A MINOR INCONVENIENCE

One time I lost my head and mistook myself for a sighted person. I don’t know quite how it came about, or how long it had been brewing. Mostly I chalk it up to the giddy euphoria of getting my Master’s degree.
Getting a Master’s is one of the few life goals I ever set for myself. I envisioned it before I was twenty. Actually I didn’t really envision getting a Master’s, for I knew that would be hard, given my tendency to be an average or slightly above average student. But I envisioned myself as having a Master’s. So when my fortieth birthday was rapidly approaching, I gambled on the possibility of being admitted as a mature student, hoping I’d somehow picked up some real smarts along the way. My Master’s degree was everything I’d hoped it would be. With those letters—M.Ed.--behind my name I felt emboldened to do things I hadn’t done before, like applying to teach a humour course at the Naramata Centre summer program. And when the Naramata people accepted my proposal, I set out to teach a course that would be so visually satisfying that no participant would be able to claim they’d been cheated by the narrow view presented by a blind instructor. With a little help from the sighted world I assembled overheads, posters, cartoons and other funny pictures. Then I planned out a program of humour that I hoped would keep us laughing for the entire week.
We arrived early at Naramata, the way instructors do, and set up our campsite. We got the keys to my classroom. David helped me set it up. While we were putting stuff on the walls he glanced out the window and noticed a blind man passing by.
“There goes a blind guy,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe he’ll be in your class.”
“Surely not,” I said. In all our Naramata family summers, taking everything from massage to storytelling, we had never once encountered a blind person. But later on that evening, when the classes assembled in their rooms for the opening welcome, I heard a cane tapping and a classmate volunteering to find him a seat.
My heart sank. I couldn’t believe my terrible luck.
I had been a blind student so many times, but I’d never once considered the possibility of teaching one. I remembered the early university years, before the advent of disability services, when I would stroll in on the first day of class and introduce myself to the professor. “I’ll need some system for writing exams,” I would announce. “And I’ll need you to talk while you write on the blackboard.” And those professors faced with a lecture theatre of 500 first-year sociology students, would start calculating before my eyes. Some of them weren’t too gracious. Most of them were amazing.
Then there were the years of disability services. I would phone professors several months in advance to warn them that I would be taking their class. Disability Services would arrange my exams. I would ask the professors to read the material they were showing on the overheads. I expected them to be gracious. After all, this time I was in the Faculty of Education. The classes were small. Most of them were gracious. But some of them would simply put up an overhead crammed with information and leave a silent time for the class to copy it down. I turn to my neighbour who would begin reading in a hoarse whisper that could be heard all over the room. Some profs would actually start talking again over the sound. The life of a blind student is always a mixed bag. You want to fit in but you need special consideration.
Three seconds after he arrived, my new blind student came forward to introduce himself to me. I tried to reach out but words of welcome caught in my throat. We were on two different planets. I could hardly speak to him, so furious was I at his presence. Here was I, making my teaching debut with a stimulating class for sighted participants, and he wouldn’t be able to participate. He, on the other hand, was delighted to find me. He hadn’t been blind for long and was having a little trouble adjusting. He’d been feeling pretty down, he confided. He thought maybe in a humour class he’d be able to make it without feeling too conspicuous. He had never imagined that he would find a blind teacher. Already it was giving him hope.
That night, while the other campers slept in the fresh mountain air, I fumed in my sleeping bag. In all my years of teaching professors how to teach a blind student I had never once considered that my presence might have angered them, might have ruined their plans, put them on the spot, made them feel inadequate. A mild inconvenience, is what I would have called it. What was I going to do with all my visuals now? How was this guy supposed to participate? Why hadn’t somebody warned me?
By the time the crows had begun to welcome the dawn I was ready to set about undoing a whole week’s curriculum. Every day’s activity had to be re-planned. There would have to be choices participants could make. In each block of choices, there had to be at least one choice that would work for a blind person.
Now a humour class is not the easiest thing to teach. It doesn’t work if people don’t laugh. The class turned out to be a group with mixed abilities and expectations. Many a time I thanked fate for sending me the blind guy. He had a natural gift for humour that kept us all in stitches and made my job much easier than it would have been without him. I ended the week happily.
Then I made myself a promise. I would never again try to teach like a sighted person. Anybody who ended up in my class would have to do without visuals for a while. I’ve kept that promise through twelve years and hundreds of classes. It has saved me a lot of work. And if a blind person ever again shows up without warning, I will be ready.

BRINGING ON SPRING

Sixteen yellow pansies and twelve purple petunias.
My contribution to bringing on spring.
I planted them out in veranda pots
And wished them all well
Though I really can’t say that I ever before
Planted flowers with patches of snow on the ground.

But we’ve waited too long for spring to come.
And somebody had to do something!!!

BRUISING

There’s a simple hope concept I’ve been talking about for ten years or more, the idea of bruising. It’s a paradigm that takes your friends and relatives by surprise. Something happens to you, and your reaction is—well—an over reaction, totally out of proportion with what they would expect from you. Suppose, let us say, that you bump your shin on the open dishwasher door, momentarily uncomfortable maybe, but certainly not life-threatening. And yet—inexplicably—you cry out in anguish, leaping in the air, cursing on the descent. Nobody but you can understand your reaction. Nobody but you knows how much it hurts. Nobody but you knows that, just yesterday, you barked that same shin in the same place. Now it hurts much more today because it is already bruised.
When I first wrote about bruising, I understood it best in terms of the dishwasher. That analogy helped me make the personal link to the bruised people who brought me their sorrow. It helped me encourage them to take it slow, give themselves time to get back into the mainstream, protect themselves and not be afraid to rest for a while.
Today I understand the bruising concept more deeply. David and I are moving slowly in the wake of Linda’s death, operating at arm’s length, taking on the responsibilities of the encroaching world with uncharacteristic ambivalence.
It is not yet three years since we began the journey through illness to death with my mother. That journey was followed closely by a journey with David’s father. Then, at Valentine’s, we started down the road with Linda. And we find, to our surprise, that we are fragile. A kind word brings the threat of unexpected tears. An evening out exhausts us. I do believe we are bruised.
“Bruising is a natural phenomenon,” I would say in a hope presentation. “Bruises do heal. It takes time, and possibly ice to make them disappear. Most of all, it takes protection. You can’t keep hitting on them.”
No doubt about it, it’s a bit of a worry, doing things when you are bruised. Today I am looking ahead. On May 23 I will have given 13 hope presentations to a variety of audiences during the month that began April 23. One down, twelve to go. And I wonder how I can be counted on to inspire hope while I’m in this state of recovery, experiencing joy in moderation, not sick enough to cancel out.
Hope ethicist Christy Simpson once coached me in a time of discouragement before a public lecture. “Do the hope stuff you do with others,” she said confidently. “You’ll find it will work on you.”
And it did work on me, so she’d probably give the same advice again if I called up to ask for it. For now I will say, “Thank heavens I’m an expert in hope. I’d hate to be facing twelve presentations on despair!”

LEARNING ABOUT TEXAS

We went to the Texas Storytelling Festival.
Texans were surprised we had traveled so far.
We were surprised that they knew anything about Edmonton.
Americans rarely know anything about Edmonton.

We watched women’s basketball on TV.
It took four nights for Tennessee to win.
And we will forever wonder how we got so hooked
As to spend four nights on women’s basketball.

We ate and drank free at the Manager’s Reception
Meats and veggies and fine fruit salad.
Sometimes we were the only ones there drinking free beer.
And we are still wondering why that hotel offers a manager’s receptions.

We thought we’d be paying for hotel parking
We thought we’d be paying for university parking
We thought we’d be paying a toll on the toll road.
And we wonder why nobody charged us for any of it.

We walked the streets of downtown Dallas
And cycled the seawall that borders Galveston
Reluctantly boarded the plane to come home
For we still didn’t know quite enough about Texas.

RECOGNITION

It was Lawrence who noticed the three little crocuses, first flowers of the spring, an uncommon observation for a guy who cares little for flowers. And a good thing it is that he noticed them, for now they lie buried under a foot of snow. I don’t know if crocuses care about being noticed. Possibly they only flower to please themselves. But a little positive recognition never does any harm. It means all the more when it comes from unexpected places.

A MESSAGE FOR LINDA AND OTHERS

Whenever Linda and I were alone in her hospital room, she would tell me she hoped soon to catch up on THE HOPE LADY Blog. She didn’t ask what she might find there, and I didn’t tell her how my writing had dwindled and then stopped altogether. I knew that I would write something special for her to read at the first sign that she might come into contact with a computer. I knew I would do that special piece of writing no matter how busy I was, no matter where I was. I had no idea what the piece would say.
Now Linda is gone. At no time did she come even remotely close to a computer. She did not want to be gone. She wanted to live. That was her story and she stuck with it. Her mind was willing. Her body? Not so much.
And so, to you Linda, this is what I will say. I didn’t quit writing because I had lost my hope. I didn’t quit because I had lost my hope for your recovery. I quit because I was already unbelievably busy when you got sick, and the action around your health consumed all the time and creativity I would have given to writing. My hope, like yours, stayed firmly intact.
When you lose the body of somebody in your life, it sometimes clears a space for memories and thoughts that had slipped below the radar of your consciousness. I had forgotten, and have only now remembered how you worried about me when I first married your brother. You worried because I couldn’t find a job and you thought that was just plain wrong. You thought potential employers might be ruling me out because of my blindness. You came up with schemes that would encourage potential employers to get to know me. If I would offer to work for nothing, even for a week, you were certain they would put me on the payroll and keep me for as long as I wanted to stay.
I didn’t know how to respond to your overtures. It is likely that I ignored them altogether. I was pretty scared at the time. I was only twenty then and I didn’t have the crystal ball that would have shown me the full life of happy and meaningful employment that was about to unfold for me. But I do know that it gave me a lot of happiness to know that you were on my side. This is what we all need, people on our side.
To those of you who have noticed the silence of THE HOPE LADY and taken the time to inquire, I say thank you for asking. Give me a few more days and things will settle down. That’s what I need, a few more days.

AUDACIOUS HOPING, EXPECTANT WAITING

And here are two ideas that belong together: audacious hope and expectant waiting. Audacious hope is the ability to take action toward a goal that has very little likelihood of being achieved (West). Expectant waiting is biding your time until the right time comes along (Marcel as quoted by my buddy Lenora). It seems that audacious hopers might certainly experience a lot of expectant waiting.

RE_SNOW

Geese flying over
Pirate straying off the walking path
Muddy-bottomed pant legs,
Snow every third day
Melting wet the next day.

Re-snow I call it,
Stodgy Old Man Winter!
Won’t accept reality
Won’t adapt to change
Trying to keep the ground covered
Making spring come several times
Just to prove she’s serious.

AUTHENTICALLY HAPPY

“How are you?” asked my friend last night.
I said, “fine.”
“Fine?” she queried. Possibly the scowl on my face was confusing her.
“Maybe fine with a small f,” I said. “Yes, I’m small-f fine.”
Actually, if I’d been more with it at the time, I should have said Jangled rather than fine. Big J Jangled, ringing ears, spinning head, racing thoughts, list of things to do, taxi waiting outside the door. Choir practice was over. I was on my way home to write emails. Over the next thirty-six hours I would tell a story at a concert, give two keynote speeches at different conferences and practice music for Sunday. And I would pay attention to my family, give them support, give them attention. I would pet the dog. I would water the plants. I had no time to talk about it.
“Good-bye,” I called over my shoulder. I was moving on.
“I am over-stimulated,” I said to David later. “Still, I think I’m fine.”
What does it mean to be fine? Is being fine the same as being happy? Martin Seligman writes that authentic happiness happens when three factors work together: pleasure; meaning; and engagement. I have all these three. What do I love more than music and storytelling? What could give my life more meaning than being part of a family, making a contribution, being important to others?
It’s the engagement part that got a little out of hand. I said I’d keep the choir going while the director went to Australia. A lot of people stepped forward to help. I wanted to include all of them. The result is fantastic, but it’s more work than I had imagined. I wanted to tell my stories at concerts. I didn’t pursue it because I was too busy with other things. But then people started asking me to tell stories. I didn’t realize I’d be so busy. And how many times had I wished that people would start seeking me out for keynote speeches? Conference planners pay good money for keynotes. When I agreed to do two on one Saturday I did not know I would be telling a story the night before, or leading the choir, or visiting family at the hospital.
As I write this morning, I know that I was correct in telling my friend that I was small-f fine. It was late and I was tired. Incredibly though, even though I was scowling when I said it, in the big picture, I was and am authentically capital-H HAPPY!

THE CULTURAL DIVIDE

An acquaintance asked to kiss my hand
Because she is from Turkey
And people in Turkey kiss the hands of older people.
That’s how she explained it.

Which got me wondering
Just how old you have to be
In order to be eligible
For a kiss on the hand in Turkey.

And while I was wondering
I also wondered
Just how long it would take me
To be comfortable with being kissed on the hand.

And just how long it will take her
To move beyond the practice
Of picking out people who look older”
And kissing hands in Canada.

And all of this got me thinking
How amazing it is
That we cross so many cultural divides
In the course of a lifetime.

SECRET BLOG

A friend of mine has started a blog.
I read it every day
To see what she has to say.
But I never tell a soul
Because it’s a secret blog!

I am the only one who knows about it.
Well, maybe not the only one.
She might have given the blog address
To some other interested blog-reader.

Or it just might be that a blog peruser
Flicking and clicking out there in the blogosphere
Has already found it
And marked it
And promised to look it up again.

PEOPLE WHO VISIT IN HOSPITALS

This is a salute to all the people who visit in hospitals,
Paying more attention to the needs of the patients than to their own need to be acknowledged.

To the ones who take along the newspaper,
Knowing they’ll stay longer if they can sit reading quietly.

To the ones who get frantic calls in the middle of the night
And the ones who lie on terrible cots and sit with aching necks in straight-backed chairs.

This is a salute to those who visit the ones who spend their days visiting in hospitals, Giving a vote of confidence to the ones who spend their nights on terrible cots or sitting in straight-backed chairs.

Norman Cousins once said that a hospital is no place for a sick person,
That one who has a choice ought not to stay there.

So let us salute those who visit in hospitals.
They are the ones who can tell you
That a hospital is no place for a well person.

BABY COUNSELLORS

March. It comes every year. It’s the month when you suddenly notice that confident mature counsellors have taken the place of last September’s baby counsellors. They have learned how to listen compassionately to sad stories. They have learned to let go when things aren’t working. Best of all, they have learned to celebrate achievements—really celebrate them—recognizing the true value of small things.

I tell them in September that it will be this way in March, aware that they don’t believe me, and even I am doubting it. It’s hard to picture, harder than picturing outdoor petunias at Christmas. Nevertheless you can count on it. It’s as predictable as Reading Week and term paper stress.

I love to watch it happen. It’s my early sign of spring.

AND THEN THERE ARE DAYS

There are days when the world is your oyster
And people listen to you
With open ears and open minds
Then beg for more when you thought you were finished.

And then…

There are days when you go in with a plan
That should have been a good plan
But appears to be a poor plan
And trying to change it doesn’t help.

Those are the days when you have to concede
That the really good days
Might be really good luck
Instead of really good planning.

Those are the days to finish early
A better alternative
Than giving up hope.

MAGPIES

Mark called to let me know that the magpies are making nests in the tall trees. We couldn’t take time to discuss it. His bus was pulling up at the stop as he gasped out the news.
Most people would see this as a warning. Nests mean eggs. Eggs mean baby magpies. Baby magpies turn into noisy adolescent magpies. Noisy adolescent magpies turn into adults who build nests.
Most people dislike magpies. Robins are the perennial sign of spring. Even on the sunniest, toastiest, drippingest days in February magpie nests in Edmonton generally go uncelebrated. But Mark has called to share the joy. It’s more than just a promise of spring in February. He’s forgiven the magpie who unloaded on his upturned face as he gazed through the leaves. He’s remembering the baby he once rescued from the street, recalling how he sheltered it in the en suite bathroom of his high-rise apartment, recalling how it sailed away shortly after he moved it to the balcony.
Never one to sing along with magpies, I’ve nonetheless forgiven Mark for the role he may have played in increasing the magpie population. It’s another aspect of the personality that causes him to spend his time helping inner city street folks and children with disabilities. That long-ago magpie rescue was a foreshadowing of the work he was about to do. It might even be seen as an early exploration in fatherhood. Could these pre-leaf nest-builders be the grandchildren?

SINGING

How sweet it was to arrive early for a presentation and be greeted by the joyous sound of 80 women singing! They were singing church songs, even though it was Wednesday morning, and they were attending a meeting. They were singing sweet and loud, singing as if there was nothing else in the whole wide world they would rather be doing.

The opportunity to sing is one of the gifts that organized religion has given. I know a young man who will not willingly enter a church. Yet his whistled tunes on the veranda, his boisterous outpourings in the shower, are the songs we taught him in Sunday school. I do not challenge him on this. Why would I do anything that might silence him? As I hum along with him, and look to the future, I wonder where his children will learn to sing.

CHOOSING

In some ways my computer is a little like my husband. I rely a lot on both of them, and I do tend to take them for granted. Many of the things I agree to do are rooted in the assumption that one or both of them will be there to do their part. And if this seems a little unfair, particularly unwise, putting machine and man on equal footing, there really is no reason for concern. Faced with the necessity to choose, say yes to one and leave the other behind, I am quite certain I’ll take the husband any day!!!!

WHEN HILLARY CLINTON ASKS MY ADVICE

When Hillary Clinton asks my advice
Which she possibly won’t since she’s never heard of me,
I’ll tell her to give up talking about realism
And do everything she can to be inspirational
And to start right away, not waste one more second.

You can tell at a glance that Hillary’s handlers
Have not been doing their research on hope
Because if they had they’d be telling Hilary
You’re wasting your breath shouting, “Be realistic!”
To a crowd that’s decided to be hopeful.

When the blacks were freed from the bonds of slavery
It wasn’t by anyone being realistic
Now deep in the memory runs an audacious hope
Brought spurting, bubbling up to the surface
By a leader of inspiration.

Next year the crowd will be more realistic
In the worst case perhaps a bit disappointed.
But this year the crowd is going to be hopeful
Enjoying the lift of a wild inspiration
And next year will be too late for you, Hillary.

THE MIRACLE

Last week I witnessed a miracle. After spending 45 minutes with a wheezing, gurgly-chested woman who could hardly breathe, I told a story. When the story was done, she was breathing normally.
There are a lot of people who would question whether it actually was a miracle. Followers of Milton Erickson would call my story interlude an Ericksonian technique. Breath specialists would likely point out that she was catching her breath as I was telling the story. Anxiety specialists would say that the story reduced her anxiety, thus increasing her breathing capacity. Professional storytellers would use it as evidence to support funding professional storytellers for breath-enhancement programs.
I’ve thought of dressing up the story for a professional article. I could write about the confluence of counselling and storytelling, the intersection of anxiety reduction and physical well-being. It would all look very professional indeed, until the truth slipped out. The truth is that I was trying to persuade the woman to go to the doctor and ask for a medical solution to her breathing problem which—I pointed out—was far more severe than it had been over the past few months. . She, in turn, pointed out that it would be easier for her to breathe if she didn’t have to talk so much, and she wouldn’t have to talk so much if I would talk more. Then I, not wishing to continue lecturing, told her a story that was in my mind because it had been told to me only a few days earlier and I had noted it on THE HOPE LADY Blog. It had nothing to do with her situation. There was no justification for telling it in a counselling session. It was not in any way humorous. It was not about books or reading.
Here’s the before-and-after summary. Before the story her voice was barely audible. After the story it was loud and clear. Before the story she was talking about suicide. After the story she was asking questions about our storytelling circle. Before the story she could not remember any books she had read recently. After the story she mentioned two books by title and author. Before the story she did not laugh at my carefully chosen joke. After the story she told me three jokes.
Call it whatever you like. I call it a miracle. I am just glad I was there to witness it.

GIVENS, TAKENS, GIFTS

How often I sit here to witness the process of givens and takens and gifts. Today I talked with Barb about multiple sclerosis. One minute, for example, you have a body—a given. The next minute you have multiple sclerosis. Your life is permanently altered because some function plus your faith in the future of your body is taken. And then, when a function returns, perhaps you are able to move your leg again, that movement, once a given, is now a gift.
With Barb’s observations in mind, and a dollop of gratitude that I have never been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I hope to work on short-circuiting the process, so that more of my givens could be seen as gifts without enduring the painful process of having them taken. Yes, I understand that a celebration wouldn’t be a celebration if it were routine. Christmas is only special because it happens occasionally. Still, it seems a shame that givens—like health—have to be taken, or seriously threatened, before we can truly celebrate them as gifts.
Perhaps the first step is to imagine my life without things I take for granted. There are the big things, like meeting David after work, and getting phone calls from the kids. The loss of these would be so large, so traumatic. And then there are the things of no apparent consequence, my navel for one. How would I feel if I woke one morning to discover that it had gone missing, filled in without warning and grown over with skin? My life wouldn’t seem to be changed. Yet it would be different. My faith in the continuation of things with no apparent consequence would be permanently shaken. And so, with Joni Mitchell’s voice singing, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” ringing in my head, I give over these few lines to a celebration of all the unnamed, unnoticed givens in my life that would become potential future gifts the moment after I lost them.