CHANGES

Impossible feats of yesterday that are possible for me today

 

Typing with two hands

Throwing the dog’s ball with my left hand

Putting my right arm into a sleeve without screaming

Holding a water glass in one hand while adjusting the tap with the other

 

The process of daily living is an intricate ballet where each limb plays a unique role.  How little do we appreciate its complexity!  Observing the return of physical function is like noticing that the birds are returning after a winter’s southern sojourn.  The arrivals on one day, heralded and left unrecorded, will be taken for granted the next day, forgotten in a blur of normal expectation. 

 

Impossible feats of last week that are possible this week

 

Standing upright without nausea

Forgetting to take a painkiller

Sleeping without the sling

Promising to be somewhere and believing that I mean it

 

Bill is officially retired, but he continues to work part time in the plaster room, casting broken bones.  Today he has dropped by unexpectedly to speed my recovery with the delivery of a loaf of freshly baked bread.  How amazing that he should arrive at the exact moment when I am calling a taxi for my maiden voyage to the office!  Taking on the role of taxi driver, he tells me about the people who shrink from the prospect of using the limbs he has repaired.  Perhaps it hurts too much, or maybe they are not troubled by a few dozen commitments that must either be abandoned or rescheduled.  All of it speaks to the value of seeing yourself as part of someone else’s future, to the value of having commitments. 

COMFORT FOOD

Ham and scalloped potatoes, chicken with cranberry glaze, hamburger with tomato and macaroni, gingerbread, brownies—because chocolate makes everything better.  Comfort food brought to the door by friends and relations.  Amazing people!  

 

THANKS!!!

PAIN VS WENDY

One second of lying on the ice after a fall is plenty.  At the 10 second mark the situation has been assessed.  Getting up will require a serious negotiation with Pain.  Pain crushes harder than a dump truck and says, “Stay there forever.” 

 

Wendy says “Over my dead body!”  Then she summons all her living body parts, moans some cryptic directions to David, tells her right shoulder where to go, gathers her skates beneath her, and rises to her feet. 

 

Round 1 goes to Wendy.

 

Pain is a foaming ocean with rising waves that pound and thunder.  Four hours later Wendy says, “I should walk out of this Emergency Ward and go home where I could get a pain killer, put ice on the swelling, make a sling for this shoulder, and lie down.”

 

Pain says, “Stand up and I’ll make you throw up.  Wait here for the doctor, or until Hell freezes as hard as skating ice.”

 

Emergency doc says “Wear this sling, get some ice, be grateful it is such a clean break, have David load you into the car before returning our wheelchair and take as few drugs as possible.”

 

Round 2 goes to Pain.

 

Wendy says, “I will go to work tomorrow.  I’ll give lectures.  I’ll counsel distressed clients.  I will be photographed for glossy publications.  I’ll sing a solo on Sunday.  And I will do it all without those nasty narcotics.”

 

Pain says, “Take the drugs, lie down, cancel everything and shut up.” she rewards all efforts to prove her wrong with outrageous spasms that resemble terrorist attacks, or labour pains.  Wendy breaks all her promises.

 

David gets to work late most days, washes hair, cooks, swabs smelly armpits, visits his mother who is having back surgery, sleeps poorly, entertains Wendy’s visitors and probably wishes he could take drugs. 

 

Round 3 goes to Pain.

 

Wendy goes to the theatre.  Wingfield’s Inferno is on stage.  She made this commitment long before she and Pain locked horns.  Pain joins her at the theatre, then lays her flat the next day. 

 

David does not say he told her so. 

 

Round 4 is a tie.  Wingfield was worth it. 

 

Orthopaedic specialist says Pain is crafting a nefarious plan to freeze shoulder harder than skating ice.  Take drugs!  Throw caution to the wind.  Remove sling.  Drift hand in tiny circles.  Walk fingers up the wall.  Find a hockey player, borrow his stick, and grab it from behind your back.  Could it be that the specialist is on drugs? 

 

David is three hours late for work. 

 

Pain sulks in the muscles.  “I’ll get you tomorrow,” she hisses. 

 

But that is tomorrow.  Today, round 5 goes to Wendy. 

LEFTY IS GROWING UP

Lefty is growing up.  Fifty-three years after making her grand entrance she is finally getting the chance to show what she might have done if only she had been made to feel important.  “I can be more than just a fancy rack for watch and wedding ring,” she says as she struggles to get painkillers out of the bottle.  “I never was allowed to do these things,” she whimpers as the bottle teeters dangerously toward the counter’s edge.  “Now you expect me to be perfect on the first try.”

 

I should be more understanding, less demanding.  It is uncharitable to scold her like a naughty child.  But I am grumpy.   Righty has been imprisoned indefinitely for her own protection.  Howling in pain she swells her fingers and never lets us alone for a moment.  It frazzles the nerves. 

 

What I am developing now, as I summon patience from a pitifully inadequate reservoir, is an immense sense of appreciation for all the people who live happy lives using only one arm.  How do they open cans when the power goes off?  How do they zip zippers, tie shoes, butter toast, open doors while carrying things, change diapers? 

 

The most generous thing that can be said of Lefty is that she means well.  Life has prepared her poorly for her current responsibilities.  Asking her to capture a pea on a fork is like drafting a Sunday afternoon skater to play centre for the Oilers in the seventh game of the Stanley cup finals.  Put a toothbrush in her hand and she fumbles among the gums, clubbing bicuspids and molars in her path.  The very idea of carrying a full coffee pot sets her to trembling.  Still, she tries to be there for me.  When I want to write she creeps and gropes among the I’s, o’s and j’s where Righty ought to be pressing computer keys.  In the long afternoons of my discontent she does her best to comfort, playing pitiful piano solos, holding ice packs, petting the dog. 

 

Does she know, even as she tries with all her might that she will never be my favourite?  The sad truth must be plain as day.  The moment Righty is finally released, she will dominate once more.  Lefty’s contributions will be forgotten.  Like the women who ran the country’s factories when their men went off to war, she will be reassigned to lesser duties. 

 

In the meantime she is showing off a bit.  “I can do more than you ever imagined,” she boasts.  The last word on the subject is hers to say.  She has earned the right to say it. 

 

 

AN EVENING WITH THE IN CROWD

Here we are at the teashop, a modern teashop.  Just like the computer store you need a guide to help you understand the process, a guide under the age of twenty-five.  Here are the shelves of tea, little square cans you can open and sniff.  White tea with antioxidants, green tea with fewer antioxidants, black tea with caffeine.  Decaffeinated teas and teas that never had caffeine to take out.  .  Bedazzled by the choices we decide to share a pot of mango passion, Roibus from South Africa.  John and Grace share a pot of something with a little lavender.  And they call it tea.  What on earth would Granny say?

 

And here we are, Friday night 9:00 and we are the oldest people in the teashop.  Further down Whyte Avenue the bars are brimming with the young crowd and yet, as if they had spilled over, some of them are here.  Just like us they are chatting at tables for two or four.  On a couch sits a couple on a date, drinking tea and necking between sips.  A modern couple.  Each has a cell phone, she a computer as well. 

 

And as we sip we are feeling a little young on this fine evening.  Triumphantly we have skated six full rounds at Hawrelak Park.  We have drawn up our sore muscles to spend an hour before bed chatting and warding off insomnia with soothing tea.  What a surprise to find ourselves drinking with the in crowd!

ONE GOOD THING ABOUT GETTING OLDER

If there is one especially good thing about getting older, it must surely be that older people have more old friends, or rather, older people have more time in which to make friends, lose touch, and reconnect.  You sit round a lunch table with three former colleagues, realizing with a shock that the four of you may not have shared a lunch table since 1986, or was it 1985?  You share a pasta lunch, warmed by glasses of fragrant wine.  And twenty years falls away, just like that.  You don’t really know each other any more, at least not all the facts, the gritty details that fill up the moments and years of our lives.  But you do know each other, at some deeper level.  Being together feels strange yet familiar at the same time. 

 

A lunch is a very brief thing.  There is insufficient time even for news of the big things, the details of falling in love, the report on where you’ve been lately.  There is no time at all for gossip.  

 

And you leave the restaurant knowing these dear people are still there for you.  When you have more time, you can call upon them, bring them back from the past.  In the present, a new present with new details, you will still love them, because they are the same people who gave you so much joy in the first place. 

SCIENCE FICTION MEETS REALITY

As I fasten my seatbelt the taxi driver says, “Just let me enter your address into my GPS.”

Okay, I am willing to wait.  There is a moment’s wait, then a female voice says, “Proceed on the highlighted route.” We are on our way. 

 

Cute, I think.  But then, as we back out of the parking lot she says, “Turn left in 500 meters.”

 

“That’s Sarah,” the driver says affectionately.  Ï can turn her volume down if you like”.

 

I will admit that Sarah is a little imposing.  She constantly interrupts, never waiting her turn to speak.  But I don’t want her turned down.  This lady seems to know what she is talking about. 

 

I want to listen to her.  All the way to my house she guides him.  Every time he turns a corner she tells him how far it is to the next corner.  She gives him a 500-meter warning before every turn.  She tells him which lane to be in to make the turn.  She tells him how to exit the rotaries. 

 

I am now on full alert.  The ultimate test of her abilities is coming up.  Will she be smarter than ninety percent of the taxi drivers who come to my house?  Will she know you have to turn right at 89 Street, even though logic would tell you to turn left? 

 

“Turn right in 500 meters,” says Sarah.  Then she tells him my house is on the right. 

 

As we near the house I feel compelled to help the driver.  For I have information Sarah will surely not have.  “Look for the white picket fence,” I say. 

 

Ï see it,” he says, but Sarah is interrupting. 

 

“You have arrived,” she announces. 

 

As I turn my key in the lock of my own front door it dawns on me that technology has now advanced to the point where Sarah can probably guide me to the door of any house or business in Edmonton. At the moment I would be making the journey on foot, with Sarah telling me the street numbers and letting me know when I have reached the door.  But maybe next year, or the year after, I will get behind the wheel of a car and Sarah will guide me around other cars as we follow the route.  Science fiction meets reality—in a good way.

WORKING TOGETHER

I have always admired married couples who can make a living working together.  This, of course, was the common practice on farms.  The division of labour varied from farm to farm.  Some had well-defined roles, some tended more to step in for each other, switching places when the need arose.  In our urban world couples go in different directions to make their contributions.  So when I see couples running consulting businesses, medical practices or stores I always pause to admire their collaborative ability, to wonder what happens at work on the days when they wake up mad from last night’s dispute over who should take the kids to hockey.

 

We got a little taste of the collaborative experience last weekend.  David was asked to facilitate a board retreat and he asked if I would help.  We didn’t discuss the terms of my helping, but I think he was thinking I might add music.  We planned to sit down and talk about it some time. 

 

We have done a lot of things together, made children, cooked dinners, taken square dance lessons, planned vacations and the like.  And we have always agreed about work.  Our work is different.  When we talk about work, we know that he would hate my work, and I would hate his.  

 

Before we got around to working out the details of this project, there came a request for us to circulate some advance material.  David ought to have done this, but he was swamped at work, so I circulated some advance material, stuff I would have proposed if I had been doing it alone.  Now we were in uncertain territory.  Both of us had done planning retreats at work, these separate works. But the processes had been different.  The goals had been different.  We would have to figure out how to plan together, how to bring out the best in both of us.  We would have to figure out what to do if we saw things differently. 

 

When the retreat was over we agreed that we were pleased with the results.  We did develop a rhythm.  Each of us was able to step in to implement the other person’s ideas.  We were able to switch leadership back and forth.  We could change plans during the process.  Despite our different backgrounds, thirty-three years of collaborating experience had served us well. 

 

 

THANKS FOR SHOVELLING, LAWRENCE AND MARK!

Here in Edmonton, the nights can be snowy.  Every media outlet might be shouting blizzard warnings.  You would think that everyone would be at home, but the devoted university students who have registered in a hope class show up at 5:00 PM.  Reflecting on hope, one of them observes that a single snowflake isn’t much, but when they band together, they have a huge impact. 

 

Our journey home is slow and cold, made tedious by the coming together of a thousand zillion snowflakes.  Such a challenge, such a burden to overcome all of this!  And then, as we round the corner to find that our driveway and sidewalks are clear, we see how one determined person working alone, joined by another when the job is well under way, can change the position of a very large group. 

THE PEOPLE WHO RECOGNIZE YOU

What fun it is to pick up the newspaper and find something to celebrate with someone you know. 

 

This week we found Kathy, a fellow storyteller, enthusiastically promoting storytelling.  We found Carolyn, our favourite real estate agent, taking over
the presidency of the Edmonton Real Estate Board.  A hard worker, and a very well organized lady to be sure.  We felt proud, as if we owned a small part
of their success, even though they were already totally successful when we met them.   

 

When the media shows you somebody you already know in a good way it makes our big city feel like a small town, in the best and friendliest sense.  It brings
people together, reminds them of things they had all but forgotten.   

 

I also got a large share of media this week and right away I felt that old tug of connectedness.  Friendly media attention brings you a fringe benefit. 
You hear from people outside your current circle: former classmates; out-of-touch friends; leaders who heard your first Toastmasters speech; bosses who
once hired you; relatives; relatives of your friends; even people who disagreed with a position you took at a controversial time in some organization or
another.  And it just makes you wonder, if you counted up all the people who know you well enough to recognize you in the paper or on TV, just how many
would there be? 

RESOLUTION #4

At least once a month I will call or write somebody who is not expecting to hear from me. 

GRANNY'S CACTUS

I like to think that Granny Cookson’s Christmas cactus will be blooming later in the 21^st century, and on into the 22^nd century, and possibly even the 23^rd.  This is a reasonable expectation if you think of its descendents as being part of the original cactus that used to hang in Granny’s back porch.  Already there are quite a few known descendents blooming regularly in various houses.  But wouldn’t it be nice if, in the 22^nd, or even the 23^rd century, there would be somebody who could tell their friends and relatives that the cactus with the lovely orange blooms was a descendent of one that used to hang in granny Cookson’s back porch?  It could happen, but it will present a bit of a challenge.  It will require some storytelling across generations.  If we want to make it happen, we will have to be a little more conscientious about telling stories. 

 

Granny Cookson (born Elsie Renshaw, Cheshire England, 1898) had a big back porch with windows facing north, south and east.  The porch was cool and bright.  In the 1970’s it was home to a huge hanging Christmas cactus (official name Schlumbergera) that sported hundreds of fancy orange blossoms.  It drew admiration from everyone who saw it.  Their praise made Granny blossom with pride, the way she did when people admired her grandchildren. 

 

Thirty years ago she visited my house, noticed my plants, and gave me a slip off her cactus that she had rooted in a quart sealer.  Nobody knows how Granny got her cactus and I do not know what happened to it later.  But my cactus will always be Granny’s cactus to me, an instant and constant reminder of a woman who was central in my early life. 

 

Granny Cookson was 54 years old when I was born.  She and Granddad shared a farmyard with us.  They lived in the two-storey house their parents had helped them build at the start of their marriage.  In 1968 they picked up the house and moved it 17 miles, setting it down on a lot in the town of Sedgewick, keeping all the windows facing the direction they had faced on the farm.   She was short, the shortest adult I knew.  Granny liked to garden, a passion I later acquired, and to knit, a skill that eludes me to this day.  She fed me shortbread and scones, chocolate cake and custard, trifle at Christmas, coffee in the mornings, tea in the afternoons.  She taught me simple songs. 

 

Go and get the apples

Go and get the apples

Go and get the apples

As you have done before.

 

I will get the apples

I will get the apples, etc.

 

She played games with me: Bingo, Sorry, Racko, Crazy Eights, Chinese Checkers, and Whist.  When she was alone she read True Confession, True Story, True Romance.  To me she read letters from Aunty Mabel, articles from the newspaper, toy descriptions from the Eaton’s catalogue, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and a large number of short and long books for children.  It pleased her that I was born on the day after her wedding anniversary, and also that I got married on her birthday.  She had diabetes for a long, long time.  She wore aprons every day.  She started wearing slacks when she was 70 years old.  She loved to buy things, new furniture, shoes, vacuum cleaners, presents.  She grew broad beans and cooked terrible-smelling fish.  She carried hard white mints in her purse and gave them out generously at church.  She kept a stock of candy in the drawer by her bed in the nursing home and offered that candy to my children.

 

She would be 108 if she were alive today.  I have the wicker trunk she brought from England, some little gold dishes she used to use at Christmas, an old rocker she never sat on in my lifetime (it slopes too far forward), and an enormous cactus rooted from a slip of hers.  Over the years I have rooted slips from my plant for my mother, my sisters, my daughter, and various admirers who asked for cuttings when they saw it in full bloom.

 

My plant doesn’t flower much any more.  It needs new loose soil, needs a larger pot.  It needs to hang in the middle of a room because it is so broad.  Last night I took a cutting and put it in a glass of water. In a few weeks it will have roots of its own.  I will give it a place of honour, bright light, cool nights.  And I will say good-bye to the old plant, but not to my memories of Granny.

RESOLUTION #3

I will take a cutting from Granny’s Christmas cactus, start a new plant, and get rid of the old one.  Taking the cutting will be easy.  Rooting it will be easy.  Getting rid of the old one—not so easy. 

 

RESOLUTION #2

I will make something good out of something not-so-good.   
This is something I can do and would like to do more often.  Just yesterday I heard Lawrence coming up the stairs singing The Dodo Song.  It goes Dodododododo,
and the tune can be any tune.  It translates into something like: "mother, I know you are in the house somewhere and will hear me singing this song, and
I know it will make you smile, and you will probably start singing it too and then we will both be smiling while we sing our private song." 
When he was younger he called me Dodo, meaning "stupid, too stupid to live, graceless."   
I'll admit I didn't care for the name.  things were tough between us.  I wanted to be treated with respect and did not know how to make that happen.   
I wanted to prevent something similar from happening again, but before I had settled on the best punishment, the Edmonton Journal published an article
on the dodo bird.  The paper reported that researchers are changing the widely told story of the dodo.  They now theorize that the dodo was more graceful
than had previously been thought,  had a larger brain than had previously been believed and that the extinction of this bird might have been caused by
climate change rather than awkwardness or stupidity.  I looked at the situation and decided it would be easier to become a dodo than to think up an appropriate
punishment.   
Lawrence was a little surprised when I bowed in gratitude, newspaper in hand.  I thanked him for likening me to this graceful, intelligent, wrongly accused,
misunderstood paragon of nature.  The incident happened about eight years ago.  It should have been forgotten shortly after it occurred.  But Lawrence
tends the memory, keeping it alive  with his commemorative song.    

RESOLUTION #1

I will try to eat one food I currently believe I do not like.  If I still don’t like it, I will try one more time, just in case there was something wrong with the first one I tried. Main contenders for the honour presently include fresh tomatoes directly off the vine and cooked liver.  This is a nod to the potential of my ageing taste buds to like new things.  They’ve learned to love olives, and I would have said that was impossible. 

 

ALICE MADE A DIFFERENCE

Alice’s Christmas letter said: “I am 92 years old.  I have lived a wonderful life.  And now I am ready to be in the arms of Jesus.”

 

We read the letter together and sighed.  If only it could be that easy, to make a decision after a wonderful life and then go gently.  Less than two weeks later we sighed again.  Just before Christmas she was gone.  The obituary in the paper said: “Alice is now in the arms of Jesus.”

 

Think of the changes Alice saw.  Her life began at the start of World War I.  She outlived three husbands.  , raised a family with the first, spent brief time with the second before he was diagnosed with cancer, and married the third after getting reacquainted at her seventieth birthday party.  We got to know her in the widowhood between second and third. 

 

Alice made a difference in our lives.  We met her shortly after she returned from Scotland, in the time before she was reacquainted with John.  She came alone to Mill Woods United Church, the only senior citizen in a brand new suburban congregation populated largely by people under the age of twelve.  By definition she might have been a grandmother to us all.  This was not the role she chose.  She liked to talk about her travels, and the interesting things she had done as a volunteer.  She liked to tell us about the unexpected arrival of her youngest child.  .  She may have been a grandmother, but she was also a board member for the growing church.  Senior citizen she might bee, but she was still building new things.

 

Alice was our friend, even though forty years of living separated her age from ours.  We will never forget the summer evening when she was our dinner guest.  David brought a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce and placed it in front of her.  Unfortunately the spaghetti continued on its journey after the plate stopped, remaining airborne until it made itself at home in Alice’s lap.  We were horrified, stunned into uncharacteristic silence.  She responded with grace and good humour.   That was the way she accepted whatever happened to her. 

 

Her third marriage took her from us, moved her a few miles away, just outside the boundary of our world.  We missed her, saw her only a couple of times in twenty-odd years for brief social how-are-you-we-are-fine conversations. 

 

Still, Alice did not give us up completely.  Our one reliable link was the annual Christmas letter.  It would have been easy for her to let us go.  Our time together had been only a brief scene in her history.  She must have sent a lot of Christmas letters, given the scope and duration of her life.  We were always pleased to hear from her.  In her final letter she dared to write that she was ready to be with Jesus.  We are privileged to have known her. 

 

THANKS MOM

Just a note of thanks to you, Mom, for all the Christmas dinners you cooked us.  We knew it tired you, especially in the later years.  We could see it wearing as Christmas eve stretched to Boxing Day.  “Do a little, less,” we urged, and we even brought things.  But somehow the occasion just grew and grew. 

 

Yesterday, as we stumbled groggily around our house, biding farewell to overnight guests, emptying the dishwasher of the last stray pieces of china, avoiding the sticky spots where the punch had dripped on the floor, our legs sore from the hours of standing in the kitchen, our senses numbed by the Boxing Day dilemma of whether to choose left over lemon tarts or left over mince, we turned to each other and said we were beginning to understand how tired you really were, all those Christmases, year after year. 

 

We wondered which parts we might leave out another year, to give our selves a break.  And we concluded that everything had to stay.  Fatigue, apparently, is a less powerful teacher than tradition.  In a month we will recall the warm glow of the midnight church candles, the raspberry tang of trifle, the card games where contestants aged nineteen to ninety squared off in fiercely laughing competition, the cooling sweetness of punch, the new clothes that fit perfectly, the delicious cheese dip that Ruth brought, the afternoon naps in front of the television.  And, just like you, we will have forgotten how tired we were. 

IN PRAISE OF TODAY'S YOUTH

The young man who almost charged us too little said simply: Ï am thinking about my finals instead of my work.  I wasn’t scheduled to be here tonight, but we are short staffed.  My head is too full of school stuff.”

 

Perhaps his distraction was partly our fault.  We have a tendency to talk to store clerks, to try to find out who they are.  He is studying telecommunications.  That is what he told us as he re-established the total and bagged our purchases.  He has three exams in the next three days.  He will be finished the program in another five months.  He has five job offers to consider when he is ready. 

 

Then we were off to the liquor store, where the young man behind the counter left his post and smartly secured for us the Harvey’s Bristol Cream that had eluded our search attempts.  It is not something to be proud of, knowing the location of liquor on the shelves,” he said as he bagged the bottle, took our money and tried to make a response to our thanks and praise.  He hopes to be known for other things.  He has been at the liquor store just over a year now, is studying at a centre for the arts. 

 

The world is full of fabulous young people, we say to each other as we head for home, exhausted from the combination of work and all the other things that happen to us in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  We should talk more to them, talk more about them.  It might give us more hope, a readier response when we hear about the sorry state of today’s youth.  In the space of fifteen minutes we met two capable, hard-working fellows with excellent manners, dreams for their future, and patience to work toward them. 

SANDRA IS A TEACHER

Sandra is a teacher, has been a teacher for a long, long time.  She used to lie in bed beside me, reading me Bible stories from a book on the high shelf.  I remember her tracing on my arm so I would feel the relative lengths of the lifelines in the book.  How we marvelled at the incomprehensible longevity of Noah.  Could any man live to be 950 years old?  She taught me about the unpredictability of volcanoes, and then dried my tears when I cried in the story of a dog who, carrying a raisin bun in his mouth, was found at Pompeii buried beneath the lava that exploded out of Mount Vesuvius.  And when I was all grown up, she took me to a storytelling festival, a day that inspired my grown-up storytelling dreams.  

 

Sandra is a teacher.  She taught me to tie my shoes, an accomplishment that could only be fully appreciated in later years, when it became apparent how clumsy my fingers were planning to be.   She taught me touch-typing as soon as she learned it.  She was thirteen.  I was six.  She taught me to climb on to a horse’s back, make a chocolate pudding, change a baby’s diaper, test the temperature of bath water, cook a frozen TV dinner, tuck in my sweaters and keep my knees together in a skirt.  Nobody knows how she learned to be a teacher.  She must have been born to it. 

 

Sandra is an officially sanctioned teacher.  She started young, was granted a license to teach before her twentieth birthday.  Year after year, decade after decade, she has performed her miracle, changing pre-reading children into readers.  She got new books to keep herself interested, learned new methods to keep up with the current trends, took cash out of the bank to buy supplies at Teachers’ Conventions.   

 

Sandra is an officially acclaimed teacher.  Her colleagues nominated her for an Excellence award.  , Acclaim of the official kind has been a rare thing in her life.  She was born healthy.  Her two sisters were born blind.   All three girls earned their place in the spotlight, but her extraordinary abilities were less noticeable because she had no disability against which to display them for contrast.  So much was expected of her, too little credit given for things that would have made her the centre of attention in other families.  But among her colleagues she was known to be exceptional.  When she was chosen for special recognition, they celebrated the honour with her and her family.   The Minister of Learning said: “Some of the most valuable lessons teachers offer cannot be found in textbooks or the curriculum. Great teachers help us to discover our unique talents.  They inspire us to dream of all we can achieve and fuel our desire to learn.” 

 

And now Sandra is preparing to be a retired teacher.  Already her workday is shorter than it used to be.  Soon there will be an end to scraping the windshield on dark wintry mornings, driving to work on roads too dangerous for the school bus, being professional at conferences with angry parents, teaching the ropes to new principals, drafting report cards. 

 

Nevertheless, Sandra will still be a teacher.  Here come her grandchildren, popping up as steadily as steps on an escalator.  Her home is a haven for cribs and highchairs, shapes and colours, letters and numbers, new books and old books.  CD’s and DVD’s fill the spaces where long-playing records and cassette tapes used to be.  There is a difference between having a career and having a vocation.  Fallen arches and pension credits can lure a teacher out of the classroom.  It takes more than that to take the teacher out of a teacher. 

 

 

MUSIC IS THE LANGUAGE OF CEREMONIES

Music is the language of ceremonies and special occasions.  My parents used to say that IF you had a gift of music, you were duty-bound to give it.  There were songs for bridal showers, songs for weddings, songs for anniversaries silver and golden.  There were songs for birthdays and songs to fill out the program at Christmas concerts. 

 

And now, a new trend that has gradually been taking hold in my life, songs for funerals.  Tomorrow will be a sad day for those who knew Brian as a husband, a father, a friend.  While Marilyn and I play the Pachebel canon, building steadily toward the final triumphant crescendo that has brought us thunderous applause on other days, I will ponder the differences in the music that comforts us, some asking for the lonesome cry of Amazing Grace on the bagpipes, others turning to the Pachebel, presented in rousing splendour, the way they heard it at previous celebrations. 

CHRISTMAS TREES OF ALL KINDS

The theme of our Christmas tree is eclectic historic.  Crystal stockings bought in Montreal before the kids were born, textured balls bought at Safeway before we could afford a trip to Montreal, beaded candy canes the kids made with grandma, soft birds with feathered tails that hung on David’s childhood tree, the latest pewter from the office gift exchange.  The lights are assorted.  All colours are fine.  The tree is cheap at Ikea, the kind that drops needles all over the place if you leave it up too long the kind that necessitates some careful decision making about how to correct its irregularities with ornaments.  The act of decorating it is a walk through the past.  The conversation as we dig through the boxes could be recorded as the basis of our autobiography. 

 

Ruth grew up with our trees, but Ruth’s tree is perfect, well as perfect as a cheap Ikea tree bought alongside ours can be.  Its adornments are silver and white.  She declined our generous offer of leftover decorations.  Aside from the irregularities, her tree is pretty much the same every year. 

 

The radio says the silver trees that were in fashion ten years ago are now back in style.  Only now, they can be red, or purple too.  I wonder what happens to all the decorations that go out of style, and it gives me a sick little feeling to think that Christmas trees, like so many other things, are the puppets of fashion rather than the celebrants of memory and tradition. 

 

I doubt if our tree will ever be anything other than eclectic, and I am learning that all Christmas trees do not have to be like ours to be meaningful.  For Ruth’s stylish tree has given us some of our happiest Christmas mornings, mornings in her living room unwrapping our presents, eating chocolates  and drinking coffee.  As soon as she mentions putting it up I get that old friendly feeling, that traditional feeling. 

 

So maybe if your tree doesn’t have to be eclectic, maybe it doesn’t have to be the same every year either.  Could it be that there is some twenty-year-old writer out there reporting with sweet nostalgia, “Our Christmas tree was a different colour every year and we just couldn’t wait to find out what colour it would be.”  

 

WRITE THAT DOWN, MIKE

Writing stories from the construction worker’s perspective is one of many items on the list of things Mike hopes to do some day.  And who better to do it than Mike?  Go to Mike’s house and you will find a transformation of magnificent hardwood and custom cabinets where the linoleum and prefabs used to be.  Mike observes that there are many books about writers, just as there are so many movies about show business.  Construction workers, he says,  have stories too, but they tell their stories to each other with their mouths full and their lunch pails open.  They don’t generally write very much.   Mike likes to write, but he doesn’t have much time.  He is busy with other things. 

 

When you go to mike’s house, you easily find out that the expert craftsmanship is Mike’s work.  But this is a tiny percentage of his work.  His cabinets and bookcases adorn many homes, included in the packages offered by companies who call themselves Master builders, rarely, if ever mentioning the names of the people who actually do the building.  Those craftspeople remain in the background, their labours essential and beautiful, their stories untold, their role unacknowledged.   It is almost as if they don’t really exist. 

 

Invisibility is present everywhere when people work together to achieve something.  But you also find it where you would not expect to.  Take, for example, in the world of story-gatherers.  Not long ago I spent a morning with three people making three minutes of television.  The camera crew showed up first, two guys who scouted the place, made trips to their van, and had the furniture arranged for filming before the host arrived.  After the host got there, the camera crew became invisible, standing behind the camera, following orders and making the occasional tactful suggestion if something seemed unworkable to them. 

 

I was the subject of a lengthy interview.  When the host asked me about shifts in perspective, I mentioned my accordion, how it was a treasure to me as a child, a source of shame and humiliation to me as a teen-ager, a closet-filler for many years, and lately, because it comforted my mother during an illness, a renewed source of interest to me.  A few minutes later, the host briefly left the room.  The cameras were off.

 

A cameraman appeared.  “I have an accordion too,” he said in a low, conspiratorial tone.  “You might remember the show on CFRN television, Kiddies On Camera.  I played on that show.  There was a girl who played the drums and we did Jail House Rock as a duet.  I had it memorized, but they said I could use a music stand, so I took the music in with me.  Then, right at the last minute, they took the music away because it was ruining the picture.” 

 

The host returned.  Back to work we went.  But a while later, she left the room again.  The cameraman began to tell me he also knew the shame of a teen-age accordionist.  We were getting into the stages of psychological development when the second cameraman appeared.  “I have an accordion too,” he said. 

 

“Oh yeah,” said his partner.  I was suspicious too.  You can understand how we felt.  We were having a great time and maybe he was just trying to get some attention. 

 

“Oh yeah,” he said.  “It’s red.  It’s a Hohner.”  We couldn’t argue with that.  I hadn’t mentioned it yet, but mine is a red Hohner also.    “I used to be in the music business before I started doing this,” he said, in answer to our questions.   “I have all kinds of musical instruments.”

 

By the time the host returned, we were talking about the difficulty of keeping the bellows from cracking when you pull them apart after—say—twenty years of idleness.  We were sharing information about authentic accordion repair shops in Edmonton.  But none of this will be on television.   

 

So keep your dream in sight, Mike.  There will be interest in your stories when you get them written down.  There aren’t many accordion stories, but they probably outnumber construction stories.  And we need stories of all kinds, all the better to understand each other. 

LUCKY ARE THE BABES WHO CALL JENNIFER NANA

Lucky are the babes who call Jennifer Nana.  For they shall have great memories to pass on to their grandchildren. 

 

Some women yearn to be grandmothers, count the days, buy all the baby furniture in anticipation of the momentous event.  But I don’t recall Jennifer bubbling with excitement when the prospect was announced.  Her response looked more like quiet acceptance, and this in its own way was uncharacteristic, for Jennifer is a woman of bubbling enthusiasms. 

 

In a time so short it seems impossible, fate has delivered her two incorrigible little grandsons.  No evidence of quiet acceptance now.  She has turned our annual church Christmas dinner into a re-enactment of the summer camps we shared with our children.  With all the determination of a leadership candidate drumming up support at a party convention, she is working the room as people take their seats, stirring up mischief.  There is chaos.  There is laughter.  Everyone has a part to play.  A chorus of Jingle Bells interrupts the master of ceremonies every time he says the word table.  And when he says Christmas, the crowd bursts out with Fa la la la la la la la la.  We smack the hand of our neighbour on the closing line of the Johnny Apple Seed grace.  “The kids,” she explains as she co-opts me as a partner in crime, “The kids don’t know about the things we did at camp, like the Announcement song.  “

 

There are so many things Jennifer does with a sparkle.  A Christmas vegetable plate is a foundation of mayonnaise adorned in bright vegetables arranged in a huge Christmas tree pattern.  A bridal shower in her home is a morning event for forty guests featuring the tiny buttermilk pancakes her mother used to serve the Camrose ladies.  A cheeseburger for our kids drips with a mixture of hot cheeses and comes to you with a skiing story from one of her myriad cookbooks.  She introduces me to Pavlova, that yummy meringue and fruit dessert, and I never forget Pavlova because she tells me about the Australian athlete for whom it is named. 

 

When Jennifer was forty, her favourite song was Rainbow Connection, by Kermit The Frog.  For years she stood in front of the congregation, teaching songs to children, with the interests of the children as her first concern.  Make it fun; make it a song that children can sing.  Be a little outrageous so they will always remember.  Make it really beautiful if it is a prayer or a round.  But this is not all she was doing.  For while she was making a place for the children, my irrepressible friend kept up a constant stream of dialogue with me, the pianist.  Though her husband warned her of the dangers of possible offence to me, she knew it would all even out.  She, standing in front of the microphone, could say whatever sprang to her lips.  Then I, unable to respond in the moment, having no microphone of my own, would have extra time during the sermon and prayers to engineer a reply. 

 

One time she threw me—a tedious birthday whiner--a surprise birthday party.  Perhaps she knew it would change my birthday story forever, bring an end to the whining.  There were two cakes, baked in her mixing bowls, one shaped as the left breast, the other as the right.  She was compensating for a shared deficiency.  Neither of us was particularly well endowed in real life. 

 

Sometimes you lose track of the things you most love about your friends.  These loves get buried in the clutter of life events, of fatigue, of straying attentions that obscure the joys of fully living.  Still they are your beacons, the touchstones of your life.  If something happens to you, they reappear in an instant, and you feel no surprise, only gratitude for their abiding presence. 

 

Jennifer has been carving a path for me for a long time, embracing motherhood first, showing me how to care for ailing parents.  And now, as my future grandchildren remain hidden below the horizon, unrevealed until their season, I see her making memories for hers, and it is enough to join her in a mid-life display of outrageous behavior, to be part of the story these little boys will tell.  She is expanding my grandmother images far beyond the narrow confines of aging women.  As I watch in genuine delight, her cup is replenishing itself from the fountain of youth. 

CHRISTMAS ON 96 STREET

Christmas morning is a time of tradition.  My Christmas mornings have, for the most part, been remarkably similar.  In my childhood, after I marry, as our children grow into adults, the pattern perpetuates itself.  We get up, we eat breakfast, we open gifts.  On the busiest days we prepare to serve guests.  On the quieter days, we prepare to be guests. 

 

Then one Christmas Day, a quieter day, something new is added.  My son Mark has made the outrageous suggestion that he and I should fill our backpacks and walk the streets of the inner city before we open the gifts.  This is a shot in the dark, for he has no prior experience to tell us what we will find.  Such a voyage would have been unthinkable only a year earlier, for we never walked the inner city streets in those days, unless to park the car with a hurried flourish and race into some store, wanting to ensure the car’s safety by returning to it as soon as possible.  But now, since our move from the suburbs, the inner city lies in a walkable path between our home and the office.  Somehow its inhabitants are less scary in person than they were from the car window.  They talk to you about the weather when you are close to them, when you speak to them while crossing at a light.  So the place feels familiar, yet unfamiliar as we journey out on the deserted streets.  Any other day the traffic would be whizzing past.  On Christmas day there is no traffic, no need to stay on the sidewalk. 

 

On Christmas morning the sun rises some time around 9:00 AM.  As dawn’s first rays extinguish the streetlights, we find people drifting into the open air.  The shelters for the homeless spill out men and women of all ages with no particular place to go.  They hover in doorways and alleys, sit smoking and chatting in circles on vacant lots.  They walk, rest, walk some more.  If you approach them with a friendly greeting and an empty cup to fill with coffee from your thermos they will proffer a cigarette for a light.  You will soon be having a conversation about the weather, family, plans for the day.  If you have something they can use, a sandwich, gloves, warm socks, a hat, a little money, they will accept that thing with hearty thanks.  Nobody takes everything you have, no sign of conspicuous greed, no hoarding here. 

 

The first time we visit the streets on Christmas morning we are tentative in our approach, cautious in our advances, fearful of causing offence, relieved by the graciousness shown to us.  Even as we walk home to join the others around a tree laden with gifts, we are making plans for next year.   

 

The following Christmas is a busier day, our turn to do the family hosting.  Nonetheless, we scramble to make the time.  The second visit begins remarkably like the first.  Some of the streets are deserted.  Some of the people we greet lower their heads and hurry past.  Then, with a shout of greeting, a man emerges from the shadows, running across the street to hale us.  “Remember me?” he cries.  His whole being is vibrating with the kind of excitement you see when a two-year-old bounces down the stairs to find that someone has placed a full stocking beside the empty milk glass and cookie plate.  “Remember me?  We met outside the liquor store last Christmas.  I was just telling my buddies about this man and his mom who came around here last year and here you are again.  Remember me?  Remember me?” 

 

One hand reaches into his shirt pocket drawing out first a cigarette for a light, next a bar of chocolate to offer as a gift to us.  The other hand beckons his buddies to join us.  In a moment the others are straggling across the empty street, clustering around, reaching for coffee, wanting to know why we are here, what we do on the other 364 days.  There is banter, there is laughter, and then, because last year’s remembered friend is asking for it, there is hugging all around, Marry Christmas wishing.   Time is flying.  It is time for us to go home.

 

I once told this story during a hope workshop.  One member of the audience was highly offended.  She wrote me an angry letter, accusing me of the worst kind of charity, the look down on the poor kind of charity, the hand out five dollars and then go home to a laden tree instead of really helping kind of charity.  I thought it was the injustice of the thing that hurt me most.  If the people of the inner city were glad to see me, why should she want to take that from them?  Later I thought it was the truth of what she said that hurt me the most.  It is true that I sacrificed nothing for them, nothing except a little of the time on the morning I have always found to be most precious.  Today I speak up whenever people say they won’t go to 96^th Street because it is too scary.  I tell them we walk the area several times a week, sometimes even on Christmas morning.  I tell them we talk to the people.  They aren’t as scary when you are close to them.  They are just people, albeit different from us.  If helping is what we want to do, we will know better how to help them once we get to know them.  If changing them is what we want to do, we may have to be prepared to change as well.  If laughing with them, celebrating with them, is what we want to do, Christmas morning—hot coffee in hand--is an excellent time to do that. 

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.