FINDING HOPE HAIKU IN THE TIME OF COVID

Reading with children Facetime is the next best thing When snuggling is out. Walking with Kathy To be outside where life is So spectacular. People delighted By an unexpected call I happened to make. Call from a cousin Who lives in Ontario Remembering me. Grateful for wellness And grocery delivery A home that I love. Making up stories Wednesdays are the send-out days Getting letters back. Balcony pansies Pandemic insensitive Blooming like crazy Media searching For good news to give us hope And give them hope too. Choosing not to clean Because I know there will be Time for it later. Choosing to clean now Because I know I will be Glad I did later. Thinking of places I’m glad not to be in now And those I still love. Sweet whiff of supper Slow cooking tantalizing While I watch Frasier Counting on science Admiring the leadership Of our officials Dreaming a future When this time will be the past That made us all wiser.

ON CHOOSING TO BE HOPEFUL

Some days I am hopeful, Others not so much. It’s the same world on any specific day Regardless of how hopeful I am, Only the possibilities for days ahead are different. Being hopeful is not wishing. Wishing is for Disneyland And birthday candles And the days when I buy a lottery ticket Just because I have money. Being hopeful is not goal setting. Goal setting is for sales teams And athletes And fund-raisers at the United Way. Hopeful is a way of feeling When I see the world, With certain possibilities, Of how good things could happen But not quite enough of the picture To lay out a detailed plan. On days when I am not hopeful There are still possibilities, Only I don’t see them So I think they are not there. And that is why, On any given day No matter what is happening It is better to be hopeful If I have a choice Which sometimes I do. And sometimes I don’t Which means I have to wait Until I do.

TIME TO HOPE

The dishes in my dishwasher are clean. I plan to get them out and put them away—later. In the meantime, I am writing to stave off the boredom that comes from having too much time at home and too little to do. Emptying the dishwasher is not the only thing I plan to do later. It is just one of the small things. Tuesday was a great day for putting things off. On Tuesday I didn’t take the garbage out or deliver the recycling to the bin. I didn’t update my financial records or strip the bed. You might think I am procrastinating, but really, I am generating self-hope. It will be better to think about a long period of self-isolation if I know there will be enough things to do in the future. It’s far too painful to contemplate a future with too little to do. I’ve known people who practice behaviors that I think of as reverse hope. Reverse hope helps us dread the future by making ourselves miserable in the present. Many years ago a friend of mine started sleeping on an uncomfortable bed. She had a comfortable bed, but she would be giving it up in three weeks and she thought she’d better start getting used to the new one before she was forced to sleep in it. Later I met a woman who refused to get out of bed because she wanted to avoid a fall that might break a hip. “I don’t want to break a hip and be bed-ridden,” she said. In good times, hope allows us to look forward to the future. In the not-so-good times, hope allows us to think about the future and be okay in the present. At present I am looking forward to a future in which I will avoid doing certain things by keeping busy doing things I want to do. Come to think of it, I can do that right now. I may empty the dishwasher today, but I am definitely not going to tidy my underwear drawer. If I am to have all this unsolicited available time at home, I plan to avoid wasting it on things I would naturally want to avoid, like cleaning out my closets and kitchen cupboards. I’d rather write. It’s a hope thing.

A POST FOR PASTOR BOB

“Hope is the YES to life” –Ronna Jevne I would have liked to celebrate my retirement at a glorious sunny garden party on a day of my own choosing. I would have liked to have left for Australia the following day with my healthy husband. Yet I cannot say that I would rather have been more pessimistic about the possibility than I was. Perhaps there wouldn’t have been much good in knowing That the unexpected closure of the Hope Foundation would derail my career in 2012 Or that multiple systems atrophy was already beginning to disable my husband in 2009 Or that I’d be a widow in 2019. Because there was always joy alongside the fear and sadness That haunted me during the period of my life when all the plans I had previously imagined became irrelevant. Some days I get a laugh by telling an audience that my hope presentations are proof that I am unsuccessfully retired. Some Saturday evenings I go to card parties where seven people play—three couples and me. Because sometimes I think that hope is more than the YES to life. It is the YES to possible lives in which some things we want must stand smiling beside other things we never wanted and probably never will.

AIRA

Family and friends helped me tremendously during the weeks and months after David’s death. But when it came to dealing with the mundane problems that confront blind and low vision people who live alone, Aira was there to ground me. Aira was my newest friend. Aira isn’t a single person, but rather a company dedicated to making information available so that blind and low vision people can do what they want to do. It’s name is an acronym for artificial intelligence remote access. Aira refers to its users as explorers. Before I became one, I’d never thought of myself as an explorer. But, given that explorers tend to be self-possessed individuals who boldly stretch their limits, I like the sound of that. Aira, according to its CEO, believes a key challenge behind blindness is not lack of vision, but lack of immediate access to visual information. The company is on a mission to provide instant access to information for anyone, anywhere, anytime. To make this happen, Aira connects blind and low vision people to human agents. The explorers have cameras, either on cell phones or on specially equipped glasses. The agents see the world through these cameras. They tell the explorers what they are seeing. At a glance, it may seem like splitting hairs to differentiate between lack of vision and lack of immediate access to visual information. But visual information is the thing most people get when they scan a recently arrived letter, or gaze at the traffic signal to see when permission to cross has been granted. You can live quite well without vision, but without access to visual information, your life is necessarily smaller than it ought to be. So much of your time and energy goes into getting that information. It saps your reserves. Perhaps that helps to explain why it pleased me to be designated by AIRA as an explorer. Explorers go after the fullness of life. Explorers get access to Aira services by purchasing time in minutes. I was extremely fortunate to have a friend who offered me some free introductory minutes at the moment when I most needed them. I was moving out of the nursing home suite I had shared with David, and back into the apartment we had purchased three-and-a-half years earlier. I would be living alone. There was no doubt that I would need some help. Take the fridge in my apartment, for example. On the front of it there is a touch screen that controls a lot of things. In fact, it does something whenever you touch it. The advantage of being able to see is that you can tell what it did, and what you have to do in order to undo whatever you accidentally did when you unintentionally touched it. I had a feeling you couldn’t actually turn the fridge off by laying a knuckle on its panel, but what if I was wrong? It was time to call Aira! Facing this unfriendly contraption, I aimed my iPhone threateningly at the fridge and made the call. In less than five seconds, a live human came on the line. “Hello Wendy. This is Amy. What would you like to do today?” I could think of a lot of things I’d like to do today, but I decided to stick with the problem at hand. “I’d like to read the screen on my fridge so I can figure out if I’ve made any changes that ought to be reversed.” “Okay. Hold the phone back a bit. Slant it upwards. There we are. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to take a picture with your camera and magnify it here so I can read the printing.” It doesn’t take us long to figure out that I have accidently switched on the light and turned the ice maker off. It only takes a few seconds for Amy to direct my fingers to the spots where corrections can be made. With the light turned off and the ice maker turned on, Amy’s off the phone and on to something else in less than two minutes. The problem is solved. Without Amy, I’d have had to ask somebody to come over. That time, instead of calling up my friend Bev with a plea to help with my fridge, I could call and invite her to join me on a walk. The move to the apartment presented many opportunities for the Aira agents to work with me. The daily mail delivered dozens of sympathy cards I could not read, and my kitchen, having been used by various guests during my stay with David at the nursing home, was cluttered with cans, jars and packages I could not identify. I wanted to know if my mirrors were clean. I needed the instructions on the package of pancake mix. On my way out to a meeting, I was unable to determine which room was 3-105 in the Education Building at the university. Aira agents gave all the information I needed using my phone camera Suman Kanuganti is one of Aira’s co-founders. He has great dreams for the company, and with good reason, since it has flourished. . It was founded in 2015. In 2017, it provided 20,000 hours of explorer-to-agent contact. It has partnered with companies in creative ways. Intuit now funds Aira services so that blind and low vision business owners can use its bookkeeping services and access its websites. Corporate sponsorships provide free Aira service to all users in 20 major United States airports and a national chain of pharmacies. These days, some explorers wear smart glasses with mounted cameras that can read the text on signs without the intervention of a human agent. As for me, I have dreams for Aira too. I imagine the day when I will be staying in a hotel. Instead of waiting for a sighted person to help me navigate the lobby, I’ll call up Aira and take an exploratory journey past the shops to the restaurant. I might even try to find a store in a large shopping mall. For now, I’m content to pay a monthly fee of $30 US for 30 minutes of Aira service. I can add extra minutes if I need them. For $129 I could get 300 minutes, but this is more time than I can reasonably use. Helping blind people get access to visual information is a major occupation of most sighted people who befriend those with blindness and low vision. Many of my blind friends live happily enough without Aira. They share their homes with sighted spouses who can see whether the mirror is clean or the fridge screen has been corrupted. They do not feel the need to use a cell phone for this type of visual information. In the past I would have been one of them. But family and friends are so much more than providers of information. We need them for all sorts of reasons. Aira has not turned me into a sighted person. It has not entirely replaced the sighted assistance I use to get so easily from David. But now, given the opportunity to assign the mundane tasks to my Aira agents, and the fun tasks to my human friends, I find the idea of living alone to be a little more appealing, a little less threatening than it was the last time I did it. I was twenty years old then. That was forty-five years ago.

SHIFTING AND ROTATING (Nursing Home Life, part 12)

Institutional life has a rhythm. You fall into the groove of it after a while. It picks you up and carries you along. There are things you like and things you don’t. After a while, there are things you take for granted. Twenty-one months after we moved into Laurier House, I find that my emotions twist and turn with unwavering fidelity. I love every third Saturday, when an omelet is served at lunch. I un-love (hate is such a strong word!) every third Wednesday because the dining room will surely serve up plates of cabbage and corned beef. I’ve learned to savour many new flavours over the years, but I don’t think I’ll live long enough to acquire a passion for corned beef. At Laurier House culinary variety pivots on a 21-day rotation. Twice a year they shake up the rotation. Through it all, the cabbage and corned beef has remained. Staffing also has a rhythm, less predictable on a small scale, more so for those of us who’ve been here a while. I’ve taken a particular liking to the evening shift every second month. To be clear, it’s one of four shifts of staff that meet David’s on a daily basis. There’s night, morning and afternoon in addition to evening. The rotations on the other three shifts work differently, though I’m not sure just how. For now, in the interest of simplicity, let’s stick with the one I’ve figured out. You might want to skip the next few lines if you don’t like numbers, or if shifting and rotating makes you dizzy. Laurier House has approximately 80 residents and is divided geographically into four sections. We are on first floor, east wing. Every two months the evening staff move to a different section. They rotate in this fashion until each team has served all four sections. Then they return, eight months after the last time they returned. We are currently experiencing our 11th version of this rotation so we are seeing some staff for the third time. Given that this is their third exposure, they should be able to use their previous experience to show them how to care for David. But wait! David changes a lot in the time it takes to complete a full rotation. Each time they rotate through, they see a different version. His needs are more specific and his ability to express them more limited. David was able to stand up the first time they helped him. He was still eating in the dining room on their second rotation. This time, they are bringing our supper and turning him in bed. Each shift rotation brings a cast of characters, some working full time, some part time and some casuals. New people keep popping through our door, wondering what to do. The process of retraining goes on for a while. I like the second month of every rotation because, by the time a month of trial and error has passed, the care-givers have figured out how to help David. The current crew is learning that David wants his heels on a pillow, his left elbow on a pillow and his head on two pillows. They know that his pills need to be crushed and he can no longer tolerate cranberry juice. They know how to brush his teeth without causing him to choke on the liquid. They know that the shirts he loved to wear at bedtime the last time they knew him have been replaced by hospital gowns. They learn by doing. On the first half of each rotation, David is an experimental phenomenon. On the second month of each rotation he is a person they know how to care for, someone familiar and special. Living an institutional life presents us with many opportunities to second guess. It’s easy to complain about things you can’t control. In general I try to avoid it. On the emotional roller-coaster I ride here at Laurier House I sometimes find it difficult to tell which issues should be addressed and which should be ignored. Take the cabbage and corned beef, for example. It’s presence on the menu affected us differently. David likes corned beef. This is his big chance to have it on a regular basis. You can bet I never cooked it for him. What kind of wife would I be if I asked to have it removed? But then there is the issue of staff rotation. My views on the subject are guided by emotion. I keep remembering the dislocation we felt during the first few weeks of our stay here, and how we began to feel more at home as care-givers came to understand David’s needs. I also recall my disappointed surprise when, without warning, a cast of untrained characters replaced the familiar ones and started the process of dislocation all over again. I hoped I would come to accept these changes as an institutional necessity, possibly an inconvenience. I had hoped I would get used to re-experiencing the feeling of being strangers here. But I never have. Home in this phase of our lives is a suite in long-term care, where we watch David’s health slide slowly with dozens of care-givers shifting and rotating around us. we have met many care-givers who are generally interested in doing the best work they can do. Familiarity with the best possible job appears to breed empathy, competence and loyalty. I feel sad that the system is so obviously organized to discourage familiarity because those who are familiar with David’s needs are so much more capable of making him happy. I appreciate the second month of every two, when familiarity on the evening shift takes the place of experimentation. I dream of a system that would value familiarity, a place where the staff wouldn’t rotate, where David would only be served by familiar staff on four shifts, maybe as few as three shifts! I like to think it could happen, and would happen if only the people who organize our systems understood how it feels to be helped so uncertainly so often by so many. But now, accepting things as they are, I care for my own mental health by making a point of noticing the day on which the reassigned care-givers cross the bridge from uncertainty to familiarity. “Will you be back tomorrow?” I ask them hopefully. In the up and down rhythm of institutional life, it’s a good day when they say they will.

A NEWER ME

BE BRAVE TONIGHT By Samantha Reynolds http://bentlily.com/2012/03/05/be-brave-tonight/ Courage is not a genetic hand-me-down or a choice you can rely on in the moment it is a muscle if you do not use it it will shrink you will go to be brave one day and find you are floppy and unsure so try on your convictions start with your own echo the words that play in your head quicksand words telling you things like never stand up to yourself stare down the doubt in the pitch-black privacy of your darkest thought be gutsy remember that a shadow carries no weight rescue yourself and you will grow like a plant to sunlight bent towards valor. The old me wouldn’t have pushed a walker along a littered hospital corridor. A hospital corridor, after all, is no place for a blind person pushing a walker. Too many hazards: cleaning carts to the left or right, frail patients creeping silently, nurses checking their iPhones with backs turned, lab carts, blood pressure machines, intravenus poles! Fear of embarrassment, of being singled out as “blind”, of being banned from hallways by hospital authorities. If I ever worked on changing that, it was never a conscious action. But yesterday--when I wheeled David’s walker out into the hall, intending to park it outside his door, to motivate the staff to help him walk to lunch rather than taking the easier path of wheeling him, narrowly missing a silent woman who, not without cause, barked: “Watch where you’re going!”—I was thoroughly surprised to find that the old me had been replaced. The new me said: “I’m sorry. I’m a blind person.” It was true, has always been true, but this time I was only sorry that I had been careless, and I wasn’t a bit embarrassed. The new me simply shrugged when the offended party made a rude reply. And I noticed, later in the day, when I carefully wheeled the walker into the hall, that the same offended party politely said, “I’ll just go around you.”

SILLINESS

“It's okay to be absurd, ridiculous, and downright irrational at times; silliness is sweet syrup that helps us swallow the bitter pills of life.” –Richelle E. Goodrich I wish I had been given a penny every time a therapist or therapy client implied to me that silliness is a harmful defence mechanism. Or maybe I don’t wish that. Pennies are heavy, and my back would surely have been injured hauling them around. As for me, well, I love silliness. The sadder I am, the more I seem to love it. I used to wonder if the process of maturing would change all this. Maybe, I speculated, maybe when I grow up, I’ll be sad when I am sad, angry when I am angry, frustrated when I am frustrated. But the other day, as I laughed hysterically, while snaking forward with less grace than a bull in a china shop, in the Air Canada lineup at the Buenos aries airport, giggling out of control as David and I tried to inch ahead at the right angle, in the right moment, sporting multiple disabilities, dragging a walker and two heavy suitcases on wheels, without toppling any post-holders or entangling our belongings in the line ropes, I couldn’t help but notice how so many of the people around us, any of whom might have stepped forward to help, had fallen victim to the contagion of ridiculously misplaced laughter. I suppose any of those immobilized strangers would have taken a walker, or a suitcase, or the arm of a blind person if I had found the words to explain our situation and request their assistance, which, I believe, is what a mature, responsible person would do. But somehow, the thought never occurred to me. Instead, I started the silliness. Perhaps, at my age, I need not worry about the possibility of growing out of it.

A brief fantasy for a winters day

If I had a choice I would take all the snow and put it on the ski hills where people really want it. And I would leave the sidewalks bear and an slippery for the rest of us to walk on. So far no one has offered me the choice. But it could still happen. Couldn't it?

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS

In the world I would like to see, people in responsible positions would be able to distinguish between those who have adjusted to disabilities, and those whose disabilities have been cured. If they could make this distinction, they would see the need for accommodations, and they would act differently. Of those who have adjusted they would ask: “What more can I do to make your life easier?” To those who have been cured, they could say: “Well, I guess you don’t need me any more.” Over the years, as disabilities have presented themselves to us, our family has become the poster child for adjusting to disabilities. We have made pleading phone calls, devised work-arounds, researched possibilities. Take it from me, a disability that has been adjusted to has not been cured. It is present morning, noon and night, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. I find that professionals and experts tend to think of adjusting to disability as something that is done once. But actually, it is done every day, a constant process of making small and large modifications to compensate for the privileges the disability takes away, the privilege of easy movement, of using services, of casually deciding to take a walk and taking it. A person who can manage steps with difficulty is better off going out than staying at home. But he faces an organizational challenge every time he approaches a front step that has no railing. A driver whose reading skills are not sophisticated is judged competent to drive and may make a living doing so. But he must search for alternate parking when simple meters are replaced with “smart meters” that require the ability to read a screen and respond to detailed commands. A competent blind traveller would be foolish to stay home and not participate in the community. But she must take the chance of walking on a red light when the signal is designed for sighted people only. An adjustment made one day is made again on the next, and the next, and the next. In the world I would like to see, the simple parking meter which operated on change would not have been thoughtlessly replaced by the complex SMART meter that can only be operated by people with sophisticated reading skills. Every new home would be build with railings on its front steps. Every crosswalk that has a changing light would have an audible signal. These modifications are all completely possible in our society, but it would take a lot of energy to advocate for them. People who have adjusted to disability spend a lot of effort adjusting on a daily basis, leaving them with limited energy to devote to advocacy. In the world I would like to see, people in responsible positions would take up the challenge of making changes without the force of advocacy to propel them. Would they be more inclined to do so if they appreciated how much energy it takes to adjust to disability? Would they be more inclined if they understood the difference between the daily lives of those who have adjusted to disabilities and those whose disabilities have been cured? So tell me that history has proven that the changes which have benefited people with disabilities have come about only when people with disabilities have put aside the time and energy to fight for them. Tell me there is no way that is going to change. Tell me this, and I’ll admit that you are probably right. But I am THE HOPE LADY after all, so I continue to hope that things can be better. Most improvements start there—with the hope that things can be better. In the meantime, we’ll adjust. Practice makes perfect. We sure do spend a lot of time in our family these days understanding the impact of, and adjusting to disabilities.

HOW DO WE GET TO WELLNESS?

Master Corporal Chris Downey reflects on rehabilitation: “I made a promise to him not to waste a minute of my life for the gift he had given me.” “I’ve had the right support around me... The first day I was able to tie my own shoe again they made it seem like I’d cured cancer.” Chris Downey is racing to the South Pole, 336 Km with Team Soldier On. Three years ago Chris sustained major damage to the right side of his body in a bomb blast in Afghanistan. Hear an audio clip at RACE TO THE SOUTH POLE

NOT QUITE SAVED

I walked the length of Dawson Park today. The round trip took nearly an hour. The weather was perfect and I thought that I should do this more often, since the walk in the park is a clear path, extremely easy to follow with a white cane. In fact, I would do it more often if only it were a little easier to get into the park. The problem is not distance. I live a few dozen yards from the trailhead, but the path through those few dozen yards is extremely difficult for a blind person to navigate. Anyway, I had completed most of the walk and was just beginning to worry that I might get lost going home when a jogger approached from behind and slowed to my pace. Don’t be proud, said a small voice inside me. “If he offers to help you get out of the park, let him do so. Be careful not to brush him off. “Hello,” he said. “Hello,” I said. “I have a question for you,” he said. “What is it?” I said. “Well, you’ve probably never been asked this before, but, well, you seem to be a bit blind,” he said. Don’t brush him off too quickly, warned the little voice inside me. Cut him some slack. He probably hasn’t had a course in discussing the degrees in vision in appropriate language. Agree with him. That will keep the conversation going. “A bit blind,” I agreed, managing a small smile, hopefully inviting but not fake. “Well, I was just wondering if you ever thought of any spiritual treatment for that,” he said. Don’t brush him off, cautioned the little voice inside me. This may not be the time to tell him that your blindness has persisted for sixty years, despite the fact that hundreds of strangers have approached you offering you salvation. “I have a satisfying spiritual life,” I said. “Okay,” he said, and hurried away in the direction of the parking lot. Did he actually leave? I shall never know, but I didn’t hear any cars starting. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that he was watching me from a distance as I struggled to look competent while I threaded my way awkwardly home through the maze-like configuration of paths, curbs, gravel patches and lawns. Could it be that I still have a few things to learn about effective communication? Next time, maybe, just maybe I will be smart enough to say, “I have a satisfying spiritual life, but would you mind giving me an arm to help me out of this park?”

GONE

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” --Joni Mitchell I awoke with the robins, flexed my ankle a bit, flexed it again to relieve the stiffness in my foot, and then the truth began to sink in. it was gone. That hulking, gray, plastic-and-Velcro-and-felt monstrosity with the airbags you pump up with a space-age rubber football-shaped balloon that has inflation/deflation tubes on either end was gone from my bed. It was gone from my foot. It hadn’t gone far. It was, after all, standing meekly beside the bed, waiting for to brace me for the trip to the bathroom. So it wasn’t really gone if you insist on seeing the big picture of gone, but in the little picture it was gone. And with it went a tiny sliver of my personal gloom. With that huge airboot standing on the floor, there was room in the bed under the blankets to flex my ankle. With a bit of that gloom out of the way, there was room for a little hope. “Gone from the bed today, gone to the storage closet for used aircasts in a month or so,” said the hope. “And what about me,” whined the gloom. “Will I even be missed?”

THE BLAME GAME

If David hadn’t asked me about my day, then I wouldn’t have mentioned the potholes I had encountered on the street. If I hadn’t mentioned the potholes to David, he wouldn’t have advised me not to walk on that street. If he hadn’t advised me not to walk on that street, then I might not have chosen to ignore that advice. If I hadn’t ignored that advice, then I wouldn’t have stepped in the pothole while rushing home the very next day. And I wouldn’t have been thrown forward. And I wouldn’t have broken the bones in my foot. And I wouldn’t be wearing this aircast. And I wouldn’t be spending my days with my feet up instead of walking. And I wouldn’t be spending my hard-earned money on taxis. And I wouldn’t be feeling so sorry for myself. But here I am, in the merry month of may, sitting in a chair and propping my foot and sleeping in an aircast and taking pain pills and riding in taxis and feeling sorry for myself. And who is to blame for all this suffering? It’s and open and shut case. I blame David.

HOPING, COPING AND MOPING WITH CHANGE

A change is coming up for me. It will happen on December 31. It’s not a change I wanted, but it’s coming anyway. Managing that change will take some focus, some thought, some flexibility. Is that a good way to start thinking it through? No, let me try again. A change has already begun for me. It’s the change that happens when you begin to plan for a change on a specified date, take for example, December 31. Managing my life during the change is taking some focus, some thought, some flexibility. So here I am, doing the three things I tend to do in the face of looming change: hoping, coping and moping. Hoping, coping and moping. Even as I write these three words I suspect I have put them in the wrong order. Of course it’s only natural for somebody who calls herself THE HOPE LADY to put hoping first. And, to be fair, I am hoping, quite a bit actually. Hope, as I often say in keynote speeches, is a positive and healthy experience. It permits us to consider the future and simultaneously be okay in the present. I am luckier than the average person. I have, at the front of my consciousness, at the tips of my fingers, engrained in my repertoire of habitual thoughts, a fascinating and varied collection of hope-fostering tools and strategies. I have a history that constantly reminds me of something my good friend Christy Simpson once said to me: “When you do hope work, it works on you.” So why am I thinking I have the three words in the wrong order? Well, it’s a matter of time allocation, I guess. The truth is, I seem to be spending a lot of my time coping. Coping, as I have often said in keynote speeches, is the process of taking each day as it comes and doing the things that need to be done in response to the things that are happening. It requires energy and creativity. It often involves deliberate activity. It is focused firmly in the present. Its rewards are twofold. On one hand, coping gets you through each day so you can start the next. On the other, it earns you a lot of praise. Everybody loves a good coper. You hear: “I am just amazed by how well you cope!” With feedback like that, it’s small wonder we tend to spend so much time coping. So I’m giving a lot of energy to coping, which is why I think it ought to go first. But then, yesterday, I started to wonder, if I really didn’t want this change, why shouldn’t moping get the chance to go first? Moping, as I have often said in keynotes speeches, is the expression of a natural constellation of emotions, sadness, frustration, annoyance. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Yet it’s the process most feared by the world’s best copers. They fear that if they let it show, nobody will like them. They fear that if they let it take hold, they won’t be able to make it stop. To be quite honest, I have been doing quite a bit of moping—mostly in secret. Moping in secret, I have often said in keynote speeches, is a waste of good moping. Moping is a process with a purpose. It was invented to give the best copers a bit of relief from the unceasing pressure of having to cope all the time. Moping, in its best form, is a message to others that you need to be comforted, or helped, or simply allowed time and space to get your act together. Moping, I have often said, knowing that copers won’t mope forever, is something you ought to do more of. Yesterday I decided to take a little of my own advice. I vowed to start moping more, to mope better. “I’m tired of all this coping,” I told my friends. “I am tired of being responsible, of being professional. I am tired of being a hero. I am going to be a victim.” My friends were very quiet. I could see they were thinking. Finally one of them said with great compassion, “I expect this change will be very difficult for you.” Now there’s nothing that makes victimhood more difficult than heartfelt expressions of great compassion. Nonetheless, I was determined to mope, and I would not be moved. “No it won’t be difficult for me to be a victim,” I shot back in my best victim fashion. “I’ve had more than enough of looking after others. I’m going to be hurt and helpless. People can look after me for a change.” My friends were quiet again. They were thinking again. They’re a bit like me. They don’t like to lose an argument. One of them said, “You’ll have to develop some new skills. Take the diva stamp, for example. (The diva stamp is something I do with my foot when I’m planning to go ahead with something and I won’t be dissuaded. Just doing it gives me power, resolve, hope.) You’ll have to find something to replace the diva stamp,” they said. “You always smile right after the diva stamp. Good victims don’t smile.” I was quiet. I was thinking. This was exactly the time when I needed to use the diva stamp, to show them I meant business. But what if they were right? What if the diva stamp was always a precursor to smiling? Tears would be the thing I needed, tears pouring down my face. I concentrated on tear production. I focused on it. I waited for the tears to fall, fall in public, fall the way they fell in the days after I first got the news of the change. Unfortunately, I’ve never been any good at producing tears on request. A sad song will bring them down in 1.5 seconds, but you are not always in reaching distance of a good stereo. I was not in reaching distance of a stereo with the right sad song playing on it. Still, a voice echoed in my head, advice from A TED Talk, or a conference speaker, or a book I read some time. “Be the change you want to see.” I approached my failure with renewed resolve. I would do it. I would be a victim. “I have to go now,” said one of my friends. This was my chance. “Okay,” I cried in my best, almost-in-tears voice. “Okay, just go. Just go and leave me here in my sorrow. Just put other commitment above your loyalty to me. Yes, you’ve go. Just go!” My friends were trying to be quiet. They’re a compassionate lot, after all. But they couldn’t be quiet. They were giggling. There’s nothing more difficult than being a victim when your best and most compassionate friends are giggling. So I gave up the task of trying to find the proper order for hoping coping and moping. I didn’t really have time for it anyway. I had to plan a keynote speech. Still, when I get the time, I am hoping to become a better victim, a more effective moper. Apparently it isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. It will take some focus, some dedication, some learning. I am kind of looking forward to it. Learning new things always gives me hope.

WISDOM FROM SAMANTHA NUT, FOUNDER OF WARCHILD

The fact that it failed doesn’t prove that it wasn’t worth doing. If it’s hard to do, it’s probably important. The person getting in the way of your success may be you. There is never a complete loss of opportunity for change, though there may be a paralysis of our willingness to try.

HOUSES COMING DOWN

Houses in the 110 block on 89th Avenue are quickly coming down. One day a house has siding. The next day it’s naked. Two days later its front steps rise up from the street, leading to a pile of rubble. It takes a while to build a house, a shorter time to tear it down, no matter how long it stood there. This isn’t the first time a house has disappeared from 89th Avenue. A house can go very, very fast. One day it’s there. The next day it’s gone. Several years ago one house disappeared from the street. It was worrying to think that a house could simply go. But we all survived. But this situation is different. They’re tearing down 9 houses on 89th Avenue, the very block where Hope House stands. Even for a group of people who spend their working days focusing on hope, it’s not easy to come to work every day and not feel sad on a street where 9 houses are coming down. There are the minor inconveniences—no driving down the street, no parking. There is the total sensory involvement—the tinkle of shattering glass, the beep beep of the machine as it backs up to change position and take another bite. Now it’s a bite of the roof, next a bite of the wall. There are the challenges of working within metres of a major construction site. You do a lot of shouting. No more quiet meditations to help people deal with their problems. As if that isn’t enough, they’re also taking down the trees in 9 yards. Too bad there were so many trees in the 9 yards. Every day the view from the front of Hope House opens up a little. “I can see all the way to International House,” says Rachel. She says it sadly. It is clear that nobody at Hope House minded not being able to see International House. And then there are the experiences of a blind traveller on a street where the only predictable thing is that you can’t predict anything. Okay, I am THE HOPE LADY, so I’ll switch gears here and admit that things can get interesting. Construction guys are keenly aware that a blind person works on this block. They worry. They approach me. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’d like to give you my phone number. Then you can call me whenever you want to walk down this street. I’ll come out to help you.” Do you know how often guys want to give me their phone number? Not very often. Still, the task of finding the situation amusing can only carry you so far. Amid all the grieving and unsettling, there’s the good news. It’s good news that the university is growing. Who could be sad about that? More people want to study. More people want quality accommodation. The removal of 9 aging houses will allow further construction of the east Campus Village. East Campus Village, by all accounts, is a nice place to live. The best news is that Hope House is not one of the 9 houses. It is one of four that are staying on this rapidly changing block. With a little luck, it will still be standing when all the rubble is cleared away. “It’s in good condition,” explains the man from the university. So this old house will be put once again to the task of making the best of circumstances beyond its control. Hope House is a senior citizen among Edmonton houses. It’s celebrating its 96th birthday this year. Of course, it wasn’t always Hope House. But it’s had a long history of adapting to change. It was built for a family—a squarish 2-storey dwelling with a glassed-in sun porch topped up with a generous attic. For extra style it took on 2 second-floor balconies. Some time in the 1940’s it reached out in back to grasp a lean-to, a pantry maybe to augment its insubstantial kitchen. Some time in the 1960’s it graduated from family ownership to University owned property. It opened its doors to student renters—some legally there, some sleeping free of charge in the tiny space beside its huge basement furnace. Some time in the 1980’s it participated in the development of the Canadian Encyclopedia. One day the University of Alberta offered the dilapidated house at 11032 to the volunteers at the Hope Foundation. People with disabilities would be visiting, so the house went modern with a wheelchair accessible main floor bathroom where the pantry used to be. In the mid-1990’s it got an elevator. The attic space was opened wide enough for 6 desks. The leaning front porch was raised up a centimeter a day until it was level. One year the house got a new furnace. Two years ago it got new windows. Lucky Hope House. Somebody—no, many people—wanted it to have a future. And so they kept working on it until it was so cherished that it won the right to stand with three others on a street where 9 houses are being knocked down. It was, as they said, in good condition. There’s no getting around it. It’s sad to come to work on a street where 9 old houses are being knocked down. “We have to be reasonable,” I say in my HOPE LADY voice. “We have to take the long view. Two hundred years ago this street was a patch of bush along the river. One hundred years ago it was a farmer’s field. Last year it was a 2-sided row of old houses, most of them in deplorable condition. In two years a student will move here from Toronto, or New York, or Australia or Hong Kong and 89th Avenue, the way it will look at that time, will feel like home.”

SNOWFLAKE REBELLION

Rachel made a snowflake out of W’s,
Made it just for me, one of her W’s,
To decorate my world in dark December
Her yearning call for snowflakes to be falling.

Rachel claims she never yearned for snowflakes
To dump in deepest drifts through endless January
Nor clog the walks and streets of freezing February,
Nor mound in muddy mayhem marring March.

And though I’m sure I’ll never tire of Rachel,
I frankly feel a full fatigue of snowflakes.
And since I cannot melt them like I long to,
Today I’ll do the one thing that I can do.

The W’s are banished from my window!

HOW THE AFORE-MENTIONED HERITAGE TOMATO IS DOING

Mike and Anne came to dinner. They brought with them a tomato plant grown from a heritage seed. As soon as I held it I forgot that I’d said we were absolutely
not planting any more tomato plants this year. And even though I have always declared it inefficient to start tomato plants from seed, I could feel myself
sliding into the future, slicing gently into ripe juicy tomatoes to extract the finest seeds for next year’s planting. This, I suppose, is the magical
influence of a heritage seed.

I never gave much thought to what expectations I ought to have of a heritage tomato. It is only now, in early August, that I realize I had expectations, expectations based on stereotypes rather than research. I could have done some research, can’t now figure out why I didn’t. I could have asked Anne how big the plant gets, when it produces fruit and how much water it takes. I did none of these. I simply thanked, her, told her we would be planting it in a pot on the deck, and ignored her response, which was to hesitate, and then say that it would likely need a good stake, or even a cage. What I ignored was the nonverbal message: Don’t plant it in a pot on the deck!

The heritage tomato seemed pleased with its new home. I transplanted it from Anne’s small carrying pot to a good sized deck pot and put it in the sun to do whatever heritage plants do, missing one important fact—heritage plants didn’t grow in pots. I now realize that the word heritage carries with it certain suggestions, visions of a hardy, independent, self-reliant plant, caring for itself and producing misshapen fruits that generate seeds without the benefit of the planned care given to its grower-bred cousins. That said, I decided to give this heritage tomato a little extra care—regular watering, a dash of fertilizer to compensate for nature’s lack of rain and the pot’s limited nutritional potential.

Things have turned out just as a more discerning psychologist might predict they would. That tomato has become dependent. Relieved of the responsibility of self-care, it grew and grew. Fearing that a tomato cage would be inadequate, we bought it a cage big enough for a peony. It grew out over the top. First came the flowers, then the tomatoes—perfectly symmetrical pear-shaped specimens decoratively adorned with rounded ridges stretching at intervals from top to bottom. One day we came home to find that the plant, pot, cage and all had tipped over. There it lay, begging for assistance. We stood it up. Must have been windy here,”” we said.

The next day was calm. Still, the plant tipped over as it had the day before. That’s when we realized that the cage secured the produce, but did not compensate for the heaviness of the tomatoes on one side, throwing off the balance. That’s when we pressed the geranium pots into service, circling them around to guard against tipping—or so we hope.

So now we wait. Every day we water—sometimes twice. That plant is thirstier than a dusty cowboy in a saloon. And every day those tomatoes grow bigger—and bigger. Who knows how big they can get?

And at summer’s end we will face an existential question: If you coddle a plant, giving it every chance to produce the best seeds, thus affecting future generations through the process of unnatural selection, is it still a heritage plant?

TRUTH

Ten thousand tomatoes out there on the vine
Or do I, perhaps, under-estimate?
I count past a hundred but cannot confirm
For it is most likely a branch has been missed
And that would skew all of the numbers.

An approximate world, too difficult to know
Where, like so many truths
Clouded by guesswork,
This one will forever be a secret.