IN SEARCH OF GRATITUDE

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

ON VICTORY AND STRUGGLE

The motto of our high school was “palma non sine pulvere”: No victory without a struggle. Lofty, suggestive, possibly even inspiring, it was largely wasted in its representative role. For it was, in practice, a theoretical motto, since few, if any of the people who graced the classrooms knew any Latin, and even the English version languished in obscurity except when it was trotted out by valedictorians desperate to appear wise at graduation. I uttered it once, on the valedictorian stage, in brief reference to winners of the long jump, and future engineers who powered their way through Physics 30. After that, I never gave it another thought for 45 years. I could probably make more of it today, given my broader experience with both victory and struggle. But I do wonder if there might have been a motto that would have meant more to teen-agers. I was, as I recall, uncomfortable on that stage, not because of the obligation to speak, for the gift of the gab was early bestowed upon me. My discomfort related to the idea of victory and struggle, and the knowledge that, as a blind graduate in a sighted school, people thought of me as a symbol of that very motto. I didn’t want to be a symbol of victory and struggle. In fact, I didn’t want to be a symbol of anything. All I wanted was to be one of them—the people who, by virtue of their place in the sighted majority, were relieved of the burden of being a symbol of anything. I wanted to get a degree, and work, and get married—not because that would be a struggle for me, but because that was what I expected everyone to be able to do. Now, if I had achieved a reasonable distance in long jump, or persisted at any level beyond Physics 10, that would indeed have been a victory after unimaginable struggle! Then, just possibly, I might have made more of the motto.

WHY DON'T YOU WRITE MORE OFTEN?

Conscience: Why don't you write on this blog more often? Me: I have so many good reasons for that, it's hard to count them all. Conscience: List them. Me: Do I have to? Oh fine. I will. 1. I don't have time. Conscience: Rubbish. You are retired, you know, albeit unsuccessfully. Of course I know that you volunteer half a day a week at Momentum Walk-In Counselling, and you still do sessions for the Alzheimer Society, and you are planning hope groups for Parkinson's patients, and you occasionally give hope presentations, and you play Bridge Wednesday mornings, and you go to music classes with Carys and Tracey on Saturday mornings, and you take exercise classes with David at the YMCA, and you go to church most Sundays, and help if David asks you to, and spend time watching TV with him, and your friends come over to keep you company, and you tend your flowers, but if you would be honest, you would have to admit that each of these things is a little thing, and you still have plenty of time to write. 2. This is a hope blog, and I'm not always as hopeful as I want to be. I have a responsibility to myself and the hope community to write hope on a hope blog. conscience: Garbage! You're hopeful enough, given all that's going on in your life, perhaps more hopeful than most, since you have made an art form of intentionally noticing hope. 3. Nobody wants to read my silly writing. I have only six followers. Conscience: Nonsense! Two out of those six have taken the time to comment since you started writing again. I'm sure you wouldn't want them to think they are unimportant. By the way, why did you start writing again? 1. Because I was going to a writing retreat and I knew I'd better warm up for that. 2. Because I still give hope talks and I have to write in order to prepare for them. I was getting rusty. 3. Because when I started writing again, I remembered that writing for an audience always help me think more clearly and more positively. 4. Because two people noticed, and they said nice things, and I'm really a sucker for attention, especially attention laced with flattery. Sometimes I just wish I didn't have a conscience.

FAMILY GOLF

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

THE FLOWER PROBLEM

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

GRIT, GRACE & GRATITUDE

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

MAKING MEMORIES

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

COOKIES

This morning I made peanut butter cookies for Bridge Club. “You don’t even like peanut butter cookies much,” said a little voice inside me. But I made them anyway, partly because they are so easy to make. “They are so easy to make!” That’s what Doris said when she brought them to Bridge Club a while ago, maybe a year or ago, back before the cancer and the downhill slide that followed too closely on its heels. “You use a cup of peanut butter, half a cup of sugar and an egg,” she said. “Then you mix them together and make a couple of dozen little balls. 20 minutes at 325 and they’re done. Doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does.” So I made them myself this morning, maybe because I wanted something simple to serve to Bridge Club, maybe because Doris’s 75th birthday would have been next Sunday, maybe just so I could hear the sound of her voice in my mind’s ear—and grieve a little. By the time you get to my age, death is not as unfamiliar as it once was. You’d have to have been a hermit not to have mourned the loss of beloved relatives, work colleagues and people you had intended to get to know better when you had time. But somehow I made it to the age of 62 without ever having lost a close friend. I would rather have made it to 82, or 102, or maybe never. Fifty-two years is a long time to bump through the ups and downs of life with a close friend. Doris Goetz was my braille teacher when I was 10 and she was 23, or maybe I was 9 and she was 22. I wish I’d thought to ask her if she knows exactly which year it was. At any rate, our first meeting was a time of great hope for both of us. She, a smiling, joyful, pretty young woman, was just beginning a long and inspiring career teaching braille, cooking, personal grooming and crafts to thousand of blind people, young and old. I, in contrast, was a fish out of water, a literate child who could not see well enough to read print, the only blind kid in Lougheed School. A CNIB driver drove her 100 miles to bring a book from which I was expected to teach myself, there being no braille readers within 100 miles. And the miracle is that I did teach myself, the alphabet, the punctuations, the complex system of contractions that most people claim as the reason why so many people never really learn braille. I taught myself to write with a slate and stylus, a system for writing which requires you to write each letter as in a mirror, poking out holes on one side that will be dots when you turn over the page. Miracle, I say, because I’m not the smartest kid on the block, and I can’t recall ever winning an award for perseverance. Maybe it was because I so badly wanted to read. More likely it was because Doris found for me that sweet spot, the time when other kids get into street gangs and experiment with smoking, the time when a kid will do just about anything to impress a mentor and a role model. To impress Doris I put everything I had into the task of learning braille. I gave up watching the Flintstones after school. I gave up visiting the hens in the yard so I could spend more time on braille. I worked as fast as Doris would allow, clogging the post box with envelopes documenting my progress, urging her to come quickly each time I finished a volume of the three-volume training book. Doris always dropped off a new book in person. A hundred miles was not, evidently, so far after all. After the first book, she gave up telling me to slow down. I was already an adult, albeit only in the legal sense, when next I met Doris. I had changed so much, no wonder I was surprised to find her exactly as I remembered, joyful, smiling, encouraging, fun to be with. We were work colleagues, we were former colleagues, we were lunchers, we were mutual admirers. I admired the way she made such a good life for herself as a single person who devoted all her efforts to one career. She admired how I made such a good life for myself as a married person adapting to several career changes along the way. I was amazed at how quickly she could leave me eating her dust after she got her guide dog. She admired how I took the LRT without a guide. We were fellow retirees, we were Bridge partners, and always we were friends. If she were here she’d be asking about my life—my kids, my grandkids, my hope projects, our new apartment, David’s health. Did I like the last symphony concert? Had I made it to Calgary to visit Pirate in his new home? If she were here she’d be remembering things I told her years ago and had forgotten until she reminded me. If she were here she’d be asking for computer help, and tips on downloading e-books. She’d be playing Bridge with us, and bringing the peanut butter cookies. Come to think of it, I miss Doris. I haven’t talked to her since February, or was it early March? Anyway, it’s already been too long, and if things were different I’d be making arrangements for us to get together instead of grieving on the Internet. But things are the way they are. So I am learning to like peanut butter cookies. I think she’d want it that way.

AN INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC CLASSES FOR BABIES

Kitty: I’ve been wondering where you go on Saturday mornings. Carys: To music class. Kitty: You don’t say! Music class eh? Are you learning to play the piano, the trumpet, the obo perhaps? Carys: Of course not. I may seem grown up to you, but I’m only six months old. I probably won’t be able to play the obo until I can sit up without support. Kitty: Then what do you do there? Carys: Make noise, mostly. Kitty: Like purring and meowing, you mean? Carys: Sometimes, but only in the animal songs. Kitty: What are your favourite things to do at music class? Carys: Oh, I like to suck on the sticks, and they have rubber drums. Now a rubber drum is a thing you can really sink your teeth into. And I like to get up on my hands and knees and watch the toddlers toddle. Today one of the toddlers toddled right over to Teacher’s guitar and loosened the strings. That must have been fun. Then, and this is really fun, I make big spit puddles on the floor and race to see if I can crawl through them before Mommy notices. Kitty: Oh. Are grown-ups allowed to go to music class. Carys: Sure. Every Saturday Mommy and I pick Granny up on the way and we all go together. Granny hugs me and lets everybody else know that I’m the cutest kid there. Then she dances with me and bounces me up and down until I spit up my breakfast. She says she gets her Saturday morning exercise getting up and down off the floor with me in her arms. Mommy says going to music classes is a good way to spend time with Granny, and Granny says listening to music lights up at least six different areas of your brain if you view it on MRI, which we never do. So I really wonder if it’s actually six, or maybe five or seven. And does it light up more areas when you suck on the sticks? Kitty: Ahhh! So much science in the world, and so little is known.

SILENCE AND NOISE

On warm summer nights, at my sister’s house in the village of Lougheed, you can wake at 2;00 or 3:00, stretch, perk up your ears—and if the fridge is on intermission from its regular humming concert, and the coyotes are stocking other territories, you might just hear—nothing at all. You listen, you check your ears for wax, you listen again, and still you hear—absolutely nothing. On these nights I lie still, warm and secure and silent. The morning will bring out the people, the birds, the cars. All will be well. On cool autumn days in our new apartment, with the doors and windows closed against the threatening chill of winter, you hear the occasional scrape of a chair on the laminate in the dining room of the apartment above, the low level hum of an Edmonton transit bus accelerating, the swish of traffic on Victoria Park Road far below, a siren at the fire station down the street, the soft voice of a neighbour greeting afriend at the elevator, the trickle of a shower that isn’t yours. All of it is far away unrelated to the physical distance. Your friends ask: “Is it noisy?” “No,” I say. “Nothing that bothers us.” Once upon a long-ago time, when our children were an as-yet undiscovered fragment of our possible future, we camped alone with the grasshoppers on a dusty site in Saskatchewan. The only sound of the night or the day was the wind brushing leaves of the few poplars left at the edge of the ditches. To an urbanite, it was deserted. To a girl recently transplanted from a farm, it was the difference between Alberta and Saskatchewan. To a romantic it should have been—well—romantic. But though I knew I ought to be thrilled to be there with my love in such a private space, awed by the nature of nature undisturbed by anyone but us, I was dogged by a persistent fear of the things that can happen to people alone—attack by disease, or animal, or man. In future I would frequent noisier campsites, and savour the absolute silences of the warm nights in a fine bed comforted by the close presence of others. In the short term future I would live in the suburbs where it is sort-of-quiet. In the long term I would move to an urban apartment on a busy street near a major river crossing and be happy just to be in the noisier centre of things.

THE BIG SURPRISE

Never before have I lived in a community where disability was the norm rather than the exception, but that is definitely the case in our new apartment. The hallways are populated with canes and walkers and the occasional wheelchair. There are hearing aids and vision appliances and memory losses, both short and long term. Sporting our own ever-growing collection of disabilities, we fit right in. You don’t have to be disabled to live in this community, but you do have to be over 45. In our early 60’s, we are definitely at the younger limit of the population. The average age is closer to 80. When we first viewed the apartment we were not searching for company either older or disabled. We were simply looking for a centrally located large place with a decent kitchen, a reasonably accessible bathroom, a balcony you could enter with a walker and enough space to accommodate the guests we love to entertain. With these caviats in mind, we scouted the place on the Internet. It seemed worthy of the trouble it would take to get through the door for a personal peek. The things we thought we wanted are here, to be sure. But the force that brought us here can only be identified as personal magnetism. The personal stuff began on the doorstep and continued in elevator and hallway every time we came back for another look. Each person we met inquired about our presence in a friendly manner. Clearly the residents know who lives here. Each one went on to say that this building is a wonderful place to call home. We must not, we concluded, appear to be the kind of people who ought not to live here. “We have coffee every Wednesday,” they said, “and happy hour on Monday. We have movies on Thursday and a barbecue coming up. You could come to the barbecue. No need to pay for dinner. I’ll bring you a bottle of wine. Do you want red or white?” “This is a community,” they said to us, after we’d drunk the wine and purchased the key. “We do most of the maintenance and gardening ourselves. We organize the social activities. We take care of security. Most of the apartments are represented when we have a meeting. This, as you have already noticed, is a great place to live,” And if my friends are visibly surprised that I now live in a place where disability is more the norm than the exception, and age is a greater number than mine, all I can say is: Nobody is more surprised than me!

MORNING SUN

The place has a “wow!” effect Windows pop out everywhere The sun shines magnificently in the dining room, living room, and kitchen nook The place isn’t square The bedroom is the coolest room in the house The lights of the city spread out before me when I walk into the bedroom after dark The balconies are generous It’s almost, but not quite soundproof There’s a club room where the neighbours gather The neighbours brag about how wonderful it is to live here The bus stops nearby The living room in our new apartment is a morning room that bursts resplendent with a rosy glow as the autumn sun rises over the river far below. With its appearance comes hope in the knowledge that, by midmorning the glow will have spread to the dining room, then to the nook by lunch time. And though the sunny nook brings a smile, and the plants on the plant stand raise their leaves for the dining room welcome, the lure of the rosy living room extravaganza with all itspromise is enough to get me out of bed for an early visit to the exercise room so that I might be back in the living room by sun-up..

SILLINESS

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

ON THE JOY OF READING IN BED

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” --W. Somerset Maugham “I couldn’t have said it better!!!” –A Bedtime Reader

THE WRITER'S ALMANAC

The Writer’s almanac I turned to my computer In search of inspiration A crippling case of writers’ block Had dulled my concentration. And there emerged In white and black The inspiring Writer’s Almanac. A beacon of hope A promise to mind Of treasures still out there Awaiting a find.

A PRISONER'S DILEMMA

In the measure of time in a warm winter coat That it takes to escape from there with your arms reaching skyward, stretched taut in the air Tugging ceaselessly upward past chin point and nose tip Endangering earlobes, scraping skin from the forehead Do you pause to reflect on the infinite wonder Of a world filled with humans preoccupied inventing Spaceships that fly to the moon then come down again But not a dependable zipper?

THE POWER AND PERIL OF FAINT HOPES

Be wary of the faint hopes With their promise of the most to gain In the presence of so little to lose. It is the faint hopes in their faintness, That are most easily mistaken for abandoned hopes And therefore carry the power To disappoint cruelly by surprise. Be respectful of the faint hopes With their power to seem unimportant For the greatest power to make change Where change ought not to be possible Waits unseen in their nurture.

A POSSIBILITY

Contrary as it seems There may be times When winter is beautiful Because the sun is brilliant And the snow is new With chrystals everywhere And the wind forgot to blow So the air is snappy And only a little cold And every neighbour who lives by the river is walking a dog on the park path. Yes, there may be times When winter is beautiful And if there are any Then today is one of them.

A TV INTERVIEW WITH THE FAMILY DOG

Pirate: You’re looking sad today. Anything the matter? Me: Well, nothing too serious. But my TV doesn’t talk. Pirate: It must have broken overnight. Why, just yesterday I heard it spewing out Jeopardy questions and playing Season 8 of M.A.S.H. Me: Oh, it can still do that. What I mean is, it doesn’t really talk to me the way I want it to. It doesn’t say the things I want to hear. Pirate: I have heard that is often the case with humans. But I didn’t know TV’s did it too. What did you want it to say? Me: I want it to tell me what channel I am on. I want it to speak out loud so I will know even though I can’t read the channel indicator. Pirate: I thought it did. Me: Well, it did when I bought it. I searched the Web until I found the only one that would speak the channel number. Then I put out the big bugs and bought it. They call it a SMART TV. Pirate: And now it stopped? It isn’t smart anymore? Me: Well, not exactly. It still could tell me the channel if I unplugged it from the digital box. But now that it is plugged into the digital box, it has to stay on channel 4 so the digital box will work. Pirate: Then why not just unplug it from the digital box? Me: Because then we wouldn’t be able to watch it. You have to have a digital box in order to get the channels! Pirate: Then why don’t you get a talking digital box? Aren’t there digital boxes that talk? Me: Not as far as I know. Pirate: Surely they will invent one soon. Me: Maybe. But that still won’t be enough. Pirate: What more do you want? Me: I want a TV that reads the screen with the channel line-up. I want a TV that reads the screen so that I can operate the PVR. I want a TV that reads the screen so that I can use the DVD player, maybe even the old VCR. I want a TV that treats me as if I were a sighted person. Pirate: Isn’t that what your TV does now? Me: You dogs are so insensitive! I thought I could talk to you! I thought you’d listen. Why do you have to twist everything I say? Pirate: (muttering as he slinks under the bed) Women! It’s enough to make me grateful that I’m neutered.

BRIDGE ON THE ROAD TO SELF-IMPROVEMENT

When I was in my twenties, I sat down with David and a couple of other friendly people to learn how to play Bridge. The food was good. The company was good. The game was interesting, but it does not stand out in my memory as a pleasant evening. Rummy, Hearts and Crib, I concluded, were more my style. I can’t say I remember what happened—wouldn’t know whether I won or lost. But I certainly remember the way I felt—on edge, inadequate, not too bright, all things considered. The game got off to a good enough beginning. Braille cards with print markings were dealt. I, reading the braille, sorted my hand into suits and began the process of bidding. This is where the trouble started. The source of the problem was not the bidding, nor the playing, though either of these is perplexing enough. What got me down was the hand laid down on the board—a stack of cards which everyone in the game could see, except for me. It should have been simple enough. All I had to do was to be told which cards were in the hand on the board. Then I would remember them all, and keep track of which had been played, while at the same time keeping track of other cards being played, plus make intelligent decisions about how to play my own hand. But it wasn’t simple. To put it mildly, I simply couldn’t remember all the cards in the hand on the board, and which ones had been played, and keep track of all other cards played, and make intelligent decisions about how to play my own hand. In a word, I was a failure. That popular game, the game I had expected to enjoy, had double-crossed me. So I gave up Bridge, turning instead to Rummy, Hearts and Crib. It’s funny how the memory of a failure will stick to you like a burr on a sock. Wishing to shake it off I would try again—once every ten years or so—renewing my commitment to Rummy, Hearts and Crib. On nights made wakeful by a crying baby or a twinging back I would devise technical innovations—reaching across the table after every round to feel the cards on the board, developing a theoretical prototype for a peg board within my reach on which I could place replicas of the cards, removing the peg representing the played card after each play. On the worst nights, I would blunder into a pity party. “If only I could see, I would play Bridge!!!” Come morning, I would put the whole sorry discussion behind me. But it wasn’t the end. The road to self-improvement so seldom really ends. I have a mentor. Her name is Doris Goetz. She’s been mentoring me in various ways every since I was ten years old. She’s an achiever, a proud blind person, independent and strong. She’s the type of person who would work out a very good system for playing a game. She took up Bridge when she retired, said she hoped I’d join her when I retired. Though the prospect appealed to me, I doubted it, and said as much. “I just can’t remember the cards on the board and keep track of the play,” I said. “How do you do it?” “I just keep asking people to tell me what cards are on the board,” she replied. Don’t you feel dumb doing that, I thought. “Don’t they get tired of that?” I asked. “No,” she said. “And anyway, so what if they do?” And that is how, a few years later, it came to pass that I was genuinely surprised to hear myself say to David that I thought I’d take up Bridge when I retired. Perhaps I would play with Doris in a club that involved both blind and sighted players. Would he like to join me? Now that our Wednesday mornings are taken up with Bridge, it would, I have concluded, be easier to play Bridge as a sighted person, because you could simply glance at the cards on the board as many times as you liked. It is, according to David, easier to play Bridge with blind people because they so often ask for a review of the cards on the board, a review that helps to focus the attention of the sighted players. Time passes quickly. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. Sometimes I make smart plays. Sometimes my plays are dumb. I look forward to Wednesday mornings, and I still love Rummy, Hearts and Crib. Bridge has been double-crossed on the road to self-improvement.

ON HOPING FOR THE BEST AND PREPARING FOR THE WORST

Hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. That is what the pragmatists say. Quite frankly, I find that statement a little confusing. At a glance the statement appears to be wise, a good balance of hope and caution. Do we hope that our houses will not catch fire, even as we purchase fire extinguishers and teach our children which exits to use and where to meet if the house should burst into flame? Do we not buy health insurance when we hope to be well? Do we not lock our doors even though we hope not to be robbed? But, on second glance, the idea of hoping for the best while preparing for the worst gives me trouble. Maybe it’s because I have counselled so many people with depression so crippling that it will not allow them to hope for the best. Everything they do seems to be directed toward preparing for the worst. The preparation becomes so compelling a preoccupation that good things within their reach can elude their grasp, remaining as unnoticed as bed bugs in the light of day. The problem, I think, is that hope in the context of hoping for the best is a passive thing, while preparing is an active occupation. We can get so busy preparing that any benefits of hope become invisible to us. Hope isn’t much use until we put a little preparation into it. One of my favourite things about hope is that, when treated to attention and respect, it tends to direct our activities. To get the best out of hope, we have to treat it the way we treat a treasured infant. We can’t simply mention it and expect it to take care of itself. We have to sit with it, inquire about it, experiment with it, nurture it, work towards its goals. We have to invest in it. Even as we invest some effort into preparing for the worst. When it comes to sayings, I think I prefer: Hope for the best and prepare for it. Also prepare for the worst, and hope the time you spent preparing for it will turn out to have been wasted.

UNDERSTANDING DEAF MUSICIANS

This morning CBC’s The Current aired a program called Deaf Jam. It traced the career development of two deaf musicians—not counting, although mentioning Beethoven. Evelyn Glennie and Sean Forbes have built reputations that would be the envy of anyone aspiring to make it in the music world. More than once, the documentary tried to address that burning question: How can a deaf person engage—I mean truly engage with music? Still puzzled and perplexed at the end of the documentary, I focused on one snippet. Evelyn Glennie was initially refused entry into a school of music that routinely accepted blind applicants—refused not because of ability, but because of deafness. As you might guess, she fought this ruling and won. No doubt this was only one among thousands of battles she fought before she became famous. Wondering how it is that a deaf person could want so much to build a musical career, I contemplated my recent trip to Russia. Tourism in Russia is not exactly a pastime I would recommend to blind people. The major attractions—the Winter Palace, the Moscow Subway, dozens of icon-laden churches, etc., are art galleries. There is nothing you can touch. There is no tour guide interested in helping you touch anything. I did, however, enjoy the trip. Explain that, will you? I can’t. From the stories of Evelyn Glennie and Sean Forbes I took three messages: Understand that deafness is a complex condition that affects people in different ways; Understand that deaf people can be musical; understand that hearing people cannot fully understand deaf people, but they can help them live better. And a fourth message perhaps: Understand that people can’t really understand blind people, not even blind people themselves.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT DEATH?

Yesterday at lunch we were talking about death with some friends. I hadn’t been the one to raise the topic, but I did participate willingly, since death seemed to be the topic of the day for me. Only a few hours had passed since I read Sandra Martin’s article in The Toronto Globe and Mail—THE LONG GOODBYE: LET’S TALK ABOUT DEATH. In it Martin poses the question: “Have you noticed how few people seem to die these days?” She was not, as it appeared on first viewing, talking about a decline in the death rate, but rather about our tendency to replace direct mention of death and burial with other expressions. People pass away, or they glimpse the last rays of afternoon light, or become bright morning stars, or are laid to rest. Martin, it seems, would prefer conversations to be more specific, less poetic. I have some sympathy for her point of view. I am, in fact, forced to confess sympathy, or admit that I was wrong all those years ago when I engaged in subversive conversations with my friend Bert. Each conversation would resemble the others. Bert would mention that so-and-so had passed away. “When did she die?” I would ask. “She passed on in late December,” he would say. “Oh, I am sorry she died.” On and on it would go, neither of us willing to back down, neither of us willing to acknowledge that we were arguing semantics when we ought to have been grieving. We were in our twenties then and though the deaths we discussed were the deaths of real people, we spoke of them at a distance, as if they were theoretical. These days, when I discuss death with friends, the conversations are different. Gone is the competitive tone replaced by the recounting of experience and the gentle prodding of a future not yet determined. There is much to talk about. We have all sat sadly and fearfully with dying parents and felt the desperate grieving of those closest to us as we arranged funerals. We have all wandered aimlessly through our homes after the funerals, wondering how to fill the gaping holes. What’s more, now that we are in our sixties, our thoughts are turning to impending deaths—our own. Some of us have cancer, others have other conditions. None of us has been given a probable date for our death, but we can see how it might happen even as we engage in the most positive approaches toward living. So we practice talking about with people we trust, lighting on it cautiously, tenderly, careful not to linger too long. But still we light on it. Where once I would have stood in enthusiastic defence of Martin’s position on telling it like it is, I now find myself reading in sympathy that so-and-so has joined the choir of angels, or watches happily over grandchildren from a better place. It’s poetry, really. Poetry comforts. I wonder if there is anything to be gained by trying to force people to say words they do not want to utter. We all no that a death occurred. What we don’t know is what is happening now to the person who is no longer alive, and because we are grieving, because we are in need of comfort, , we want to give the benefit of the doubt, to believe that something good has come of it all. Near the end of her article Martin asks “Will you join me in a collective resolution to rip the shroud off death imagery?” Honestly, at this point in my life, speaking as a person who has always been willing to address death in direct language, I think I’ll decline the invitation.

WHAT WOULD A HOPEFUL VIRGO DO?

I opened the newspaper yesterday to find, to my surprise, a melancholy horoscope. I thought I must have misunderstood it, so I read it again. “There must be some mistake,” I muttered. “Aren’t horoscopes always supposed to be positive? Isn’t that how they sell the papers?” So Here, according to the New Year’s eve edition of the Edmonton Journal, is my horoscope for 2015. “VIRGO Aug. 23-Sept. 22 This New Year is the time to be with the ones you love. You will land like a cat on all fours this year. You also will do a lot of reflecting through mid-August. Be honest with yourself about what works and what doesn't. Let go of what is not working, as you are about to begin a new luck cycle sometime around your birthday. You could be surprised by how good life can be. It would be wise to use the first part of the year to ask yourself what you would change if you could. Also, update your life goals; perhaps they need some revision since you last thought about them. A lot likely has changed since then. Others seem to gravitate toward you, and your life will become more rewarding as a result. It is quite possible that something you really want will become a reality. Soak up the popularity and good fortune that come your way in 2015!” Not entirely pleased with the idea of needing to land like a cat, or review my life goals, or reflect on things in mid-August when I’d rather be soaking up the delights of summer, I decided to sleep on it, and review it again in the new year—which is today. I’ve never been very good at life goals. Other people decide to be an airline pilot, or an astronaut. They fill bucket lists with exotic destinations. I, in contrast, say things like; “I just want to be happy.’ Or, “I want to be able to look back and feel proud of how I handled things.” Goal-setters hate this kind of talk. It makes them throw up their hands in despair. But it’s the best I can do—honestly it is, and I simply will not let it go, even if it isn’t working! Today is the day when I will probably forget, for the first time this year, to write 2015 instead of 2014. Nevertheless, I am trying to get things off to a good beginning. Recalling some famous falls by cats I have known, off of fridge tops and out of hayloft windows, I started the first morning of the first day of 2015 with some stretches, some sit-ups, some bird dogs, and a push-up or two. I am working on the goal of building more flexibility and stability, my preparation for landing “like a cat on all fours.” Then I went downstairs and started the preparation to be with the ones I love, at our New Year’s dinner and card party. Looking back at the invitation I sent them, I predict that they will be gravitating toward me at about 4:30, and if they don’t let me win at cards—a distinct possibility based on historical perspective, their presence will be reward enough for me. As for asking myself what I would change if I could, I decided to put that off until tomorrow.

THE PLACE FOR HOPE IN OUTRAGE

“Though cynicism tranquilizes hope, progress is often made because outraged people demand it. Correct evaluations of a much-improved world shouldn’t undercut the knowledge that the world desperately needs improving. Wherever optimistic evaluations about the current state of affairs trump ambitious goals for political progress, we can fairly say that positivity is the worst.” --Shannon Gormley, IN DEFENCE OF OUTRAGE, Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 29, 2014 Well spoken, Shannon! Indeed, as my friend Ronna Jevne once said to me: “It wasn’t the smokers who got us the smoke-free environments.” We need the outrage to ge things started. But somewhere in the process of making the change, the smokers got on board with the non-smokers, and that made all the difference. If outrage had prevailed alone, we’d still be coughing in smoky elevators and dodging cigarettes in department store line-ups. So I ask: What good can come of outrage, no matter how justified, without a firm grounding in the hope that the world, in fact, can and will improve? And what do we need to do to ensure that hope flourishes alongside the outrage?

WHERE DO WE START?

“It’s not crossing the finish line that matters, but making it to the starting line” –Martin Parnell This I will keep in mind as I contemplate expectations for the new year.

A DOG INQUIRES ABOUT RETIREMENT

Pirate: I heard you talking about your calendar. Me: Oh really? Pirate: I know you said this September would be very different from other Septembers because you’d be retired. Me: It will be different. Pirate: Yes. And I have a few questions. Me: Ask away. Pirate: Is it true that you are facilitating hope discussions at the Alzheimer Society and the Artspace Housing Co-op? Me: Yes, that’s true. Pirate: And is it true that you are planning a keynote webinar for the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, and a hope workshop for the ATA substitute teachers, and a trip to Yellowknife to work for the CNIB? Me: That’s right. Pirate: And do you really plan to see some clients on Thursday mornings before your regular counselling gig at the Walk-In Counselling Society? Me: Yes, you’ve got it. But not very many clients, and I’ll be limiting my work to people who have care-giver stress, and people adjusting to illness or disability. Pirate: And will you be doing some storytelling gigs in September? Me: Yes indeed. Pirate: All this sounds very interesting. Me: Yes, I believe it will be. In fact, I’m rather looking forward to it all. Pirate: Hmmmmm … Me: Is something troubling you Pirate? Pirate: I’m wondering if I have somehow misunderstood the concept of retirement.

SCAB MAKER

On a good day,when Mother Nature was formulating innovative strategies for child protection, she came up with a particularly enlightened idea, installing at the center of each and every child, a personal scab maker, skilled in the rapid repair of skinned knees, scraped elbows, and the tender tips of tiny noses. She did not neglect me in this regard, and in my elementary school days, my personal scab maker worked overtime. In fact, her best repairs were made while I was sleeping. I used to marvel at the way she worked, from the outside in, constructing first the hardshell of protection then smoothing the tender new skin underneath with the precision that would be the envy of the best tdrywall taper. She did her work quietly, asking no assistance, supported only by an occasional kiss, or a bandage on the very first day. It is possible that she worked harder than the personal scab makers possessed by my classmates. I do not know if this was true. But the adults in my life believed it to be true and it concerned them deeply. The source of their concern appeared to be my glasses, large spectacles with hard plastic frames that tended to shatter on impact. I dutifully put them on every morning and took them off at bedtime. It was something I had been doing for years, never once questioning the reason for them. School was the place where the glasses all seemed to break. . A clean break would be mended with glue. A jagged break might be fixed with tape. Any fracture more complicated than that required the services of an optician, a mysterious man in the city whose services could only be procured after the exchange of money. My parents, I was assured, we're not made of money. The adults in my life approached the problem with differing solutions. The teachers instructed me not to run on the school grounds. Applied to a different person, this idea might have protected my glasses. But these teachers were dealing with a tiny extrovert who had almost no vision and only sighted classmates to play with. I was, by nature, an obedient child. But even the most compliant children have their limits. My parents dealt with the situation in a different way. 'You will have to do without glasses for a while,' they gravely declared. And so I went without. Today I toast my scab maker, as much for her successes as for her failing. For if she had been willing to repair my glasses, her perfect labors performed at no cost, I would probably still be paying for the repair of useless spectacles.

Slow motion

There are so many things which can slow time down, anticipation of something you want, boredom, and the ultimate slower of time, and I'm preventable accident about to happen.
I have, in the past few weeks, become acutely aware of this slowing effect. In the mornings I make coffee. Does the machine take five minutes or 50? It's all the same to me. In June we missed our connecting flight and spent some extra time in the Munich airport. Were we there eight hours or eight days? It must have been eight hours. We only ate one lunch.
And then there was the day when I was hit by a car, yes, hit it's a funny thing how you can know something without knowing you know it. I knew, I discovered, in the time that slowed down to a crawl and then almost to nothing, that being hit by a car is at two stage process. First you are hit and then you are runover. 
I am going to be run over, I thought as the bumper hit my legs. I am going to be run over, I thought as I flew through the air. I am going to be run over I thought as I lay on the pavement. I waited, and I waited, and I waited. 
And I will never know if I waited 20 seconds, or 20 hours, or 20 years. I will never know because I was not run over. I was only hit by a car. Thank heavens for that! by a car.

Laughter is a tranquilizer without side affects

Ask a toddler with a scab on his knee
And he will tell you in action rather than word
How a belly laugh can eat race the hurts of the world

Smelling good!

The Miltonia orchid in my kitchen window. When the sun shines on it there is no fragrance more beautiful.

TIME FLIES

Spring came on Tuesday so I went for a walk. Summer came on Wednesday so I planted pansies.Autumn Came on Thursday so I tried to ignore it. Today is winter. Is time passing more quickly than it used to?

HOPE SPRINGS

If you were to say That the first day of spring Is the day of the equinox Twelve hours each for day and for night, I would not argue. How could I? But the day when I sit Eating dinner outdoors Hair in a ponytail Bare feet on veranda boards With the breeze on my arm and no wish for a sweater, Then that would unquestionably Undoubtedly, unarguably Be my personal first day of spring. And that was today!

THE NIGHT WALL

From time to time we would travel to Spirit River and stay with Aunty Adaline. We would bunk in her basement—a roomy place with comfortable furniture and a generous bathroom that was private for guests. But on one occasion we called her to say that we would be camping nearby at Saskatoon Lake. We would visit her for an afternoon. If her objection was only half-hearted, we did not notice. “It can be cold out there,” she said. “The weatherman is predicting cold weather.” “On July 31 we are certain it will be fine,” we said. We had not planned for snow. Saskatoon Lake is named for its bounty. The bushes hung heavy with purple deliciousness. But nobody likes to pick saskatoons while wearing mittens, so we did not pick a bucket for Aunty Adaline as we had planned. Instead, we called to say that we had changed our minds about staying over at her house. We had not been fully aware up to that point that Aunty Adaline’s health was changing. Where once we would have arrived to a warm welcome and the irresistible aroma of cake in the oven, we found her flustered, preoccupied with the combined effort of a search for her lost Life-Line Alert button and the remaking of her bed so that we could sleep under clean sheets. Her basement was messy, she reported, due to a recent flood. Though fully cleaned, it remained disorderly. She would not entertain the idea of our going there. We would share the big bedroom in her room. She would sleep in a single bed elsewhere. When bedtime came, we climbed guiltily between her sheets. The curtain of sleep descended. I was dreaming deeply when the wall spoke her name. “Adaline,” said the wall. I was not particularly surprised. Walls will speak to those who feel guilty. Deeper into the dream went I. “Adaline,” said the wall, more urgently this time. “Adaline, are you all right? Shall I send an ambulance?” Here is my best advice for those considering possible life-mates: Look for someone who will know what to do if the wall begins to speak in the middle of the night! For while I pulled the covers over my head in a hopeful attempt to silence the thing, David informed the wall that we were Adaline’s niece and nephew, spending the night in her bed. “Her Life-Line Button has been pushed,” the wall replied, and David, with characteristic practicality, dug in the space under the mattress until he found the lost button, and removed it from its hiding place so that it would no longer be activated by the process of rolling over in bed. . “Good night,” said the wall. “Good night,” said we. So the wall did not send an ambulance, and David was soon breathing the deep inhalations of a peaceful sleep restored. But I lay awake, wondering how long it might be until the RCMP would pound upon the door, sent to investigate the possibility that two sleepy robbers had somehow disposed of Aunty Adaline/

CENTSITIVE

Bill collector at the dentist's office: Now I ahve processed this work through your plan and the remaining balance is $6.12. Me: (shaking out my purse for spare change) that's ridiculous? bill collector: What's ridiculous? Me: To be scrambling for pennies on a payment of hundreds of dollars. bill collector: Oh, let me drop the pennies. That will be $6.10. Me: (to THE HOPE LADY AS WE BOARD THE ELEVATOR) Oh dear, I think I might have forgotten to thank her for the generosity. And THE HOPE LADY says: Some day I am sure this will make me laugh! Just one more example of the power of hope!

SATURDAY MORNING DANCE

Fate—as fate so often will—has thrust me into a place where I never expected to be—Saturday morning dance classes sponsored by the Edmonton chapter of Parkinson Alberta.. Never mind that I don’t have Parkinson’s—a good thing to be sure. Never mind that I have four left feet, a stiff right shoulder, a sieve-like memory for consecutive sequences of step patterns, and insufficient vision to imitate the instructor by following visual cues. I’m there anyway, fighting off performance anxiety at the very mention of Charleston, Tango, Plie and Paradiddle. All over the world, people who have Parkinson’s are attending dance and sining classes. They are stretching their muscles, fine-tuning their balance, experiencing the liveliness that complex musical and movement functions bring to the brain. People with symptoms resembling Parkinson’s attend as singles or couples. The messages are clear: Do what you can. Try to do more than you think you can. Have fun. Never have I been more aware that a person who is blind from birth has no idea how people dance. How high do they lift their legs? How quickly do they raise their arms? Never have I been more aware that, in this class, where participation of any kind trumps all else, it really does not matter. For those of us who have spent our lives trying to achieve, it’s a difficult idea to fully integrate—this concept that participation is everything and fun is the ultimate reward. There’s so much to worry about, so much to remember. What is supposed to follow the eight heel taps of each foot? How can I have forgotten the Grapevine again? Why did I just bop my neighbour in the nose with the up-and-over? But every once in a while, near the end of the gruelling two-hours, we turn to partners. I look forward to this time. I am more comfortable dancing with a partner—my partner. The instructor says: “Do the Tango.” We laugh. Neither of us can remember the Tango, even though we learned it last week, and possibly again the week before. The instructor says: “Move towards the door.” David and I move in opposite directions. The conventions of marriage set in. I am outraged that he has moved the wrong way. Now we’ve missed the next instruction. “Not the door we came in,” he whispers. “That’s the door she means when she says to move towards the window.” Then we get the giggles. The instructor starts to laugh. Other people start to laugh. There is, I think, a certain liveliness in the brain.

BEN SAYS GRANNY

Ben’s mother sent me an email. The email came from Ontario. “Ben can now say five words,” she announced. “He can say Eyra—the name of his girlfriend at the babysitter’s, mama, dada, hi and amen.” Just to prove it she sent along a little video. Mama said: “Aaaaamen!” Ben said: “”Aaaaamen!”SThere it was, plain for all to hear. The proof was in the video. Now I was as proud as any respectable grqandperson could be. But I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. So I did what any self-respecting soul might do. I bought a ticket, jumped on a plane, and headed for Ontario to come to the aid of that baby who needed somebody to teach him how to say: “Granny.” Even as I gave the travel agent number on my MasterCard I knew the job might not be easy. It is true that I am a granny, which means I am also a mother. And it is also true that my three children grew up to be perfectly competent talkers. But I am too old to remember just how they learned certain words. Fortunately, I am old enough to remember how my little brother learned to talk, way back when I was six or seven years old. At the time I figured he was beyond hope. Little brother grew up to be a capable talker, despite some rough beginnings. He made more than a few mistakes in his time. Mom always took his side when I pointed out how dumb he was. I specifically recall one day when he was farming on the kitchen floor, loading grain into a transport vehicle, naming that vehicle over and over again. Perhaps he would have attracted less attention if he had been saying, “Luck, luck, luck; or muck muck muck.” “The f sound,” Mother explained, “is easier for babies than the tr sound.” Like the tr sound, the gr sound is not an easy learn for a pint-size baby-talker. And I only had three days in which to teach the “gr” word to Ben. So wepractised hard right from the beginning, teaching the way any good teacher would teach. I started with the five words he already knew, asking him to repeat each after me. Granny said: “Mama!” Ben said: “Mama!” Granny said: “Dada!” Ben said: “Dada!” Granny said: “Hi!” Ben said: “Hi!” Granny said: “Eyra!” Ben said: “Eyra!” Granny said: “Aaaaaamen!” Ben said: “Aaaaamen!” I am pleased to report that we made tremendous progress in only one long weekend. By the time I left for Alberta, Ben could say “Granny.” It was as plain as day to anybody with a little imagination. Sometimes it sounded like mama, and sometimes like Eyra. Sometimes it sounded like Dada, and every so often, it sounded just a bit like Aaaaaamen!”

ELDERS

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

THE ULTIMATE HOPE CHALLENGE

Can it really be that the ultimate hope challenge is the act of switching to a new computer?

The joke

A chickadee is singing,
Springs here! Spring is here!
He is only joking of course.
The thermometer says -20.
But everyone loves a joker!  

Ghost town

The bar was deserted when we arrived. The owner welcomed us in for a lunch of fish and chips.
He told us about the town. "There used to be more streets, "he said."There used to be more houses on the streets. There used to be five bars in this town."
The bar is for sale. It makes me wonder: what is there for the inhabitants of ghost towns to hope for?

ELEGANT ABUNDANCE

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

POTHOLES ON THE ROAD TO SELF IMPROVEMENT

“When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.” –Confucius Not long ago we celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary. It is a notable accomplishment, I would say, to live with a person for forty years and still find that person interesting. But that is how it is, even though he changed a bit, and there were times when he missed the opportunities for self-improvement I so generously presented to him. Take, for example, the modern addiction to electronic games. I was unaltered by it. I was above it. So you can understand how I might have been just a little jealous when hours and hours of time we might have spent reading side by side were transferred to his total engagement of punching keys and flicking fingers. It set me to longing for the olden days when we used to sit in front of the 13-inch portable TV watching WKRP in Cincinnati. Sometimes I would wander into the office where, he said, he was going to update the bank records. But I was on to his deceptions. Bank records don’t cheer and boo you over the computer speakers. I would sit beside him, muttering to myself. “You have wronged me, wronged me,” I would say. Just try to talk to a person playing an electronic game! Just try to get him out of the house for an important visit! “Just a minute,” he would say. “I am almost done.” But any fool could see that he wasn’t. Denial is a common side-effect of addiction. How I wished that he were more like me, more focused, immune to such frivolous addictions. Never a quitter, I tried to change him. I shamed him. I made fun of him. I read more books in an effort to be more interesting than the game of Hearts on the computer. And when all of that failed, I recalled an old saying from my Granny’s stock of wisdom: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” It was, I convinced myself, a challenge of self-improvement. I was not perfect. I could afford to improve myself a little. I downloaded a card game on my computer and played it for an hour. The game was hard for a blind person to play, not only difficult, but downright boring. So I didn’t copy it over to the new computer we bought five years later. In fact, I didn’t ever play it again after that first day. But in the background, a small and sinister voice whispered to me. “The rest of the world,” it hissed in a threatening tone, “is addicted to electronic games. What is wrong with you?” The road to self-improvement, like so many other roads, is confounded by potholes. Ten years passed, maybe thirteen. We were close, my love and I, yet different. I noticed that he was spending less time playing games on the computer. This would have been good news, except that the extra time was now spent playing games on the iPad with occasional breaks to play on the computer. I was still reading my books. By and by, I acquired an iPhone. I used it for email, and phoning, and even to read books. It is a handy little device. He said—a little unfairly I thought—that I was addicted to the iPhone. But what would he know. He may be a senior manager in a large corporation, but he is not a psychologist. Being a psychologist, I performed a trick of self-evaluation just to prove that I was not addicted. I tested myself to see if I was jealous of the iPad game time. Concluding that I was, I knew the iPhone had not truly caught me in a nefarious web. Just to double prove it, I invested $5.00 to download an audio game. Then I set out to play it. The game is called The Night Jar. Here’s how it works. You put on the earphone and the game tells you are trapped in a ship from which you must escape. Dark matter drips on you. Monsters noisily eat your former shipmates as you pass. You have to find your footing and head for escape doors. You search and you search. You fall a lot. You start over many times. I confess that I wasn’t very good at finding the doors. It wasn’t long until I grew tired of creeping past dark matter. There was good news though. I was a winner even though I never got off the ship. Once again I had proved that I was immune to electronic games addiction. Then came Christmas, season and nostalgia, season of wishes. You have time to remember things at Christmas. I remembered that I had often harboured a secret wish that somebody would give me a game for Christmas. In sixty-one Christmases it has hardly ever happened. It occurred to me that, as a special gift, I could get my own game and prove myself right about electronic games yet again. It would only be $5.00, but then, the last $5.00 was wasted. I decided not to bother, then changed my mind. This time I would look for a free game. Why waste money proving yourself right? I chose a game called Audio Archery. Never having, for one moment, been interested in shooting arrows, I knew I wouldn’t like it. I told my friend Jim about the game, and he said the very idea of a blind person shooting arrows from an electronic bow made him quiver. Still, the energy of downloading it would have been wasted if I did not try. When you play Audio archery, audio targets fly across the path between your left earphone and your right earphone. When the target reaches the centre, you fire your arrow by raising your finger off the screen. If you lift your finger at the right instant, you get a bull’s eye. In order to reach the end of the game, you need a lot of bull’s eyes. You have no control over the targets. They come at you one after the other in rapid succession, 70 in all if you hit enough of them, fewer if you don’t hit enough of them. There’s no way to stop the targets once they start. You have to keep hitting them. You really have to!!! The faster they come, the faster your heart races. It’s a matter of skill, a beautiful dance of concentration. In a perfect world, you would demonstrate perfect concentration. But this is not a perfect world. All too often, your concentration will be broken, jolted by somebody who speaks to you, or expects you to leave the house just when you are almost getting the highest score you ever got. Sometimes your concentration will be so complete, so perfect, that it will not be jolted by such a person until all the targets have crossed your range. Sometimes, between games, I would hear a small voice whispering. “You are addicted,” it would hiss. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong and I could prove it. Just to prove it, I downloaded a game called Seven words. It’s a thinker’s game, the kind of game that improves your vocabulary and enhances your reading. In future, when I have more time, I will demonstrate that my reading has been enhanced. Sometimes I take a break from Seven Words to shoot a few hundred arrows. And even though I still haven’t managed to reach Level 10 in Audio Archery, I feel the adrenalin rush that heralds the approach of true self-improvement. This is how Olympians feel! Things do change when you work hard enough, when you wait long enough. A week has passed since Christmas. I notice a man standing patiently waiting for me when we have a dinner engagement, or a plan to walk the dog. We have a lot in common. Forty years of marriage have drawn us closer.

Standing together.

Could it be that the generation gap isn't as large as we thought? I say we need the younger generation. If we didn't have them we would not be able to use the Internet. We count on them to make us modern.
My daughter says your generation doesn't send things anymore. I want to get Christmas cards in the mail. I want to get letters in the mail. What is wrong with your generation anyway?

A brief fantasy for a winters day

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

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS

I got down the Christmas dishes this morning, put them on the lower shelves where they can be easily reached, put the every-day dishes up on the high shelves you can’t reach without a ladder. Yesterday I played a new Christmas CD. The day before I practiced some of the Christmas songs that never become listenable unless I practice them for several weeks—the songs I didn’t practice at all last year. Christmas, in my world it seems, is arriving early. Last year I didn’t prepare for Christmas. Well, I suppose I prepared, in the way a sleep-walker or a robot might prepare. I didn’t anticipate. I didn’t feel Christmas. Christmas came last year. It came without my help though I did whatever it was that I had to do. One day, very close to Christmas, I got a ladder and brought the dishes down. One day, I think it was boxing Day, I played a few Christmas CD’s. Baby Ben made his grand entry into the world on new Year’s eve and, as he pulled us forward into the future, I observed with relief that the whole business of holidays was finally over. I hated last November. Last November we were closing down my beloved programs at Hope foundation. I was saying good-bye to clients. I was mourning the loss of my colleagues. We were making adjustments to accommodate david’s changing health. We were paying daily hospital visits to our frail and cherished Gramma. Last November was a lousy month. December was just as bad. Last November I didn’t want to do the things I like to do. If something came up that might be fun, I did it reluctantly. I caught myself hoping I wouldn’t get any Christmas presents. It was a very strange time. But I guess I learned something a long the way, something practical and useful. A good thing it is too, for this November finds me doing painful work--hope work with groups of people who have recently lost a colleague to suicide. “what do we do,” they ask, “after we accept that it is normal to feel guilt and anger?” The answer to this question is not clear to me. I suppose there really are no rules to govern it. But I have, with the memory of last November fixed firmly in mind, approached these workshops with the conviction that there is no moral reason why we can’t consider the possibility of seeking out positive emotions like joy, awe, interest, inspiration, amusement, contentment, pride, gratitude, love and hope. There is no moral reason not to pursue things that delight us, things that fascinate us, things that refresh us, work that really matters. Circumstances may rob us of the desire for these things, but there is no moral reason why we must deny them to ourselves. Perhaps this conviction is helpful to others as well. My email contains a thank-you note: “Thank you so much for your wisdom, encouragement and hope on Friday. They meant a lot to us and to me personally. I had not realized that I had started to give up some of the things that I love to do until you brought it to my attention. I now know that I need to once again do the things that refresh and delight me.” When I read that note, it occurred to me that I had already started looking forward to Christmas this year. But it was the note that woke me to the realization that I hadn’t noticed the change.

PLAYING MUSIC

Ben’s world is filled with music. The grown-ups who love him want it that way. In the future he may play an instrument, and he will undoubtedly download the songs of his choice from the Internet, or play those old-fashioned compact disks the grown-ups used to buy. He will go to concerts. That is in the future. Ben’s world is filled with music. He appears to like it that way. At this point, people sing to him every day. He sings to himself in the moment before sleep. He plays music when he plays with his toys. There is music in his house, waiting for him to choose it. There is an electric piano, books that play music, rattles that play music, a swing that plays music, a jumping mat that plays music, an exercise saucer that plays music and a music table. Granny’s house, though not so blessed with musical toys, has plenty to recommend itself. If he searches for instruments at Granny’s house he will find--with apologies to anything I might have forgotten to mention—a piano, an electronic keyboard, a guitar, an accordion, a rain stick, a box drum, a skin drum, an ocean drum, two tambourines, a kazoo, three small flutes, two harmonicas, approximately one-hundred-and-twenty combs, plus assorted spoons, and sticks. Ben may love all of these. For now, though, Ben makes his own music. The variety is not as great as it could be, but is it likely that anything will ever compare—either at home, at Granny’s, or in the finest concert venue—with the present daily joy he finds while inventorying—on hands and knees--the doorstops? Where will there ever be a more delightful sound than the daily concert played as a twangy, bouncy tune on each?

ON THE STREET

There are times when things simply will not go as planned. Take this morning, for example. I awoke to the news that it might rain. That was bad. Rain in November is never a good idea. The weather lady said it had stopped raining. That was good, because I was planning to walk all the way up the hill to get a bus. A walk up the hill is the exsercise I need in the morning of a busy day. But when I got outside, the front sidewalk was so slippery that I had to keep one foot in the snow to steady myself on the slippery slope. So much for the planned walk up the hill. But the city sidewalk wasn’t slippery. The up-the-hill plan was back in motion. But in order to climb the hill I had to pass a bus stop. A bus was coming,. Fortunately, I had not quite reached the stop. But the bus made a sudden stop, right beside me. The driver jumped out. “did you want my bus?” What could I say? I got on the bus. “The bus is full,” said the driver. “that’s fine,” said I. “I will stand at the front since I am not going far.” But the crowd had already parted and someone had jumped up pushing people back to make a seat for me. So I sat down out of respect for all the people who had been inconvenienced. What else could I do? Some days things simply will not proceed according to plan. I would not have planned to write this on THE HOPE LADY Blog, had it not been for a thing that happened yesterday. It was a beautiful evening and I had decided to walk four blocks along Jasper avenue to catch a bus. I had to pass two bus stops along the way. At the first, a slurry-voiced man with unpleasant breath jumped to his feet to ask: “Ma’am, would you like to sit on this bench?”. I declined. Another man approached the first and asked “should I throw you in the traffic?” He declined. Then the second man asked the first: “should I throw her into the traffic?” He meant me. Just to prove it, he began to follow me. Then he passed. He was waiting for me at the next bus stop. He shouted, but did not throw me into the traffic. So I wrote about my failed attempt to get exercise by climbing the possibly-icy hill in the rain. It’s a better story than yesterday’s.

GRANNY TELLS A STORY

Ben: Granny, pardon me, but I couldn’t help overhearing your talking book—the one by the space guy. Granny: Oh, you mean Chris Hadfield’s Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth? It’s very exciting, isn’t it—the idea of flying through space? Ben: Yes, I guess so. But actually, what interested me was his writing about teamwork. Granny: (Isn’t that cute, not even a year old yet and he’s already thinking teamwork.) Teamwork, Ben is a lovely thing. Ben: Could we be a team, granny? Granny: Why, of course we could. Let’s make a tower out of these blocks. Ben: Sure Granny. But first I’d like to discuss the possibility of us forming a partnership that would allow me to access the cereal cupboard next to the fridge. I know that door opens all the way, but for me, it only opens a few centimetres. I feel certain that, by working together, we could solve this problem. Granny: (Your mom will kill me if I let you into that cupboard.) Come on up here, Ben Darling, and Granny will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a little rabbit who wanted to open the barnyard gate. He pulled and he pulled, but each time he pulled on the gate, it bonked him in the nose. Then one day, a wise owl flew over and the rabbit asked him for advice. “Move to the side of the gate before you pull on it,” said the owl. “Then it won’t hit you in the nose when you open it.” Ben: Granny, what’s a barnyard gate? Granny: (You see, there’s no need for harsh discipline. All you have to do is distract them when you suspect they’re on the verge of getting into trouble.)

WHAT I MEANT TO SAY IS ...

The first sentence of a paragraph, as my grammar teachers used to say, prepares us for the content that will follow. These wise voices come to me across the years as I sit down to type, with my HOPE LADY fingers, a reflection on the happenings of the past week. I have been saying—no, face it I’ve been WHINING—about the terrible week we’ve had. Pity the person who casually asks: “How is your week so far?” That person is going to hear a tale of woe. Have I got a tale of woe to tell! It’s been a lousy week. Here is the evidence. There is a cold so attached to me that I fear we are permanent partners. The ground is covered with ice that makes crawling the safest way to avoid a fall. There’s a son who needs his mother’s love because he slipped on that ice and ended up with five stitches in his head. There’s a program that needs more of my time because a colleague is on stress leave. There’s a friend whose tea date had to be changed so that I could help a principal whose staff are devastated by the suicide of one of their own. There’s a plumber who has practically lived at our house lately because our heating system has decided to take a vacation. (Have you ever noticed how well heating systems tend to work in the summer?) There’s a whole night’s sleep gone forever while I kept a watch on the fireplace to ensure that the fire kept going. (How did they ever sleep in pioneer days?) All of this as we prepare for a trip that would truly be inconvenient not to mention expensive to cancel. All of this and even more has sprung to the tip of my tongue when people ask “How’s your week so far?” Why is it, I wonder, that in a bad week, the story of the badness so often steals the show? I’ve been thinking, I guess, that this has been a bad week, and that has been the first sentence of the paragraph. There are, of course, many perspectives on any given story. Here is another story about that same week, a story with a different opening sentence. Our children have chosen top-notch partners—people you’d be thrilled to welcome into your family. For evidence of this, I need only turn to my recent electronic communications. There is, for example a message on my iPhone. My daughter-in-law is out doing a few errands. If it is convenient for me, she could stop by and pick up Pirate. This will give us a couple of free hours that would have been spent taking Pirate to her house (his second home and first choice for a good time whenever we are out of town.) It is, of course, extremely convenient for me, and she knows it, but doesn’t say it. The email contains a message from our son-in-law—a man preparing to collect us at the airport some time around midnight. His refrigerator, he tells us, has been stocked with items selected to delight us: bacon, gluten free beer, chocolate milk. He hopes we are looking forward to our time with them. What he doesn’t say is that he is collecting us around midnight and will likely be up at 2:00 AM even though he is expected to be wakeful for work the next day. Now I wouldn’t want to leave things unsaid that should be said. It should be said that the electronic communications show a history of loving phone calls made by these wise children who chose top-notch partners. They called to chat, to update us on their news, to confirm plans, to ask if there is anything we need them to do. From among all the evidence, one indisputable conclusion emerges. A bad week is not such a bad week when you can count on a loving connection with children and their top-notch partners. Perhaps that should have been the first sentence of this story, but sometimes, when you sit down to reflect in writing, you don’t know what you really wanted to say until you get to the end.

A BRIEF LESSON IN THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

Ben: Granny, would you tell me one more story about the olden days. Granny: All right Ben. The year was 2012 and the time was mid-November. Ben: Wow! How old was I?? Granny: You weren’t born yet. Ben: Prehistoric! Granny: Yes, well, you were going to be born in another six weeks or so. Ben: How did you know I was going to be born? Granny: Let’s not get into that right now. Back to the story. It was mid-November, and Granny was thinking of getting an iPhone. Ben: Mona, you mean? Granny: Yes, well, Mona. I was thinking of getting an iPhone. I didn’t know her name would be Mona. Just like we didn’t know your name would be Ben. Ben: Why didn’t you call her Ben? Granny: Because she talks to me in a woman’s voice. Did you ever hear of a woman named Ben? Ben: I guess not. Get back to the story, Granny. You mean you didn’t have an iPhone? Granny: No, not then. Ben: Then, how did you read the newspaper in the bathroom? Granny: Well, I didn’t. I had to sit at the computer to listen to the newspaper. Ben: And how did you do your email at the bus stop? Granny: Well, I didn’t. I had to wait for my email until I got to work. Ben: And how did you download music from iTunes? Granny: I didn’t. Ben: And how did you get podcasts of CBC radio programs to listen to while you waited in the doctor’s office? Granny: I didn’t. Ben: And how did you get Kindle books? Granny: I didn’t. Ben: And what kind of stopwatch did you use when you timed Grandad’s speech therapy practice? Granny: I didn’t have a stopwatch. Ben: And how did you borrow audio books from the Edmonton Public Library? Granny: On CD. Ben: Oh my! How primitive! If Mommy phoned you on a weekend, and it had just snowed, how did you show her the snow? Granny: I didn’t. Ben: What kind of pocket calendar did you have? Granny: I didn’t have a pocket calendar. I kept the calendar on my computer. Ben: Where did you keep the pictures and videos of me? Granny: I didn’t have any pictures of you. You weren’t born yet, remember? Ben: Oh yes. But wait a minute. The year was 2012. It was so long ago, so long ago that I wasn’t even born yet. You couldn’t read the newspaper in the bathroom. You couldn’t Facetime us to show us pictures of the snow in Edmonton. You didn’t have a stopwatch. You only did your email at a desk. And, just imagine! You couldn’t even make a phone call! Granny: What are you talking about? Of course I could make a phone call? Ben: Oh boy. I don’t think I’ll ever really understand history.

THE FIRST WALK OF WINTER

Pirate: I want to go for a walk. Me: Okay. But it snowed, you know, and it’s cold out there, you know. Pirate: I want to go anyway. Me: Okay. Pirate: (1 minute out) I don’t like the snow. Me: Me either. Pirate: (1.5 minutes out) I want to go home now. Me: Me too. And the lady on the radio said: To increase your stamina, just increase your exercise time by ten percent perday. 180 seconds round trip today 198 seconds tomorrow 217.8 the next day 239.5 seconds the next day 263.4 the next day Wow!!! We’ll be upto a 5-minute walk in no time!!!

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS

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

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING AND THE WORKINGS OF THE UNIVERSE

Sometimes the universe will cooperate in the most surprising ways. Sometimes it will even do this for me! Because of this, I am currently reading, and fully enjoying a book: Miller, W.R. & Rollnick, S. (2012) Motivational Interviewing, Third Edition: Helping People Change published by The Guilford Press The cooperation of the universe began in early October when one of the participants at a hope workshop I facilitated for the BC Therapeutic Recreation Association came forward at the break to ask me if I was familiar with motivational interviewing. I tucked the question away, knowing I might never get around to checking it out. Nearing the probable end of my paid working life, I find myself a little less motivated to keep up with current literature than I once was. Then, in mid-October, my sister mentioned that patrons of the CNIB Library could get free memberships in Book Share. I tucked that idea away also, knowing I might never get around to checking it out. For the first time in my life, due to amazing technical advances, I actually have ready access to more books than I can read given the limitations of a 168-hour week. But it came to pass that I did investigate Book Share, and they had the first book I searched for, Motivational Interviewing. Motivational interviewing is “A collaborative conversation style for strengthening a person’s own motivation and commitment to change.” It is a person-centred approach, one that suits my way of doing things. Noting the fruitless hours we spend trying to convince others to do the thing that seems most obviously right to us, the authors wisely observe that “People are more likely to be persuaded by what they hear themselves saying.” The book is a guide for people who want to conduct better conversations, conversations that help people affirm for themselves what they want to do without making them feel as if they’ve been cut adrift by a counsellor who has no ideas. People are more likely to be persuaded by what they hear themselves saying. I know a lot about the truth of this statement. In counselling, clients do much better on those lucky days when you can guide them to chart their own path for change. And in my life, I have had the unfortunate experience of saying the same thing over and over in attempt to convince others, only to find that I have fully convinced myself of it. A long time ago, my good friend and Mentor, Ronna Jevne asked me to consider an idea that stopped me in my tracks. “Have you ever noticed,” she asked curiously, “that when something isn’t working, we tend to do more of it?” Of course the idea was, in itself, ridiculous. When something isn’t working, don’t we give up and try something else? Apparently not if we believe that the thing we are doing ought to work. In the months following my conversation with Ronna, I watched myself closely to see if I ever did more of something that wasn’t working. The truth refused to hide. It was in my house. A child would leave his socks on the floor. “Pick up your socks,” I would say. The socks might remain on the floor. “Pick up your socks,” I would say, louder this time, in case he had not heard. “In a minute,” he would say, and the socks would remain on the floor. “I told you to pick up your socks,” I would say in a very loud voice, as if the child’s hearing and memory might both have inexplicably been impaired. The truth followed me into meetings. “I think we should abandon the idea of celebrity hosts for our fund-raising,” I would say. “We could use our own board members and it would mean more.” The meeting would continue, with participants suggesting more and more celebs. ‘I think we should consider using our own board members,” I would say, a little louder, in case there might be a hearing problem, or possibly some difficulty understanding the language I had used the first time. And, thus I would go through life utterly convinced that the socks ought to be picked up and the board members ought to host. Funny how the world didn’t see things the way I did. Many years have passed since Ronna Jevne observed my work, or shared time at a meeting with me. Still, at least once a week, at home, in meetings, while I am supervising students, while I am counselling, she pops up on my shoulder and whispers in my ear: “Have you ever noticed that when something isn’t working, you tend to do more of it?” She said this to me just recently when I was feeling a little bit tired of it all, a little bit bored, resting on the theory that it is not worth my time to follow the latest book trends in professional practice. Funny how I never get tired of hearing it, never get tired on wondering what I ought to change. So now, I have access to audio copies of many professional titles in Book Share, and this fine, wise and practical book on motivational interviewing to enjoy. Sometimes the universe cooperates, and sometimes it takes a mentor, present or remembered, to get it going.