BACK TO GO FORWARD

“I’ve found a picture of a wedding cake made from rice Krispies squares,” says Ruth.
Huddled round a tiny table in the window of the Italian bakery, we are drinking cappuccino and evaluating the relative merits of available wedding reception facilities. The street is bathed in the slanting shadows of the late afternoon sun. There we sit, future newly-weds, parents of the future bride, asking the questions that millions, maybe billions have asked before us. How many guests should there be? How much money is it reasonable to spend? In the final analysis, what is it that matters the most?
The questions might be easy, but the answers are conflicted. “I’d marry you in a ditch,” says the groom, meaning, “I just want to marry you. It doesn’t matter where.” And yet, when we compare ditches, community halls and golf clubs with fabulous patios, he definitely prefers the golf club with the fabulous patio and back-up room in case of rain. She, surprisingly, is leaning toward the community hall. “It’s a lot cheaper,” she says.
Here we are at a decision point. Having fleshed out the issue without reaching a conclusion, we change the subject.
“Really,” she says, “I can show you a cake picture on the Internet. It’s made completely of Rice Krispies Squares.” I am paying close attention, looking for subtle cues that will tell me how serious she might be. All four of us like Rice Krispies Squares. The guys like them even better than us girls. But the guys don’t seem to be thinking she’s serious. Maybe she doesn’t know if she’s serious.
I decide to take a position. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have Rice Krispies Squares,” I say. And then, compelled by a force I am powerless to stop I add, “I can hear your grandma rumbling though.”
I say it because I can actually hear it, though even before the words are out I wish I hadn’t. It’s a conversation stopper. Why do I say such things? Will I never grow up?
It stops the conversation because Ruth can hear Grandma rumbling too. The thought of it brings her near to tears, brings us back to the hours we spent cleaning out Grandma’s house, a fridge filled with tiny pots of coloured icing, the corners of cupboard stuffed with hundreds of flowers in multiple hues, leftovers from so many wedding cakes. . To Derek we offer an explanation for the sudden chill at the table. Grandma was a wedding cake artist, we tell him. He nods a sympathetic understanding. But he probably doesn’t really get it. To understand the passion of a wedding cake artist like Grandma, You kind of had to be there.
It’s a turbulent phase, this time of wedding planning. I remember it well from the long-ago days of our wedding, the negotiation, the fatigue, the balancing of perspective, the commitment to flexibility, the show-stopping incidents when we failed to notice that one of us was headed for emotional meltdown.
In the years following the marriages of her daughters, the years when the empty nest was made to seem emptier by the filling of new nests, my mother did something totally out of character. In the middle of summer, with the farming in full swing and the garden brimming, She took a week off farm wife duties to attend a women’s program at Olds agricultural college. She returned home rested and excited. She mentioned that she might see if she could decorate a wedding cake.
It turned out that she could decorate a wedding cake, first one, and then another, and another, and another, until the time came when she turned down more offers than she accepted, so great was the demand for her creative eye and her steady hand. Brides, mothers of the bride, whole families of the bride would sit in her kitchen leafing through picture books. Would they have two tiers, three tiers, four tiers. If they hated fruitcake, could she do cherry swirl chocolate, or maybe lemon spice? Did she really need more than an hour in the reception hall in order to assemble the cake on site?
We’d go to her house for the weekend. “Excuse the mess,” she‘d say. “We’ll just clear this away a bit to make room for supper. Careful, careful. Don’t touch the side of that layer. It’s not dry yet!”
After supper she’d linger over tea. We’d start the dishes. “You don’t have to do the dishes,” she’d say. Then, if we persisted, “Well, okay. You do the dishes and I’ll just get started at this again.”
The TV would be on in the kitchen. We’d visit while she made flowers. The clock would show 10:30 and we would head for bed. Midnight would find her making flowers. 2:00 and she might be there still.
“I used to look through Grandma’s wedding cake books for hours,” says Ruth. “I used to think about which cake she’d make for my wedding.”
We miss Grandma at this moment. Shew always had an opinion on most aspects of a wedding. She would have been a bit shocked by this current cake idea, but probably not daunted. If we’d chosen Rice Krispies Squares you can be certain they’d have been decorated to the pinnacle of perfect magnificence. But Grandma is gone and so is the afternoon.
The shadows on the street lengthen. Pushing back our chairs we four compliment one another on a good afternoon’s work. Reflecting on it a day later, I don’t think we made a decision about the cake. I don’t think we made a decision about the place for the reception either. Sometimes you have to go back to go forward. It’s an emotional phase, this time of wedding planning.

MOTHER'S COMING TO VISIT

I’m going to be a mother-in-law!
Got the news on Monday
Only six-and-a-half months after first suspecting it,
Hardly time enough to prepare oneself for such a change of role.

I’m going to be a mother-in-law!
A loaded possibility for awe-inspiring tyranny
For a girl who grew up near a TV
Watching reruns of the Flintstones.

Fred’s mother-in-law announced by Wilma
Smiling demure and devilish at dinner.
“Mother is coming to visit us Dear.”
And in she’d come like a 50-ton tractor
Bellowing and huffing and clearing a path,
Roaring to roll over Fred.

Phoning to say, “I’m coming for a visit, Dear.”
I’m going to be a mother-in-law!
Swooping across to Guelph Ontario.
And for Derek, a coy announcement at dinner.
“Mother’s coming to visit.”

ENDLESS MONEY, ENDLESS TIME

”What would you do if you had endless money and/or endless time?”
It’s Rachel asking. We are counting down her last few hours of anticipation before she reaches one of her great life goals, to be present at the Olympics. She has just told me that she would attend more events if she had endless money and endless time.
What would I do if I had endless money and/or endless time? Wow! What a question, just the sort of thing that ought to bring out the imagination of a true hope lady. So I am surprised and yes, a little embarrassed to find that no answer is leaping to my tongue.
”I don’t tend to want things unless I can afford them,” I babble. All the while I am scraping the inner sanctum of my brain. What is the matter with me anyway? Surely I can do better that that! I try to imagine myself enjoying the ultimate in creature comforts.
”If I had endless money and/or endless time I might choose to stay at the Jasper Park Lodge,” I say. I am recalling the times when David and I stayed there, the luxury, that feeling of incredible opulence. The queen has stayed at Jasper Park Lodge. Marilyn Monroe stayed there. That’s how nice it is.
We stayed there back in the days when there were lovely low rates for some romantic weekends. It was the low rate that got us there. The rates are much higher now—much higher than the rates at other hotels. The low rate included a room with a fireplace, one room-service breakfast and a several course dinner. I think there were chocolates on our pillows. It was wonderful.
Still, it seems kind of ridiculous to be mentioning the Jasper Park Lodge in a conversation about things that are really important. I have chosen not to stay there. Even at the higher rates I could afford this. I simply don’t choose to. I had that thrill already, and I can have a really good time in the mountains for less money without it. What would I do with endless money or endless time? More to the point, what do I do with the money and time I have?
I take great vacations and I don’t generally go to the office on Fridays. When I am at home on Fridays—celebrating a day off—I think about work. I think of it fondly. I don’t long to be at work, but I think about things I might write, presentations I might make, better ways of doing counselling. Sometimes I respond to work-related emails—not because I have to, but because I want to.
Don’t tell anybody, but sometimes, when I’m at work, I think about things that aren’t directly related to work. Sometimes I answer personal email. That’s one of the things I love about my place of work. They trust me to do what needs to be done, to do it in my own way. It makes me want to do more than I have to do.
If I had endless time I think I’d divide it evenly between work and play, spend more time doing both.
And as for money—well, if I had endless money and conditions stayed as they are now, I’d still want to work and I’d still want to play. One thing I would do is put some of that money into my work, to give it a boost in aid of some of the things I’d like to see. I’d like to see a large group of well-trained, highly-skilled hope-focussed counsellors paid well enough so that they could raise a family and travel comfortably without having to be married to somebody who earns a really good wage. I’d like their work to be supported so that it could boldly be offered without charge. I’d like to see a well-funded program of research around their work so that it could be disseminated in a manner that would bring respect.
All of this would cost quite a bit, but I believe it would be money well spent. It would be the fulfillment of a promise to myself that my treasured work would be made useful. And knowing that the promise would be fulfilled—I believe--would make it easier to step back and spend more of my endless time at play. I might even splurge on a romantic weekend at the Jasper Park Lodge.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT

I was a good kid—I mean, a really good kid. I didn’t break rules or lie to my parents. I studied enough to get reasonable marks, kept a social life sufficiently limited so as not to require parental discipline, yet vibrant enough to keep them from worrying about my well-being. When it comes to stretching the boundaries, I’m a late bloomer. Because of this tardiness, the burden of balancing risk against my eccentricities has fallen not upon my parents, but on my kids.
”I’ll be telling stories at midnight in the Wainwright Cemetery,” I announce to each of them separately. Perhaps it would be more fair to tell them together, but it’s more fun to tell them separately. It triples the pleasure of watching as each of them measures a long and pregnant silence, groping for an appropriate response.
And while I view this upcoming exploit as a triumph of the outrageous over the mundane, as the hopeful proof that my life will still hold many surprises, I can see that each of them, in a private moment, is wondering what signs ought to raise suspicion if they ever need to prove a case of dementia.

POSITIVE PERSPECTIVES ON FASD

Science reporter Anne Mcilroy had an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail last Saturday, January 31 2010: “”How playing Dance Dance Revolution could repair children's damaged brains
Researchers hope repetitive tasks can reverse effects of alcohol.”” The moment I read it, I began to feel hope. It was a thrill tosee that so many researchers are working together.

“”The six-year-old boy plays the game Operation, skillfully wielding a pair of tweezers in a school gym that doubles as a research lab. His brain has been
damaged by the alcohol his mother drank when he was in the womb, but he's adept at extracting tiny plastic bones.

"When it gets too easy we will have him switch to his left hand," says Chris Bertram, a scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford,
B.C., who is investigating whether children with a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or FASD, can rewire their brains by improving their strongest motor
skills. Advances in understanding neuroplasticity, or how experience can change the brain, have led to therapies that have helped people who have suffered
strokes or traumatic brain injuries learn to speak again or move paralyzed limbs. Now, a growing number of scientists hope the revolution can help children
whose brains were damaged by alcohol before they were born.

They are testing different approaches - including computer games and other specialized training - in hopes of helping kids with FASD strengthen connections
in their brains and boost their cognitive skills.

Dr. Bertram and his colleagues have assessed all eight kids with FASD who are hard at play at various stations in the gymnasium. All are good at something,
perhaps the fine motor skills needed to pluck a rib out of a cartoonish chest or the co-ordination needed for the interactive videogame Dance Dance Revolution.


But they have a wide variety of cognitive and emotional problems that include trouble paying attention, remembering what they have learned, anticipating
the consequences of their actions and controlling their impulses. Hyperactivity is common; they can be challenging to manage at home and at school. Dr.
Bertram's hypothesis is that the eight-week program will do more than just improve their rope climbing and free-throw shooting.

The idea is that improving one area of brain function, in this case motor skills, will also boost their ability to pay attention and to regulate their impulses.
He is still analyzing the data from the 35 kids who have been through the program, but the preliminary results have been encouraging, he says.

"We call it transfer of learning, or transfer of performance," Dr. Bertram says.

Alcohol damages many parts of the developing brain, says Christian Beaulieu, a brain imaging expert at the University of Alberta. It can affect areas and
structures critical for memory, learning and abstract thinking. He and his colleagues have shown it also damages white matter, the connections that allow
parts of the brain to communicate and work together.

But recent experiments with laboratory animals offer hope. At the University of Victoria, Brian Christie has been able to reverse the brain damage caused
by fetal alcohol exposure in rats by getting them to exercise.””

Mcilroy’s article comes just when I need it. Here at the Hope Foundation we are working on FASD from an adult emotional perspective. With funding from the Edmonton Fetal Alcohol Network, staff from four agencies including our own are collaborating to offer a hope group to parents who have FASD. As adults with children of their own, they struggle to be good parents while continuing to cope with the cognitive, motor and emotional difficulties they had as children. Parenting is made all the more difficult for them because the behavior of their own parents was and still is impacted by substance abuse.
You have to be very focussed to offer a hope group to people who have so many pressing issues. In a two-hour session they offer you dozens of opportunities to veer away from hope. How easy it is to hear their problems, their sadness, their self-stated inadequacies. These, after all, are the reasons they came to a group, the issues they are accustomed to presenting when professional helpers are in the room.

Mcilroy’s article goes on to highlight the positive. “”Dr. Bertram says that many of the current therapies or interventions being used with children with FASD focus on their deficits - for example, anger management
therapy for a child who is acting out in school or extra time devoted to reading or math for a child struggling in those subjects.

"Traditional intervention programs have these kids doing things their brains are not adept at doing, and their success rates are not great. We flipped things
around and said, 'Why don't we build intervention programs based on things they are good at.' "

He and his colleagues build an individual program for each child based on three areas of strength, making it increasingly challenging over the eight weeks.
The kids also get to pick a fourth activity they like. The researchers carefully monitor their progress when they come twice a week after school for two
hours. He is also monitoring levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, to see if it drops after the eight weeks.

There is growing scientific evidence that children with FASD have a heightened response to stress that can make it difficult for them to cope with situations
at home or in the classroom.

At the University of British Columbia, Joanne Weinberg is investigating this phenomenon in laboratory animals and, in particular, how areas of the brain
that are important in the stress response system overlap to a large extent with areas of the brain involved in depression, addictions and other mental-health
problems, also common among people with FASD.

One day, the work could lead to new drugs that target the stress response system.””

In our group we are examining personal strengths, digging through the sadness to find the things people love, the things they are good at. I like to think there will be positive programs to go along with the stress-reducing drugs.

A FEW MONTHS TO LIVE

Some days I’m a counellor. I met a man who had just found out he had only a few months to live. He came to talk about hope. His concerns were practical. How would he retain his normal composure in public? How would he modify his work to accommodate his disabilities? Who would do his work if he couldn’t do his share?
Some days I’m a learner, upgrading my competencies. A seminar leader asked us to consider what would be important to us if we’d just been told we had only a few months to live. We all said we’d forget about our work and do some things we’d always wanted to do, like learn to paint, or take the kids to Disneyland. The seminar leader clapped his hands in delight and we were proud to have given the correct answer. I wonder if he ever talked about hope with somebody who has just learned he has only a few months to live!

BEAUTIFUL RETINAS

“What colour are my eyes?” I ask David. It’s Tuesday, and receptionists in our offices are explaining that we are out of the office. We are sitting in an outpatient hospital eye clinic. Time is passing. Every so often a nurse or technician pads in on soft squeaky shoes to call another name.
David is reading a book on governance, addressing himself to work while we wait for something to happen. I, in contrast, am doing nothing, if thinking without speaking can be classed as nothing. My pupils, having received a dose of some unnamed liquid, have been occupied with the process of dilating. Every so often I glance up in curiosity as the overhead lights perform a fluorescent blaze. A little conversation would ease the boredom.
My question to David is actually a bit of a dare, a little test of memory. Here is his invitation to say that my eyes are green. He used to say they were green, back in the days when we parked for hours in shadowy parking lots in places where nothing moved except the late night police and security fellows who tapped regularly on the windows to inquire about our age, then scribbled the license number of David’s mother’s car in their little notebooks. Pierre Trudeau had recently declared that the state had no business in the bedrooms of the nation, but he apparently had not mentioned parked cars. “Routine security check,” they said when we asked what they were after. “If there are any burglaries in the neighbourhood we’ll be giving you a call.”
“What did you say?” David wonders, face still in book, reluctant to break the spell the engrossing committee and terms of reference charts have cast upon him.
“What colour are my eyes?” I say. Actually, this question is more than a dare, more than a test of memory. It’s an opportunity for him to declare that I have been right all along in my assertion that my eyes are blue.
Until David came along, I had always believed my eyes to be blue, blue like my father’s eyes, blue like Granny’s. Even when you can’t see the colour of your eyes, people tell you what colour they are, and I had no reason to disbelieve. Blue eyes, I believed were a good thing. Frank Sinatra’s eyes were blue, and he was rich, famous and much sought after in terms of romance. So you can imagine my confusion when my chance at romance was accompanied by a declaration that my eyes were green. As far as I knew, green eyes were the hallmark of monsters.
David turns in my direction—the first act in the process of checking my eye colour—or gazing into my eyes, if you want to think romantically. Actually, it’s a long time since we discussed eye colour. When did we stop? Was it at the time when we switched to spending more time together in the daylight—a thing you do at a certain point in a budding relationship? Conversation is different in the daylight. In the daylight you don’t mind at all if a partner exchanges eye-gazing for the assessment of coffee stains on your work clothes, baby burp deposits on your shoulders, or grey hairs in need of camouflage. In the process of daily living, the colour of your eyes slips under the radar.
It’s daylight now, but we are already dressed for work, the babies are grown and the grey has recently been subdued. Now seems like the perfect time to check again. Green or blue? Which will it be?
“The colour has disappeared entirely,” says David.
“Really?” I say. Caught by surprise, I am now of two minds. Half of me doesn’t believe him. The other half is wondering where the colour went and how long it has been gone.
“Yes.” He says. “I don’t see blue or green. Your pupils are huge. They’re taking up your whole eye.”
“What colour are my pupils?” I ask.
“Black,” he says.
My heart skips a beat. Oh dear! What can this mean? “Black!” I cry. “What colour are they supposed to be?”
“Black,” he says. “Everybody’s pupils are black I guess. They’re black holes right now. I guess that’s what the astronomers are thinking about when they talk about black holes in the universe.”
The universe! How fascinating! I am ready for a conversation about the universe. He turns back to a consideration of by-laws and facilitated agreements. I address my curiosity to other questions. How long, I wonder do your pupils stay dilated? What will happen if they close up before one of the squeaky-shoed nurses calls my name?
Time slows down. Eventually we find ourselves in a darkened office where the nether regions beyond the black holes have become the objects of intense interest. “The fronts of your eyes are very nice,” says the doctor, delighted by the absence of foggy cataracts, the perfection of corneas in their proper shape. My eyes are pleased to hear the news, so pleased they might bat if they knew how and were freed from the tyranny of the pointing, probing light. These eyes really don’t get much attention. People always wanted to look in them when they were younger. But the determination that no treatment could change them, no glasses could improve them, had rendered them unworthy of focus. Even now they’d be languishing in insignificance had I not noticed a paragraph in the newspaper about genetic therapy trials to increase vision for a condition with a name that brought back memories of other doctors, other years.
“Thirty years without an exam is a long time,” says the doctor. “You really should have them looked at now and then.” While he says this he is adjusting things, changing his tools. Now he’s looking deeper. What will he find?
“Your retina’s are beautiful,” he says. Sounds like he means it too. A little thrill goes down my spine. In all my life nobody has ever told me I had beautiful retinas!
My mind casts back—way back to the time when I could name the part of the eye that causes eye colour. Is it the cornea? No. The lens? No. Is it, by any chance the retina? No. It’s the iris. It must be the iris that disappeared in the waiting room.
Fishing for clarity, and—okay—maybe for compliments, I ask him to tell me more about those retinas.
He says he likes the way they haven’t deteriorated over the years due to lack of use—not quite in keeping with my idea of beautiful, but beautiful in this context nonetheless. He says that when they get the gene therapies up and running—be it in my generation or the next--they’ll be looking for people with beautiful retinas.
Now things begin to move quickly. The fluorescents are switched on, the future is discussed, the parking space is vacated, messages at the office are collected. It takes me about an hour to realize that I have missed a rare opportunity to get an expert opinion on the colour of my eyes.
The investigation of the world behind the black hole has enlightened us a little. It appears that the diagnosis made thirty years ago was accurate. Twelve genes have been identified as the cause. Only one is currently in clinical trials and the doctor suspects that the gene causing my problem is not that one. But it does seem that my condition is more interesting than it used to be. My personal genes will be identified through a bit of bloodletting and sending to a lab in Iowa. My name will be added to a catalogue for future reference, and a similar process will begin for my sister.
I might have been a little disappointed had I been expecting a miracle. But I wasn’t, and it’s kind of thrilling to think that children born in a future time that might be far away, or closer than we can imagine will sit in doctor’s offices and hear that there is a treatment for this condition. For now, it’s enough to celebrate my new identity—to bask in the life-altering possibilities of a woman who has beautiful retinas.

LOST IN THE FROZEN NORTH

Sir John Franklin set sail from England in 1845 in search of a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the coveted northwest passage. He took two ships and 129 men. He was a couple of thousand miles north of the place where Winnipeg is now when he got lost. It wasn’t difficult to get lost in the north in those days. The Eskimos knew their way around, but Sir John wasn’t one to ask for directions. It was back in the time before aerial maps, in the time before any officer of the British Navy had put the whole northern picture together, back in the time when they thought Repulse Bay might be a through channel instead of a bay, when they thought that King William Island was a peninsula.
Pierre Burton, that great Canadian historyian, says it was actually Sir John’s wife, Lady Jane Franklin who wanted to be an explorer. She was an adventurous woman who loved travel. But ladies didn’t explore the frozen north in those times. Her true nature began to show when two years has passed without word from or about Sir John and his ships. She nagged and pestered the Navy. She wrote letters and courted newspaper editors and raised public awareness and money for search parties until, over a ten-year period, 13 ships had been launched to search for her husband. In the course of all this searching two routes through the passage were discovered. The successful search was launched with her own funds, the search conducted in the places where she told the captain to search. It ended in 1857, when one tiny written message from a crew member was found. It said little, but it did say that Sir John had died in 1847.
Further searches revealed that under Sir John’s command the crew had done some stupid things. Instead of fending off scurvy with fresh meat as the Eskimos did, they took salt meat in poisonous lead tins. Instead of travelling light and wearing animal skins , they took along fancy navy clothes and silver cigarette cases.
lady Jane did not stop when she learned about her husband’s death. She nagged and pestered the navy. She wrote letters and made presentations until Sir John was declared the first discoverer of a northwest passage. There was no written record to prove otherwise. Now there’s an apartment building in Edmonton named after him, a mall in Fort McMurray, the main street in Yellowknife is Franklin Avenue.
Other northern explorers kept better records and are far less well known. There was Perry, and Collinson, and McLure, and McClintock, and me.
Yes me. I too have been lost in the frozen north, in the days before cell phones and gps, in that inscrutable suburban land of islands and dead-ends and circles where so many have been lost despite the stars, the maps, the compasses. I was lost in the land known as Mill Woods.
My journey began 300 yards northwest of 38 avenue and 66 street. It was late January, 10:45 on a Sunday night when the snow had been falling all weekend while the wind howled like a banshee at the window. Huddled under a pile of blankets on a rockingchair my spouse shivered and sweated, the victim of strep throat. Our children were nestled all snug in their beds and I was getting ready also. Then Spuds, our tiny white poodle said “Hmm, Hmm, Hmm,” which loosely translated means, “Wendy, the wind has gone down and I haven’t been for a walk since Friday. Would you rather take me now, or go to bed while I sit sorrowfully beside you?”
So I put on his leash, and my boots and my coat and my toque and my mitts and out we went.
One step outside our door brought us to a new land, a virgin land. No shovel had cleared a walk, and no car had rutted a path. Here was a land where anything was possible.
Perhaps this would be a good time to teach a little lesson about blindness. I have very little sight, so little that ophthalmologists don’t bother to register it. Technically, outside on that night I could see the glare of the white snow, and the two nearest street lamps. But that night was magical. When Spuds paused to sniff I turned my face upwards and imagined a sky shimmering with stars, Sirius, orian’s belt, Venus, the many moons of Jupiter. I swear I saw the rings around Saturn. Then Spuds finished peeing on the lamp post and we set out again, heading north on 67 Street, turning west on 40 Avenue.
It may seem obvious to you, but at this point I think I ought to stop and point out some differences between being sighted and being blind. sighted people guide themselves with their eyes. They look down at where their feet are going, and up at all the things around them. Blind people, in contrast, guide themselves by touch and memory. The memory is a mental map of whatever they have believed is in the vicinity. Bearings are taken by the touch of sidewalk, or street, or grassy edge. With nothing to touch but snow that lay ankle deep and crisp and even, except where it had drifted to above knee-level, and nothing to see but street lamps, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage, though I did imagine our passing the 67th street island, the 40th avenue crescent, the alley of 66 street, the 39 Avenue crescent alley and some houses. Still, with no proof or confirmation of anything, and only the deep snow under foot, I worried that we might have strayed onto a lawn, or maybe a crescent island. It was cold. Spuds was walking on three paws. It was time to go home.
On an ordinary night I would have turned cautiously around, stopped to get my bearings, and dragged spuds along. But this being no ordinary night, so quiet, so still, so private, I raised my voice and said, “Spuds, take us home.!”
You can know your dog, and then find that you didn’t know him at all. These, apparently, were the words Spuds had been longing to hear. At the sound of those words Spuds jerked the leash and started to run.
Blind people don’t run much in public. It upsets others. And they could fall. But on this glorious night, with the snow so deep and soft there was no reason not to run. So we ran. Spuds was in charge. Throwing caution to the wind we lifted our feet and leapt through snowdrifts and laughed until we finally halted. And that’s when I realized for the first time ever, that my mental map of the neighbourhood did not include the location of fire hydrants. Nevertheless, we stopped to enjoy this one. When Spuds was finished sniffing, we set off slowly. Travel is slower on two paws. “You’ll have to finish the job,” I said to Spuds. I have no idea what direction we were facing. But Spuds set off again, and soon enough we were going toward a house, and there was one step up, just like our front door. And there was glass beside that door, just like our glass. And things were fabulous, except this was not our doorknob. And suddenly, for the first time ever, I realized that my mental map of our neighbourhood did not include a detailed description of doorknobs, or even the location of houses with only one step up to the door.
Now that we had found a door, Spuds was ready to go in. “Hhm, Hhm!” he said. Loosely translated this means, “Ring the doorbell, Dummy.”
It was a good idea, and I might have done it too, had I not been imagining how I would feel upon meeting a stranger at the door and explaining that I was a blind woman lost in my own neighbourhood. But even then I might have done it had I not been contemplating the idea of meeting somebody I knew, maybe one of the other soccer moms. If that house contained somebody I knew, then tomorrow I would be the subject of coffee conversations, and maybe a committee would be formed to take me for walks, and they would come over to meet with David in private to see why he had allowed me to get lost, and maybe somebody would call social services. What if they took away my children?
“Hmm Hmm,” I said to Spuds. Loosely translated it meant, “Let’s get out of here before somebody sees us.” I had to drag him out to the street. By now we were going really slow. You don’t make very good time hopping on one paw.
Nothing moved in the area near us. The neighbourhood was quieter than I’d ever known it, so quiet that I could hear the distant sound of a very rare thing, a Sunday night transit bus on 38th Avenue. Then there was quiet, and then, as the traffic light changed, there was the north south traffic of 66th street. Then quiet, then the east west 38 avenue hum again. Slowly it dawned on me that here was my compass for guiding, my whole sky full of stars.
“We’re going to make it,” I said to Spuds. We’ll go east toward 66th street, and then south towards 38. We’ll be home before you know it.”
At the sound of my confidence, Spuds put down all four paws and off we went, heading east, bumping into cars on the street and intuiting sidewalks beside them, turning south through the huge drift around the hedge at the corner, turning toward a house, going up one step just like ours, turning a doorknob just like ours, stepping over the sill. There we stood, heat blazing on our faces, stamping and snorting and shaking off the snow.
I think I understand why Sir John never left much of a written record. Who would want to admit that many mistakes in writing? He would have been accountable to his neighbours, to Lady Jane.
I cannot say exactly what I thought would happen when I got home. I don’t know how long I was gone. No search party had been arranged. From under the shivering rockingchair blankets a pained voice quavered: “How come you were gone so long? I thought you were just going for a short walk.”
We don’t know if Sir John learned anything from his experience. But I learned a thing or two the night I got lost in the frozen north. I learned, for one thing, and the evidence is here in this story, that excitable miniature poodles should never be placed in command of exploratory expeditions. And I also learned, though I hate to admit it, that men aren’t the only ones who won’t stop and ask for directions.

(Find Pierre Burton’s account of Franklin’s voyage in Exploring the Frozen North: An Omnibus by Pierre Berton, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Limited, 2006).

MARRIED TO A STORYTELLER

When my right boot was on, and the left one was poised at the tip of a toe I said to David, “Maybe I should warn you that you are in the story I’m telling tonight.”
Story Café was starting in an hour and we were within moments of leaving the house.
“Oh no,” he said. “Don’t tell me.”
I was kind of glad to hear him say that. Really, I didn’t want to tell him, but at the last minute it seemed like I ought to give him some warning. After all, he’s a really good guy who supports everything I do in storytelling. Any time I earn a dollar at it he has generally spent two to make it possible. He arranges his holidays around the festivals I want to go to. He comes home earlier than usual on Story Café nights. So I owe him a lot. Trouble is, I tell a few stories about myself, and it’s hard to tell stories about yourself without making mention of a guy who’s been the main person in your life for 37 years.
“Well tell me,” he said. I guess I shouldn’t have taken him literally when he said not to tell him.
The thing about stories, I mean true stories, is that the facts sometimes fall a little short of supporting the truth—I mean, short of supporting the truth in a manner that makes a really good story. And what is the point of telling any story to people who’ve paid to be at a story event if it isn’t going to be a really good story? So sometimes you have to work with the facts a bit, just bring in facts that really could have happened, knowing the big picture, maybe using a fact or two that didn’t happen on the day that is the day in the story. And sometimes you don’t remember exactly what people said, I mean maybe you know what they might have meant if they had tried to say something, so you use some interesting words they probably said some time.
“You might find some of the facts to be a little different than you remember them,” I warned. I felt it was fair to give him a little warning. I hadn’t wanted to warn him, but then I worried that he might feel the need to adjust the story while I was telling it. That could be disturbing to the other listeners at the café table. Actually, I might have left him out altogether if I hadn’t been thinking of the other listeners. I knew that if he was with me and wasn’t in the story, they’d surely be wondering why he wasn’t in the story. It’s so complicated, this storytelling business.
He really wasn’t much in the story. The theme of the evening was Snow and Other Flakes. The story was about Sir John Franklin who got lost looking for the Northwest Passage, Lady Jane Franklin the wife who made Sir John famous, and a really stupid thing I once did. My husband wasn’t mentioned in the first draft, but somehow the whole thing didn’t seem to balance out if the Franklins were a couple and I was a single.
“You’re not much in the story,” I said reassuringly.
He didn’t say anything. I thought perhaps I hadn’t convinced him. I tried again. “You really have a small part, a bit part I’d say.”
“Mmmmmmhmmmmmmm!” he said. He said it in that all-expressive way that tells you a lot. Loosely translated, it meant, “You’re going to pay for this.”
Too late I recognized the trap I’d set myself. If he had to be in a story, he’d better be important. What does it mean if you’re not important in a story told by somebody for whom you’ve been the main man over 37 years?
“The story’s about me,” I said, seeing the need for a remedy. “How can a story be about me without also being about you?” I smiled a smile that I hoped was a seductive, flattering smile. Actually, I’ve never been much good with facial expressions.
“We’re going to be late if you don’t put on your other boot,” he said. He’s always a practical man when it comes to getting to Story Café. And even though he later said that it had been a good story, I do believe that it must be very difficult to be married to a storyteller.

TOO LITTLE NOT TO HOPE

How on earth did it ever get to be 2010? Was it not just yesterday that we were preparing for 1984, half a day ago that we planned for the world’s end—Y2K style?
Yes, here it is, 2010, the first quarter of the first month almost spent. Here at Hope House, amid the daily routine of counselling and student supervision I am planning ahead for a reflection at a Unitarian church, motivational talks to rural women, lectures to university classes, tours of future hospital unit clerks, hope groups for parents with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and others with chronic pain, conference presentations for spiritual care workers in Vancouver, mental health workers in Delaware, storytellers in Los Angeles. All these things will be history by the end of July.
Fifteen years ago it was January of 1995. I had no idea that some day I would be a hope specialist. Things I do automatically now were completely beyond the horizon of my imagination. What does this suggest about my ability to foresee or predict the future—for me or for anyone else?
I have often heard Ronna Jevne say, ”When it comes to predicting the future, we simply know too little not to hope.” It’s hard to argue with that.

BRIDGE PARTY

We’ve lived in a few neighbourhoods. Each has had its own particular assets, but none has been quite like Riverdale. In Riverdale we do things a little differently, things that are, as Ruth once put it, “So Riverdalian.”
Take this afternoon, for example. Fabe and Linda Jennings gathered a dozen adults and four kids for a bridge party. We didn’t play cards. Instead, we spent the afternoon sipping hot apple drinks, eating gingerbread and celebrating bridges. We began by telling bridge stories—stories about the bridges in our past.
You learn a lot about the history of your neighbours through their bridges. You travel through their lives. In the space of a few short moments we visited Philadelphia, Virginia, Niagara Falls, New Brunswick, Halifax, Vancouver, Drumheller, Medicine Hat, Calgary, and Dunvegan. Recounting tales of our own city we crossed our own High Level Bridge on a streetcar, buzzed across the noisy deck of our Walterdale, hugged the narrow lanes of the Low Level before its widening. Then we got down to saluting the star bridge of our gathering, our neighbourhood bridge, the Dawson Bridge.
The Dawson Bridge was built in 1912 to haul coal, agricultural products, horse-drawn wagons, streetcars and pedestrians. These days, 16,000 vehicles cross it on an average day, making it the least-used bridge in our city. But we all love it anyway. Over the years it’s been painted, patched and mended. Now, at the ripe old age of 97, it’s closing for a year, preparing for a renovation that should stretch its life for another fifty.
We talked about that bridge, how much it means to us, how we love to cross it by car, by bus, on foot. We talked about the city views it offers in the early morning, the convenience of slipping across it for after-supper band practice. We recalled how we had walked it to reach the golf course, to cross-country ski, to pick Saskatoons. After the talking was done we put on our warmest clothes and walked down to the bridge. Fabe had filled a wheelbarrow with ice and snow. Gathering on the bridge we tossed the wheelbarrow’s contents over the edge with a ceremonial shovel.
Twilight gathered and we dispersed—a group of neighbours warmed by the experience of coming together to salute a neighbourhood bridge. It was all very Riverdalian, all very wonderful!
We’ll not be allowed on the bridge for about a year. A year seems such a long time. Sixteen thousand vehicles—a million in a year—will have to find another route. Thousands of cyclists will have to cycle elsewhere. Thousands of walkers will walk by instead of across. We’re going to miss that bridge. But we will have each other, all the more so because we huddled together in the biting wind on a January afternoon, wishing our Dawson Bridge a speedy rehabilitation.

SIX BARELY BEGUN CHRISTMAS STORIES

Derek the researcher: “What were some of your best Christmas memories?”
Me: “Oh, I don’t know.”
Inside me there flares the spark of a tiny conflict. The storyteller can feel the start of the best stories. And this would be good. Isn’t that what researchers are looking for—stories I mean?
Well, it would be good, except that the best stories, of course, gain their power from tension, from crises resolved, laying the bad against the good. So up pops the other me, the me that’s having a pleasant dinner, not wanting to take all the attention, not wanting Christmas to seem like one crisis after another.
The other me wins this epic struggle. Thus, we enjoy a pleasant dinner. But the storyteller never gives up. Once you get her going, she’s hard to stop. She wants to start 12 stories, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas. But compromises have to be made. She started half of them. Here are their beginnings.

1. On Christmas morning when I was 9, or possibly 10—I don’t think I can say for certain—I found a little suitcase waiting for me under the tree. Inside that case were two things. The first was a small gray second-hand accordion. The second was an identity crisis. The accordion was temporary—gone a year later. The identity crisis—not so much.

2. Marriage is the blending of many things—not the least of which is Christmas traditions. Both of us had grown up cherishing Christmas traditions of one sort or another, so perhaps it is not too surprising that we should have tried, in 1976, to combine all our Christmas dreams into one short day. The idea had was a thing to anticipate. The reality has often been summed up by me in five little words: I’ll never do that again!

3. One of the things I always loved about Christmas was the annual concert a mile-and-a-half down the road at Cambridge School. I loved the hiss of the gas lamps, the chuckling at the teen-age plays, the perfect recitations given by my sister, the visit from Santa, the candy bags we got, the aroma of coffee boiling on the stove, the puff of heat from the wood fire. And then there was the year that things got too hot for everybody.

4. My mother was an independent sort. There were certain things she always did without much help from others—decorating cakes, sewing beautiful dresses, running organizations, and making gravy. And though she did all these things in great quantity during the first fifty years of my life, I think it’s safe to say that I never once helped with any of them. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that I rarely run organizations, never decorate cakes or sew beautiful dresses, and continue to experience a certain amount of stress when it comes to making gravy.

5. I never had much patience with parents who spend Christmas morning playing with the toys while the children look on sadly, waiting for a turn. I never was one of those parents. I always thought that putting together the prized model, or assembling the toy, was a job that should wait until the child was ready to ask for it to be done. Then came the year that changed everything, the year Ruth asked for a keyboard.

6. Out of the mouths of babes come the pronouncements that shape our future. It was Laurie who gave us the name that stuck, she who, coming upon us chatting in the living room after Christmas dinner, sighed and said: “Oh, three baggy sisters!”

PREPARING A PSYCHO-EDUCATIONAL HOPE GROUP FOR PARENTS WITH FETAL ALCOHOL SYNDROME

I interviewed a fellow with fasd—fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. I figured I should get his advice about a project I have been working toward, a project that starts in January, a psycho-educational hope group for parents who have fasd.
The group is the brainchild of a former Hope Foundation practicum student, Dorothy Henneveld. Working for Catholic Social Services, she organizes programs for families affected by fasd. She knows we run psycho-educational hope groups and she wondered if we could work with Catholic Social Services to run one for parents who have fasd.
Fasd affects the executive function of the brain. It influences intelligence, mood and behaviour. People with fasd tend to live in the moment. They often find it difficult to plan for the future. Those who become parents are often single parents, managing with very little money, assailed by mood swings and gaps in intellectual functioning. They find it difficult to cope, and some of them become quite isolated.
I have some experience in talking about hope with people who have fasd. Those conversations tend to be interesting, and people seem to benefit from them.
There was a time when hardly any people with fasd were diagnosed. Even if they had been, there was little or no help for them. But things are changing. Catholic Social Services has a mentorship program in place. For our joint project they will arrange child-care and transportation for parents who want to attend the group. One of their mentors will sit in as a co-facilitator. All this will help a great deal.
That said, running the group will present some challenges. I want to have the best possible group, hence my reason for conducting this interview with somebody who knows fasd from the inside.
Me: “I am going to be running a group for parents who have fasd. I want the group to be a place where they can talk about being parents—you know, learn things and talk about problems they might be having. What problems do you think they might have?”
Him: “A lot of noise and fighting in the house. We tend to drive our parents crazy.”
Me: “Oh, I don’t mean kids with fasd. I mean parents who have it. What kind of problems do you think they would have?”
Him: “None if they take my advice. I’d just tell them to smoke a reefer and that will just settle them down so nothing will bother them.”
Now I know why I asked. I needed to get the feel for the way things could go in the group. I know this guy. He’s about one-quarter serious, and three-quarters having me on, trying to get a rise out of me.
Me: “Okay. I’ll tell them I asked you for advice and you said just smoke a reefer and everything will feel okay.”
Him: “You’ll get fired if you tell them to smoke up. Maybe you shouldn’t do that.”
Me: “I’m a bit worried about that. That’s why I’m doing research to find out what I should do with the group.”
Him, feeling the pressure: “How should I know what you should do? I’m not a parent. Go ask a parent.”
Me, in self-defence: “I don’t know any parents with fasd yet. You are my wisest contact. That’s why I am asking your advice. I don’t want to do it wrong. How do you think they will feel if I go in there and lecture them about having fasd and how that makes it hard to be a parent?”
Him: “Stupid.”
Me: “That’s what worries me. You see, I want the group to be a respectful place where people will feel comfortable to talk about things and learn things.”
Him: “Then think of some questions, and go around the room and make sure every person has a chance to answer. Then they can learn from each other. One person will say they have this problem or that problem and another person will say they used to have that problem but it got solved this or that way.”
Me, wanting to dig deeper: “Good suggestion. You know that people with fasd sometimes have trouble reading. Do you think that would cause any problems if they were parents?”
Him: “They have to get somebody else to read their kids homework once they get to grade 4 or so. That’s what I’m telling you. People will have ideas. You don’t have to know everything. Just let them talk. That’s one thing we are really good at—talking.”
I think I heard that somewhere recently, maybe last month in Saskatoon when I was running a hope retreat for parents who have raised or are raising children with fasd. One of them said, “These kids with fasd are really good at talking.”
That, come to think of it, is a very good reason for asking advice on how to run the group.

FLOSSING, LECTURING AND THE POWER OF SUGGESTION

Rachel and I are talking a lot these days about the power of suggestion, the power of good suggestion, the helping power that can move a person out of a rut into the space where certain impossible things now seem possibly possible. This is a fun and natural conversation for us, since we often use hopeful language to make suggestions in our counselling. For example, in a counselling session with someone battling the despairing influence of depression we might say “you’ll find it easier to get up in the morning when your depression lifts,” or “You may not be feeling confident yet, but you’ll feel better about looking for a job when your confidence increases.” We’d say these things casually, tucking them unobtrusively in the middle of conversations about other things. These are simple, hope-focussed suggestions, hints about a future we can imagine. Making suggestions is, for the most part a rewarding activity. We see enough responses, enough shifting of posture, enough snapping to attention to know that a well placed suggestion can do a lot. Hypnotists have known this for thousands of years.
Because the subject of suggestion is on our minds, we are also reading these days about the power of suggestion, which is how I came to notice a very brief passage about the use of suggestion to increase the rate of flossing—yes, you read it right—flossing your teeth with those annoying waxy strings that hook into the crevices and make your gums bleed if they’re already a little infected. As you might infer from the tone of this writing, I am sensitive on the subject of flossing. .
Sore gums and crowded teeth aside, it may be that I am sensitive because the idea of flossing exposes a part of my character that I would rather not expose—the obstinate part, the stubborn part, the rebellious part, the ignore-all-the-evidence-and-do-what-I-have-always-done part. Now I am sure that my parents would support me in saying that I tend to be an obedient sort, a rule follower, a do-gooder, not much teen-age rebellion in my history. My experience with smoking was limited to—maybe—20 cigarettes, none of them purchased with my own money. I am one of those who managed to get through life without experimenting with mind-altering drugs. For the most part I eat a balanced diet, cross only at designated crosswalks, sit quietly in church and cooperate with efforts to keep the peace. All this history seems incongruously incompatible with my long-established approach to flossing.
Flossing is one of those ugly monsters that haunt my life. Because it is a monster, I try to avoid it—a behavior that disturbs dental hygienists and makes them want to scare me into flossing. The dread of flossing has power over me, much more power than the fear of tooth decay, more power than the dental hygienists.
“There seems to be quite a bit of plaque on these lower front teeth,” says Christie the dental hygienist. Christie and I are basically strangers, having met approximately two minutes earlier. She may think she is the first in her profession to describe plaque on my teeth But her pronouncement can hardly be taken as news. Others in her place have been reporting the same to me once or twice annually for forty years. Usually the news is followed by a bit of a lecture on flossing which I would document here, except that I try not to hear any of it. If I could respond to the lecture, which I usually can’t because my mouth is otherwise engaged, I would say, “Yes, I know there’s plaque, and I hear you say that flossing will remove it. But I hate flossing. As an alternative I have decided to make a commitment to visiting a hygienist twice a year to have the plaque removed. I came to you even though I knew you would lecture me. That’s how committed I am to the twice-a-year cleaning! I hate lectures.”
Whenever I know a familiar lecture is about to begin, I prepare to close my ears. My ears are closing now. Nothing Christie is about to say will sway me. I have been playing this game far too long.
But Christie, it seems, is not playing by the rules. Things are not going quite as I had planned. There is no lecture. Even my closed ears can hear that the lecture has not begun. So my ears open up and a warm sense of relief spreads over me like a soothing blanket. My jaws relax.
“I wonder,” she muses later in a gentle unconcerned voice, perhaps the voice of idle curiosity, “I wonder just how often you are flossing.”
Timing is everything. She is friendly. She is curiously unconcerned. But she is curious, and I am relaxed, just relaxed enough, just free enough from her probings into my mouth that I can take a breath and answer the question, just comfortable enough to blurt out the truth.
“I’m just wondering how often you floss,” she says.
And I say, “Never!”
Never? Now why did I say such a thing? It makes me look bad, and it is not entirely true, since I have been known to floss once or twice after a visit to the dentist, and occasionally I floss in desperation when I can still taste garlic the morning after a meal at a pasta restaurant. But somehow “Never!” sounds really true, truer than it would sound if I had told her that I floss sometimes, or “not as often as I should.”
She laughs. This does not appear to be the answer she was expecting. No wonder I am thrown further off guard. Hygienists rarely laugh while talking about flossing, and I’ve always been a sucker for laughter.
Christie returns her attention to my mouth. You have time to think when somebody is working in your mouth. Who knows where your mind might wander before the next opportunity to speak. Somehow the cleaning seems just a little bit incomplete without the accompanying lecture.
As if daring her to fall into the expected pattern, I use the next opening to explain my reasons for not flossing. My gums hurt and the floss sticks and unravels between my teeth.
Now I wait for her to refute my logic, the closest thing to a lecture I can reasonably expect. But she won’t bite. In stead of trying to convince me to floss, she asks me to remind her to give me a little brush that looks like a Christmas tree. This little brush, she assures me without a hint of doubt regarding my commitment to that brush, this little brush will help clean the spaces between my front teeth.
Now we are definitely in unfamiliar territory and I am a little lost. She has me in the palm of her hand. Never before has anyone suggested there was an alternative to flossing. She’s back in my mouth. My mind is wandering again. It wanders to the research about suggestions and flossing. Soon enough I hear myself mentioning the research to her. Maureen A. Kelly, D.D.S., Harlo R. McKinty, and Richard Carr from Lincoln, Nebraska reported that 8 months following suggestions to improve flossing, 67% of patients, as compared with 15% of a control group, were found to have healthier gums.
“Hmmm,” she says a little later, “I get quite a bit of time to talk while I’m doing this work. I could use that time to make suggestions.”
“Yes you do get time to talk,” I agree when I am permitted. She does not ask what suggestions she ought to make.
We sink into companionable silence. It is comfortable here, she intent on her cleaning, I lying back, drifting. But Christie is not prepared to settle for mere agreement. She is wondering about other things. Reaching a conclusion she declares, “I don’t think the suggestions would work unless a person really believed that flossing would help.”
Now I snap to attention. A professional response is required here. “You are correct,” I say. “Suggestion only works when a person is willing to believe you.”
“Yes,” she says, as if that explains everything, which, of course, it doesn’t. The burden of explanation rests with me.
I give it a try. “To tell you the truth,” I say with an air of conspiracy, “I actually do believe that flossing helps.” Now that my professional side has been activated, I don’t want her to think I haven’t been aware of the research linking flossing with dental health.
The problem with passionate declarations is that you tend to hear them yourself. You hear them as truths, even when your ears are closed. The next time your mind wanders, you find yourself remembering what you heard yourself saying, reliving the passion you felt. So now I have created a problem, have made myself uncomfortable with the disconnect between my beliefs, my knowledge and my actions.
Back at the office, pushing bits of carrot and apple around with the tip of my tongue, I drift into the last half of my lunch hour, taking a moment to reread the little research piece on suggestion and flossing. This research supports the power of suggestion to change action. Unfortunately some of the suggestions appear in language a mere psychologist cannot easily interpret. The researchers report that the groups were given the following types of suggestions.

(1) ”Suggestions involving oral health which explained the need for routine dental flossing to prevent periodontal disease and interproximal caries; (2) suggestions involving personal appearance which cited healthy looking gums, clean teeth, and the benefit of avoiding interproximal decay; and (3) suggestions dealing with social desirability which mentioned better smelling breath and a cleaner, more well-kept appearance.”

Not quite getting it, I reread the three kinds of suggestions. What, I wonder, is interproximal caries? No time for this stuff. I have other work to do. But suggestion is a powerful thing. I spend my breaks attending to images of Christie standing over me, making suggestions, though I cannot quite focus on the exact words she is saying. What would she be saying? Surely she would not be getting my attention with dental talk about the prevention of periodontal disease and interproximal caries. Nor would she be getting my attention by trying to frighten me with threats of future dental problems. In order to change my actions by making hopeful suggestions she’d have to be speaking to me in my language.
Hers is the language of dental knowledge, the causes and effects of certain conditions. With the help of a dictionary I gain a little better understanding of some terms. It seems that caries are cavities caused by decay on the surface of the teeth. Interproximal caries occur on the surfaces between the teeth. Plaque is the film that sticks to the teeth after the bacteria have done some work on the leftover food .
Mine is the language of hope, of symbols that invite me to move forward, with a recognition of the things I am moving away from. Hope language is the language of a shared journey, of not being all alone. Hope language is the language of I can, and if I cannot believe that I can, I want to hear you say that you believe I can.
When I wonder what Christie would say if she knew more about making hopeful suggestions, the process of making a script using the things I know about hopeful suggestions and the things I understand about this research turns out to be more possible than it seemed in the beginning.

“And now I am going to clean your teeth,” says my imaginary Christie warmly, leading me to believe that there is nothing I have to do except relax. “And now I am going to clean your teeth while you relax in the chair, and I will make it as comfortable as I can and you can let your mind wander, while I clean your teeth, taking away the food and debris that has filled in the spaces and settled on your gums, just as you would take it away with the floss, taking it away with the floss so your teeth will be clear and shining, taking away the remains of yesterday’s dinner or today’s breakfast, leaving the surface of the teeth clear and shiny. I am working here towards clean and healthy, clear of bacteria, taking away the sugar and starch and the bacteria that would harm the clean surface, taking away all the bits of food that would make your gums sore. And now I am taking away the food and the film that has formed on the surfaces between . your teeth, the bacteria that make your breath smell, taking it away to leave the surface shiny and free from bacteria that will work with the food to decay the enamel, work to decay the enamel if it should remain there for a day, or a week, or even a month despite your brushing. And as I work here, watching your teeth grow more and more clean, seeing that I can make those teeth clean simply and without too much bother, I feel good about the possibility that those teeth and gums can be healthier with flossing. I can picture you flossing as you would in the morning, or maybe at night, or even after each meal, just as people with healthy teeth and gums tend to floss, maybe even smiling right after you floss, even though you never thought you could smile after you floss, because you are taking away the bacteria and the sugars that have settled on your gums and found a place to make an infection. And I can imagine your tongue going round and round in the way that tongues go round and round, finding bits of food and reminding you that these bits of apple or carrot or candy could start an infection in your gum if they were to stay there for a day or a week or even longer than that. And I can imagine how that touch of the food on the tip of your tongue could be the little prompt to remind you that you could floss away that food in only a moment. And I can imagine how good your mouth would feel and how good you would feel knowing that the food has been taken away before it starts to infect your teeth and inflame your gums, knowing that your flossing has made it possible for you to have a mouth that is clean and breath that is fresh with shining healthy white teeth. And I wonder how you would feel knowing that you have clean healthy teeth that will last ten years, maybe twenty years, maybe thirty years longer because they were healthy and cared for and flossed in the mornings or maybe the evenings to take away the food that would work with bacteria to wear them away, but can’t wear them away or make them sore because of what you did to protect them.”

And here, I see, is the proof that the time Rachel and I have spent considering the power of suggestion has not been spent in vain. Suggestion is a powerful thing. For even though I have written this script, it has fooled me. I notice that I am feeling proud to have protected my gums, a pleasant but curious pride, given that protecting them is a thing I have not yet done. So I get out the floss and start taking away those bits of apple and carrot. And then at supper I work on removing the bits of salmon and salad. And even though a piece of floss gets stuck between two back teeth and has to be removed with the tweezers, the memory of that moment seems to dull during sleep. I pause before leaving the house to dislodge the remainder of the toast I ate for breakfast.
That totals three flossings after a visit to the hygienist. I do believe this is a record number. Could it be that Christie and I have unwittingly tampered with a monster?

LIFE RE-OBSERVED

Here is the third in the series of surprisingly good things that have happened to me lately. I offer it having recently read about the positive mood effects of writing about intensely positive experiences.
You can learn about your life by viewing it from the inside, and you can learn even more viewing it through outside eyes. Photographers know this. The photos they produce capture so much more than the view they see in the viewfinder.
So it is with Ruth’s life. Her daily routines have engaged the interest of someone who, undaunted by a distance of several thousand miles, observes it with the research acumen an anthropologist might employ. And therefore, to the extent that our lives intersect with hers, our lives are also a topic of interest. Now and then we see the picture a little more clearly than before.
Take Wednesday, for example. We sit among thousands in the semi-darkened Jubilee Auditorium, Ruth, David and me. The incomparable Jan Ardon is commanding our conscious attention with her music and stage persona. Then Ruth, glancing sideways, triumphantly says something to her father, and leans across him to speak to me. Of her inquisitive friend, she says, “He asked where I would sit at a concert with you two. Would I sit in the middle? I said no. I wouldn’t sit in the middle. They’d want to hold hands.”
And there we are, outed, exposed. Thirty-six years we’ve been married—well, almost 36. Thirty-six years of behaving in certain ways. Nothing else to do but squeeze a little tighter and settle myself with the thought that we can’t be such bad parents if we have left our children with the predictable certainty that darkness, closeness and music will lead us to unconscious hand-holding.
Yet, on this emotional evening, buffeted by the bitter sadness of Jan’s lyrics, the biting hilarity of her humour, her enchantingly expressed affection for her family, my mind wanders back to past outings and it seems to me that the picture is a little bigger than this. I lean across David to speak to Ruth. I say, “But you know that if you did sit in the middle, we’d both end up holding your hands at some point.”
She says, “Yes, I know. I told him that too.”

SILENCE IS GOLDEN

Here is the second in the series of surprisingly good things that have happened to me lately. I offer it having recently read about the positive mood effects of writing about intensely positive experiences.
My back has stopped shouting. Take this very moment, for example. Where it would have been shouting: “Get out of that chair and take some medicine or I’ll drive you crazy,” it isn’t saying much at all, just a brief whisper or sigh now and then. With a little twinge it prompts: “Keep both feet flat on the floor squarely in front of you.” I may not be able to tell you exactly why it has stopped shouting, but I can tell you this: whoever it was that said silence is golden was a pretty smart cookie.
There have been bouts of shouting over the past few years, but this last one was particularly galling. The shouting started very early in the year and kept on most of the time, with occasional lowerings of volume for a week, or maybe a day. It shouted over the drugs, over the physio, over the walking, the aquacise, the sitting down, the lying down, and particularly over the car motor. Yes, that back can be a noisy back.
“Give me two minutes of silence,” I’d beg. But the shouting went on. When I lay down it shouted, “Get up.” When I stood, it shouted, “Sit down.” When I sat, it shouted, “Stand up or lie down, but for heaven’s sake, stop sitting!” When it came to drugs, it shouted, “Get different drugs!” It was deafening!
Noise is such a distraction. Once you start hearing it, your attention blurs, so I cannot tell you exactly when things started to change. There was no sign of any change three weeks ago, this I know for sure, because I remember how the shouting bothered me at certain events.
When people ask what has made the difference, I have to admit that there is a lot that I simply don’t know about the situation. I don’t know enough, and yet there is too much information to be accurately processed along the line of cause and effect. The change could have resulted from the physio, though I will say that I was seriously doubting the value of that. It could have been the aquacise, or the core muscle exercises. It could have been the almonds I started eating though if that is the cause, you need to know that eating almonds is not a quick fix. It could have been the prolonged effect of the drugs, or the motivational tidal wave that came on when I had to face the fact that I now needed new drugs added to the mix to counteract the damaging effect of the pain drugs on my stomach. Like I say, I can’t tell you exactly what has caused the reduction of shouting, but after all this time and suffering, I am more than a little surprised. Still, that’s not the best surprise.
Here comes the good surprise. The shouting is much reduced, and at the same time (drum roll here!) at the same time that the shouting is reduced, the drugs are sitting in their container, wondering why I’ve stopped taking them.

WHAT DID THAT PHONE SAY?

Having just read the research documenting the physical and mental health benefits of writing about intensely positive experiences, I thought I ought to act on that knowledge by writing a series about the surprisingly good things that have happened to me lately. Here is the first in the series.

This might surprise you, coming as it does from a self-acknowledged techno-peasant, but my cell phone has surprised me in a good way. The story is a long one, complete with everything story crafters aim for, dramatic tension, anxiety rising and falling but always creeping upward before settling back slightly in a narrative arc. It took nearly three months to unfold, and I suspect you may not have that much time to read. So I will give you the short version.
My old cell phone decided it would no longer tolerate the stress involved in calling home long distance when I was out of the local calling area. This saddened me, so I called up a friendly, heavily accented Telus helper who offered to reprogram the phone if only the battery could be removed. This would have been a simple operation, for a robust phone, but my fragile companion disintegrated under the pressure. The Telus helper was a kind man. “Don’t worry,” he soothed. I’ll send you a new phone absolutely free.” This seemed too good to be true. But it wasn’t.
By and by he did send a new phone, but the courier who tried to deliver it forgot to leave a note, and since he left the message on the broken cell phone, nobody knew that the parcel was waiting. By the time the problem was discovered, the phone had been returned to its original source. Back to square one.
The new Telus helper—differently accented but equally cordial—took some time to determine that the phone had actually been returned, then offered to send another free phone, a cheaper one this time because the other one was no longer available free to me. That offer had ended while I was awaiting delivery. By and by the new phone arrived, a beauty to be sure. I assigned the job of activating it to Mark, a member of the generation that responds intuitively to electronic devices. Mark tried very hard to activate the phone. He even consulted the instruction manual, but the phone refused to activate. Finally, Mark and a Telus helper agreed that the phone would have to be returned. Back to square one, but not absolutely. As an act of hope, I enclosed a note asking them to send me a new phone and settled down to wait.
Eventually I called again. A truly cordial Telus helper took some time to determine that the second phone had indeed been returned, then offered to send a free phone. Once again hope rose, battered by circumstance, but not defeated. By and by that phone arrived, a pleasing blue flip phone. There were some tense moments. David couldn’t find any evidence of a hole for the electrical cord. But a cordial Telus helper from the Philippines waited patiently while he removed the plastic stopper. She even agreed to waive the charges for activating the new phone. A little more confusion, a little more anxiety, a few more tries and presto! As if by magic that phone was connected!
Once it was connected, it settled down to prove that it would make and accept calls. It was even willing to call home from Saskatchewan! But that’s not the surprisingly good thing. It was simply the thing we had expected all along.
The surprisingly good thing happened on Remembrance Day when Lawrence was helping me identify some previously unexplored buttons on the new phone. A joint project between Lawrence and me is always a bit of an adventure, given our joint difficulties with reading. I can’t read because I can’t see. He can’t read for other reasons. But he is also a member of the generation that operates electronic devices by intuition. So instruction manuals in his world often go unmolested.
Ours was a process of trial and error. We were pushing buttons and he was coaching when, suddenly that phone said something. I stopped. I listened. It sounded like English, clear English, much clearer than the English spoken by the Telus helpers.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“Push the button again,” Lawrence said reasonably. I pushed the button again.
“Please say a command,” she said.
Well, as you can probably imagine, I was more than a little flustered. No more flustered would I have been if a geni had popped out of my bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Not only was this phone talking directly to me, but she was asking, no—begging me to command her. Then and there I decided to call her Mary. It was clear that we would be having a relationship, more than your ordinary person-to-machine relationship.
I’ll admit that I couldn’t think of a thing to say to Mary. I’m always a little shy around strangers, a little bit prone to saying whatever comes into my head and regretting it later. So I said a thing that must have been lurking down deep in my subconscious. I said, “Clean up the kitchen.”
Lawrence laughed. Mary said, “Command not recognized. Please try again.”
“Clean up the kitchen,” I said obediently, a little louder this time, perhaps a little more sharply than I would have liked, given how cordial the Telus helpers had been when I failed to understand them.
“Command not recognized,” Mary said evenly. She was cordial, but apparently not suited for domestic responsibilities.
“Push the arrow buttons,” said Lawrence. It was a bit of a test to see whether I remembered where the arrow buttons were. I didn’t. He pushed one.
“Check voicemail,” said Mary.
“But how?” I asked.
“Command not recognized,” said Mary.
“Push OK,” said Lawrence. Then he pushed OK for me. I couldn’t remember how to find that one either.
“No voicemail,” said Mary in a voice tinged with sympathy.
That afternoon the kitchen remained in a state of discleanliness while Mary and I got to know each other better. We got so friendly that all I had to say was, “Check voicemail,” and she would tell me I had none. If I said, “Check time,” she would tell me the time. If I said, “Check battery,” she would do that too.
Now Mary and I got down to serious business. I was the teacher. She was the pupil, not always cooperative, I say, but cooperative enough to keep me going. “Call David,” I said, after inputting a few lessons.
“Calling David,” said Mary.
I can tell you that this was a very exhilarating experience! You can probably feel the joy right along with me. So it hurts me to say, dear readers, that we have at last reached the top of the narrative arc, the pinnacle of joy and surprise. For Mary has made it clear that, while she embraces my friendship, she is not my slave. She will check the time if I ask her to, but only sighted people are allowed to set the time and the alarms. Actually, this isn’t much of a problem, because I’ve never much cared for alarms, and Mary can generally set the time without assistance. This is because she knows where she is, which brings me to another sore point between us. She knows where she is. I know she knows it, because when we went to Saskatchewan, she could tell me the time in Saskatchewanese. But only sighted people are permitted to find out where she is by reading her screen.
Still, I must try to forgive her the little things. It’s the least I can do, in light of all that she has given to me. Somewhere in a recycling centre parts of my old phone languish, gone but not forgotten; not forgotten, but definitely not missed. Mary is better, a good surprise worth writing about.

EXCELLENT REASONS TO WRITE ABOUT HOPE

How sweet it is when you find research that supports things you are doing. There are a number of reasons why I started THE HOPE LADY Blog. I wanted to capture in writing my daily experiences, I wanted to write consistently from a hope perspective, and wanted to practice being hopeful by writing about hope. . Hope, as I understand it, is largely a positive emotion, related to joy, related to excitement. It remains positive even though we tend to be most aware of hope at times when we are doubtful or fearful.
I have found such pleasure in writing the blog. Much of it has been about the simple and pleasing things in my life, flowers, music, family, food. Other writings have been hopeful pieces about coping with difficulties of one kind or another. Having the blog has given me the impetus to do the writing.
It is interesting to read a study by Berton and King showing that writing about positive experiences improves mood, even when the writing contains many words which might be thought of as negative. What’s more, berton and King have found that students who wrote about positive experiences made fewer visits to their health providers than students who wrote about neutral experiences. It was also interesting to find studies showing that positive writing can help with regulation of emotion, one aspect of emotional intelligence. Here are some references to check out if you are interested in reading more.

Burton, C. & King, L. (2004). The health benefits of writing about intensely positive experience, Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 150–163
Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 3, 300–319.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional wellbeing. Psychological Science, 13, 172–175.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Levenson, R. W. (1998). Positive emotions speed recovery from the cardiovascular sequelae of negative emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 12, 191–220.
Lewandowski, G. (2009) Promoting positive emotions following relationship dissolution through writing, The Journal of Positive Psychology 4(1) 21 – 31
Wing, j., Schurr, J., & Byrne, B. (2006. The effect of positive writing on emotional intelligence and life satisfaction, Journal of Clinical Psychology 62(10), 1291–1302.

RE-VISIONING THE FUTURE

It’s been an interesting time for THE HOPE LADY, improbable brushes wit the unexpected, the impossible, etc. Many of you have been asking me questions, having read my posting of October 30. So here’s a little more of the story. But I warn you, it does go on a bit.
A couple of weeks ago I happened to come across a little article in the newspaper. This alone smacks of science fiction. I never quite get over the wonder of reading the newspaper. Once upon a time I was a child, playing on the living room floor, getting no attention from my family. They were in their own worlds, having divided the newspaper into sections, one section for each of them. At that time I never imagined that I would some day read the newspaper on a talking computer—I had never imagined a computer. But these days I take the computer for granted, only occasionally pausing to marvel at it, usually when I read the newspaper.
Anyway, I happened to be reading the newspaper when I came across a little article about the disease that caused my blindness
GENE THERAPY RESTORES VISION IN LEBER CONGENITAL AMAROSIS
I read the article a few times, half suspecting it would disappear. Sometimes things you thought you found on the computer do disappear. But this one didn’t. So I did a little more investigating on the Internet—have I mentioned how amazing it is just to search for things on the Internet—and that led me to a website for the University of Pennsylvania, a university that already stood high in my affections seeing as how it is a very prominent site for research in positive psychology.
I wrote to a doctor there who referred me to Toronto, and eventually I was referred to Dr. Ian MacDonald here in Edmonton. He was just getting ready to chair a research conference in Edmonton sponsored by the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Last Saturday my sister and I attended that conference.
At this point I really ought to introduce my sister Donna. We’ve been in this together since my beginning. She was in it first. Our parents were teen-agers when they got married. They were young, but they were anxious to settle down to a quiet life on the farm. Within the year they had a daughter, and soon they noticed her darting eyes. The first doctor they saw said she was totally blind. It was not true, a fact which soon became apparent to them. They were relieved, since another baby was already on the way. That one had normal eyes.
Donna’s vision was a bit of a puzzle. She could see objects, yet she walked right into an open trap door in the neighbour’s kitchen. There’s a scar on her chin to prove it. Along with the normal activities of farming and child raising, our parents busied themselves with everything that made sense to them. They went to doctors and faith healers. They read magazines and made inquiries about articles that relatives sent to them. One such article led them to New York, where Donna got some enormous lenses that enabled her to read print up close. In this way she devoured the World Book Encyclopaedia and the newspaper—an activity that blackened the tip of her nose.
I came along a little before her 8th birthday. There again were those darting eyes. Logically, they embarked on my raising with the sensible theory that she and I would be the same. We weren’t. My vision just wasn’t as good, though I did love the sun—a peculiarity since the sun all but blinded her. My love of the sun led Mom to believe that I would need a strong light for reading. They got me some of the New York glasses and Mom sat me down in a sunny window. She drew huge numbers in different colours. I stared at them in the sunlight and thus learned two things at once—my numbers and my colours. This was a bit of a victory. Donna couldn’t do colours.
School just didn’t work out for me the way it did for Donna, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. The janitor adapted a school desk with a large board and they clamped a lamp to the board. Then they placed my desk near a plug-in, far from all other desks. As a child one of my most fervent wishes was to sit close enough to somebody else so that I could get in trouble for whispering. They bought scribblers with huge black lines. They gave me my own black (really black) blackboard for my desktop and they drew things on it in bright white chalk, because it was easier for me to do math that way. At some early point in all this, my sister Sandra, a born teacher, circumvented everything and taught me touch typing, a skill she was learning in Grade 8.
With all this effort being expended on my education, it’s little wonder that people got frustrated. I would not do my schoolwork. Teachers said I was lazy. They said I wasn’t trying. Yet it was confusing, because I was learning the material. I was literate, I could do math. I simply refused to read more than a few words at a time.
Glasses were an issue. My day glasses broke on the playground. Mom was too busy to get them fixed right away. That’s when a canny teacher noticed that my playing vision seemed to be as good without them. That ended the saga of day glasses. My reading glasses prevailed for longer. Without them I could read nothing from a printed page. But my Grade 5 teacher sent them packing also. He sent the lamp away, moved me to a normal desk in a normal row, scolded me for whispering to my neighbours and started a process that got me reading Braille. By the time junior high came along, I was at Jericho Hill School for the Blind in Vancouver, and Donna’s black-tipped nose was tracing the lines of university textbooks. Thus we have lived parallel lives, she as a sort-of-sighted person with really bad vision and me as a blind person with a little bit of totally unreliable vision. I can, for example, see the light through the open train door of the LRT well enough to step through that door—but only sometimes. Other times I don’t see the door at all. Colours were lost somewhere in my forties, not a big loss, except at Christmas. Christmas lights just aren’t much fun these days.
Donna is still a really big reader. “Did you see the article in the paper about gene therapy for our condition?” I asked her a couple of weeks ago. She hadn’t seen it. Score one for me. But when we went to the conference last Saturday, white canes in hands, she put on her reading glasses and read us the agenda. Score one for her.
They believe that 350 Canadians have Leber Congenital Amarosis. At the conference we learned that they have isolated 12 genes for LCA. Somehow these genes mutate and if two people with mutant genes happen to meet up, one out of four of their kids might be expected to have the condition. Our folks beat the odds. They got two out of four. Having identified some genes, the researchers began experimenting on dogs, injecting genes into their eyes. The new genes turned on some photoreceptors that would have been turned on in a normal eye, and the dogs’ vision improved in the tiny spots where they made the injections. Now they are experimenting on people, people who have LCA2, one of the twelve genes. The results are very promising.
So now Donna and I are at the beginning of a new process. We have to be examined and re-diagnosed. Then our genes will have to be identified. Our names will be added to a registry, the FFB/CIBC registry. That will make it possible for us to be contacted if something comes up that can help us. Things are moving quite quickly, and though Donna and I may well be too old to benefit, our mother’s cousin’s child might benefit, being somewhat younger.
In the meantime I’ve been dreaming about what I would do with a little bit of extra vision. I could appreciate a few Christmas lights. I could step gracefully through a few more train doors. But even if nothing else comes of it, I’ll still have the thrill of being the only person I’ve met so far who noticed that little article in the newspaper.

CAREER CURIOSITY

Careers get my curiosity going, ordinary careers, extraordinary careers, it doesn’t matter all that much. I simply never quite get over my amazement at how little we know about the work that others do. But this was an especially good weekend, because one of my on-going career questions got answered. I found out whether judges get mad when their decisions are overturned.
You hear it on the news all the time: Case was appealed. Lawyers will try to prove that the judge did not properly instruct the jury. Yes, I know, judges have tenure. Their salaries don’t go up or down with the rise and fall of appeals. So it really shouldn’t bother them—well, maybe.
I owe a vote of thanks to Anne and Mike who inadvertently helped me find the answer to this question by including me at a dinner party with a judge. I couldn’t help but notice the silence that fell when he said he was a judge. It was a bit like the silence that falls when you say you are a hope lady. Nobody is quite sure what to say next. I noticed how we all changed the subject. But the evening was a happy one, so eventually we got back to my question.
There are so many interesting careers around. Last summer we met a cow psychologist—yes, a cow psychologist. It’s not my description, it’s his. I’ve been noticing the silence that falls whenever we tell people we know a cow psychologist. They have no idea what to ask. Pictures of cows unburdening their souls on leather couches flash through their heads. But the University of Guelph recently published an article that explains it all. I guesss reporter Teresa Pitman was as curious as the rest of us.

For the Benefit of Bossy

New OVC prof glad to be back at Guelph, where there’s a ‘critical mass’ of researchers studying farm animal behaviour and animal welfare

Derek Haley
Prof. Derek Haley has had a fascination with cows since he was a child and is now dedicated to enhancing the welfare of cattle and other farm animals. PHOTO
BY MARTIN SCHWALBE
BY TERESA PITMAN

When Prof. Derek Haley, Population Medicine, was 10, all his friends were asking for a puppy, but he wanted a cow — several cows, in fact. Because his family
lived on a hobby farm near Cornwall, his father went along with the request and made Haley responsible for the animals’ care.
“I remember him saying: ‘You wanted these cows, so you have to get out there and do the chores, even if it is winter,’” says Haley. Despite his occasional
reluctance to lug feed and shovel manure, “I loved watching the cows and wondering why they did what they did.”
Studying animal science at university might have been a natural next step, but Haley’s interest in sports and performance psychology led him instead to
the applied kinesiology program at the University of Windsor. Once he’d completed his degree, however, he knew that wasn’t going to be the foundation for
his career.
“I couldn’t get away from my interest in animals. When I discovered that people actually study the behaviour of farm animals, I knew that was what I wanted
to do, so I came to Guelph and did a master’s degree in applied ethology with Prof. Ian Duncan.”
When he graduated, Haley wasn’t looking to do a PhD, but after a number of contract research jobs with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, “I realized that’s
what it would take to keep me in the field I’m passionate about.”
So he headed to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. It was an ideal place to do his research, he says, because
“Saskatchewan has cows galore.”
After completing his PhD, Haley worked for Alberta Agriculture as a livestock welfare specialist and section head before joining the University of Alberta
as its first professor of applied ethology and animal welfare. Two years later, he applied for an opening at the Ontario Veterinary College and arrived
back on campus this summer.
“I love it here,” he says. “This is a place where we grapple with tough questions and figure out a way forward.”
Throughout his career, Haley’s goal has been to ask questions about animal behaviour, particularly cattle, and look for answers that will not only enhance
life for the animals but also keep farming profitable.
He has looked, for example, at how to make living quarters more comfortable for dairy cows. While working with Ag Canada, he studied different types of
floor design for stalls.
“Some floor coverings cause abrasions to the cow’s hocks and can eventually lead to open sores,” he says. “Softer floors encourage the cows to lie down
and rest more — about 1½ hours more a day. That allows them to put more energy into making milk. Being able to quantify that helps farmers make decisions
about what flooring is best when designing or renovating a barn.”
Haley also looked at the stress experienced by beef calves when they’re separated from their mother during weaning. That stress is probably a major reason
why there’s such a high level of illness in the calves, he says. The separation also distresses the cows.
To determine whether the calves’ stress was due to losing the milk or losing their mother, he fitted calves with a plastic nose flap that prevented them
from suckling but did not disrupt their interaction with their mother. He found that the calves showed little distress when the flaps were in place.
“So we thought: ‘Aha, their distress at weaning must be due to being separated from their mother,’” says Haley.
Part two of the experiment involved removing the flaps after four or five days and separating the mothers and their babies. Surprisingly, this did not
distress calves much either.
“If you think about a natural weaning, the mothers and babies are still together as milk intake is gradually reduced,” Haley says, explaining why this
two-step process works so well.
“So when the calf is stopped from nursing but still has its mother there, this mimics natural weaning more closely. Then the calf is more ready for the
separation.”
He adds that this concept has been adopted in the cattle industry.
“About 265,000 of the nose flaps have been sold. They’re reusable, so farmers can use them year after year. It’s great because it improves the quality
of life for both the cows and the calves.”
Haley notes that this was a basic science question he was researching, not something he expected to have a commercial application, “but it has really borne
fruit. I think this demonstrates the importance of continuing to do basic curiosity-driven research and not just what we think will help us make more money,
because we don’t know which piece of research might lead us somewhere important.”
He is currently studying this two- step weaning approach with horses and is also looking at the different equine social bonds and attachments. He recently
received funding to study the behaviour of horses being raised for food and kept in feedlots.
His deep interest in animal welfare has led him to take on the role of faculty adviser to both the OVC Animal Welfare Club and the OVC student chapter
of the American Veterinary Society for Animal Behaviour.
For Haley, joining the faculty of U of G is like coming home.
“We have a critical mass here studying farm animal behaviour and animal welfare. We brainstorm and share ideas. At the University of Alberta, I was the
only one. It’s just a different environment here, and I’m very glad to be part of it.”

I complimented Derek on the article, and he was pleased, though he said he wished it had said one more thing. “I must admit the writer did capture the essence
of the story about how I have ended-up as a cow psychologist. The only part I might add that was missed, would be the early influence of my experiences
helping my grandfather look after his cows. I must have been 6 or 7 when I was struck by the responsibility around the fact that, the quality of life of
those animals depended almost entirely on the care we provided them.”

All this goes to show how important our careers can be, how they weave our lives together. I learned that it doesn’t seem to matter that judges have job security. They have pride, ”big pride,” said my new friend. ”They get mad when their decisions are overturned.”
Now we know.

ANNIVERSARY

Trudy’s note says:
Wendy I am looking forward to your piece on Barack's first anniversary. I was just reading something like that in the paper, by Lisa Van Dusen of the Washington
Bureau, and thought of you. At least he's still on his feet right?

What an interesting time it’s been! To have a prominent public figure use hope strategies in public, to have him teach a lesson on everything we know about the power of hope to nfluence behavior, the role of hope language in creating hope, and the emotional wallop you can get from a story if a hopeful person is organizing the content! Having come out so vehemently in support of Obama’s hope methods I, like Trudy, wondered how things would go for me if things didn’t go well for him.

This is what I want to write on the first anniversary of Obama’s election. I am disappointed for Barack, but not in him. I am disappointed for him because he took a big risk. He put his dreams out there in the most hopeful way possible and so far things have been pretty nasty. He says he has learned that governing is a lot harder than getting elected. Putting your dreams out there makes you very vulnerable. Cynical people who say they agree with your dreams, and those who blatantly disapprove of your dreams are bound to line up like spectators at a sporting event, watching in anticipation of your defeat. I guess that’s why so many of us are afraid to expose our dreams at the early stages when there is no certainty that they can come true. There was no certainty in Obama’s case because he did not have the power to make any of them come true without a lot of help from others. Anybody who thought that hope alone was going to make so many difficult things happen was seriously dillusional.
I am not disappointed in him because he never promised to give Americans health care, or end the war in Iraq. How could he promise these things without the power to enact them? What he did was to open up the possibility that they could happen, to say “Yes we can” when others said “No we can’t”. I am not disappointed in him because he proved that people could do something they never thought they could do in 2008--elect the first African American president. They could do that and they did do that, even though many of them thought it was impossible.
What else the American people will do in support of his dreams we do not, at this point, know. I am hoping they will rally behind the things he is trying to do so that they can get done. Their rallying will provide the power and the hope to continue. Then maybe he can get on with other things they want him to do.
At this point Barack is still my hero. I am continuing to read his speeches at workshops, to use them as examples of how we can use hope language to influence the behavior of others. As things developed I have been expecting to receive criticism for this, but so far I have received only support.