REFLECTING ON THE FOOD SUPPLY

REFLECTING ON THE FOOD SUPPLY IN COWBOY POETRY He was sittin at the table chewin on a fine T-bone. There was steak sauce on his moustache. He was eatin all alone. He was ponderin the feedlots with their twenty thousand head; Of the workers touchin shoulders and the virus that they spread. He was thinkin bout the butcher shop his daddy used to run, Sides a-hangin in the cooler when the weekly kill was done. You had paper wrapping everything the labels writ by hand And you knew exactly who you fed and what they would demand. There was oxtail in the supper plans and soup bones on the bubble. The kidney, heart and liver sold without a moment’s trouble. It was shortribs for Elvira Jones and chuck for Elsie Gable. Verna Parker took a tender roast to serve on Sunday table. You could drive out to a farmer’s place and there conduct a meetin With the farmer who provided and the steer you’d soon be eatin. There are some who say they’re satisfied with tofu nuts and soy But it takes a juicy steak to feed a grateful good old boy.

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.

NORMAL THINGS ARE STILL HAPPENING

There comes a day, a few days after the March equinox, when the sun directs a morning beam into my bedroom. It happens just after 7:30 and lasts a minute or so, just after the northerly sun rises enough to peak out from between some buildings on the next block, Just before it angles up to hide itself behind The Athabascan next door. The conditions for observing this phenomenon have to be exactly right. You might miss it the first day or even the second. You’d never see it if you weren’t in the bedroom. You wouldn’t see it on a cloudy morning. I saw it on April 2, 2020. I wasn’t looking for it. I was just talking to myself about getting out of bed and there it was! A ray of hope projected itself across the room from the angled window by the bathroom sink to land on the wall by the mirror over the dresser. “Normal things are still happening,” I said to myself. “This is only one of them.” I know a woman who gave birth to a healthy child in the maternity ward of a local hospital. Pigeons are circling our building, looking for friendly balconies. Neighbours are still spreading rumours. Friends are still making me laugh. Neglected friends are still delighted when I remember to call them. Pandemic buzz is consuming us all. Everybody seems to be talking about the new normal. I am taking some comfort from noticing evidence for the old normal. Perhaps I shall be a little more conscious of watching the morning sun as it alters its trajectory, lingering a bit longer every day until the summer solstice signals a reverse of fortune. It’s part of the old normal that will secure me. Here, in my new normal, I’ll have the time to notice it.

EATING IN THE BEDROOM (Nursing Home Life, part 10)

There were a few absolutes when it came to my mother. There was, for example, ‘don’t bite the bottom off of an ice cream cone.” It was a warning, not a response. So I tried it once at a community picnic on the steps of Cambridge school. The results were—unpleasant! Sticky ice cream dribbled down my legs and settled on the steps. Neighbours began to shout for help. Mother appeared. “I told you not to do that,” she scolded. I believe this was my first true public humiliation. A second absolute proved to be just as wise, and not quite so publicly embarrassing. “Never go to bed with gum in your mouth,” she warned. I didn’t get breakfast the morning after I tried that. Mother used the time to cut the gum out of my hair. I still had time to catch the school bus. When people said, “You got a haircut,” I simply nodded. I tested both these absolutes in early childhood. It took me longer to test another. “Never eat in bed,’ said my mother. It would have been difficult for me to eat in my bed even if I’d wanted to. Somehow I would have had to get food without her knowing, sneak it past her and carry it all the way upstairs. I believe this absolute remained untested until the winter of 1973, when I paid a spring-break visit to my boyfriend David who was studying at Acadia University in Wolfville NS. On that brief vacation, the act of eating in bed seemed insignificant compared with other rules that were falling by the wayside. For example: “No girls allowed in the boys’ residence” and “Never sleep with a man until after your wedding.” In the heady confusion of all this disobedience, can you blame me for forgetting my mother’s long-ago given advice about eating in bed? At that time downtown Wolfville was served by an IGA grocery store. It was impossible to enter that store without succumbing to the fragrant seduction of the cinnamon sugar doughnuts rolling hot and fresh off the conveyer belt. Can you blame us for failing to consider what the consequences might be if we ate them in David’s bed? When advising my children, I was more specific than my mother had been. I said: “Never bite the bottom off an ice cream cone because the ice cream will pour out and you will be made to clean up the ness.” To my children I said: “Never go to bed with gum in your mouth because if you do, it will tangle in your hair and I will have to give you a haircut.” To my children I said: “Never take cinnamon sugar doughnuts to bed. The sugar granules are most uncomfortable to lie on.” By that time, the practice of sharing a bed before marriage was so widely accepted that it hardly bore mentioning, and I hesitated to launch a detailed conversation about the experience of rolling around on a bed of sugar granules. All of this came back to my mind when I read the message my iPhone delivered from my good friend Rob on the second day of December in 2018. “David and Wendy: Thank you for a really nice evening together. I think we should always have bedroom meals. Much more comfortable than formal dining rooms.” Oh, what would my mother have said? Perhaps I ought to say a word or two about the evening that prompted the note, though it seems a shame to muddy the truth of a story by presenting the facts. Rob Jennifer and I had spent the evening sitting around a card table at the foot of David’s bed, drinking two kinds of wine while eating brie and tortiere with mango chutney. David had already dined on a plate of pureed something-or-other from the Laurier House dining room and a glass of thickened water. We weren’t quite as insensitive as it seems. Even when David was able to sit at formal tables with the rest of us, he never cared for any meat wrapped in pastry, and he has declined all offers of thickened wine since the first time he tried a little of it on a teaspoon. In addition to the other provisions, Rob and Jennifer had also brought a carton of his favourite Christmas ice cream. All four of us enjoyed a bowl of that and delighted in an evening of love and laughter. Neither sugar granules nor any other traces of food were left in David’s bed. It is possible that a future archaeologist, unearthing an iPhone might misunderstand the simple message from rob. So I wanted to clear up any remaining ambiguity here. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

VISITS FROM THE DENTIST (Nursing Home Life, part 9)

Our dentist came by the other day. It was his second visit to our suite at Laurier House. The first time he came he launched his customary social chat before looking in David’s mouth. It was a one-sided chat. David thinks very clearly, but says very little these days. “It feels awkward talking at you instead of having a real conversation,” Scott said to David. I laughed. “Isn’t this what dentists do all day, conduct one-sided conversations with people whose mouths are immobilized?” “I guess so,’ he said. “But this is a bit different.” I was relieved at his honesty. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a curious relationship between being open about discomfort and being willing to persist in spite of it. On this second visit, he adjusted David’s bed to a favourable position, looked in David’s mouth and painted his future cavities with a compound designed to protect them from further deterioration. Then he showed me how to check for infections and offered to borrow space in a wheel chair accessible dental clinic if serious dental work was required. . He said he’d be back in four months. “Thank you for coming here,” I said. It felt like understatement to me. It seemed such an inadequate response, given that Laurier House is not convenient to his office or his home. “I wanted to do it,” he replied. I didn’t doubt that he meant it. He knows how important dental work has been to David. In the days when he was independent, David would never have missed a check-up, or passed up an opportunity to improve his dental health. Scott has been our family dentist for ten years or so. He’s been a partner on this journey. We never asked him to come to Laurier House. He simply volunteered to do it when I told him that David wasn’t able to get out to see a dentist. He first knew David as someone who wanted a 7:00 AM appointment so he could squeeze dental work in the time between an early morning six-mile run and a punctual appearance at the office. Then came the time when every visit showed us how Multiple systems Atrophy had changed David’s body in the six months since the last. The Journey to care for David’s teeth has continually been hampered by obstacles and problems that needed solutions. I remember how the small spaces around Scott’s dentist’s chair seemed to shrink when David started using a walker, then shrank beyond recognition when we had to take the wheelchair into the office and use the walker as a support to help him transfer from one chair to the other. It was Scott who suggested that we start taking David to a wheelchair accessible office. This meant changing dentists, and we tried that. But David wanted Scott. So we compensated by taking two men to every appointment to assist with David’s transfer. It was Scott who suggested that we hydrate David’s mouth to keep his teeth healthier. That was several years ago. It worked then. On this visit we told Scott that we now use drops to dehydrate David’s mouth to keep the fluid from building up in his chest. He shrugged sadly and said he’d do the best he could in the circumstances. Sometimes this journey through David’s progressive illness feels a bit like one of those hop on hop off city tours we used to take. There are many stops along the way. People get on. People get off. There really aren’t words to describe how grateful I am to those who stay with it, for David or for me. They have to be tough enough to witness the slow and painful progression. They have to be confident enough to do things they can do and humble enough to avoid being overwhelmed by the things they cannot fix. In return, David and I do our best to be cheerful and positive, but we’re not exactly fun to be around, and it’s quite some time since we’ve been in a good position to return a favour. I try to remember to be amazed at the number of people who stay with us in spite of their freedom to go. I will not likely be able to pay them all back, but perhaps I will have a chance to pay some of it forward.

JOHN THE MENTOR (Nursing Home Life part 3)

There was food for supper in our kitchenette fridge, but we opted to have supper in the dining room on our first night at Laurier House. Principle had triumphed over preference. In principle, it was best to eat in the dining room because Laurier House is a community as well as a nursing home. David and I have always been community people. In every new place we’ve moved to during 44 years of marriage we have stepped forward to meet the neighbours and join in with local activities. So it made sense to eat in the dining room, even though we had a fridge with food in it. My preference would have been the kitchenette. In principle, we had to pay rent to live at Laurier House, David for long-term care, me as his companion. Food was included in the rent. Why pay again for food you have already paid for? My preference was to buy our own food and eat it in our suite. In principle, we had moved to Laurier House so that there would be a team of people to join me in taking care of David as Multiple System Atrophy steadily progressed. David gave a firm indication that he wanted to act on principle. So we chose it over preference, even though I didn’t want to go there. I had never imagined a nursing home as a place where I would want to live, or a care centre dining room as a place where I would want to eat. When sociable people like us move into a community, its character gradually becomes part of them. They take on its projects, its conflicts, its joys, its aspirations and its sorrows. Having moved several times, we were familiar with this process. Perhaps it was this knowledge, more than any other factor, that explained my reluctance to join the community in the dining room “Pretend it’s a restaurant,” I said to myself. “Fat chance,” myself said back. But we went anyway. Feeling as lost as accidental visitors to a foreign land, we accepted the offer when one of the care attendants came to take us to supper. Perhaps a dozen people had arrived before us. The Laurier House dining rooms are furnished in tables for four. Places are pre-assigned so that the staff can set up in advance. “This is John,” said the care attendant as she positioned David’s chair. “This is David and Wendy.” Then she was off to shepherd someone else. Not counting us, John was the sole diner at our table. It appeared that he was already well into his meal when we arrived. Acting on our natural curiosity, we set out to get to know him. Sociable and curious, we hadn’t been there more than a few minutes when we came up against the first obstacle. We couldn’t figure out why John was there and we didn’t know how to find out. When I was a little girl, my mother taught me a thing or two about asking questions. “Never ask people how old they are,” she said. Later, in response to a transgression on my part she added, “Never ask people how much money they have.” Even later, she added: “Never ask visitors when they are planning to leave.” After that, it was mainly up to me to decide what questions to ask. In the case of John, there seemed to be something I had to know, and I swear I heard Mother say: “Don’t ask people why they are living in a care centre. Wait for them to tell you.” Mindful of her warning, I tried my best to be curious and wait at the same time. While I waited, I contemplated. John did not seem to be a staff member. He appeared so much healthier than most of the residents. Maybe he was a companion like me. But that didn’t seem right either. Laurier House is extraordinary among Alberta Health services care facilities because it houses two categories of occupants: residents and companions. Residents qualify for care services from Alberta Health. Most of the Laurier House residents use wheelchairs. A few use walkers. Some rarely or never leave their rooms. David is a resident. Companions--usually spouses of residents--share accommodation with residents. I am a companion. The ratio of residents to companions is about four to one. This, plus the fact that John was unaccompanied, caused me to assume that John would be a resident. But if that was the case, then it was going to be difficult, without asking directly, to figure out why he was there. John was a friendly, take-charge sort, somewhat older than us but seeming just as young. He was the kind of neighbour you’d like to meet on your first day in a community. When it came to getting past the niceties, he was at a distinct advantage. It wasn’t difficult to see that David was using a wheelchair, or to hear that his speech was impaired. There was stiffness in his arms and hands. His head bowed forward a bit. Knowing we had moved in that very day, John launched an easy conversation about the details of our move. Did we both live here? Where had we come from? Were we comfortably settled in our suite? We wanted to respond by showing interest in him, yet beyond a certain point, we didn’t know quite how. All four of his limbs seemed to be intact. He could hear well and see well. He mentioned driving his car to medical appointments. He had lived here a little less than a year. But what was he doing at Laurier House? The mystery was solved when a care attendant stopped by to put a sympathetic hand on John’s shoulder. “I am sorry for your loss,” she said. When she had moved on, John told us that his wife had very recently died. He lived at Laurier as her companion. . This was a possibility I had not considered, nor did I really want to. Here, on our very first day, we sat within touching distance of a man grieving the loss of his wife. She might have sat here with us if we had arrived a week earlier. At that very moment, David and I were grieving the loss of our regular life together. John must have grieved that same loss not so long ago, and now he was dealing with this new grief. Had we already been friends, we would have known how to talk about this, but as strangers our avenues for mutual consolation were harder to find. John was a stalwart man, resolute in his dedication to moving forward. So we did not speak of grief. We talked of other things. Already he was searching for a new place to live. We followed the details of that search. This is what Laurier House companions do when their spouses die. With no resident to support, there is no reason for companions to remain. Three weeks after we arrived, John was gone. For a brief time he was our best friend. He was the first person we lost at Laurier House and we missed him. The loss I felt at John’s departure took me back a few short years to the time when David’s mother was in her mid-nineties, alive and alert. In the previous twenty years her peers had all died. A social type, she immediately developed friendships in the seniors residence where she lived. But her new friends also died. Yet somehow she had continued on a forward journey with resignation and a surprising degree of optimism. Watching her, I had hoped to follow her example—when I was in my mid-nineties. The opportunity to follow her example came much earlier than I expected. I was 63 and David was 64 when we moved to Laurier House. There was already some illness amongst our peers, but most of our friends and relatives were travelling, volunteering, entertaining friends, and living the life we had hoped to have in our sixties. Joining the Laurier House community was going to expose us to loss at a level we had not anticipated. I am grateful for the time John gave to us. He did not leave without a trace. Instead of talking about grief in his last few weeks, he turned his attention toward settling us into our new future. He taught us how to assist a friendly resident who was constantly searching for her room. He taught us that you could probably be served if you showed up for breakfast half an hour earlier than the posted serving time. He taught us that you could take a breakfast tray to your room, or ask a care attendant to get one for you. He taught us that you could ask the dining room for a litre of milk, or a carton of juice. When I consulted him about a problem with our shower, he said that his shower, left to its own devices, seemed most inclined to point at the side wall. That, he explained, was the reason why he usually chose to bathe. These things we would no doubt have figured out eventually, but we were grateful for the lessons. Time is a clearly defined thing. It takes as long as it takes. Only human perception makes a minute seem long or short. As I write this piece I am aware that I have already been at Laurier House longer than John. The time I spend here is the time I have with David, so I cannot wish it shorter. . In the brief time we knew him, John showed us how life would unfold at Laurier House. People would come. They would hide. They would settle in. The staff, getting to know them, would treat them with affection. Then they would go, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. That was the rhythm of the place. We were at the beginning then, looking for a roadmap to guide us on a journey nobody would ever want to sign up for. We were looking for hope. If John--grieving a loss and facing his second major move in less than a year--could smile through it all, treat people with respect and open his heart to disoriented newcomers, then maybe we could too.

THE HOPE LADY RISES TO THE OCCASION (Nursing Home Life part 1)

I don’t believe I have ever heard anyone say: “I hope to move into a nursing home some day,” or “My life goal is to end up in long-term care.” Small wonder! Long-term care comes with a lot of unwanted baggage. According to Alberta Health services, it “is designed specifically for individuals with complex, unpredictable medical needs who require 24 hour on-site Registered Nurse assessment and/or treatment.” It’s not a way of being that anyone would choose over good health and independence. But there are times when we choose places to live based on how we are, rather than how we would like to be. If we find ourselves living in a place where our needs cannot be adequately met, then it is just possible that we might start hoping to move to long-term care. These days people in the Edmonton area can receive long-term care in several types of facilities. There are traditional type nursing homes with single and double rooms. There are groups of long-term care rooms in facilities that also have apartments and duplexes that house people who need little or no care. There is also Laurier House, the place where we currently live. Laurier House is unique in that it accommodates both long-term care residents and live-in companions. David and I wanted to live together in the future and that is why we chose it. It was the most hopeful choice we could find. For many years THE HOPE LADY Blog was an active blog where I thought and wrote about life from a hopeful perspective. My writing slowed and eventually halted as my life became more and more entangled with the progress of a degenerative neurological disorder known as Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). I have the spouse’s version of MSA. That is to say, David has the disease, and I am inextricably linked to him. MSA is, by its very nature, a hope-sucker. It can suck hope out of your life as fast as you can generate it. Before MSA our hopes for the future had been grand, general and expansive. Once MSA introduced its future plan for David, our hopes became narrow and short-term. We hoped each day to make our life together as good as possible. Beyond that, I was in a constant state of preparation hoping to be ready to face the unwanted changes that lay just over the horizon. I had traded the happiness of being hopeful about the future for the hope of being prepared to take charge. It was a defensive kind of hope, a hope enacted to counter-balance the fear of losing control in the face of chaos. I could deal with it, but I didn’t want to blog about it. It is possible that, if our time here had been shorter, this phase of my life would have gone unrecorded on THE HOPE LADY Blog. But now that David has been receiving care at Laurier House for more than a year, and I have built a life for myself here as his live-in companion, I find myself wanting to write an insider’s HOPE LADY perspective on living in a nursing home. It seems a little bit dangerous because I have so many feelings these days. On the down side, I am not immune to attacks of cabin fever. I am devastatingly sad to be steadily losing David to forces nobody can control. I am regretful that we could not have made a sustainable plan to prevent our having to move here. I am envious of the friends and relatives who, early in retirement, are living the lives we had planned to live. I am easily frustrated when the tasks of daily living prove to be harder and more complicated than they need to be. These feelings, I find, are more suited to expression in private diaries than public blogging. Nobody likes a whiner! That said, our life together here at Laurier House has many features that a HOPE LADY would want to acknowledge and record. There is delight and friendship; kindness and competence; curiosity and humour. It helps to notice these things. It is much easier to live each day to the fullest and look forward to the days just ahead when we find it in ourselves to name the things that bring us joy, and thank the people who generously fall in step beside us to lend a hand and an encouraging word on this journey. So begins a series of vignettes describing aspects of my life as a companion to a loved-one in long-term care. If you are reading this, please know that I don’t expect you to suddenly start hoping you can someday live in a nursing home, any more than I would expect you to hope for a bout of cancer, or a broken leg. But I do want you to know that there are options, and there are things each of us can do to help create spaces where people might find happiness in the face of frailty and disability. By the time we qualify for long-term care, most of us will not be healthy enough to advocate for the conditions that would make us comfortable. So we have to rely on healthy concerned citizens to bring such places into being before we get there. I write this series in gratitude to the imaginative people who envisioned Laurier House for couples like us, and singles who would choose to receive care in a place that is more resemblant of an apartment building than a traditional institution. I write it in appreciation of three shifts of staff who do their best to be both efficient and humane. Finally, I write in the hope that we will make it our business to staff the facilities we have at something above the minimum needed for efficient operation. When we need to live in such facilities in the future, it will be because we can no longer care for ourselves. In that case, we will want to live in places where the staff has both the time and energy to care for us--not in a minimal way--but with a flourish, as if we were rare and precious.

IN SEARCH OF GRATITUDE

“The most transformative and resilient leaders that I’ve worked with over the course of my career have three things in common: First, they recognize the central role that relationships and story play in culture and strategy, and they stay curious about their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Second, they understand and stay curious about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are connected in the people they lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception. And, third, they have the ability and willingness to lean in to discomfort and vulnerability.” Brené Brown, Rising Strong After spending more than a year on the market, our house sold. Our realtor seemed happy, if a little apologetic. Beside him I sat, scribbling initials here and there, scratching my full name on the line as he pointed. Then I waited for the surge of gratitude that would, if my readings of www.gratefulness.org were accurate, enhance my physical/mental health, contribute to financial stability, improve my personal relationships and contribute to the well-being of work/community environments. I waited for the unbridled shout of joy, the quiet contentment of satisfaction, the slight tug of a smile against my cheeks. Then I waited some more. Gratitude, it seemed, had gone missing. To my surprise, I didn’t call anyone to announce the good news about the sale, didn’t tell my friends, thought it better not to disappoint them. They had been summoning my gratitude—my relief at a minimum--ever since the negotiations began. “You must be so relieved,” they said. “You must be really happy to have the possibility of getting it done with.” If I can’t be grateful, then I must be relieved, I thought. I must be it. I have to be relieved for my friends, for my kids, for all the people who want to hear that I am relieved. They are counting on me to be relieved. But I was not relieved. I was anything but relieved. Instead of being relieved, I was angry—angry that it had taken more than a year to sell, angry that it had sold for so much less than we had ever imagined, angry that the buyer was demanding that we do routine maintenance before handing it over, angry that I hadn’t insisted on lowering the price long ago, angry that there had been a break-in during the negotiations, angry at myself for feeling sad every time I visited the house I loved, so sad that I only went there when forced to do so. So it wasn’t enough just to be angry. I had to be sad as well. I was sad to be losing the house that had made us so happy, sad that David’s illness had made the sale of the house the only reasonable option. I was sad to lose the house with the incredible veranda and the yard full of birds, the house where you could lie awake at dawn and count the birds you could hear through the open windows—five birds, ten birds maybe. I was sad to lose the rhubarb I hadn’t wanted to plant, the onions I couldn’t get rid of, the raspberry bushes that tore the skin off my arms, the lupines, the peonies, the lilac bush, the Solomon’s Seal started from a cutting stolen by friends from the front of Athabasca Hall for my fortieth birthday, the goat’s beard Mark once gave me for Mother’s Day. Adding it all up, I had to admit that I was far too sad to be grateful. On top of all this, I was resentful, resentful that it wasn’t enough just to be angry and sad. I had to be worried on top of it all, worried that the accumulation of all that had happened to me had somehow transformed me irreversibly into a sad and angry person who couldn’t be grateful for blessings, who couldn’t tell stories that ended happily without including long middle descriptions of the suffering. I worried that I might have lost the capacity to be satisfied with my life. Now I know that the best way to enhance gratitude is to list things for which you are grateful. I also know, from trying this myself, and from hearing hundreds of stories from clients who tried it, that listing things for which you are grateful is a practice that works best when you are already feeling grateful. When you are mostly sad and angry, a list of gratitudes quickly transforms itself into a list of yes-buts. Yes, I am grateful that we live in such a beautiful apartment, but I am angry that we had to move out of the house. Yes I am grateful that I was able to go to the house and collect two fragrant bouquets of peonies for the apartment, but I am sad that I will probably never grow my own peonies again. Yes I am grateful to have the best husband anybody ever had, loving children, delightful grandchildren, devoted friends, financial security, sunny days, the on-line grocery shopping service, and the electric wheelchair that has made it possible for David and me to cruise the streets of our new neighbourhood, but I’m angry and sad about the house. Take it from me. Satisfaction with your life is a hard thing to come by once you get into the intoxicating rhythm of making a grateful yes-but list One of my great disappointments in the positive psychology trend with all its potential for self-help is that it makes you believe it is possible to make yourself feel what you want to feel instead of what you feel but don‘t want to feel. If you can make yourself feel things, I haven’t yet learned how to do it. The best I can offer is that you can lead your unwanted feelings to the door, but you can’t shoo them out. They’ll leave when they are good and ready to do so. If you are lucky, the process of herding them toward the door will leave some empty space to fill with other feelings. Maybe you can do a little bargaining, practice the art of compromise. It took a while to come to it, but I’ve offered Sadness a deal. I’ll stop pressuring her to leave if she’ll stop pushing back. I’ve hinted that she might even be allowed to stay permanently. As for Anger, well, she’s already on her way out. I suspect she got a little jealous when I buddied up with Sadness and decided to search for an easier target. And as for life satisfaction, a visit to www.viacharacter.org has reminded me that satisfaction is strongly associated with five character strengths—hope, zest, gratitude, love and curiosity. With Anger consuming a little less of my time, I found a moment to take an inventory. Firmly in place I have love and curiosity. Hope, as you might expect, refuses to be left out entirely. Zest is making occasional appearances, and gratitude has promised to keep working against the yes-buts. As the peonies prepare to drop their petals, maybe tomorrow, but certainly the day after, I notice that I’ve even made a few calls to announce that the house has sold, and though I had to pinch myself to believe it, I am quite sure I heard myself say, “It’s a bit of a relief to have it sold.” Could it be that, one day soon, “It’s a bit of a relief” might actually be replaced by “I’m grateful”?

FAMILY GOLF

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course. Hank Aaron Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/golf.html Lawrence and Mark organized a family golf game. The goal, it seemed, was to seize the day, to have as much fun as possible. Each of them did their part. Lawrence had the idea. Mark booked the tee time. Lawrence arranged the weather. The day was perfect, sunny with a slight ruffling breeze, not too hot, not too cold, no mosquitoes. Mark arranged the golf carts. “Could we have two golf carts?” he asked at the Pro shop. The clerk was polite, but curious. “For two golfers?” he asked. “Yes,” said Mark, making no apology. “We can manage with one.” We left the shop with the key to one cart. Any conversation that might have occurred between clerks went unheard by us. Then, just at the moment when Mark was leading his blind mother by the arm, and Lawrence was helping his dad board the cart from his wheelchair, the clerk appeared with the key for a second cart. No additional charge. We all climbed aboard. I rode with Mark. Sibling rivalry bubbled just below the surface. With a wave to his brother, Mark cranked our speed to maximum. We must have been going one or two kilometers per hour. “You can’t scare me,” I said, looking as fearless as possible while holding tightly to the side arm. Mark takes wicked corners, wickeder when his brother is watching. By and by Tracey joined us at the fifth hole tee box with a full load, baby Carys in the baby carrier and a picnic supper alongside the diaper bag. I surrendered my seat to most of Tracey’s cargo to trail after the carts with Tracey and Carys, chattering all the way. We know you’re supposed to whisper on a golf course. We just forgot. Dad spotted the balls as they landed. Birds chirped. Ducks watched unmolested. Nobody knows who won, because nobody bothered to pick up a score card. After the picnic we all went home. If the goal is happiness, there are probably a thousand ways to play family golf.

THE FLOWER PROBLEM

Picture a balcony bearing ten pots of flowers. Find impatiens, geranium, Martha Washington, evening scented stocks, pansies, heliotrope, roses, begonia, petunias, alyssum, ornamental grass and a few adornments that didn’t come with names. Picture all of this in mid May in a province known for occasional snow in June, and there you see it—evidence of a FLOWER PROBLEM. Warning: don’t bother organizing an intervention to get my attention. Don’t assemble a delegation of caring family supported by flower problem treatment professionals! I know about the problem. I know that only I can beat it. Some day I’ll beat it. I swear I will! It was daughter Ruth who first named the illness. She had failed to notice the introduction of the lily patch and a few hanging pots to the already flowered house on 67th Street. She had celebrated the planters and peonies at the house on 89th Street. But when the number of front yard pots exceeded twenty, she felt she had to say something. “You, Mother,” she announced, “have a flower problem.” How could I deny it? Time I used to spend with the kids on the soccer field was now spent trimming the coleus. Television watching time was pre-empted smelling the roses. But how could I quit, or even cut back? What would our friends say? How could I explain it to any of the neighbours who passed our house on walks just to see the profusion Then, out of the blue, an opportunity presented itself. We were moving to an apartment. It would be difficult to have a flower problem on an apartment balcony. Where would I store the potting soil? How would I deal with the mess of water and fallen leaves? Who would haul away the debris? We moved in late August. “No flowers,” I said to my surprised family. “The flowers stay with the house.” Just to show how serious I was, I only took a few empty pots, and a few plant stands, and one pail of potting soil. And I only bought one chrysanthemum when the need arose to warm the autumn chill. Perhaps if I had been a little more vigilant at the first signs of spring, things might have turned out differently. But it seemed right to thank Mark for bringing the first pansy pot in early April, an affirmation that winter was truly gone. And would it not have been impolite not to rejoice when Grace brought my favourite yellow pansies and removed the remains of last year’s chrysanthemum? And how could I have rejected the rose bush in full bloom that Mark presented as a gift for early Mother’s Day, or the free pot of geranium and petunias that came free from Superstore with a grocery order over $250.00? Would it have been right not to support our church by purchasing $100.00 worth of summer joy from the annual plant sale? After all, the house did not sell as we had planned. And there sat the remaining plants stands, lonely on the veranda. Had they, after so many years of faithful service, not earned a position of honour outside our new livingroom window? “I like to look out the window at all those flowers,” said David. Next door to us stands a high rise with suites that look directly on to our balcony. “These people probably think I have a flower problem,” I said to David, as I stowed the last of the potting soil. “Don’t worry,” said he. “The neighbours have always loved our flowers.. If I were to be truly honest and not simply hopeful, I suppose I would have to admit that I may never be cured. The root of the flower problem, it is now obvious, lies in the act of enablement. Yes, there is an enabler living under my very own roof? How can you expect to cure yourself of a problem like that with an enabler in the family?

GRIT, GRACE & GRATITUDE

A few weeks ago I received an email from my friend and mentor, Ronna Jevne. She was offering an overnight writing retreat at a lodge in the country, and even though common sense told me that the very same email was sent to dozens, maybe hundreds of people in her network, I couldn’t seem to rid myself of the conviction that she was aiming that retreat directly at me. “Ridiculous!” said Common Sense. But I was not listening. “Look,” I said to Common Sense, “there is a ton of evidence pointing to my conviction that this retreat is being offered especially for me. The title of that workshop is Grit, grace and Gratitude, three things I could use right now. And the lodge is only a little way out of the city, so I can take a cab if I can’t get a ride. I’d only need to be away for about thirty hours, which is certainly within the realm of possibility. And you know, Common Sense, I haven’t been writing much lately. In fact, I haven‘t put a word on The Hope Lady blog since some time back in 2015. Yes, when I put it all together, it seems pretty clear that this retreat was designed specifically for me.” “Ridiculous!” said Common sense. I didn’t listen. Life can be pretty dull if you spend too much time listening to Common sense. “You haven’t been writing on your blog,” said Ronna, when I emailed her the news of my pending registration. Her tone was more affirmation than accusation. “See,” I said to Common sense. “I knew it. She’s been checking up on me!” “Just send the money when it’s convenient,” said Ronna, “and I’ll get you a ride.” Ronna and writing and I have a long and storied relationship. Our first encounter happened back in 1993 when I asked her to be my thesis supervisor. “Can you write?” she demanded. Truth was, she needed a Master’s student about as badly as she needed chicken pox. “Yes I can,” I declared with conviction. I needed a thesis supervisor as badly as I needed food for the rest of my life, and Ronna was the only desirable person in the department who hadn’t yet turned me down. “I don’t want to be nagging you,” she said. And I had a supervisor. At the time, I really intended to be self-managing. “I don’t want to hear you whining about how you can’t write,” she said. “The sign on my wall says NO WHINING!” Apparently she’d already had enough whining students to last her a lifetime. “I won’t whine,” I promised. But she did have to nag me, after the fog descended on all my good ideas and the only way out was to disappear and pretend I’d never started a Master’s. And she did help me, even though I whined. “Is there something I can do to move you forward?” said her voice on the phone on a day when I had accidentally answered a call from her. I couldn’t think of anything she could do to help me, so she had to do her own thinking. She praised me when I wrote a little, and laughed when I was funny, and bragged about me when I wrote more. And she published hope work with me, and hoped I would be a writer, which I’ve never turned out to be—though I do love writing when it calls to me. So I’m blogging again, out of gratitude to Ronna for keeping my name on her email list, even though the retreat is still sixteen days away. And Ronna has shown the grace not to utter a word of complaint, or let on that she might be groaning under the weight of responsibility for the good mental health of former students who require more attention than they have earned. I am promising, as you might expect, to write at the retreat without uttering a single whining noise. At this point, it is not clear to me where the grit comes in, but if there’s grit to be uncovered, well, I guess that’s what we’ll find out in sixteen days.

MAKING MEMORIES

On Mother’s Day weekend in the future Feasting in cozy cafes and restaurants of rich renoun Will I fail to recall the day I spent beneath an umbrella in a song-bird serenade As the vegetable seeds pierced the surface with their tiny stems and the dandelions grew a foot or more in a single moment? Will I neglect to remember the frosty marguerite in my hand, The fresh blueberries and left-over pizza served with a cheery “there you go, Mother!” My feet cooling in a shallow pool with sand on the bottom for the beach effect? Will I disremember the rosy lips of Baby Carys exploring the pool’s rounded edge As her eyes peered into the sandy water and her hand sought the thrill of a possibly forbidden dip? Will my mind fail to review that tender moment, when after slurping a long and luxurious drink, Bentley launched 88 solid German Shepherd pounds into the cool pool, Ignoring entreaties to come quick for the capture of the mouse who surveyed the scene from beneath the mountain ash? Will I forget the Mother’s Day weekend of 2016? It’s possible, I suppose. For any thing is possible. But I doubt it!

ELDERS

This week we lost Aunty Adaline, the last of the generation that precedes us in David's family. We are now the elders. It's a worrying proposition really. What do the best elders do, anyway? We tend to say that elders in our society are not respected. And yet, I think they are, which is the very thing that makes elderhood such a challenge. The best elders are wise, but not too quick to share their wisdom. They are stable, but flexible. They bring the experience of the past, and a childlike wonder when viewing the present. Elders teach us to laugh at things we wouldn't know how to laugh at. They show us how to part with vanity. They love us. They want to see us. These are the things we lose when the last elders of a generation are gone. This is the responsibility that, by birth, is transfered to us.

ELEGANT ABUNDANCE

Wow!! The world of books for people with print disabilities is opening up as never before. What better place to notice the change than in the search for the books on the short list for CBC’s Canada Reads 2014? For the first time ever, and with the help of three libraries, I will have the opportunity to read all the 5 books on the finalists list for the Canada Reads contest. There is a chance, in fact, that I will have the opportunity to read all five books before the contest airs on CBC Radio. I have already read Annabel by Kathleen Winter. It came to me in DAISY format on CD from the CNIB Library. I read it in bed, an hour or so of reading pleasure each night before sleep—and a little extra, because the book was so compelling. Next I will read Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan. I have borrowed a copy on commercial audio CD from the Edmonton Public Library. I searched for it on the Internet and placed it on hold. Now that it has found its way to me, I will read it as quickly as I can and return it for the next person on the holds list. On my next vacation, I will read Cockroach by Rawi Hage. I have downloaded it on a tiny card in DAISY format from the CNIB Library and it now rests on my pocket reader. On that same vacation I will also read The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. Unlike the others, this book will be read to me in an electronic voice. I downloaded it onto my pocket reader from BookShare, a source where publishers can place electronic copies of their books for the use of people with print disabilities. I downloaded the book in audio format, but I could have chosen to get it in braille. The one book I do not yet have is The Orenda by Joseph Boyden. It was published in 2013 and is currently being recorded by volunteers at the CNIB Library. I will download it when it is available. The process of finding and getting books that blind people can read has undergone a revolution in the past few years. Public library collections have been greatly enhanced by the popularity of commercially available audio books. The Internet has made it possible to search for books and get them on demand. Recent changes in international copyright law have torn down the walls that used to limit cross-border access. The effect of the changes has been summed up by my friend Jim, a man who can read circles around me. Reflecting on how things were in the recent past he says: “Other people would be talking about information management and I would sit there wishing I had information to manage.” Reflecting on the future, I worry a little. Three of the five Canada reads books are provided by the CNIB Library, a reliable source of braille and audio books with a history stretching back more than 100 years. That library has been my rock. It is moving down a path toward integration with public libraries. Canadian books are not generally made available on commercial audio. As integration progresses, we have to hope that Canadian readers will continue to be supported in reading Canadian books to us in a timely fashion. Beyond the act of hoping, we will need to advocate for this. You can listen to an electronic book, but a human reader is far superior. For now, it is enough to be grateful that our book supply is better than it has ever been, to celebrate this elegant abundance. It is a giddy feeling to be able to get so many of the books I want after so many years of settling for whatever books I could get.

VOTING FOR EDMONTON'S MAYOR, SINGING ON THE TRAIN

I voted in the Edmonton municipal election yesterday. And even though I cannot see to read a ballot, my vote was cast in perfect privacy. I went to City Hall, sat down at the Automark voting machine, and listened as the machine read me the operating instructions. I selected a mayor from among six choices, a councillor from among 16, and a school trustee from among two. Then I put my ballot in the box, thanked the staff, told them how thrilled I was to be able to vote in privacy, boarded the LRT at Churchill Station and hummed, for the sheer joy of it, all the way to the university. More than any other level of government, our city has made voting easy for people who cannot use a print ballot. In future, we will only be voting once every four years instead of once every three years. This change will give our elected officials more time to work for us. I support this change, but I hate to give up even one chance to vote in such a delightfully inclusive manner.

WET FLOOR!!!!

Want to hear something spectacular? Well then, go down into an underground station of the LRT in Edmonton. Make sure to be in a station with concrete walls and a high ceiling that echoes like the Swiss Alps. Wait for a quieter moment. Then pull out a white cane, take a few quick steps forward and propel a WET FLOOR sign into space. (Note: I suspect you don’t have to look for a station that has a wet floor. Pretty much any station will do.) Wait for the sign to clatter back on the ceramic floor, hit it a second time if it lands in a straight path just in front of you, and you’ve got a hubbub worthy to remove the ear buds and turn the head of even the most obtuse teen-ager. Is it just my imagination, or are WET FLOOR signs more popular these days? Admittedly, my memory isn’t what it used to be. I check three times to make sure I turned the oven on, four times to be sure I turned it off. Still, you’d think that a person with the capacity to spontaneously recall half the lyrics to half the songs on the pop charts of 1966 would not have forgotten the WET FLOOR signs from the good old days of her youth. Surely she would have noticed them if they had been as popular as smokers in Ladies’ washrooms. Or is it just that, in these smoke-free times, a lot of things have become more clear? Anyway, until somebody proves me wrong, I am going to stick with the theory that there are more WET FLOOR signs than there used to be. I’d say they border on the ubiquitous. You find them in places both private and public—taking up 90% of the available floor space in the washrooms at Tim Horton’s, cluttering the vast expanse in the tiled lobby of the dentist’s office, not to mention the place where I encounter most of them—centred boldly in the narrow pathways that lead from the street to the trains of the LRT. Why, just last week—on a single trip to work--I took out four of them—sent them flying, spinning end over end, clattering on their sides, sliding like hockey players on their way to the boards. . Each encounter in its turn was surprising, noisy, a moment of high drama. Four encounters in the early morning rush of sleepy commuters. A record to be sure, and still I’ll never know how many possible others I missed. There is a difference between being noticed and being stared at. I am not, and have never been, the kind of woman who likes to be stared at. Give me a joke, and I’ll try to make you laugh. Give me a stage with a mic and I’ll tell you a story, might even sing you a song. But send me out to work on a sleepy commuter morning, and I would prefer to be unnoticed or at least to imagine that I am unnoticed. I would prefer to have digital WET FLOOR signs flashing high on the walls rather than littering the floors in the most obvious paths of travel. I would prefer to be able to see these blasted items of clutter and not hit them at all. At the very least, I would choose to have WET FLOOR signs present only when floors are wet, rather than hanging about for hours on floors that probably dried yesterday. But if I can’t have any of these things, then please endow me with the delusion that the WET FLOOR sign launching event is one of the funniest entertainments of the day, if not for the startled on-lookers, then at least for me. Let me hear the applause when a perfect hit is made! Let me bow in humble gratitude for the twisted fate that presented the opportunity to entertain! It’s not such a big stretch of the imagination, is it?

THANKSGIVING FOR FAMILY

Last week I attended a conference where more than half the participants were First Nations. It was jointly sponsored by Aboriginal Health Services and Alberta Health Services. It got me thinking again about the role of family. There were more children at this conference than you would usually find at such a thing. People were sharing responsibility for them, carrying them around, planting them on willing laps. There were more generations of families than you normally see at conferences. That is because so many of the participants came from First Nations families. I was there without relatives, a normal conference condition for me, unless I’ve recruited a relative to drive me. Family support looks different in different cultures. Early in our marriage I recall thinking that it would be good to be far away from family. We could do our own thing, carve out a life for ourselves. I knew that if we were near family, they would influence how we lived. Those were the days before social networking, before you could be close to loved-ones, hearing their voices, seeing their picture while you spoke to them, calling as often as you liked. It turned out that long distance separation for us was not to be. Some parents were ten minutes away. Others were two hours away. And so, on this Thanksgiving, I have the great gift of being thankful for incredible family support, both given and received, the way that family support makes you grateful. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that one of our conference speakers said that everyone has a role in families. In aboriginal cultures, the role of elders is to be wise, to be cared for. The role of younger people is to care for them and learn. In our culture, things are a bit different. We think more passively of elders, don’t rely on them as teachers so much. But the rules of mutual caring still apply. . I will be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with my father and my mother-in-law. It is likely that both of them will give me at least one piece of advice. I’ll remember that advice, even if I don’t want to. I know this because it has often happened. I am going to be a grandmother soon, or is it a Granny, or a Gran? We’re not sure exactly what I shall be called. The object of my grandmotherhood, still being on the inside has no name at the moment so I call him Little Bun. Little Bun will be growing up a few thousand miles away from me. Still, I truly hope to be part of Little Bun’s life. I’ve been making lists lately of all the things my elders have taught me about raising children, of all the things my elders have done to help me raise my children. The list is long and impressive. And so, on this Thanksgiving weekend, I am especially thankful for family support. I am particularly willing to hold on through the ups and downs, to believe that it is a good thing to be with family.

IF I WERE A SIGHTED PERSON...

There are quite a few things I would do,
like getting my driver’s license,
and catching people’s eye.
Among other things,
I’d identify birds by using bird books.

What could be more fun
Than flipping through the pages,
Spying a bird with a cry of
“That’s the one!”

Me: I heard the most beautiful bird song this morning. I was talking to Donna on the phone at the time and I just had to open the door so she could hear it too.
Him: There’s a new bird in the robin’s nest on the veranda this year.
Me: What kind of bird?
Him: I don’t know what it is.
Me: Maybe it’s the bird with the beautiful song.
Him: Maybe. It has a very red breast.
Me: But not a robin?
Him: Smaller than a robin.
Me: And it’s head?
Him: Red head.

If I were a blind person,
I would try to remember
That I live in 2012
When anybody can go to the computer
And search for “smaller than a robin, red head, red breast, Alberta.”

Me: I think it’s a house finch.
Him: (looking at screen) I don’t know. I’ll wait until I see it again.
Me: I am sure it’s the song of the house finch.

If I have to be a blind person,
And it does seem that I do,
Then I’m glad to be one in 2012,
Even if I can’t say for absolute certain it’s a house finch,
Because here I sit, blogging,
While listening on the computer to a most beautiful bird song.

MARK MY WORDS

And it came to pass that, after our Thanksgiving dinner,
When Mark had made the after-dinner walk especially fun for 11-year-old abbey,
And retrieved Pirate from his frolic in the bush,
And dealt the cards that weren’t a complete deck,
And re-dealt a better deck, but not quite right because the number of players kept changing,
And dealt again, then dealt again for Abbey, and for me, and for Aunty Donna,

Yes it came to pass that I promised to be grateful for Mark,
For all the things he does just because,
He can make the world a better place.
And to say that I am grateful—say it with feeling!

THANKSGIVING BY THE DOZEN

It was in City Hall Not in a church That representatives of 12 faith traditions Gathered on a Wednesday night To welcome each other, To support each other, To say prayers of Thanksgiving.