Winter Storm Warnings

Winter arrived yesterday – not unusual to receive the first real snowfall of the year in mid-November – but what was unusual was that we got 6 inches of the white stuff all at once – instant Christmas Card! Luckily we took advantage of the storm warning to prepare: a stop at Costco for enough food to last until Spring; a stop at the liquor store in case we are actually all stuck inside together for any extended period of time; time spent Friday night getting the backyard rink ready; and a little bit of forethought yesterday to hang the garland and lights on the front of the house.  Nothing like a warning from Mother Nature to get you moving.

So the outside looks like Christmas – the inside? Not so much.  The last of the Fall and Halloween decorations have just been put away, and the chaos that is our slowly-being-renovated-house ensures Better Homes and Gardens will not be stopping by any time soon to do that photo-shoot.  The additional hour this week thanks to the time change was barely felt, and we have a list of to-do’s a mile long that we want to tackle, but time seems to escape us – work, school, the boy’s hockey schedule: it blurs together and before you know it another month has passed and you find yourself pretty much where you were 6 or 8 weeks earlier. Only older.

Life happens.  And it doesn’t wait until you’re ready. Ask the East Coast.  Or better yet, just look outside. We know winter will come – it’s no surprise given where we live – this isn’t Texas – it’s always a matter of when.  This year it was yesterday and we were mostly ready, maybe not with all the little details like draining the gas and putting the lawn mower away for the winter; or that one final clean of the shed and putting away the last of the planters and pots which are now buried by the gazebo deck. But we did enough while we had the time to be able to sit down today and feel content with where we are.

There’s change on the horizon – change in all sorts of places. I’m giving you fair warning now that it’s there, waiting for me, waiting for me to accept that it will come and when it does things will have to adjust around here to suit.  And that’s okay.  I’m making my peace with that.  Looking forward to it actually, needing it in many ways.  You’ll hear more about that in the weeks and months to come – but suffice it to say one of the reasons I haven’t been ‘here’ much the past few months is also one of the forces pushing things forward.

We resist change pretty well – I think we’re taught that that skill at a young age – to push back and hold on to things the way they are currently instead of feeling the natural ebb and flow of time and accepting the current of the stream as it carries us along.  Not sure if that’s our ego thinking it’s in charge and able to finally have control by making time stand still, or if it’s the common human tie that binds us all – facing the reality that we too are mortal and will someday pass.  Some people really struggle with that idea, that they won’t be around forever – they dismiss it entirely and live with a fear constantly a palpable part of their days, a fear that drives them.  A fear that consumes them quietly inside, gnawing and eating at them, cloaked in illness or mental health issues, or maybe in that classic catch-all ‘stress’ – its all the same; its one emotion pushing the buttons and until it’s met and looked at clearly with no assumptions and no illusions, it will continue to run the show.

But if it’s uncovered and examined for what it really is, that emotion is a pretty harmless thing – it’s a survival mechanism of sorts alerting us to immediate or certain dangers – helpful tools when we lived off the land like wild animals – not always terrible useful now that we’ve seemingly mastered our environment – but in that definition of “alerting us to immediate or certain danger” we can find the seeds of why so many of us fail to act or refuse to accept the inevitable – the danger isn’t immediate enough to force us to change.  It’s off in the distance, like retirement or old age – ideas to a child that seem fuzzy and cloudy, not in any need of clarity or processing because they are so far away in time from the here and now.  But time is sneaky that way.  These eyes still see the world with the memory of that child, and that teen, and it is easy to pretend we aren’t who we are becoming.  But the signs are there – more of them everyday – if we’re willing to slow down and pay attention.

It’s November, it’s snowed and it’s giving me a chance to sit here and reflect while looking forward.  A reminder today that we all have time enough to do what needs to be done now, to be able to sit down later and feel content with where we are.  Now help me shovel the driveway…

And then it was gone.

It’s a quiet start to another Sunday, the cats and I quietly watching the day begin, coffee close at hand, neither cat is all that interested beyond laying a furry head down and occasionally throwing a glance my way, but they both stay close.   I say both cats, but we only have one – the other is from across the street, the neighbor’s cat who has adopted us as his second family; his second home - free and welcome to come and go as he pleases through the back cat-door the boy and I installed earlier this summer – a means of allowing our own old cat to head outside at those God-awful times in the middle of the night by himself without human assistance or attention - and for the most part he’s figured it out.

You can teach an old cat new tricks apparently. 

And then there is Pepper, the cute little grey and white cat from across the street who loves attention and wanders among the 4 or 5 houses around his own, getting treats and a good belly scritch from Mr. Monk next door or hiding in Rhonda’s flowers waiting for her to arrive with her gardening tools, or patiently sitting on our front stoop – eager to welcome us back home, and hopeful we’ll allow him in to partake of some food in the second cat bowl in the kitchen.  Chris, his rightful owner, was aghast when she learned that he was eating at our house - she knew we loved him as one of our own and had no qualms with seeing him in our front window and not her own – but never realized he’d adopted us so fully as to think of himself as being ‘home’ over here.  But he knows where his true home is, and comes and goes through our doors like the welcome friend that he is.

Our cat more than tolerates him, and if he sees the familiar face peeking in through the new glass front door, he’ll give out a meow reserved for the very purpose of announcing his friend is here and should be let in at once.  And if one of us is paying attention, we’ll dutifully open the door and usher the purring guest into our home.

Cats can teach old humans new tricks too.

So there they sit, or lay or whatever it is that cats do when they curl up and tuck everything in and look so damn comfortable just existing in the sun.  A chiropractor’s dream client – if it weren’t for that spring of a back bone that allows them to contort every which way, and to do so with such ease and just a hint of showing off - you can’t help but admire their attitude.

It’s been hot out lately – too hot – dangerously hot in fact this week to the point where outdoor activities were cancelled Wednesday – the heat and that damn humidity making it medically unsafe for much exertion outdoors.  But we know that’s not going to last, so we endure it and manage through and accept that with little rain this summer the trees and leaves are drying out too soon – the acorns have been falling for a good week already – the pumpkins already orange – the calendar must be wrong.  It can’t be that time yet – we exclaim, hoping we’re right but knowing we’re wrong – nature doesn’t watch the calendar – it is what it is and this is what we’ve got, so better to deal with the reality and keep moving forward than to morn the loss of what was and be mired in self pity and denial.

It is September and we can’t run away from that – though the kids would love to stretch another week or two of summer vacation in there somehow – wasn’t it just June? - School starts Thursday and for us it means High School starts this week.

High School.  Really?

Where did it go?  How did it happen? Why didn’t we see this coming?  We’re not ready for this, are we?  Didn’t we just finish walking him to Kindergarten last year? That smiling happy little face, excited for the chance to go to school and meet new friends and learn new things; the one who happily played all day and loved to have books read to him at bedtime, in that cozy room at the end of the hall, with the Noah’s Ark décor and the huge collection of stuffed animal friends that overtook the bed and left little room under the covers for him let alone us as well to cuddle and snuggle and play pretend.

No, that wasn’t last year, or the one before that, no, that was a few too many moons ago, and this week we’ll take a new ‘back to school picture’ this time from in front of the renovated front entry – another sign of the changes that have been quietly and constantly evolving through our lives – that once little boy with the oversized backpack and goofy grin will have been replaced with a giant version of himself, a confident young man embarking on the next stage of his scholastic journey, and we’ll watch him walk down the street that morning and know that he’s well on his way, and that he’ll be fine.

We know this – we’ve seen him grow and change all this time, and we’ve enjoyed every minute – even the tough ones – and we’ll remind ourselves that this is how it is meant to be – whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.  He’s a good kid, we’ve done a decent job of getting him ready to face the world, and now he’s beginning to step out there on his own.

It’s September, and that means it’s time to begin getting ready for fall, for packing up the summer life and putting it all away neatly and safely for next year, while preparing for the next guest to arrive, the one that doesn’t seem to stay quite long enough – the one you want to overstay their welcome but never quite seems to.  Maybe that’s why you miss them more than the others – they know how to quietly arrive with little fanfare and how to suddenly depart unannounced, leaving you wanting just one more day with them; one more quiet morning sharing stories and listening to each other’s silence.

So it’s time for boxes of ripening tomatoes, for back to school shopping, for school pictures and timetables, hockey registration and football practices, earlier bedtimes and fewer hours of sunlight.  Cooler evenings and warmer clothes, thicker blankets and heated floors, comfort foods and community halls.  The cats are getting restless – it’s time to shift again.

The cats, the Boy, the seasons.  Constantly changing, constantly moving forward, constantly welcome. It’s not the change that brings the uncertainty; it’s the longing to not let go of the past that creates the fear of the future.  We need to be mindful that it has always worked out just fine before, there’s no need to think otherwise looking ahead – so embrace the change, accept the reality and enjoy the moments as they unfold around you.  Those moments are what makes your life.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Hey.  How have you been?  I know, I know, it’s been too long, we’ve managed to let life get in the way again and let the important things slide.  We keep doing that, taking the other for granted when things become hurried and frantic and you can’t tell up from down or night from day – hell, who are we kidding, it can happen even if it’s a perfectly quiet Sunday morning on the deck listening to the birds and enjoying that first cup of coffee watching the sun wake up the sky.  We’re lazy and we know it.  The things that keep us grounded the most are the ones we allow to shift out of focus on a regular basis until such time as we stop long enough to notice what’s missing.

It’s still warm, too warm for us up here, and I know you have it worse, but we were never meant to live with the AC running 24/7 – that’s not healthy and I don’t know how you do it.  I need my window open at night to sleep in that deep, restful sleep that has been eluding me for far too long now, and a closed up stale house just isn’t cutting it.

Yes, I know we’ve only got a few more months of this and then it’s back to the dark chill, and you know I’m perfectly fine with that.  I’ve never once said I didn’t like that.  Yes I know I complain about it once it’s here and caught us in it’s icy grasp, but deep down I still love it, and would dearly miss it if this wasn’t where we called home.

There’s comfort in those changes, a rhythm, a cadence that marks time perfectly, measuring the months while we pretend not to notice, eyes diverted while the grass grows and darkens, slows and browns, cools then stops.  It’s an assurance that things are fine the way they are, without your intervention, that nature has it all figured out and if you’d only quit trying to fool yourself, you’d see you need only to fall into step and allow it to be just the way it is.

But we’ve never really been good at that have we?

We’re fortunate to live in a time where (for most of us) opportunity and choice are almost endless, we’re god-like in every respect and ancient royalty by any measure of historical context, but we’re caught in a shift of ideology that has us anxious and fearful of losing everything we have.  Sounds like the same issues historical royalty faced too, but ours is ingrained into our being now even the poorest among us expect things to be a certain way, the threshold higher than at any time before, the dream just beyond our grasp. 

Few though recognize the reality, which is not new, only magnified by the unlimited amount of information we have at our disposal through which to shift to find it.  It was easier to remain ignorant when information was more tightly controlled by the ruling classes of Church and State, easier too to be led and controlled, and don’t think that lesson has been lost on those who seek to gain at the expense of others.  Dumb it down and keep them numb and the world is your oyster.

We have only ourselves to blame – seeking refuge from our daily stresses in mindless fluff and pointless pastimes, allowing others to carry the load and do the heavy lifting, preferring to sit and rest a spell, thinking we’ll catch up and help out when we’re ready.  But if we can’t even make time for the ones closest to us, the ones who mean the most, what makes us think we’ll make any time for issues that might not concern us presently but will surely impact us later?  We’ve been conditioned to live in the here and now, and that’s exactly where we’ll be damned.

But how do you balance the here and now acceptance of allowing things to be the way they are naturally with attempting to provide guidance and leadership for a future course through unknown waters?  The two seem directly opposed. Perhaps within each is the solution to the other – a measured allowance of latitude within the wheel to wander across the waves while we occasionally scan the horizon for perils and obstacles?  Except that it was far easier to spot the hazards when you were alone at sea as opposed to traversing the woodlands at high speed where both the forest and trees look identical.

Perhaps that’s where the change of season comes in, clearing the forest of the leafy cover come fall, allowing more light to filter through until we’re uncovered and bare, able to see great distances now in the cooler air, poised to take advantage of the clarity.  And with calculated decisions made, we continue on back into spring, where the green returns and multiplies soon to provide us with much needed shade to hide us from the midsummer’s sun.  We slow our pace somewhat in the heat but soldier on, the rich bounty of the coming harvest steering us forward, waiting to replenish our bodies and souls.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose…

Words to ponder this morning before that dark, oppressive heat settles in for another day.  And maybe our routine of finding and losing each other again is just the way it is meant to be. 

Maybe, but I’d prefer to keep the losing part to a minimum.

Disillusioned Acorns

It’s July, it’s hot out there, has been for some time now – not as hot of course as a little further south of us – but hot nonetheless, and throw in that humidity and I don’t care where you are from, it’s not pleasant out there.  It’s sticky and muggy and then the sun rises higher in the sky and we bake, and scorch and we take it personally. 

We’re fortunate – we have air conditioning – I feel for those who do not, or the elderly or shut-ins who have no real means to escape from the heat, and I feel for the pets that seek shade and water and a cool place to lie down and hide from the daytime.  It’s funny; we long for summer during those cold, dark days in winter when we’d give almost everything to wear shorts outside – but now that it’s here we’re struggling to keep a stiff lip and say nothing, content to enjoy this hell we’ve longed for, despite the sweat and sun-stroke and the stale conditioned air.

Its July and that means I’m bach-ing it.  The family off back home helping with the annual garage sale and the gardening and maintenance around the house that is becoming more and more work for an ever aging parent – a reality that in and of itself is causing some conflict and stress between mother and daughter, and when you add a grandson who is practically grown even though his birth certificate says he’s only 13, and a grandmother who thinks he should be entitled to laze around and enjoy his summer vacation while his mother feels she is the one expected to do most of the heavy lifting… well, you can see I’m quite happy to be home alone.

And I would normally say I am, happy to be here that is, except I’m not.  I’m lost if truth be told, and I think I have been for some time.  I have no drive, no motivation, and projects started earlier that once held my attention and desire to complete with care and concern just sit there and wait.  Wait for me to return.  But I didn’t know I had left.  No, that’s not true, I knew I was slowly leaving and I blame the meds we’ve be using to try and stop or lessen the migraines, the ones that seemed to be helping until they weren’t any longer, at which point we upped the dose to try and slow the 2 or 3 episodes a week over 3 weeks to something more human.  But that just served to catapult me into some upper level of lethargy from which I have yet to return.

Blame is an easy game.  It takes the onus off you and shifts it to whatever is handy and able to be pointed at with conviction and purpose.  All the better if that thing is unable to defend itself or point back at you – if it can’t protest, it must be guilty.  But the truth is that blame is just an excuse.  Blame has a negative connotation, where a sense of moral judgment is attached, and accepting blame seems to also warrant some degree of shame or guilt, and thus blame serves to devalue the person or persons responsible for whatever wrong has been attributed to them.  Since the meds can’t feel shame or devaluation, they are a pretty easy target at which for me to point and shoot.

But I know better.  The meds have certainly exposed the conditions to a greater degree than before, but they are not the sole cause for my malaise.  The fact is I’m tired.  And some days I feel more tired than others, and even on my best days this last while it seems I’m still a pretty good amount of tired.

Tired of what you ask?  Everything.  And nothing.  Doesn’t matter which, some days they are the same.  Or so it seems.  I’m just tired of the daily routines and pressures that go along with them and tired of the seemingly lack of progress in so many areas and directions around me at the same time.  Maybe I’m getting older and taking stock more honestly about what I see.  Maybe I’m realizing things aren’t what I thought they would be, certain they should be, believed they had to be – than what they are.

It’s an overwhelming sense of inner conflict that I can’t subdue.  I know I can be and do more than I am, give and contribute more meaningfully in many areas and ways, and yet I feel stuck; frozen; stationary when I feel like I should be moving, in any direction. Like I’m no longer a human ‘be’ing and just a human have-ing and do-ing.

In some ways I think I’ve forgotten what my true human nature is, what it means to be human at its very basic level.  An acorn doesn’t have that issue – it falls to the ground one day and does acorn things, waiting until conditions are right for it to begin to change and become what it has always been intended to be: an oak. 

But it doesn’t just pop open and spring into a full-grown oak tree just like that. No, it happens very gradually, like some film on photosynthesis back in 7^th grade science class (yes kids, I said film, not video – Google it) where the time lapse speeds up the painfully slow process and you watch the seed sprout up and grow toward the sky, it’s tender shoot twisting and turning and it’s first leaves curling and bending as it sprouts ever upward.  Roots break downward at the same time, capturing a foothold in the earth and nutrient-rich soil below.  Together the roots and shoots provide the nourishment and means for the acorn to develop slowly into a sapling, and with the passage of many years, into the hardy, knurled-barked, mature oak, where it takes it’s place in the cycle of life and lives in balance and harmony with it’s surroundings.

That’s acorn nature, but what of human nature?  What are we destined to become when our roots take hold and we’ve grown upwards and become more hardy and mature and taken our place in the cycle of life?  Are we merely here to serve as consumers of every commodity and product shoved in front of our faces? Are we providers too? If so, then of what? Do we each have different natures inherent in our inner coding, natures that direct each one of us differently towards our fates? Do we have common attributes together all of us, and together with all other living things?

I’m finding it harder each day to believe my nature is to wake every morning and manage other people’s routines and processes, working together as a group for a common goal, motivated more by survival and less by purpose, a thoughtless bunch of labour inputs in some economic model of commercialism…

There must be something more.

And I use to feel it, whatever it was, that sense of guidance and purpose, a right-ness of time and place and knowing I was where I was meant to be. But now I’m not so sure anymore.  And with that uncertainty comes my sense of being lost. Listless.  Adrift on the waves of time.

I say I blame the meds, but I know that’s not the case.  That’s just an easy way out of trying to settle things down around me or maybe overturn them completely.   And as much as I like to believe I have things more or less sorted out most of the time, these days I’m not willing to place any bets.  What I’m seeing these days is that I’m longing to just be, and stop having and doing so much, but not sure how that works or whether we can right the ship and chart a course in that direction – if only I had a compass with that heading.

I’m tired.  It’s July.  It’s hot.  What I wouldn’t give for some quiet peace of mind and shade under that oak tree…

The Growing Season

It’s dark now; the day over for most, ending for many, another set to arrive before we’re ready.  Chance of showers overnight, they say, fingers crossed we don’t find ourselves in the presence of another of those glorious spring storms like we did last Friday evening – the kind where the skies grow eerily quiet and still, then suddenly erupt in a rage of wind and downpour.  The kind that wash away hours of hard work and carefully planted lawn seed and deposit both in the gutter at the end of the driveway and down the street.

But that’s how it works.  You get a beautifully hot, summer day over May long-weekend and you’re liable to pay for it with a thunderstorm – nature’s way of keeping the balance.  Mother Nature also likes to remind you of how short your memory is too, especially on those too-early, hot, summer days that arrive in May and you forget to consider sunscreen while you’re raking and seeding your renewed front lawn…

We know better.  And Mother Nature knows we know better too – that’s why she keeps throwing those same lessons at us over and over and over again.  She’s just proving a point.

School’s beginning to end for many of my friends to the south, though our kids still have a month and a bit left on their sentences before the educational warden grants them parole.  It’s the season of outdoor education now, with field days and track meets and trips to the park for the youngest ones, for dancing and fun in the warm weather.  The grade 8 classes are planning their ‘graduation’ farewells before leaving middle school behind for good and entering the hallways of high school for the first time this fall.

Call me old fashioned, but I just don’t understand the pomp and ceremony of moving from one grade into another – this is how it is supposed to work kids.  You don’t need a dinner and dance and grad photos to mark the occasion – you save that for the end of high school when many will exit the halls of education never to return, and those that choose to continue their pursuit of knowledge will find themselves thrust into a world for which they may not be prepared.   This is just the end of the eighth grade; four more to go until you’ve accomplished something. 

But still, there they are, the 13 and 14 year olds, too young to be adults, and too old to be kids, yet wanting both at the same time.  The girls have chosen their gowns and corsages, hoping, longing, needing to be asked to the dance by the cute object of their wistful affection; he’s oblivious to them of course, a pack animal coming into his own, surrounded by a gang of similar-minded, young man-boys, their thoughts alternating constantly between music, video games, sports and girls, caught in a dizzying whirl of adolescent inattention.  All of them squarely in the sights of life’s best and worst times.

But we’ve made them this way, all of us: parents and teachers and the media and society in general.  We’ve coddled them, given them false hopes and empty, hollow promises when what they needed to learn were some harsh, hard realities.  The real world doesn’t reward mediocrity, it’s an unfair collection of lessons and suffering, survived by those that can ride the waves and chart a course despite the storms and bad weather.  It offers riches and joy and prosperity to those willing to seek them – in whatever form they take – but it just doesn’t hand them over because you managed to stumble across them.  Hard work and doing what is required to get the job done aren’t necessarily for the faint of heart, but they shouldn’t be shied away from or looked down upon, and they certainly shouldn’t be concepts foreign to our children, lest we want to keep housing them and feeding them until they turn forty…

Kids aren’t stupid, they understand the game of life, and they play a mean hand when forced.  The trouble is not enough of us are forcing them to play those hands.  Lavish celebrations for passing grade 8? Please. I’m surprised we aren’t paying them for test scores.  I understand wanting to celebrate the end of that portion of your school life but let’s keep things in perspective, shall we?  Why do we feel the need to rush the adult world on them?  I know they want to become a part of that world as quickly as they can, God knows the media thrives on feeding them images and stereotypes of adult needs and wants and desires, but that’s no excuse. 

As parents we want to keep our children safe and free from harm and pain if we can – that’s the job and responsibility we signed up for.  But we were also charged with shaping them into productive members of society, who will be able to think and act for themselves, guided by principles of fairness and empathy, respect and responsibility.  And part of that guidance means letting them fall every now and then so they can learn to get back up on their own.  We do it when we teach them to ride a bicycle – we don’t wrap them in bubble wrap and pillows and send them off to wobble down the street without training wheels – no, we watch their progress and remove those wheels when they demonstrate the right amount of skill and aptitude, then run along side guiding the seat, providing just enough trust and encouragement to keep them pedaling forward, and then we slowly let go…

They will fall.  They may get hurt.  But they will learn to ride.  And they will be successful at it.  It’s the same with life.  Kids need to fall, they need to get hurt, and they need to learn from their mistakes.  But they need those things in a constructive framework that supports their growth and development, from everyone who has a share at stake in their final outcome – parents, teachers, society at large, all of us.

Don’t sweet-talk your child – they can see right through that, and they will take advantage of it and ride that wave as long as it keeps cresting.  And the further they float down stream, the harder it becomes to pull them back to this side of shore.  Don’t pander to them in the name of safety and dangerous, scary worlds – that’s fear based guidance and it has never developed anything except more fear.  You reap what you sow.  So why not sow some kindness and attention and respect and honesty.  You owe them at much.

Sometimes you may have to scrape those seeds off the neighbor’s driveway and put them back where they belong, where they can grow into healthy, strong, shoots, under your watchful, caring eyes.  Is it the easy way? Hell no.  But it’s doing what is required to get the job done.  Enjoy the grade eight graduation dinners and dances, celebrate the fact that your children are growing up, but let’s not forget the lessons we’ve known all along, though we seem to keep forgetting again and again. 

Nature loves balance; kids need to fall, and I need to remember sunscreen. 

Crumbling Walls

The sun is slow to rise this morning, yawning as it stretches and twists and turns to loosen itself up for another full day, the morning clouds wispy and sparse, drops of dew collected on blades of grass keep the lawns cool and wet to the touch.  The birds are still early morning active – not having sat down for their ritual rest yet – the red squirrels dance in the branches overhead, the trees finally greening up nicely.

It’s a perfect late spring morning, I’m up early to take advantage of what is presented each day but missed in favor of the blankets and pillows: the quiet solitude of the back yard, a city yet to emerge from its restful slumber, the beginnings of another day.  In the distances a car engine starts and a fan belt squeals until it finds its rhythm, an early riser off to work, about to join an ever-increasing morning rush.  The paper has already been dissected and parsed, a cup of coffee keeps me company, and I wonder what the day will hold.

The remainder of the 3 yards of topsoil sits waiting under a blue tarp on the driveway – half of the original delivery has been shoveled and spread, raked and rolled, seeded and watered – the front yard once again resembling itself, though it sits reduced in size somewhat because of the relocated driveway. I finally had the last of the stone blocks removed this week, they sat there at the curb all winter, waiting to be salvaged and repurposed, but no takers could be found, and Monday they met their next fate and were loaded into a trailer and hauled off to be dumped as fill. 

Quarried fifty some years ago they adorned our home’s façade until last fall, when I chiseled and hammered them loose and carted them away from the site and neatly arranged them in squareish piles by the new driveway.  Our new plans call for a different direction in exterior finishes, perhaps a cultured man-made stone in places, and with that the old stone with its fractures and fossils became obsolete.

As I raked and leveled the ground where the stones had been stacked I thought about the choices we make on a regular basis, design and décor choices, purchasing habits and tastes, updates and redo’s.  We are an ever-changing people wanting ever-current surroundings, with the latest technology, the newest model of car, the trending social media stories, and the next big app.  We wonder about our children’s ability to read and write with any fluency given their seemingly innate abilities on tiny touch screens and miniscule keypads, banging out 140 character updates to an increasingly self-obsessed society of online friends, words mangled into cryptic shortcuts for those pressed for time and attention.

The local school board complains the grade 8 math scores are lower than low, the board members and Education Minister moan and wail about decreased ability and functional cognition of basic facts, afraid we’re turning out graduates who can’t balance their cheque-books – if those still exist. But it seems the real objective is not to be better for the sake of the students so much as to not be behind the pack of peers tested. Even at that level the concern is about the comparison to others, not the comparison to self.  Where do we rank? Instead of Are they learning the skills they require?

To my untrained eye it seems we’ve grown as a society into something we didn’t wish to be. 40 is the new 20, and we’re being led by business and governments with no perspective and less maturity than ever before.  Facebook’s IPO is set to launch this morning to the tune of $18 Billion. Not bad for a company formed only a few years ago by a college kid looking to more easily hook-up, doubtful he was concerned about grade 8 math scores or gave any thought as to how his creation would serve society.   But there they are this morning, the media story of the day, people turning over fortunes to them to buy a piece of the action, another 3 card Monte, pulled off in a boardroom and not on a street corner.

Maybe I’m just getting older and more cynical of a world I still don’t understand.  I’m not sure.  As I leaned on my rake and chatted with my elder neighbor from across the street, I asked him if he was staying out of trouble but I already knew the answer – he was far too busy to be in any trouble, bowling and soccer and curling and more social engagements than you would have thought possible to cram into a weekly schedule.  He didn’t need a computer to connect with his world, he was too busy being a part of it.  He congratulated me on the addition and said he was impressed how well it fit in to the existing look and feel of the street; I thanked him for the compliment and went back to the raking.

I looked once more at the house and thought about the new stonework we would be putting up – man-made to look like the real thing, but lighter and less expensive, with no long-term knowledge of how well it will serve its purpose.  And then I wondered about the Facebook IPO and those math scores and texting and Twitter.  Maybe a return to real stone is the right choice for my future…

April Showers

A cool quiet start to another Sunday, this one the final one of April, the smell of rain in the air, lingering, waiting, allowing the morning’s rituals to begin without interruption.  There goes the family from down the street, off to their regular Sunday service, a tradition that is slowly dying a lonely death; it’s comfort and lessons and sense of community a thing of the past.  The sparrows, a mated pair, dance along the ground in front of the house, picking through bits of sand and gravel together, singing happy songs to one another as they pick the sidewalk clean.  The Robins, Mr and Mrs have chosen our little spruce tree out front as the suitable kind of tree for a nest, and have been spotted occasionally this week pushing bits of string and dry grasses into a shrouded, secluded, section of spruce boughs, safe from the cats, getting ready for the arrival of offspring. 

The blue-jay is breaking the quiet now with his shrieking call, and the cat who can’t decide if he wants in or out or both, is crying to be let back in, having just wanted out, presumably to trample the sprouting shoots in the back flower garden and enrich the soil with his own unique fertilizer.  The kids from down the street are playing in their back yard, and much like the cat, are sounding like they don’t know on which side of the door they’d prefer to be.

At least my coffee is safe and provides enough reassurance to see me through the beginnings of the day.  The end of April is a mixed bag for me, taxes are due, a birthday awaits, and as has been the case for the past few years, a headache calls and wants to keep me company.  A skeptic might say the three are related, and might even throw in the season’s uncertain weather as a factor for my casually caustic mood, with it’s shorter than normal fuse and nerves more closer to the surface. Maybe.  But I’m still in the mood to disagree regardless, and know its best to keep my distance lest I find myself in the midst of an argument I don’t want any part of, but with a disposition that wills me to win.

I refer to the episodes as headaches, but that’s entirely incorrect, as it would suggest the only manifestation is some head-related pain, and would that it were so, but no, its an entire body-mind affliction – like all ailments are though we choose to focus on the most dominant symptom – and I’m learning to recognize the changes and though so far I have been powerless to prevent them from assembling into a much larger force, I am comforted in the knowledge that by being present in the moment and conscious of the process as it evolves, my being aware of the altered states allows me to lessen their effect somewhat.

Minor depression-like symptoms coupled with feelings of pressure in the head and facial region, acute headache on one side or the other, usually the left, unless preceded by visual aura which almost exclusively affects the left field of vision but carries a right-sided pain.  Days before my neck will ache deeply into my spine, and you’ll find me tilting my head from side to side, slowly stretching to relieve the tensioned spring that runs from the top of my head to the middle of my back.  Then come the carb and salt cravings, like some bovine-induced spirit, I seek starchy foods and snacks to placate my mood and my uneasiness.  Keep an eye on the ego during this stage, as it’s apt to want to drive the emotional bus for a few days, self-centered analysis of issues, and an overwhelming inward focus dominate my thinking which will be cloudy to a degree, the ability to concentrate on fine details gets lost in the shifting priorities of self and connection to others.  And once that’s set in, then the pain builds and the eyes become light sensitive; all sensory inputs are overloaded really, smells induce aversion, and sounds, while not amplified, seem to linger longer in my head, muddying into a ringing of sorts, a frequency high enough to cause discomfort should I focus on it, but low enough to become lost in the mix.

I think I would be able to handle that combination on its own, but fate prefers to throw me a larger than fair share of lack of motivation along with a reduced capacity for feeling joy or happiness beyond not feeling pain, and that pushes me over an edge where I stay for awhile, stumbling blindly through the mess my mind-body has created, waiting for the curtains to be pulled back again (as long as my eyes can tolerate it) until things clear again and life returns to its wonderfully simple ways.

Disease? Sickness? Mental defect? Disorder?

No, its all part of how I’m wired.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been like this since day one, though I’ve had ups and downs through the years, where parts of the whole affliction were missing altogether, or others much more dominant than the rest, and able to be passed off as something else, treated as symptoms of something altogether unrelated, calmed by medicated shrapnel that happened to hit on the way by.  Moody and misunderstood; quiet and distant, brooding and seemingly solemn, preferring to thrive inwardly, letting few inside; that’s how it would read to an outsider, though the reality, as always, is something entirely different.

No, you’re right, I don’t get too excited at life’s events – unless I’m there in that darkened state, when I’m more apt to respond with something cutting and sharp, the attacking protection of a wounded animal – nor do I get too low, preferring to keep an even keel, riding the waves for what they are, returning to a fairly normal emotional baseline as soon as possible, but able to find nourishment and happiness in even the smallest detail, the tiniest speck of light, trying to carry those with me for the inevitable times when I’ll need them again, waiting it out.

The sparrows are still singing, and its getting cooler out there, as is my coffee, the Robins are puffing up as they sit on the wires, the rain clouds are slowly settling in.  Luckily for me my clouds are finally parting, though it may be a few days until I get that comforting feeling of community back where it belongs. I’ll just stand back awhile and let this storm roll through, then we’ll see what begins to blossom afterward.  After all, April showers bring May flowers, right?