered quitting times came and went, a steady trickle of siblings, spouses, sons, daughters, sons and daughters’ spouses and their children soon had Big Sister’s house full to bursting. What my mother innocently terms her “small family” has erupted into a group not quite large enough to claim village status!

Make no mistake. I love my family. I am the luckiest daughter/sister/aunt in the world. Wee Sis asked me in high school what was wrong with us because we liked our parents. My mother has often said how surprised she was to discover that her family was not as normal as she believed. Didn’t every family get along as well as we did? We’ve had drama, of course. We’ve had sibling squabbles and growing pains and tragedies like any other clan, but on the  whole, we’ve stayed together even into the kids’ adulthood. I mean, the Big Guys are all in their sixties now! Conversation might be a little awkward to start with, but we compensate with lots of hugs until we gain traction and suddenly it’s as if we were never parted. I have every confidence that my siblings and I will remain close even after our parents have moved on. We won’t see each other every day, but we don’t do that now. What we do do is remember we were raised by parents who taught us the importance of family, of the privilege of belonging to something greater than ourselves, and the responsibility we have to keep that going so in the end, none of us will ever be alone.

The mob at Big Sister’s place last week was as raucous and chaotic as I’d feared it would be ... and I’m so glad I was there. It’s magical to be part of something so overwhelming.

With love,

The Next Two Weeks

This is my life for the next two weeks. With breaks for the new Star Wars film and hosting a visit with my wee and boy sisters on New Year’s Eve, the bulk of my remaining fortnight’s vacation will be spent writing. Yup, a typewriter and a coffee cup (actually a computer and a tea tumbler) are my constant companions as I devote myself to reconnecting with the Muse.

My primary project is the story of Caius and Aurelia. I won’t get it finished—there’s too much to tell—but now that I feel more like myself again, I’m eager to resume the writing of it. While I was doing the dishes the other night, the opening lines of Aurelia’s POV drifted in on the winter wind, soon followed by a third character stepping up to tell his version of the tale. I was so excited I forgot about the dishes and stood with my hands in the hot water, watching the pictures in my mind’s eye. With that much meat on the bone, I’ll be feasting well into 2017!

Reconnecting means more than with the Muse, however. I lost some serious touch with my daily practice after accidentally igniting an auto-immune reaction to a homeopathic flu preparation in November. A natural alternative to an annual flu shot, which I have never had, I decided to get back with the program after some years of going without—and I wish I had gone without it this year, too. Within 48 hours of the first dose, joints were flaring all over the place; and while there is no definitive proof that the medicine was the culprit, the timing is too suspicious to discount it. Over the five week course, my arthritis progressively worsened, started to recover, then worsened again. Three health practitioners had three different theories. None of the treatments made it better. One or two made it worse. I decided to finish the flu program rather than quit halfway through—it may or may not have been a good idea, but four weeks after my final dose and my body appears to be recalibrating. Oh, my joints still hurt like tiny star flares, but the frequency, location and intensity are diminishing and, as I say, I am beginning to look outward with more interest in things than I was through the past couple of months.

During those interminable weeks, it was all I could do to get out of bed, get to work and hang on until fatigue sent me to a premature bedtime. Christmas only happened with the help of tea fairy Treena and my angels—thanks to them, I was able to pull off the coup of Christmas prezzies for my beloved Ter, who was my stalwart rock the whole time—but anything else requiring energy or focus fell by the wayside. Weekly yoga sessions, daily meditations, attention to detail at the office (I’m sure my mistakes will show up later in January), and writing anything other than my name were sacrificed in the name of survival.

Though I did finish my annual reading of The Night Circus. And the Christmas cards got done. Priorities, you know.

So, my fiendish plan for the rest of my vacation also includes reconnecting with Ru. Gradually, gently, I mean to reinstate my twice weekly yoga sessions and practice more frequent meditations. Ter has wryly warned against “over meditating”—she has as many gurus as I have doctors, and in helping to make her point with me, she realized that she has a similar proclivity to spiritual maintenance as I have to physical. And it’s true: too much of a good thing can be as harmful as too much of a bad one. The pendulum on maintenance (physical for me, spiritual for her) swung a bit too far and messed us up in 2016. Between us, we intend on simplifying our practices as we move into the new year, aiming for balance in all things.

With love,

Teacher, Teacher

My fear of missing the bus can be traced back to an episode in first grade. The class was to copy a page of text from our reader before school got out, and my Virgo perfection complex had me taking my time to get it right.

My sibs and I were bussed from home in those days, to the English speaking school across the Richelieu River and, at six years old, I assumed if I missed the bus home, I’d have to stay at the school overnight and it wasn’t even in the same town. Scary stuff, right? But when the bell rang and I wasn’t finished the assignment, the teacher made me stay behind until it was done.

The bus was waiting and if I wasn’t on it ... all sorts of nightmarish possibilities scampered across my mind, horribly distracting as I struggled to meet my deadline while in a burgeoning panic.

So I hurried. I did the best I could under duress, but it wasn’t good enough because the old bat looked at my work, picked up her red pen, and crossed out the whole page of my exercise book.

I made the bus home, which was my priority objective, but I fought tears the whole time. I think, but don’t recall, that I ripped out the page so my parents wouldn’t see the humiliation—I was hugely upset because I’d done my best in a race against the clock and the teacher had totally negated my effort. Whether or not it was, and forty-nine years later I’m still undecided, it felt unfair.

That particular teacher had a bit of a reputation among the student body (my older sister once did a hilarious impression of her yelling at kids on the playground), but she certainly left an impression on me.

Fast forward to seventh grade, my final year in elementary school after we’d relocated to Victoria. I had gone down the corridor where grades one, two and three were taught, probably to deliver something to one of the teachers. It wasn’t to the old dragon I encountered; that much I remember. I also remember her stopping me in the hall and demanding to know why I wasn’t in my own class. Mostly, I remember wondering why they assigned the most frightening old biddies to the first grade kids!

I seriously doubt this is the case now. From the antics of my co-workers who have school age children, I’m more sorry for the teachers than I ever was for my classmates because I’m pretty sure the sabre-toothed modern day mother would have had her fangs drawn by my first grade teacher.