ON STAGE BEHIND BOB

Other people are sleeping peacefully, or eating breakfast, or reading the newspaper before heading off to the office.  I am playing wrong notes on the piano.  Only one question seems relevant: Why do I say yes to these things?

 

This isn’t my problem.  It’s Bob’s.  He has written a song which he wants to sing.  The song needs accompaniment.  Since Bob neither reads music, nor plays an instrument, his song will remain a song for the shower unless somebody composes and plays an accompaniment.  If Bob had been a little less humble when he shyly asked if I could create music for a song he had written, if I hadn’t imagined the song to be a simple song in the key of C needing only a few cords, if we hadn’t been standing at the back of the church right after a sermon about reaching beyond yourself, then I might not have said yes.  But I did say “yes” and the date when bob will perform the song is already set. 

 

I’m a sucker for flattery, a pushover for anybody seeking volunteers.  All they have to say is: “you’d be great for this job,” and I’m right there, doing their work when I ought to be doing my own.  So here I sit, winding and rewinding Bob’s cassette tape, fumbling in the impossible key of E major, a woman who never plays the blues, wondering how they play the blues for a guy who croons like Elvis.  It will take hours to figure it all out, hours to play it with confidence, hours to practice with bob.  And what will be the gain?

 

Now the performance day has come, and here we are, crammed into the far end of a narrow airless room with a tin can sound system and a piano that probably had its most recent tuning some time around 1950.  Fluorescent tubes blaze along a ceiling so low I can almost touch it.  Some members of the audience are asleep, aided possibly in their rest by hearing loss.  Others fidget in wheelchairs.  The place smells like—like--like a nursing home.  Just how much time did I spend preparing for this?

 

The moment has arrived.  The piano and I are negotiating the introduction.  Lean on the soft pedal.  Keep the rhythm slow and steady.  Bob is positioning the mike.  He’s breathing in.  Now he is singing the low notes, making them mellow, feeling the rhythm.  Now he’s building in the middle, resting, breathing.  The lights seem softer somehow.  Now he’s up in the high notes, the E, the D’s, soaring, gliding.  The piano has forgotten to be out of tune.  Indeed, it seems to be playing itself, coming out of itself to be with Bob.  It is supporting.  It is lifting.  It is singing too.  Having awakened the audience, Bob takes a moment to twirl them at the top before he starts the final descent, coming down softly, leaving them gently.  The last low note ushers in the silence.  Nothing left to do but take a bow. 

 

Applause rings out.  Tomorrow a bustling nurse will nod politely when a white-haired gentleman tells her Elvis was in the building.  But tonight the place seems to smell better than it did an hour ago, maybe as good as the Winspeare Centre, or maybe like a hotel theatre in Vegas. 

 

FRUITCAKE

What do the experts say about the staying power of their fruitcakes?  Martha Stewart makes a fruitcake that will keep for 25 years.  Food writer Cinda Chavich tells us that her mother’s fruitcake keeps for a yeaar.  Ours never lasts more than a couple of months, shorter time if covered with almond paste.  Nobody knows how long it would keep.

THE PROBLEM WITHCHARITY

I know two people who have no food in the cupboard and no money coming in the next few days.  Neither of them will have money for the rent if they buy food with the next cheque.  It ought to be easy to deal with this problem, given the plethora of charity fund raising that goes on at Christmas.  The food bank is everywhere, on the radio, at every concert.  They are intelligent.  They are aware.  It is inconceivable that either of these people are unaware of the food bank, but neither has mentioned it, and so I tentatively mention the food bank to both of them. 

 

They are different these two, different in age, in gender, in stage of life.  Yet their response to my suggestion is virtually identical.  Silence!  I wait.  More silence!  The silence of the measured response, the silence of people swallowing a reaction too caustic to throw in the face of someone they trust, someone they respect.   “no,” they say.  “No.  Not the food bank.”

 

And then they wait for me to answer, wait in the silence.  More silence.  The silence of a counsellor who doesn’t know how to help people regain their mental health when they have no food to eat, the silence of someone who admires their courage in the face of deficiencies incomprehensible in the context of my own life.  I want to tell them that I don’t get it, that their refusal is stupid, that it makes me feel hopeless amid the bombardment of charities in this Christmas season.  Only trouble is, I do sort of get it. 

 

These are kind people, nice people, charitable people struck down in their prime by the pervasive mental illnesses that filter through the generational divides in their families.  They want to give, not take.  And while they may or may not be able to receive a cheque in private and sneak it to the bank under cover of confidentiality, they cannot imagine hearing themselves beg for food and then choose macaroni over lentils.  They would paste on a smile of gratitude, force out a polite thank-you. They would go home and give the food away. 

 

I just want to ask them over for dinner.  But the psychology profession would call that poor boundaries.  I fear the professionals would not defend me if things turned out badly.  “You can’t change the world,” they would say.  That is why we have government and charities. 

 

And I know they are right.  I cannot change the world.  But I still want to try.

 

FINDING FRIENDS AT CHRISTMAS

“Let there be no mistake,” says Tina.  “My social life is just about non-existent.  But then I call up this friend who I know is really busy, and she suggests we go out for dinner on Friday.  Her husband is totally caught up with work at this time of the year and she is spending her evenings alone.  And I am really surprised, because I have been thinking that I am the only person who isn’t completely booked up at this time of the year.  I am thinking that maybe if I make a few calls, I will find others who aren’t as busy as I thought.  I have had an Epiphany, and Advent hasn’t even started.”

 

THE BOY WHO SAID RRRRR

There once was a boy whose parents sent him to places where the people were deaf, mean and stupid.  Take kindergarten, for example.  “Hello,” said the teacher, as he untied his shoes.  “What is your name?”

 

“Lowence,” he whispered.

 

“Pardon me,” said the teacher.

 

“Lowence!” he said louder, but not loud enough, it seemed.  Because she went to her desk and got a piece of paper.  “Oh,” she said.  “Lawrence!”

 

Standing right beside him were a big tough guy named Jason and a sniveling little girl named Andrea.  When the teacher was getting a Kleenex for Andrea the guy named Jason whispered, “Lowence eh?  Can’t even say your own name.”

 

So Lowence kicked Jason, good and hard!  And Jason yelled: “Owowow.  He kicked me!”  The teacher heard that.  Now the teacher wasn’t the only adult in the classroom at the time.  There was also another really mean woman, a black-haired woman who took him firmly by the arm and marched him along down to the principal’s office where he had to stand in front of a counter and talk to somebody else who also turned out to be deaf. 

 

The mean woman said: “This boy has been violent.  His teacher has sent him to see the principal.”

 

“Oh dear,” said the lady behind the desk.  “What is your name?”

 

“Lowence,” he mumbled.

 

“Pardon me?”

 

“Lowence,” he said louder. 

 

“Lawrence,” said the mean woman with the black hair.

 

While he waited for the principal who was busy doing other things, he crawled under a table, and when he jumped up, the table jumped too.  So did a big cup of hot coffee that spilled on some other people who were waiting to see the principal.  People started yelling, which was really stupid, because the whole thing was an accident. 

 

Well, as you can probably imagine, this was a really busy time for his parents, going to meetings about his behavior and chasing after him when he ran away from school, and worrying about what ought to be done to teach him to read and getting him tested so he could qualify for special funding.  Nonetheless, one Saturday morning, right when the best cartoons were on, his mother said they were going to see a speech therapist, which was really stupid because he had speech therapy at school.  He did not want to go.

 

Later he had to admit that the morning turned out better than he expected.  For one thing, his mother bought him a slush from the 7 11 on the corner, which was something she really never did.  And the first thing the speech therapist made him do was look at pictures and say their names. 

 

After they had spent some time with the pictures, rabbits, roosters, rulers and the like, she told him he had a very handsome mouth and brought a mirror so he could see it.  It was a pretty handsome mouth.  He grinned a little.  Then she showed him her mouth, and she held it just so, open a little with her tongue curled backwards, and she made this sound: “RRRRRRR.”  Actually, her mouth was quite good looking also.

 

Then she said something he really could not believe.  You could hold your mouth just like that and make that sound too.  Why don’t you try it!  Come on!  Try it!”” 

 

She was right.  You could hold your mouth just the way she held hers, a little bit open with your tongue curled back and you could make that sound!  “RRRRR!”.   Even he could make that sound!  He sounded like a dog who was getting his bone taken away.  “RRRR!” He sounded like a tiger warning another tiger to stay out of his way.  He was a pack of dogs.  He was a whole zoo full of animals, all growling their heads off.  He growled and growled until his mother and that lady got the giggles and made him giggle too, which made it tough to go on growling.

 

Then that lady said something really ridiculous.  Now you can say Lawrence,” she said.  “Just hold your mouth like that and growl in the middle.” This is how it will sound.  It will sound like Lawrrrrrrrrrrrrrence.  “

 

He looked into the mirror, he held his tongue just right, and then he said it, “Lawrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrence!”  It sounded so good that he said it again, and again.  The lady said it with him.  His mother said it with him.  They marched when they said it.  They clapped when they said it.  They said it and said IT until their throats hurt. 

 

And after that, it seemed like there weren’t so many deaf people in the world.

THE HOPES OF A HAPPY COUNSELLOR

I wonder why we counselors write so much about our work, and so little about emotions.  What work, other than counselling, could be so totally fraught with
emotion?  All of us are human, filled to the brim with feelings we carry into and bring out of our work.  It strikes me as odd that, when we do write about
emotions, we put so much emphasis on learning to deal with client emotion and so little on making the most of our own.  Why, when we talk about our emotions,
do we so often phrase our language in terms of burnout and boundaries? 

 

 Most counsellors tell me they like their work.  So that raises a question: what could encourage us to write about counselling as the work we love, the
work that thrills us, rewards us?  Perhaps we need some leadership, an example to follow, permission demonstrated through action.   Okay, I will take a
turn.  But even as I contemplate my love of counselling, listing the practices that have made me the happiest, taught me the most treasured lessons, I
cannot think of a single publication where I would have the confidence to send such a piece of writing.  The happiness research tells us that life satisfaction
comes from the blending of three things: pleasure, personal engagement and meaning.  So here, on my blog, where I make the rules about what can and cannot
be said, are my top six hopes, based on what I have noticed about satisfaction with my work in the past, and what I hope to notice in the future.  .

 

 THE HOPES OF THE HAPPY COUNSELLOR

 

 1.  I hope to ache with caring.

 

 I hope to ache with caring, a phrase given to me not by a counselling expert but by a children’s author, Mem Fox.  I hope to ache with caring, even though
it hurts to ache, because when I ache with caring I make one more phone call at times when I think I have explored all the options.  I write referral letters
with greater conviction.  When I ache with caring, there is more chance that I will be understood, less chance that my genuine compassion will disappear
behind a mask of professional propriety.  When I ache with caring I read more books, ask more advice, take more risks, try new things.  I am inoculated
against apathy.  I have moved beyond the conscious effort of showing empathy by paraphrasing and reflecting feelings.  I actually hurt.  It’s uncomfortable,
but I do better work when I ache with caring.

 

 2.  I hope to learn by listening.

 

 When I listen to people, really hear what they are saying, they all sound different, and I am curious.  It is the curious part of me that keeps me interested
in other people, keeps them from falling into categories, makes each of them unique.  Listening to them seems to make them more interesting than anything
else I have tried.  When I listen with open ears, open to things I would like to hear and things I would rather not, I get the answers to the big why’s
of life: why do young men carry weapons?  Why are people so resistant to taking prescribed medications?  Why do we grieve the loss of people who were mean
to us?  Why do kids skip school?  When I occupy myself by learning through listening, I am usually too busy to give advice or point out the difference
between good and bad, between right and wrong.  There is always plenty of time for that later, and my opinion seems to carry more weight if I still want
to express it after I have listened first, learned first. 

 

 3.  I hope to be a source of hope.

 

 I hope to be a source of hope, with a spongy layer to soak up more of it.  When I hope I am given an extra set of binoculars with a view of a future I
would like to be in.  Any kind of hope will do: hope that is brave enough to scare off fear; hope that is powerful enough to dislodge inertia; hope that
is tenacious enough to out-maneuver despair; hope that is bright enough to light a path through fog or darkness.  If the events of my history or the tools
in my counsellor’s collection can bring hope or find hope or inspire hope or nurture hope or foster hope or enhance hope, then these are the tools I will
use with pride.

 

 4.  I hope to bubble with laughter.

 

 I like laughing.  I believe in laughter: private smiling mirth; irrepressible giggling; gut-wrenching, teary-eyed deep breathing laughter for the fun of
it; laughter for the health of it.  To those who say we should laugh less and deal with problems more seriously, I say let us laugh if we are able; laugh
first so we can build up the strength to deal with the problems.  It is hard for me to work with people who cannot laugh.  But then, pretty much anybody
will laugh if you help them.

 

 5.  I hope to inspire with stories.

 

 I like telling stories in counselling almost as much as I like hearing them, and I really, really like hearing them.  My love of stories took root early
in my days of bottles and diapers.  Over the years it has grown, found more places to express itself.  I am willing to risk wasting a little time with
stories, because stories do so many good things.  They settle us down, rivet our attention, make us feel warm, pique our curiosity, give us heroes to follow,
comfort us in times of fear.  They make the whole process interesting.  And as I said before, I like it when it is interesting.

 

 6.  I hope to be surprised by joy

 

 Surprised, you say?  Well, yes, surprised by joy, just like the title of that old William Wordsworth poem, since joy is in short supply in counselling. 
So many of the people who finally resort to counselling, having waited until they could not stand it one minute more, have lost their joy, or have tucked
it away under their sorrow, or left it at home, not expecting to need it for that hour.  So when joy—however fleeting--joins us in the office, bursting
forth in the news of triumphs, seeping out from the clutter of untidy memories, it is a welcome guest, a heralded celebrity.  In the face of disappointment,
and depression, and illness I am so often surprised by joy.  May I never get over being surprised!

 

 

WHAT WOULD THE HOPE LADY DO?

I might never have had a blog if they hadn’t started calling me The Hope Lady.  As far as I knew, blogs were for teen-agers and politicians on the campaign trail.  Besides, I’ve never been a journal keeper. 

 

My journaling history is a saga of failure, several journals begun, none growing larger than three entries before abandonment.  I had the idea that a journal ought to contain personal secrets and could not bear the thought of my secrets from any particular day being discovered.  There is safety in knowing you can change your secrets, and you can change them, so long as you haven’t put them in writing.   What’s more, I never could get very interested in writing anything that wasn’t going to be read by anyone. 

 

The Hope lady is a title others gave to me, not one I would have chosen for myself.  I am definitely no Mother Theresa.  But when you work for a centre for hope studies, and you talk about hope day after day, year after year, to people who may, or may not be able to remember your name, some of them are bound to refer to you as The Hope Lady.  Some days it feels like a good fit.  Other days, when the world is violent and the news is discouraging, and the drinking water has turned to acid rain and the bird feeder swarms with noisy magpies, and the computer has frozen and the kitchen tap is dripping, and the stock market is sliding while the only stock we ever sold is rising, and my favourite clients are suicidal and some professional journal editor has rejected the writing that kept me awake for six days—well—those are the days when it seems that there are actually two of us, The Hope Lady and The Real Me. 

 

The Real Me howls and wrings her hands.  She blames the politicians and pollutes the water.  She angrily turns off the radio and unplugs the computer because you can’t always turn it off when it’s frozen.  She curses the forces that shape the stock market and vows never again to buy birdseed.  She says something rude to the plumber’s receptionist and promises to rip up the editor’s comments.  But that will have to wait until the computer starts working again, because she has not printed them yet.  The Real Me is not the person who should receive a telephone solicitation from a charity, or a request to volunteer.  She is not the one who should be summoned to comfort the suicidal clients.  The task of being a good person on a bad day is delegated in full to The Hope Lady. 

 

The Hope Lady is no Mother Theresa, but she can do some surprising things.  She can write a little, and has wiped out 53 years of unsuccessful journaling with a blog faithfully kept for eleven weeks.  She feels no pressure to reveal secrets because it is a public journal, and no pressure to make it perfect because she already knows it will have few readers.  Nevertheless, she is purposeful in its writing, because somebody just might read it.  Grounded firmly in the world of The Real Me, she sets out to notice what The Hope Lady ought to notice, to give voice to the things The Hope Lady ought to write.  Surprisingly, her writing has received the stamp of approval from The Real Me.

 

And what has The Hope Lady noticed in the past eleven weeks?  The joy of a blind woman who can read the newspaper and the triumph of important issues in research; the comb concerts that celebrate racial progress in Selma Alabama and the gripping power of American civil war stories to make us work for peace; the pheasant at the bird feeder, feasting on the grain the magpies have spilled; the young people who learned to control their behavior, grew up nicely, shared their food with hungry strangers, interrupted their rushing journeys to help people in need; the old people, remembered with love and wonder; the cat getting a bird’s eye view from atop the piano; the proud accordion player coming out of the closet at last; the left wing, public health care supporting Albertans who were so totally welcomed in red-neck Tennessee.  She has written about hope-opotamuses, dogs with a secret past, unexpected roses, long-time half-empty vessels that filled to bursting in only a moment. 

 

There it is, this imperfect blog; out there in the universe where anybody might accidentally stumble upon it.  It is the foundation of evidence for hope that keeps the two of us on track on the worst of days.  It is the old chest we route in when we need to find hope.  It is the weight of reassurance that steadies our anchor when The Hope Lady and The Real Me venture into the world inhabited by suicidal clients. 

 

What would The Hope Lady do that The Real Me wouldn’t?  Even on the worst days she would look around to see if she could notice any hope.  And if she could summon the words to describe what she found, she would record it in a blog.

PIRATE'S PARADOX

I was starved when they found me and missing one eye

My features encrusted, a canine mud pie

So they christened me “Pirate’ and fenced their front yard

With wire and picket they thought would be hard

To escape, but it isn’t.  I crawl underneath

I engineer gaps with my paws and my teeth

 

If I could tell stories I’d keep them enthralled

With the places I’ve lived and the names I’ve been called

They sooth me with petting, they ply me with bones

They coddle me more than most kings on their thrones

I’m a paradogs daily, intending to stay

While incessantly plotting a fast get-away.

BILLS

I am thinking of two Bills who have been important to me.  Bill Beach was the minister at Mill Woods united Church when it was chartered.  He taught us how to set up a church, how to form a board, how to make a Sunday school, how to build a building.   The other is Bill Tymchuk.  He hired me into my first professional position, set an example for a job ought to be done, showed me that a gracious retirement is possible, came out to cheer for my accomplishments at every opportunity.  Now both Bills have Alzheimer Disease.  Their wives, ever their best helpers, now take the lead wherever they go.  But still my Bills are setting an example.  Bill Beach, a golfer from way back,  brings is putting machine to the Alzheimer forum, so that other patients and their families can see how they might continue to pursue a former passion.  And Bill Tymchuk calls me on the days when he is well saying: Ï thought I would call on a day when I can remember you. “

 

Knowing these two men, how can I think of Alzheimer Disease, and not be hopeful at the same time?

WANTING TO HAVE IT ALL

From the Dixie Chicks lyrics: "Am I The Only One (Whose Ever Felt This Way)"

 

There Is No Good Reason

I Should Have To Be So Alone””

 

I wanted to get tickets the moment I heard that the Dixie Chicks were coming to Rexall Place.  I was a little sorry about the venue.  This over-sized hockey rink is not exactly a citadel of acoustic perfection.  But Neil Diamond sang for me there, and his music kept me on my feet cheering through most of the second half.  And when Sarah McLaughlin sang for me in that place, it took twenty-four hours for me to emerge from the dreamy pleasure of her mellow sound.  A Dixie Chicks concert seemed like just the place where I would want to spend $120.  In my mind’s imagination I heard three beautiful voices entwined in soft feminine harmonies, lightly dancing among shades of violin and banjo.  I heard the sweet words that bring me to tears, the stories about lost love and little girls who fall for doomed soldiers. 

 

Our $120 put us up in the nosebleed section, a healthy climb, not for the faint of heart.  But then, though we were not the oldest people present, the crowd was much younger than we had expected.  We had been in our seats not more than a few moments when the aisles began to fill with strapping young men carrying trays of beer.  Within half an hour those same aisles vibrated with the descent of the hoards who now needed the washroom. 

 

Amid the action, three women came out on stage, exchanging instruments during the applause.  A noise roughly equivalent to the roar of an earthquake filled the place.  Amid the din the vague shapes of familiar songs reached out to claim the ear, then receded in the chaos.  Words and instruments disappeared entirely in the roar of the back-up band and the buzz of the sound system.  Deaf from the pounding of the music, I had no idea what they said between the songs when the applause died down. 

 

Bombardment is the word that seems to describe the experience.  At some point we made a conscious decision to avoid the danger of being trampled by the beer carriers and bathroom seekers on the steps, even though it meant suffering through to the end.  Having attended an event with $12,000 other people I felt curiously alone.  On the way out I heard a young girl say she had cried during the sad song about the soldier.  The newspaper said the Dixie Chicks were a real crowd pleaser.  After all, they mentioned the Oilers and everybody cheered.  I recalled their mentioning the Oilers, but I can’t remember if I cheered.

 

By mid-afternoon the next day, with my hearing partially restored, and the waste of $120 partially forgiven, I played my old CDs.  There they were, those harmonious voices, those clear-as-a-bell instruments.  They were whole.  They were magnificent.  They were just as wonderful as I remembered.  They were not gone forever. 

 

I have learned a lesson about wanting to have it all.  My Dixie Chicks are back in my ears now, and I’ll never try to see them in concert again, not even if they come to the Winspeare.  Well, maybe if they come to the Winspeare.

IF YOU CAN

I post this for those of you who ask for it after hearing it at my presentations.  If you are the unacknowledged author of tis delightful piece, please step forward and you will be acknowledged.  

 

IF YOU CAN.......

(author unknown)

 

If you can start the day without caffeine,

 

If you can get going without pep pills,

 

If you can always be cheerful,

ignoring aches and pains,

 

If you can resist complaining and

boring people with your troubles,

 

If you can eat the same food every

day and be grateful for it,

 

If you can understand when your loved

ones are too busy to give you any time,

 

If you can overlook it when those you love

take it out on you when, through no fault

of yours, something goes wrong,

 

If you can take criticism and

blame without resentment,

 

If you can ignore a friend's limited

education and never correct him,

 

If you can resist treating a rich friend

better than a poor friend,

 

If you can face the world

without lies and deceit,

 

If you can conquer tension

without medical help,

 

If you can relax without liquor,

 

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

 

Then You Are Probably the Family Dog!

THE PRESCIENT CURTAIN

And here comes Lenora, early to work on this snowy morning when the whole world is grinding at a snail’s pace and those who make it to work are shiveringly gritting their teeth.  She is smiling, this humble seamstress, this woman with the sewing machine that always used to jam.  It seems that her old machine has somehow been infused with a touch of magic.  For now she has made a tiny curtain, the first she ever made by following all the instructions, the first she ever lined.  This delightful creation is a dollhouse curtain, a forerunner of curtains to come.  Soon her living room window will no longer fight alone against the winter’s chill.  The winter will not daunt Lenora.  A woman who can make a little curtain can also make a big one. 

ACCORDION

When I was thirteen, looking for any excuse not to admit that I could play the accordion, looking for any piece of information that could help me understand how to attract the attention of boys, Ross Watson told me accordion playing was simply not done by people under fifty.  So I only played for others, my parents when they begged, the Power Morning Crew on Power92when my little daughter woke me one morning to say she had promised them I would play and they would be calling right away. 

 

How fine it is, now that I am over fifty, to hold my head high and play the accordion to please myself. 

MISINFORMED

I’ve just received some shocking news.   
It’s about Winnipeg, a city I have never visited and yet, have known well—at least one part of it.   
 It’s about the corner of Portage and Main, that famed intersection immortalized in song and joke, that windiest of all corners where pedestrians cringe
and hunker against the bitter driving wind.  How long I have imagined them, shivering as they wait for the light.  How often have I, shivering at an Edmonton
crossing, thanked the stars that I do not live in Winnipeg, where I would have to huddle at Portage and Main?   
 The news has cut me to the quick.  For I have received, from a trustworthy source, information about that famed corner.  It is apparently a huge wide
street,
much too wide for a safe pedestrian crossing.  And so the crossing is done underground.  Pedestrians, aided by escalators, ride down in comfort and cross
safely out of the wind.   
 What does this suggest about all the other assumptions that guide my view of the world?  

MISTAKEN

You told us he would grow up though he started very late.

You said that it might be a while, perhaps at twenty-eight

Your words enlivened hope that this could somehow come to be.

But you were wrong!  It’s happening now, and he’s just twenty-three.

RESCUED

THWARTED!

 

It is 7:30 AM and I am puffing my way up the last of 43 ßsteep concrete steps.  But a thick, heavy rope now bars my way to the plaza just beyond.  And there
I stand, confused, a voice inside me saying: “Go back down and take the escalator.”

 

 RESCUED!

 

But there is another voice, the voice of a young man.  “Duck under,” he says, as he raises the rope as high as he can, an inch ABOVE WHERE IT WAS, maybe. 

 

 DELIGHTED!

 

And as I STRAIGHTEN UP MY CRACKING BONES, continuing on my journey to work, I am smiling.  Maybe later I will be angry at the idiots who put the rope at
the top of the steps and not the bottom.  But for now I am tickled that a man sounding as young as him could look at a woman as old as I feel, and imagine
ducking under as a possibility. 

RESCUED

THWARTED!

It is 7:30 AM and I am puffing my way up the last of 43 ßsteep concrete steps.  But a thick, heavy rope now bars my way to the plaza just beyond.  And there I stand, confused, a voice inside me saying: “Go back down and take the escalator.”

 

RESCUED!

But there is another voice, the voice of a young man.  “Duck under,” he says, as he raises the rope as high as he can, an inch ABOVE WHERE IT WAS, maybe. 

 

DELIGHTED!

And as I STRAIGHTEN UP MY CRACKING BONES, continuing on my journey to work, I am smiling.  Maybe later I will be angry at the idiots who put the rope at the top of the steps and not the bottom.  But for now I am tickled that a man sounding as young as him could look at a woman as old as I feel, and imagine ducking under as a possibility. 

GOOD MORNING LADY PHEASANT

Good morning Lady Pheasant!  It was cameras at the ready on that first mid-October day when you first appeared under the bird feeder, scooping up the seeds the magpies had unceremoniously dumped.  And now it’s every morning for breakfast, coming down from YOUR pnight time perch in the trees.  You prevail in the presence of the smoker on the veranda, and the snow shoveller on the sidewalk, and the truck passing by you in the alley. 

 

Have you noticed that the keeper of the feeder, since the first fall of snow, has been sprinkling the ground so you will not have to wait for the magpies?  But be careful, Lady Pheasant.  The humans are friendly, but the coyotes sometimes walk these same urban pathways, howling in the river valley dark.  And the moon will soon be full again. 

KNITTED SLIPPERS

A grand salute to knitted slippers

Colours different every time,

Striped forest green and winter white

Ruby red with midnight black

Checker-boarded two-tone brown

Harvest gold with navy blue,

Variegated strands of purple.

 

Snugly just below the ankles

Double thickness, soft as cushions

Not on sale at Bay or Zeller’s

Nor at shoe emporiums

Made for self by expert knitters

Or to the knitting impaired like me,

Given by the knitters who love us.

IF WE CAN TRANSPLANT HEARTS

Carter House, in Franklin Tennessee. 

Just another historic site listed in the tourist information. 

Just a place to spend a few hours on a holiday Friday afternoon.

 

The American Civil War is of little interest to me. 

So why do I hang on, unable to rush away?

Why am I asking questions of a tour guide who is clearly trying to leave?

The sun has bade me shed my sweater.   

So why does my blood run chilled in my veins?

 

Can it be because I stand in a farmyard where more than 8,500 soldiers died on Nov. 30 1864?

Or because their young Todd carter, away for more than three years, died only a few yards away from his home?

Or because a family cowered in their basement while the battle raged above?

Or because the buildings on this site are riddled with holes from thousands of bullets fired 142 years ago?

Or because I cannot imagine what it must have been like to leave that basement when the bullets had ceased to fly and walk upon the bodies of the dead and dying?

Or because the carters’ 288-acre cotton farm operated using the labour of 28 slaves, People bought and sold, people without a choice, people who had no future unless something happened to change things?

 

How audacious it must have been to hope that things could change!

How utterly devastating it must have been to pay the price of the coming change!

One hundred and forty-two years later there is evidence that enormous changes do happen.

 

If we can divert flood waters,

If we can go to the moon,

If we can transplant hearts,

If we can talk to people on the other side of the world,

Then maybe--just maybe—we can figure out how to conquer human oppression without fighting bloody wars. 

 

 

ON LAUGHTER AND HATING

From the teller’s stage at the Jonesborough Festival, 88-year-old Kathryn Windham tells us about the Sunday afternoon comb concerts on the lawn in front of the Selma Alabama Public Library.  Selma Alabama—that town sounds familiar.  What do I know about it?

 

It was March 7, 1965 when a group of marchers formed in Selma under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King.  They were protesting the literacy rules that prevented many of Alabama’s black citizens from voting.  Police attacked and killed one of the marchers.  They attacked again at a protest held March 16.  Still the vioence would not end.  People involved in a march from Selma to Montgomery between March 21 and 25 were killed.  These far-away events made the news here in Alberta.  As a child, I could not help but hear about them, and I listened in wonder, having never met a Negro, not being able to understand why they couldn’t read, why they couldn’t vote.  

 

And here, in 2006, stands Kathryn saying: “There are still a lot of wounds to heal.”  She tells us about the remarkable act of forgiveness shown by a black man named Ernest Dawson.  Though the Selma library denied him access as a child, he later donated $10,000 to purchase children’s books for its collection. 

 

And the comb concerts?  Well, according to Kathryn, everyone is invited to play in the comb orchestra that practices on the lawn in front of the Selma Public Library.  Using waxed paper over comb teeth, you vibrate your lips and make music under the direction of a local choir leader.  The vibration tickles your lips.  The tickling makes you laugh.  The person next to you is laughing also.  According to Kathryn, it is impossible to laugh with people and hate them at the same time. 

The Hope Lady: TAKING IT FOR GRANTED

The Hope Lady: TAKING IT FOR GRANTED

THE TENNESSEE STORYTELLERS WILL MAKE YOU SIT DOWN AND LISTEN

We were walking toward to Saturday morning farmer’s market in Nashville Tennessee when a loud booming voice drew our attention.  It’s Abraham Lincoln,” said my husband.  And sure enough, there was Abe, addressing an audience seated on folding chairs in the sun. 

 

What a man he is!  Dead a hundred and fifty years and still riveting audiences, still making people stop their journey and sit down to listen! 

 

And what was he doing there?  Well, defending himself I would say.  After all, he was speaking to a Tennessee audience.  Tennessee was not on his side of the American Civil war.  And he was also spreading hope, inspiring it in the adults, enacting it with the children. 

 

He told us how firmly he believed that the slaves must be freed, how painful it was to have so many of his wife’s relatives fighting for the south.  He got out his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, and delivered it with such trembling passion that I had to search for a tissue because tears came to the eyes of this previously disinterested Canadian tourist.

 

Suddenly he changed pace and began to enact a message of hope to the children in the audience.  First, he encouraged them to stay in school so that they might benefit from the best America has to offer.  Then he drew them from the audience.  To Emily he said: Ï hope that, in your lifetime, we will have the first female president.” To Jim he said: Ï hope that in your lifetime we will elect the first African-American president.”  He also wants an American-Indian president, but he thinks that might take one more generation.

 

When he had finished, we left our chairs and resumed our stroll among the vegetables.  But his message stayed with us, grounded in the past, delivered in the present, showing a hopeful way for the future. 

 

TAKING IT FOR GRANTED

The cat on my piano crouches humbly,

Purring softly,

Never worries that he purches on a platform six times taller than himself.

 

For he knows that he can rise

Step nimbly the the edge,

Spring off and hit the ground with a perfect casual grace.

 

I imagine what would happen

If I jumped from a platform thirty-five feet from the ground.

But the cat is unconcerned about my musing.

He will choose the moment of his landing

Taking it all for granted.

THE DAY I PLAYED FLOYD'S PIANO

Some people get their adventure thrills from bunji jumping, or climbing Mount Everest, or swimming Lake Ontario.  I got mine during the thirty seconds when I sat on the bench and played Last Date on Floyd Cramer’s piano. 

 

We were visiting Nashville, touring Studio b at the time, shepherded by a guide who could not possibly have been older than twenty-five.  Reaching back into history for stories that happened twenty years before her birth, she showed us the cabinet Elvis damaged during a recording session temper tantrum.  She showed us the exterior bricks that had to be replaced when dolly Parton, on her way to make a record, hit the building because she failed to apply the car brakes soon enough.  She showed us pictures of the Everly brothers and Eddie Arnold.  We stood on the spot where Roy Orbeson stood to hit the high notes of Only The Lonely.  She showed us a film clip of Jim reeves recording blue Canadian Rockies.  Forty-five years of living peeled away and the music of my youth filled my heart to overflowing.  Then she showed us the piano Floyd Cramer played when he recorded Last date.  Anyone who wanted to was invited to sit on the bench and play. 

 

If I had been myself at the time, if I had not been bewitched by the falling away of the years, if I had paused to remember how long it had been since I last played Last date, I would never have sat on that bench.  But I was not myself.

 

For as long as I can remember, I have wondered about Floyd Cramer’s piano.  Was it different from mine?  If I played it, would I sound like Floyd?  I had a piano when I was a kid, and it just didn’t sound like Floyd Cramer’s piano.  Floyd’s piano sang in my radio.  It danced.  Last Date was one of my favourite songs.  I loved the “bent” notes, the “slip” notes that gave the phrases their little lilt.  I could play Last Date when I was a kid but it didn’t sound like it did when Floyd played it.  Somebody told me it was the pianist that made the difference, not the piano. 

 

Then, when I was in my late forties I got the chance to play a piano that sounded a little bit like Floyd’s.  I was taking piano lessons in the living room of Linda Borty.  Every Saturday I stumbled through my scales on her grand piano.  She gave me some Bach, a little Beethoven.  She liked to keep a balance between classical and popular.  One day she got out Last Date by Floyd Cramer.  She opened up the music and played it for me.  Linda could have played any piano and sounded like a pro.  But she was a grand musician when she played her grand piano.  She could bend the bent notes, slip the slip notes.  Her piano sang.  It danced.  

 

Linda lived music.  She carried it to people, took it with her.  Just as she had chosen music for students and choirs, she chose the music for her funeral.  Two different versions of Last Date were played.    The first was a tape recording of Linda playing it on her piano.  The second, slightly slower, a quarter tone higher, was Floyd’s own recording.  The two songs were different, and each was beautiful. 

 

If I had been myself, I would not have sat down, dry-mouthed and terrified, on the bench in front of Floyd Cramer’s piano.  I would have worried about the dozen strangers who were listening.  I would not have touched even one of my trembling fingers to the C above Middle C.  But alas, I was not myself.  I must have been remembering the piano recitals in Linda’s living room.  I must have been remembering how good her piano sounded, even when you played it poorly.  I must have been remembering how it never mattered if you messed up at a recital.  Because there I sat, in front of Floyd Cramer’s piano, playing for a crowd of strangers, forgetting the left hand and playing wrong notes with the right. 

 

For all I felt, I might just as well have climbed Mount Everest.  I was brimming with a wild anticipation, drawn by that irresistible urge to try, breathless with lips brittle as paper when I had finished, exhausted and exhilarated all at the same time. 

 

 No recording was made, so we shall never know how much I sounded like Floyd.  But the piano sounded just like his, and I feel certain I heard Linda cheering above the polite applause. 

MUSIC CAN TAKE YOU HOME

I grew up in two places.  I was raised on the Alberta prairies, but it seems that part of me was rooted in Tennessee, even though I never set a foot on Tennessee soil until I was 53.  It’s the country music that made Tennessee feel so much like home.  Without being really aware, I knew as much about the front porch swing of Dolly Parton’s Tennessee mountain home as I knew about the Blue Canadian Rockies.  When I got to Knoxville, my head filled with the story of a man who loved and murdered a Knoxville girl because she would not marry him.  In Gatlinburg I could hardly restrain myself from asking directions to the saloon where the Boy Named Sue found his errant father. 

 

The stories I know of Alberta towns have come from my visits, and also from the daily news.  My stories of the Tennessee towns are more poignant, more detailed, more eloquently situated in my imagination.  They are told in the words of others in the country songs I heard on my mother’s lap.  I was a tourist in Tennessee.  But now I know what they mean when they say music can take you home.

 

DINNER AT DON'S

If you invite yourself to dinner at Don’s, and your invitation is accepted, you may be served sweet buttered corn so fresh it snuggles the memory of the garden’s afternoon sun, and carrots scrubbed glossy and turned in butter, and slices of fried ham, or roast of beef from the crockpot.  And did I mention potatoes?  Well, no matter what else, there will always be potatoes, for the garden has performed its usual wonders.  And you may find it difficult to believe that up until a year ago Don’s meals had all been cooked by his mother, or his wife, or an unseen cook behind a swinging door. 

 

So is this then the final proof that an old dog can learn new tricks, or is it simply Don’s indisputable declaration that eighty is not old at all for some dogs? 

 

 

THE POWER OF A HOPE-OPOTAMUS

The Hope Foundation is a centre for hope studies.  We have an international database of hope research literature, a visiting scholar from Australia, a multiple=year study of the process of hope in counselling, a library, a counselling program, programs for kids and—a herd of hope-opotamuses on the mantel.  Big and small, rubber and plush, piggybanks and cd holders, the herd is an accidental collection.  It has assembled slowly, without intention, the result of good will, of human generosity.  . 

 

Conference agendas are a little like our herd.  They begin with good intentions, with a vague idea about education.  Committees gather, they look for money, they invite experts.  And occasionally, very occasionally, one of the committee members successfully makes the case for having a session on hope. 

 

There is plenty to say about hope to doctors, to nurses, to patients, to family members.  But when you get them together in a large room, with their stomachs overflowing with a more-than-ample lunch, and their heads brimming with the graphs and charts from the morning Powerpoints, you wonder how best to proceed.  So you collect your lecture notes for the academics, a few books about hope for the readers, and you throw in three purple hope-opotamuses, a large, a medium and a small.  Hope-opotamuses do their own work.  You never quite know what they will accomplish.

 

The large one offers to sit with a conference participants during the lecture.  Nobody claims him at first, but a group of nurses pick him up and sit him with a doctor.  At the end of the hour, the doctor does what I want him to do.  He trades him in for a hope book. 

 

The medium is snapped up without hesitation.  The lady who holds him is sad to trade him in for a book.  It is my prerogative to take him back, but I cannot do it, so I leave him with her and offer the book for the taking.  The book is snapped up like a treasure. 

 

And then there is the small one, teenie, really, a Teenie Beanie Baby, 1993.  He travels with the herd, but he’s not really a member.  His name is Hopey, and he belongs to me.  He was a gift, a gift of hope from someone who had known in his deepest soul the meaning of hopelessness.  For a while he sat on my counselling table, a happy little reminder that sometimes my work makes a difference.  Then one day he snuggled in my purse and went to a hospital.  Retrieving him from the clutter of lip-gloss, Aspirin tissues and combs, I gave him to my mother. 

 

I could forgive her for her initial lack of enthusiasm.  After all, she was sick, and her pain was overwhelming, and the drugs were stupefying, and the predictions were dire, and she could not get out of bed.  And I was willing to take him back, to place him temporarily among the flowers on the windowsill.  But she was still coherent enough to want to please me, so she cradled him in the palm of her hand and said she would keep him for a while.  Neither of us had any idea how powerful he would become.

 

It was truly amazing how quickly he took charge.  He had one rule which she took it upon herself to enforce, he must not be placed beyond her reach.  To the porter who left him in the lab when he returned her to her room she said: “Hopey is back in the lab.  He needs to be here with me.” To the busy cancer doctor who removed him from her hand in order to take her pulse she told the story of the unfortunate porter who had been forced to return to the lab.  And soon Hopey was running the hospital more or less, governing the actions of the nurses, the housekeeping staff.  She could not say to them “respect me!  Understand my needs!  Treat me like a human being, like you’d want your mother to be treated.” But Hopey could say it for her.  He could make them all stop and listen.  He did make them listen.

 

And when he finally lost her, he came back to me.  Sometimes we go to conferences, to make them listen.

 

 

COMPLETING THE CIRCLE FOR HAZEL

Some time around her seventieth birthday, when the children were fully launched into adulthood and she was no longer caring for grandchildren, Hazel began to speak of completing the circle.  By this she meant returning to die in her place of birth.  The very idea of it baffled the family, for Hazel had never been the philosophical sort.  In fact, she was a practical woman, never had enough money to live in luxury, never seemed to pursue her personal interests, never spoke of her own passions.  She was not nostalgic, did not summon the past.  Storyteller she was not. 

 

Nobody maliciously block the path of Hazel’s happiness.  The problem with her completing the circle, as the family saw it, was that none of them lived near enough for an easy visit.  She did not drive, and there would be nobody to care for her. 

 

Nevertheless, she had all but completed the purchase of a tiny old house in a strategically located old village and was preparing to move when her plan was sidelined by the people whose help she needed.  Unable to carry it through without assistance, she grudgingly took up residence in a sparkling new seniors complex’, a short walk from the home of her eldest daughter, twenty miles away. 

 

But Hazel was not finished yet.  Next door in the seniors’ complex lived a man who could both drive a car and happily anticipate the notion of a second marriage.  One day a granddaughter, peeking in a window, noticed that Hazel was rubbing his back.  Soon enough the newlyweds announced their purchase of an old house near the place where the circle began, leaving two sparkling almost-new apartments in need of tenants.

 

There it might have ended peacefully had Hazel not been so tough, tougher than the man she married.  Both of them struggled with failing health, him with physical, her with physical and mental as well.  When he was no longer able to care for them, Hazel’s family sold the house and relocated a furious Hazel to a nursing home.  There, locked inside for her own safety, she boldly told anyone who would listen about her plan to leave and buy a house where she could complete the circle.  

 

Hazel was ninety-five years old when she died.  She outlived eight of her eleven children.  On a sunny September afternoon, with a warm breeze drying the ground for harvest, her family gathered to complete the circle.  They took her coffin to a place where most of them had never been, an historic church that stopped having Sunday services twenty-five years earlier.  Alone on the prairie landscape it stands, several miles from the old houses in the tiny village.  Next to the church is an old-fashioned church yard where Hazel’s parents, first husband and two infant daughters are buried.   It is a peaceful place, a place where history has settled among the modern farms.  Hawks perch on fence posts.  Grasshoppers dart in the ditches.  Here it is possible to forget the final years when Hazel ranted and cursed the villains she saw in those who loved her.  Here it is possible to lower her coffin and know that she is satisfied.  

I KNOW THAT READER!

 Andrew is in grade 3 now, sitting in the front row, bursting with excitement when a special guest reader drops by.  Andrew knows the guest reader.  She
has read twice to him, last year and the year before.  “

 

 When Andrew met the reader he was in a class with no number, a smaller class with tougher teachers, teachers who take on kids coded Behavior Disorder. 
He brought to the classroom his memories of past tragedies, his uncontrollable self.  The reader loved to watch his teachers, loving Andrew, nurturing
his eccentricities, shaping him with kindness, imagining a better future than Andrew himself could plan. 

 

 But now Andrew is in Grade 3, bursting with excitement to say: ”I know that reader!”