SCOTCH SCONES

Last Wednesday I attended a monthly meting of the ACW—Anglican Church Women. Oh, how it took me back. It took me back to cramped little living rooms on Thursday afternoons—always the third Thursday of the month. It took me back to the days before I started school; when I would sit among the women, sit as still and as quietly as was humanly possible, when I would listen to the endless deliberations of the women. Would it be $50.00 to the boys camp, or $75.00 to a mission in Uganda? Should the church be cleaned with Pledge on Tuesdays, or lemon oil on Fridays? Would the Valentine’s Day tea and bake sale be better on February 10, or ought it to wait until the 17th when Patsy would be back from visiting her daughter? And then there were the letters, endless letters read aloud by the secretary: pleas for support from far-off missionaries; thank-you notes for a get-well card send last month; vital instructions from the Bishop. Through all of this I would wait, and wait, and wait.
It took me back to the waiting, waiting for the moment when the ladies would perch daintily on the edge of chairs, balancing the hostess’s finest china teacups in their hands, never spilling a drop in the saucers below. It took me back to the homes of the women, to the foods that each one served when her turn came around: to Mrs. Clouston’s sausage rolls; Mrs. Thomas’s egg sandwiches; Mom’s tiny cupcakes dipped in coconut; to butter tarts and lemon squares and the miniature buttermilk pancakes that Jean Hepworth called Scotch Scones. I liked it all, but I loved those scones. I ate one scone, then another, then another.
“Let her eat them,” crooned Jean, when my mother moved to stop me. “She’s a skinny little lass.”
It took me back to later times, when I went to school and Mom went without me to the ACW meetings, even the meetings at Jean’s. I couldn’t be there of course. So Jean sent the Scotch Scones home for me. What a thrill it was to find a stack of them kept fresh in a plastic bag, too many for me to eat at a single sitting, waiting for me in our kitchen after a long day of arithmetic! This is what I ought to remember when I wonder whether it is worth the effort to show a little appreciation.

TEACHER'S DILEMMA

Ronna Fay Jevne:
When we are able to articulate, to name the mission to which we are called, we are able to examine our work through the lens of hope rather than the lens of success and failure. We can attempt what is important rather than make important what it is that is easily achieved. To work without a call is to live in a place of doubt about what is and is not important. We are more easily enticed to working for the system than to working for the client when we are without a vision of the difference we truly want to make. Levov (1997) reminded us that Calls are essentially questions. They aren’t questions you necessarily need to answer outright; they are questions to which you need to respond, expose yourself and kneel before. You don’t want an answer you can put in a box and set on a shelf. You want a question that will become a chariot to carry you across the breadth of your life, a question that will offer you a lifetime of pondering, that will lead you toward what you need to know for your integrity, draw to you what you need for your journey, and help you understand what it means to burst at the seams. These questions will also lead you to others whose lives are propelled by the same questions, and from them you will receive, ”oh, never an answer,” as writer P. L. Travers says, ”but a spark of instructive fire” (p. 7).

And here I am today, looking at this passage, outlining a three-hour session whereupon I will be expected to impart my knowledge about counselling with hope and humour to a class of novice counsellors who hope to be psychologists.
And how shall I be: mysterious, inspiring, practical?

What if I say: “You have to start by being the person you are, and then find reliable tools you can use to structure your work with integrity?” They’ll be disappointed. They were expecting wisdom and a how-to manual.

What if I say: “I have this box of hope tools. I’ll show them to you. I have this box of humour tools. I’ll show them to you. But the thing I have learned over the years is that a person with integrity can’t effectively use a hope tool in a counselling session unless one person in the room can express some hope. Nor can a person of integrity use a humour tool in a counselling session unless there is somebody in the room who has a genuine compulsion to laugh.” They’ll be frustrated. “Integrity-shmegrity! They’ll whisper. “Who does she think she is?”

Or maybe I should just say: “I have this box of hope tools, and this box of humour tools. I love using them. I use them when it feels right to use them. I’ll show them to you. I want you to know they are available.”

Perhaps that is as much sense as I can make of the potential for using these tools with integrity given three hours in a roomful of novice counsellors.

(Quote by Ronna Jevne taken from page 272 of Jevne, R.F. (2005). Hope: The simplicity and complexity. In J. Eliott (Ed.). Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Hope (pp. 259-289). New York: Nova Science.)

Obama's remarkable accomplishment affirms the power of hope

Edmonton Journal

(2009-01-26)

Letters
Obama's remarkable accomplishment affirms the power of hope

What a blessing Barack Obama is to a hope scholar. His remarkable journey summarizes the findings of entire libraries of hope research. He has mastered
the art of creating hope by talking about hope. He has shown that you can talk about hope before you have a solution to everything. You can talk about
hope and reality in the same sentence and still have both.

Obama knows that hope is not the simple equivalent of wishing. It is a complex interaction of thinking, feeling, acting and relating. He knows that when
you pull hope from the past, you start having hope for the future. Then, in an incredible act of pulling all of this together, he capitalizes on the knowledge
that hopeful moments make people more proactive, more flexible, and more inclined to risk trying something new.

It is not always our first impulse to choose hope over fear. Obama has shown us how easily it can be done, and how good it feels to do it. He has chosen
to be openly hopeful for his country, to be the unapologetic target of cynics. Rather than mobilize its citizens with fear, he has given his country permission
to celebrate.

Hope is worth celebrating. In recent years, Edmonton and surrounding municipalities have proclaimed the first week of February to be Hope Week. The idea
came from the Hope Foundation of Alberta, a centre for hope studies.

Hope is a force that deserves respect. It enhances the work of counsellors and teachers and doctors and nurses and leaders. It changes the lives of patients
and students. It influences the actions of voters of all colours. Knowing more about the dynamics of hope helps us make better use of it. Talking about
hope creates hope.

During Hope Week we celebrate the difference that hope makes. We will go into Hope Week 2009 with the message that hope changes futures. We have an amazing
example of thinking, feeling, acting and relating to show us how it works.

Wendy Edey, director of counselling, Hope Foundation of Alberta, Edmonton

PREPARING FOR HOPE WEEK

We were standing in the Hope Foundation reception area, Joan and Lenora and me, just chatting about Hope Week. Oh yes, Hope Week 2009 will begin on February 2, and there will be media coverage. After all, the purpose of Hope Week is to celebrate the difference that hope makes.
Talking about hope in the media is always harder than it seems. I never fail to be surprised at how much harder it is to discuss hope with a reporter than with a street person, or somebody who’s just been diagnosed with ALS. Maybe it’s because most media interviewers start with the premise that hope is intangible. Maybe it’s because we’re a little bit cautious, not wanting to sound like snake oil salesmen. Whatever the reason, we find it pretty easy to get lost when we start promoting Hope Week in the media.
At Lenora’s suggestion, we were looking for one simple idea, one eloquent phrase to keep us focussed. We were saying, “Hope changes lives,” and then, “Hope can change a future,” and then Lenora said, “Hope changes futures.” We stopped at that, pausing to reflect, wondering where to go from there.
The front door of Hope House opened, and there was Bev Carlson, in for an appointment, not with any of us. Oh dear, we thought. This looks bad, three of us just standing around chatting. It’s kind of normal at Hope House, where we truly enjoy each other’s company and learn together on a daily basis. But we don’t like to get caught in the act. We prefer to leave the public with the impression that we are mysteriously wise.
I don’t know Bev well. But I do have a lot of respect for her ideas. She once wrote a passionate letter about hope, a letter full of kitchen table wisdom that made us cry. Later she gave permission to reprint part of the letter in our annual fund-raising solicitation. So when she offered a warm smile from lips half frozen by the wintry blast I said, “Bev, I am going to say a phrase, and then I want you to say whatever comes to mind. Okay?”
She laughed. She knows I am a counsellor. Perhaps she was thinking of the word association tricks movie psychiatrists use to reclaim beautiful hysterical women from the crazy-making effects of long-buried memories.
I took a moment to gather strength, to imagine myself wise and resplendent, a paragon of wisdom among all the experts they call on to fill the endless hours of stuffy airtime on Newsworld. Assuming my most authoritative professorial tone I boomed: “Hope changes futures.”
Bev didn’t miss a beat. “Of course it changes futures,” she cried. She didn’t add, “That’s obvious!” But it was apparent that she had been expecting something a little deeper from an educated woman such as myself.
“And how does it change futures?” I asked.
“It makes people not give up,” she replied. “It keeps them going.” Then she gave us a few dozen examples from her own experience just in case we needed convincing.
Why do so many of us tend to start with the idea that hope is intangible, too fragile to stand alongside the facts? It’s not as if we have to choose between hope and reality. We can put them in the same sentence and still have both. Bev faces challenges. But her hope was as solid at the end of her story as it was when she walked through the door. And when she moved on into the meeting in the library that had brought her across our path, she left us standing there at the reception desk, hoping that Hope Week coverage will be a little simpler this year, daring to believe that it can.

GOING YOUR WAY

"Tell me about a time," says hope professor Dr. Denise Larsen, "when something was going your way, only you didn't know it." It's a hope cue, an invitation to remember an incident and then to believe that something you don't know about might be going your way at this very moment.

In October of 2006 David and I vacationed in Nashville after attending a storytelling festival in Jonesborough. I recorded the following on this blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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


 
I will never forget that sunny Saturday, first because it left me hopeful, and second, because our imaginary abe was talking theoretically, hedging his bets. He was thinking about a far-off future. He was choosing the youngest people in the crowd and promising a black president or a female president some time in their lives. There was no mention that it could happen in just two years. Who knew? Who would have dared to publicly predict such a thing?

Sometimes things are going your way, only you don't know it.

WISHING AND HOPING AND LEADERSHIP

So here I am, a staunch and loyal Canadian, doing something I never dreamed I would do, wishing something I could not have imagined wishing.
What am I doing? I am preparing exerpts from Obama’s speeches to present in a university class called Hope And The Helping Relationship. I will be using them to illustrate the points made in Eliott and Olver’s study of the discursive properties of hope derived from cancer patients’ speech. It seems an odd combination, I know, but the class will be taking place on inauguration day, and I can’t say I have ever seen a better example of the emotional, behavioural, relational and cognitive momentum that can be achieved through using a variety of word forms to make hope explicit. Hope is an adjective describing a noun: “Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of Hope?” Hope is a noun. “It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.” Hope is presented as the emotion of hopefulness: “if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the
same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine,
the people will rise …” Hope is a verb: “This is our time -- to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth -- that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with
cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: yes, we can.”
Obama calls upon the temporal dimension of hope through stories stretching back hundreds of years. He enables the contextual dimension by placing his oratory firmly in the realm of current American politics. If you count out the charitable fund-raising campaigns and the pharmaceutical advertisements, it would be difficult to find anyone Who has ever made better use of hope. It’s the inspirational fire. It’s the multidimensional approach to the construct. It’s the perfect educational storm!
And what am I wishing? Well, as a staunch Canadian, it pains me to say it. This is atime of uncertainty. This is a time where the language of the leadership of my own country is the language of division, not the language of coming together. So here I am, wishing something I never imagined wishing. I’m wishing that I were an American, and only hoping to be a proud Canadian.
Mentioning hope, I have often heard it said that it is important to be realistic. This I do not dispute. But it seems to me that if you are faced with the need to be hopeful and realistic, and the challenge of placing one before the other, you can count on having them both if you start with hopefulness. For realism will follow hopefulness. Whether hopefulness will follow if you start with realism is open to question.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Today’s mail brings a note from Elizabeth Ellis, one of my very favourite storytellers.

I thought you might like to know that I am
a. doing a conference call for the NSN's Healing Story Alliance tonight and
b. doing a keynote for the Timpanogos Storytelling Conference in Utah in February.
The topic for both of these things is HOPE: Storytelling in Economic Hard Times.
In each I am going to talk about the importance of the artist in helping a community maintain Hope and how essential it is to think about that responsibility
in these financial hard times. Gonna ask folks to look for the blessing in our current situation and remind them that many of their listeners are grieving
people.”

Now there is nothing I would rather do than hear a presentation by Elizabeth ellis. My enthusiasm wouldn’t be dampened, even if it was a presentation about taking responsibility and being careful. Regrettably, I won’t hear this presentation, but it has got me thinking.

So here we go now, into a time of great uncertainty where so many people fear that the comfortable future they envisioned will be swept away by financial melt down.

And here I go now remembering so many conversations from my youth and young adulthood, proudly told stories By people who somehow lived
Through the Great depression.

And I wonder if the people who are grieving in 2009 would fine comfort in the stories about how people made it through the Great Depression.

ARRANGING THE CHAIRS

“Supposing,” I say to some university students whose opinion I value, “supposing you were an occasional professor teaching a hope class, a fairly small class in a fairly large classroom. And supposing you wanted the students to feel comfortable, and to get to know each other quite soon, and to talk to each other rather than always to you. Now supposing that this classroom is full of old-fashioned student desks, not tables and chairs. Would you move the desks into a semi-circle? “
“No,” say the students.
This is not the answer I had hoped to hear. I ask them: Are you sure?” They’re sure. They’ve got me on a technicality. They remind me that I said comfortable, after all.
It is the first day of class now, and I arrive early, about the time a nervous professor ought to arrive. Time enough, I think, to rearrange the furniture if I decide to do it, even though I have already decided not to do it, because I shouldn’t have asked for advice if I wasn’t willing to hear it. Yet this is a very large classroom, and I really don’t want students sitting in the corners at the back of a room in rows.
Like I said, I arrive early. Still, I have not arrived early enough. Two people are already in the room, and yes, they are registered in my class, and yes, they are sitting just where the most pessimistic among us would expect to find them, at the back of a classroom organized in rows.
"It’s a fairly small class,” I say. ”We’ll be talking quite a lot to each other. How do you think we ought to arrange the furniture?”
"In a semicircle,” says one, and then, as I take a step to pull a desk aside, “Can we help you move the desks?”
And that’s how the desks got to be in a semi-circle. Some things turn out better than expected.

NOT TO MISS A MOMENT

Yesterday, when we were playing games after eating, discussing how many layers we would need to wear when taking Pirate for a walk, Margaret said she hated to go to bed because sleeping would end the Christmas holidays more quickly. Others might have thought this strange. I understood it completely. Christmas holidays are a friend of mine.
My love affair with Christmas holidays started long ago, perhaps when I started school, maybe even before that. And throughout my working career it has been my great privilege to be allowed time off around Christmas and New Year’s. My deepest sympathies extend to people who cannot choose to have time off. For them I would gladly permit the closure of stores, and I’d wish for wellness to cut the demands on hospital staff, and I’d wish for strong water and power lines to give utility workers the pleasures I’ve known.
Not everyone loves Christmas holidays the way I do. Others who have the choice say it’s good to work around Christmas and New Year’s. You can get a lot done, they say, with so few people in the office and the phone not driving you crazy. You can get more value for your days, they say, because the powers that be are apt to close the place down early. The logical side of me understands these principles completely. Still there’s nothing logical about my love for Christmas holidays. The experience is unabashedly emotional. So emotional is it that, even though I love working, I start looking forward to Christmas holidays—well, some time in October at the latest.
It’s the mornings I look forward to, dark mornings when the outside lights come on at 6:00 with the automatic timer, brightening our bedroom, and I hear Pirate barking at the newspaper delivery, then turn over to pretend it isn’t really morning yet.
It’s the afternoons I look forward to, walking Pirate in the sunshine. Can it really be –30? Feels like –28, or maybe even –25. It’s the evenings I look forward to, night after night of socializing with family and friends until I think I just cannot stand one more dinner, and then there is yet another dinner. There’s the presents on Christmas morning, and whatever happens New Year’s Eve, and the Boxing Day leftovers. I love it all.
Don’t misunderstand me. Christmas holidays are not perfect, in fact they are far from it. But this is the season when, despite the war and tragedy that annually occupies the newscasts, things seem somehow fixable. There is family tension, always family tension, but there is also good will to mitigate the worst of it. There’s over-eating, so much over-eating, and there are good intentions for weight losing in the new year. There is game-playing, all kinds of games, with a lot of game-losing to help build character. There is cold weather, usually cold weather anyway, and doesn’t that promise to stop the pine beetle from reproducing?
Oh I love Christmas holidays! I’ve tried to explain how much I love them, but Margaret said it better than I ever have. Is it any wonder that Margaret and I just want to stay up, to savour every last hour, even though we really like to work?

TIME MANAGEMENT

I've known for several days now that, due to adjustments demanded to syncronize the atomic clock, experts plan to add an extra second to this day before it ends. What I can't figure out is how to use the bonus time.

WHEN I RETIRE

When I retire
My life will be
Much like it is
In the Christmas holidays.

Except that..
There won’t be a mountain of chocolate in the cupboard
Or turkey and trifle in the fridge
Or company coming every second day,
And dinners with others on other days,
Or New Year’s eve to consider,
Or a pile of new clothes to try on
And new records to listen to every day.

Yes, when I retire
My life will be
Just like it is
In the Christmas holidays.

GRANNY'S TRIFLE

Today we are eating leftover trifle. We didn’t really need to make trifle at all, given the large number of sweet things that were already here. But Christmas is the only time when we ever have trifle. So I made it anyway. Trifle is layered, like my life. It is something I make with my heart.
It is impossible for me to make trifle without remembering Granny Cookson. So far as I can recollect, my trifle is fairly similar to hers. Granny always made trifle at Christmas. In those days I ate it happily without stopping to consider its ingredients. In fact, I thought all trifle was Granny’s trifle until I met David and heard that his idea of trifle was a layered dessert containing Jell-O.
“Jell-O!” exclaimed my mother, when I told her what I had discovered. “Granny’s trifle doesn’t have Jell-O in it.” And that was only the beginning of my trifle education. One year I proudly carried a trifle to the Mill Woods United Church Choir Christmas potluck party. My trifle was Granny’s trifle. I was the first to arrive. There followed in my footsteps six other choir members bearing six bowls of trifle. Each of them was different from all the others. Each of them was made with layers of cake and other things, but none of them was granny’s trifle.
To eat a dish of Granny’s trifle is to taste all my childhood Christmases, to be once again warmed in the holiday good nature of my father’s family. Christmas was at granny’s house. We ate the meal and washed the dishes. We played board games and snickered at the men snoring in the living room. We played hide-and-seek in Granny’s closets, and listened to the Queen’s Christmas address. Then we ate a late-night snack and I cried because we had to go home. Christmas was the day that should have lasted forever.
Mom’s family did not gather at Christmas. So even though Granny was not my mom’s mother, it seemed natural that Mom should take up the cause of recreating Granny’s trifle when Granny stopped hosting large Christmas dinners. David and I would arrive at Mom’s a day early to help prepare the feast. The trifle would already be in progress. Mom would have the cake made and the raspberries thawing. We would make the custard, toast the nuts and whip the cream. To make a bowl of Granny’s trifle is to stand in Mom’s kitchen, stirring the custard and talking to Mom. "Don't leave yet," she'd say on Boxing day. "We haven't finished the trifle."
Nowadays, the job of trifle making has fallen to David and me. David’s family was never much committed to the Jell-O layered dessert, so Granny’s trifle it is. No matter that its assembly creates a pile of dishes. The process begins in warmest August. First we eat the ripening raspberries hot off the bushes, then we bring them in for breakfast. Finally, when there are too many for breakfast, we freeze the first bag. “That’s the trifle,” I say. After that I forget all about Christmas and go back to appreciating summer.
A few days before Christmas is the time to think about the cake. Will it be half an Angel Food, or a yellow cake mix, or a recipe for jellyroll? Usually it’s the recipe for jellyroll. I bake it, tear it into little pieces and place a layer in the bottom of the straight-sided berry bowl I got as a wedding gift. (It came with six little bowls, but they didn’t fit well in the dishwasher, so the ones that have survived now serve the dog his daily meal.)
On Christmas Eve morning it’s time to thaw the raspberries. Two cups of berries go nicely atop the cake in the berry bowl. Then, if you are only making one bowl, which is something we rarely have the good sense to do, you make one recipe of custard using the directions on the can of Byrd’s Custard Powder. The hardest part of the operation is waiting for the custard to cool before you pour it over the berries. I don’t know precisely why you have to wait for it to cool. Mom said so and she’s gone, so I can’t ask her. I suspect that if you poured it hot it might cook the berries and soak right into the cake instead of hovering above the berries in a tasteful layer. While you wait you can pass some time toasting a few slivered almonds to sprinkle after you pour the custard.
Some people might add a layer of whipped cream, but we don’t. Instead, we always whip the cream during a very chaotic time on Christmas morning and keep it in a separate bowl. I don’t know why we do it this way. That’s how Mom did it. Some day we might serve trifle to somebody who doesn’t want to eat it with sweetened whipped cream and that person will definitely be grateful.
While we clear the turkey from the table we start begging people to eat the trifle. “Please eat it so we won’t have so much left over!” Then we force them to work up a new appetite playing games before serving trifle again. Eventually we have to let them go home, leaving us with the leftover trifle. Then we try to appreciate it for as many days as it takes to finish. After all, we won’t make it again for at least another year.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHRISTMAS MEMORY

From A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, (1914-1953) first read publicly in 1952, published posthumously in 1955

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes
hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days
and twelve nights when I was six.”


From the Cookson/Martin/Edey Christmas at our house yesterday

“Okay, we need to finish up this food so we’ll have room on the table for the plum pudding, caramel sauce, trifle, whipped cream, and seven trays of Christmas baking. Now, will you have turkey (basted by david with melted butter and red wine like they suggested on CBC)? Cranberry sauce? Potatoes and gravy? Turnips (We made them for Andrew.) Andrew—any turnips? Corn festively mixed with green and red pepper? Brown or white bun? How about Donna’s fruit salad? Layered salad with peas? Oh, and here’s the pickle tray and the olives! Now Donna, we need you to eat more. What will you have, donna?”
“Oh, more stuffing please.”
“Okay, I’ll get you some. Now where is it? Pass the stuffing please. Donna wants more stuffing. Hey down there, could you pass the stuffing up here? Where is the stuffing anyway?”
“Are you sure we had stuffing?”
“Well, yes, I think we had stuffing. We did have stuffing didn’t we?”
“Sure we had stuffing.”
“Yes, we had stuffing.”
“Where can it have gone?”
“Maybe it’s still in the oven.”
“Can’t be. We already had it and I only made one big bowl.”
“Maybe somebody should check the oven.”
“Oh, here it is, in the oven. Untouched. Now let’s have the stuffing course before we get to dessert!”

Summary: On Christmas Day 2008 only half the diners remembered having stuffing. People are even more forgetful than they used to be.

BANANA DISCOVERY

Here is some information you may, or may not have. If you take a banana, (it has to be fairly ripe, though not squishy) peel it, then pinch gently on one end, the banana will divide lengthwise into three long, curving, beautiful banana sticks. Of course, I am aware that you probably already knew this. Everybody seems to have known it, except, that is, for me. And my question is: Why wasn’t I told?
Is it because I am not curious enough? Surely I could not have been expected to find this out on my own! That would have required playing with my food, an activity frowned upon by the adults of my childhood.
Or was I deliberately left out of the loop? This seems unlikely. Try as I might, I certainly cannot think of any reason why the truth should have been hidden from me. It’s not as if I have a history of cruelty to bananas.
The truth slipped into my sphere of awareness. It came so softly, so unobtrusively that I might have missed it had I been daydreaming. I first heard rumblings of it while having lunch with my colleagues. “What did you say?” I queried, rousing myself from visions of an afternoon nap. “A banana will divide lengthwise into perfect thirds? Describe to me the exact process.” I assumed they were pulling my leg (they are prone to antics like that). But they described a process, and insisted it could work. . I’ll confess it. I didn’t believe them. Trouble is, they’ve been right in the past.
I recalled how the friend of one of my friends convinced my friend that you could boil water in a paper bag over an open fire. He said it wasn’t easy. You had to start with a very hot fire so the water could boil quickly. It was, he said, a race against time. I recall how vehemently I argued. I said the bag would catch fire. Then I reasoned that the water would soak right through it. He praised my deductive skills (I am a sucker for flattery). Then he said that explained why you had to hurry. It is just possible that I believed him for a moment. Tricksters are everywhere. My friend believed him more than I did. I’ve mentioned it to a lot of people over the years. None of them believe it.
But the banana thing? Well, I just couldn’t tell for sure. And so, on the off chance that there might have been some substance to it, I asked David a tentative question about the nature of bananas. He answered me calmly. He said you could split a banana in three by squeezing its tip. He offered to show me. I didn’t know what to think when the experiment did not work on my breakfast banana. He said maybe the banana had to be riper.
Then, yesterday, all by myself, I peeled a banana and deftly but gently pinched its tip. Voila! Three long, perfect, curving banana sticks. I didn’t know what to do. I thought of bronzing them. I almost called my friend in Vancouver to ask her if she believed a banana would split in thirds if you gently squeezed its tip. Then I remembered that it was only 5:30 AM in Vancouver, so I gazed at them in a prolonged rhapsody of wonder. . They were so exquisite I could hardly eat them, though I will say that they formed a lovely pattern on my toast.
Now I am wondering what other amazing discoveries await me. This morning I spoke to a green pepper in the vegetable compartment of the fridge. “What secrets have you been keeping from me?” I asked. I tapped its top, massaged its middle. I bonked its bottom. Nothing happened, no change I could determine at the time, anyway. But it could be that the results have a delayed effect. Science is like that. It’s a lot easier to interpret a result once you know what result you are expecting. And then again, it may be that I aimed my inquiry at the wrong source. I didn’t hear about the banana miracle from a banana.
If there’s an extra spring in my step this morning it is because a window of possibility has opened for me. A lot of things are possible. I can’t tell you what they are. Nobody has told me yet. Well, maybe people have been telling me and I haven’t believed them. I didn’t actually try the thing with the paper bag. I don’t know if I will. Opportunity may be limited. I am hardly ever left all alone with a paper bag, a cup of water and a very hot open fire.
This I can say for sure. In 2009 I will be keeping my ears open for unsolicited tips on the nature of green peppers, or red peppers, or any other facts that have been kept from me all these years.

ANNIVERSARY

It’s December 22, deep, deep winter. But it’s not always cold on December 22. Thirty-five years ago today the sun shone brightly. It melted the snow and turned the streets to mud. I don’t need a weather calendar to confirm this statistic for me. It was hot that day. There was mud on my wedding dress to prove it. And later in the evening, when the ice fog dropped low over the countryside, turning the roads to glass, the family chimed: “We told you so!” But we didn’t care what they said. We were newly-weds dining on deluxe burgers and fries in our going-away clothes at the Esso Voyageur in Camrose, the only place open at 3:00 AM. Later, we’d be settling down in the cozy comfort of the Camrose Motel.
On future anniversaries, I would look at our wedding day as a curiosity, witnessed proof of the only real rebellion I ever had. “Get married next summer,” my mother said. She had every right to say it, seeing as how she was already making a wedding dress for my sister’s wedding on the Thanksgiving weekend. “Wait for next summer,” said David’s mother. She had every right to say it, seeing as how she would be travelling two hours east for the wedding, most of the Edey relatives would be travelling hundreds of miles from the Peace River country in northern Alberta.
But I, family pleaser extraordinaire, was mysteriously deaf to their pleas. For I, to my great surprise, had come upon a man I wanted to marry. He also wanted to marry me. We had decided to delay our announcement when David’s brother announced his wedding plans for the summer of 1973. Then, as we were contemplating Thanksgiving, my sister announced her intentions for that date. That left us no choice. December 22 it had to be. We were both going to university, both working part time. At that time grocery stores were closed on Sundays, and also on Boxing Day. So David could get five days off in a row.
Thirty-five years later I can see an easy solution. We would simply tell our parents we were moving in together and announce that a wedding date would be chosen for their convenience. And though we had lived in the Free Love mentality of the sixties, and couples were living together in many apartments, neither of us could envision the conversation in which we would tell them that David was leaving the comfy family nest for the other half of the bed in my cramped basement suite. So wedding it was, over all objections. (No, we did not have a baby on the way.) We simply couldn’t wait through the long winter months for the kiss of June. I couldn't wait. Never before or since have I felt anything so urgently. For the privilege of filling up the other half of that bed I would have eloped, really made our parents mad, done without all those presents. I suppose this is why other parents got on with the wedding plans.
Thirty-five years ago today we received the card table and folding chairs we will use on Christmas day, the green flowered dishes we use every day, the pots and pans that will cook our dinner, the bowl that will hold our Christmas trifle.
We got pieces of the china that adorns our company feasts. We got the simple candleholders we were given before the days of candle parties. One of the mixing bowl set is broken. Some of the wine glasses bit the dust.
As for the grumbling parents, they bit the bullet and showed us uncompromised support when they saw that the battle was truly lost. It wasn’t the marriage they objected to, after all, only the timing of the wedding. David’s father made an insistent phone call, prompting the relatives to change their minds about making the long journey from Northern Alberta. My mother designed for me a white velvet gown with overjacket that supported a train and a Margaret trudeau hood. My parents gave us a piano because I asked for it. David’s parents bought us a bedroom suite and fed us Sunday dinner every week.
When we drive down the highway, passing the Camrose Motel, looking just as plain now that it is thirty-five years older, Ruth asks: “Why would anybody have a honeymoon in the Camrose Motel?” It’s a good question. The answer might surprise you.
I had never spent Christmas away from my parents, and the Camrose Motel was only an hour down the road. Staying there, we were well positioned to return to their place on Christmas eve. In later years I often spent Christmas away from them, but never to this date away from David. And all of these Christmases have felt right, except that all of them are a little too close to our anniversary. This, I guess, is the dawning of perspective in a process of growing up.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS MORE OF: HOPE

Today I got a letter from Wilma Clark. It said, “You are what the world needs more of—hope.” I don’t think I could claim to be hope itself, but I do confess to being a great supporter of hope, and I totally agree with Wilma that hope is what the world needs more of.
There are those who disagree with me. They are saying that the world needs common sense, the wisdom of the free market, solutions to all its problems, the annihilation of certain destructive elements. Some are even saying that hope is destructive. Some say it’s a waste of time.
But I still like hope. I like to hear Obama talk about it. I like to know that there is a guy next door who wants to talk about working together to make a better world. I like to hear how he doesn’t blame anybody. It gives me hope.
Of the leaders in my own country, at this time when they are taking a rest, this is what I would like to say.
Let's put all four leaders in one room and ask them hope questions. Each question must be answered with the words I hope.
What kind of country do you hope canada will be?
What do you hope Canadians will have?
How do you hope they will interact with each other?
What do you hope Canadians will do?
What do you hope other nations will say about Canada?
What do you hope to achieve in Afghanistan?
What do you hope other countries will say about Canada's environmental policy?
What do you hope historians will write about your contribution to Canada?
What do you hope will be your proudest accomplishment at the end of your career?
I hope this experiment will some day be tried. I believe it would raise debate to a mush higher level. You will notice that this approach asks for no
promises, no action plans. It will be much criticized for this. It will be called pie-in-the-sky, derided as impractical. But I believe the hopes will
direct the actions.

PROGRESS

Yesterday we celebrated the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. We watched improv comedy by Laugh Inc. Dogs with Wings picked up money from the floor and turned on lights for us. I thought back to the days—not so long ago—when there were no comedy troops of people with brain injuries. I thought back to the years when service dogs who might have served other disabilities were jealously guarded by the blind community, and the training of such dogs was sanctioned only by the Seeing Eye Inc. in Morristown NJ. And it seemed to me that a lot of progress has been made in the past few years.

CONTAGEOUS HOPE

I have been noticing lately
That our hopes regarding others
Tend to be only as large
As the world we can imagine.

And I have been noticing lately
That our hopes regarding others
Tend to have an influence
On the hopes they have for themselves.

Which is why it pays to be diligent
In exploring the world with vigor
So that the world we can imagine
Is a large, large world.

SOCIABLE CHRISTMAS IDEAS FOR LONELY PEOPLE

There would be more hope if lonely people had somewhere to turn for ideas about how to spend a sociable Christmas Day. In a good world people wouldn’t have to be lonely. One of my hope projects this year is to make a list of sociable things lonely people can do on Christmas Day. I am thinking of any and all people, but I am not thinking of dating services, which is what you get when you search the Internet for ideas. . I am thinking of suggestions that would be helpful to people who need people, people who are not expecting anyone to reach out with a Christmas Day invitation. I began the project by looking for ideas for the Edmonton area, but will welcome other ideas as well.

Send ideas to wendy.edey@gmail.com and look for future postings on this topic.
Here are the first three ideas I have received.

1. Call the International Student Centre at the university and offer to host a student who has no Christmas plans.

2. Contact a travel agent to ask about short Christmas trips.

3. The Victory Christian Center in Edmonton puts on a huge Christmas Day dinner at the Shaw centre. Attend the dinner or volunteer to work at it.

DRAWING HOPE IN A CLASSROOM

What fun it is to go to a classroom where the kids have been making hope art. If you haven’t had a chance to do it, you have missed an amazing experience.

Last Thursday I visited a very active classroom. Most of the children were either 6 or 7 years old. All had met the requirements for assignment to the category known as ‘behavior disorder’. They were lively and bouncing by the time I got there, but their teacher said they had had a very peaceful morning. Why had they had such a quiet morning? Well, it seems they had been doing their hope art, giving it their full and undivided attention. It was so unusually tranquil that their teacher called the principal in to witness this uncharacteristic peace.

A memory, clear and sharp, came to me as the children introduced themselves, telling me about their hope creations. The memory was of a conversation I had a couple of years ago, when the hope art project was still an idea in its infancy. The conversation was with a teacher.

Her: “I just don’t think this project can work.”.

Me: “Why not?”.

”I know it’s a good idea and all,” she said thoughtfully, “giving the kids the challenge to think about hope and draw something. But I am thinking about some little people I have known, little people with no support from home, maybe not too smart, been through unspeakable things that you and I cannot even imagine. I think about me asking them to draw about hope, and these kids sitting there, failing again. It would be cruel to expect them to draw hope!”

I don’t recall what I said. I wanted to persuade her, so I imagine I told her that I believed it would be okay. I believed it because I have met hundreds of adults who have been through unspeakable things. Some of them are seriously considering suicide. Some of them are not too bright. And yet I would be willing to risk asking any and all of them to reflect on hope and draw something. If they seemed unable, I would help them a tiny bit.

I don’t recall exactly what she said in response, but I do recall that she wasn’t convinced by what I had said. She was thinking that it’s different for adults than for these little people. She was thinking that classrooms are different from counselling sessions. She was thinking that I probably didn’t understand what teachers face in their classrooms. I wouldn’t have disagreed with any of this.

I know a number of teachers who have struggled with the idea of making hope explicit in their classrooms. Many years ago I had another conversation with a teacher. He told me that a teacher wouldn’t be wise to ask kids to draw hope because they would all draw pictures of the latest toys in the department store. Since those toys would be unavailable to some of the children, he said it would be unfair to start such a process. At that time I had much less experience. What he said made sense to me, given the materialistic attitude of our society.

On the other hand, I have known teachers who embraced the idea of doing hope projects. They did them purposefully, anxious to see what would happen, suspending any fears they might have had about the worst possible outcomes. One of these was in command last Thursday, in the classroom where I was meeting little people who were proudly displaying pictures of rainbows and animals and such. There was no mention of toys, even though Christmas is coming. I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about the conditions that disrupt children’s behavior so badly as to render them unmanageable in a regular classroom by the age of 6 or 7. We know they are more likely to be in a behavior disorder classroom if they have been abused, neglected, or have parents with mental illness or addiction issues. Some were damaged by drugs or alcohol before they were born. We know that poverty is common in their ranks.

It was an exciting day in that classroom. They had a guest—me. The had art to show. But there was more. One of the children was proudly displaying a chicken puppet. It was on loan from the principal. It was his reward for the marvelous behavior he had shown during the peaceful art time that morning. The whole class was bursting with chickenly pride.

Many lessons were evident during my hour in that classroom. It was abundantly clear that you don’t have to be smart to understand what hope is. You don’t have to be rich, or clean, or popular, or happy. You don’t have to be an artist to draw hope. What is it about hope art that leads children to that reflective place deep into their centre core? From where does it draw the power to create a quiet lull in a behavior blizzard?

Hope art projects create many benefits. They give children the space and quiet time to think about hope, to feel hope, to do an act of hope, and then to see the mirrored image of their own hope when they show their work to others. Some of the children in this busy classroom found time to make two or three drawings. Some of the drawings will be exhibited in the children’s hope art show. Others will be displayed in their school.

Though the art can stand on its own, and sometimes it has to, there is no doubt that the best way to experience a hope art project is to see the children and the art in the same room. You get more out of it when you see what went into it. That’s when you feel the hope. That’s when you experience the separate, private and individual meaning of each and every rainbow that found its way onto a page. That’s when you know that the process of considering hope is every bit as significant as the outcome. I wish you had been there with me. If you have never visited a classroom where the children have been making hope art, you have missed an amazing experience.