Hands

What I would do in retirement never really worried me.  I don't bore easily.  Besides, I had the list of things I didn't have time for while I was teaching, raising my children, and caring for my parents.  Case in point:  extend my writing beyond professional prose.  As you've noticed, I've been experimenting with various forms.  Some of these experiments have ended up in this space.

Today is another example.  Months ago, I wrote about hands in response to a prompt.  This week, looking through my writer's notebook, I reread that piece and wondered what I could do with it.  Turns out, it can be a poem.  While mulling over the shape, I recalled a rhyme I read to the children when they were small.  Why I associated that particular rhyme to this subject remains a mystery. You will recognize the inspiration.

Hands

These are the hands that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the wrists, thin and bony,

                                    that produce the octaves

                                    that direct the choirs

                                    that open the jars

                                    that stir the birthday cakes

                                    that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the the palms, broad and tough,

that splashed babies in the bath

                                    that smooth sheets and tablecloths

                                    that gauged fevered foreheads

                                    that cupped Maman’s last luminous moment

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the fingers, long and thin,

that thread the needles

                                    that stitch the sequins

                                    that practice the scales

                                    that create the sounds

                                    that weave the words

                                    that place the dinner settings

                                    that season the dishes

                                    that wear the rings

                                    that extend the palms

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the nails,  cut to the quick,

                                    that bear the stress

                                    that disfigure the fingers

                                    that extend the palms

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the cuticles, gnawed and pulled,

                                    that attest to anxiety

                                    that witness deliberation

                                    that border the nails

                                    that disfigure the fingers

                                    that extend the palms

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the thumbs, scratched and worn,

                                    that decorate the pies

                                    that deal the cribbage hands

                                    that rub the spots

                                    that direct the comments pen

                                    that resemble the cuticles           

                                    that border the nails

                                    that disfigure the fingers

                                    that extend the palms

                                    that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the hands, veined and splotchy,

                                    that tell my story

                                    of cradling fragile hearts.

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

Coincidence

Fifteen minutes into my thirty minute drive to school that June morning the week after my father’s funeral in 2011,  I can visualize the exact location of my school keys.  They are nestled in the pocket of my purse.  Minor detail--it's the purse on the shelf in my home office.  Not the one beside me in the car.  What will I do?  Will anyone be at school at 7 :30 a.m.?  How can I compact my early moning to-do list into whatever time becomes available?  I visualize myself circling the school, looking for a light or a shadow in any room, banging on the window in the desperate hope that someone will hear me.  Ugly.

Turning into the school access road, I am philosophical.  Whatever.  I’ve invested the last half of the trip fleshing out contingency plans.  I’ll make it work.  Just then, passing the door near my classroom on my way to my parking spot, I notice something peculiar.  The door does not seem to be flush with the outside wall.  In fact, it seems ajar.  Is it possible?  Could the door not have locked properly when the last person entered or left?  That never happens.  I unload, lock the car, and amble up the walkway, eyes trained on the door.  Well.  It’s not closed!!  I giggle.  

I’m in the school.  I’ve sumounted the most difficult hurdle.  Surely, now I’ll be able to find someone with keys to open the classroom.  Later, the office will lend me a set for the day.  Only a few steps into the dark hallway, I notice light coming from my classroom.  That’s impossible.  I know I shut the lights the night before.  No, it’s really true.  Not only is there light—the door is open, and the maintenance staff is wiping the tables and sweeping the floor.  I can't remember that ever happening before in this school. I can barely speak.  So, I’m in, and I’m ready to go.

The disbelief carves a smile on my face which nothing the day might bring will be able to crack.  I think of my father.  I can't help looked around the room and say, "Thank you."   I feel his caress, his reassurance,  even his gratitude for the time we shared before he died.

Inexplicable confluences of circumstance dot my life.  After 40 years, I am reunited with a woman with whom I went to high school.  She moved to a community near mine; I was working with her sister at the time; we both love to do liturgical music.  Then,  comparing our children’s birth dates one day, a friend of mine and I  are amazed to learn that our daughters were born hours apart the Christmas of 1983 (hers on Christmas Eve, and mine on Christmas Day), and that our youngest children, both sons, were born in March of 1989.  Another head-spinner.

Stories abound.  At Christmas Eve last year, we await the beginning the Midnight Mass at our daughter’s church.  Nostalgic at the memory of  commemorating her Christmas birthday with "Happy Birthday" at the end of so many midnight liturgies in our home church, I remind her that we won’t be able to do that this year.  We settle in to imbibe every molecule of the characteristic joy of liturgy at Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Winnipeg.    Father Kevin has just proclaimed, "The mass is ended," and wished everyone a joyous Christmas.  The music director steps up to the microphone.  Instead of the recessional hymn, he announces that it is Fr. Kevin’s birthday.  The entire congregation belts out "Happy Birthday."  Of course, we sing to Dominique as well, and the tradition of the Happy Birthday after Midnight Mass continues.  One for the books.

Then, just the other day, checking email, I see that the mineral makeup I use is on sale.  Good time, then, to stock up, and to take advantage of sales on a few other items as well.  Not ten minutes later, I drop the small terra cotta jar of my current supply on the bathroom sink.  It splits, spilling the precious contents.  I cannnot believe I have done this.  With a small spoon pilfered from the kitchen, I scoop up what’s still dry like gold dust, and preserve it in a plastic container.  As I wipe the orange stain from the sink, the vanity, and the floor, I mull over yet another concours de circonstance, as we say in French.  Only this time, it’s not heureux.

At one time in my life, I would have looked for the mystical  in these occurrences.   Now, three weeks shy of my sixtieth birthday, mystery has supplanted mysticism.  In ways I can never understand, I am spared stress when I can least manage it; I am reunited with people I never expected to see again; my life parallels that of a stranger who later becomes a close friend; traditions echo in foreign places; bizarre coïncidences give pause.  I revel in awe, freeze-frame the moment, and try to be grateful for the experience.  I have come to terms with mystery, I think.

Solstice

At the beginning of the end of my day, I press the Power button on the car, strap myself in, and turn on The Afternoon Edition.  I’m making the right turn out of the office parking lot when I hear Craig Leiderhouse talk about flooding in southern Alberta.  Massive amounts of rain in the last week, especially, have swelled the Bow and Elbow Rivers.

How bad can it be, I wonder?  I listen, incredulous, as reporter David Fraser describes his escape from his stalled car in High River, just before the water swept it away.

"How long between first seeing the water on the street and leaving the car?" Leiderhouse asks.

"About a minute," Fraser answers.  He waded in the water with the salvaged backpack, moving toward the police car lights and safety.   Calgary is affected, too, Leiderhouse adds, and evacuation orders will be announced very soon.

I drive on autopilot the rest of the way home.  Our son and his wife live in the far northwest, in the hills, so neither their personal safety, nor their home, is threatened.  However, flooding could complicate the transfer of a second property, this one a few blocks from the Elbow River.   That was yesterday.  Today, Sunnyside is under water.

Summer Solstice is not supposed to be like this.   The longest day of the year on the prairies is for sittting outside on the patio, preferably with a carousel of  friends and neighbors, over a mug of beer, a glass of wine, chips and dip, cheese and crackers, and whatever dessert lurks in the recesses of a freezer (usually Gloria’s).  The official beginning of summer means the stars poke through the purple sky at ten o’clock, a fire interjects in the conversation, constellations of lights in the trees bewitch the yard, and the sentinel Narnia lamp monitors the goings-on.

Instead, summer solstice this year means trauma, loss, and rebuilding for people in southern Alberta, and worry and anxiety for those elsewhere connected to them.  For many, life has exploded.    Still, in that turbulence, this summer solstice offers the opportunity for generosity, co-operation, resilience, and equanimity, for grace under pressure.   An end ushers in a beginning,  maybe of living in the moment, conscious of life’s fragility and ephemerality. 

Perception

I notice her, from the piano,

kneeling, head bowed, eyes closed,

fingers interlaced with beads,

lips forming the repetitive prayers of the Rosary.

She mouths the last ‘Amen’ after

the last prayer after

the last ‘Glory Be to God’ after

the last decade of the

last Sorrowful Mystery

of this Rosary before mass.

During my pan of the congregation

as I announce a run-through of new music,

her eyes lazer mine.

Her head shakes from side to side, and

her mouth contorts into a No!

I hesitate in my introduction,

smile to myself so I won’t blanch.

I feel taisered.

Five decades, twenty minutes,

erased

in one primal gesture.

Wait—a companion has emerged beside her,

engaged in a quite different conversation,

surely.

Not about me at all, then.

That must be it.

Fatherhood

"I’m not biking any more."  He meant it, too.  Five-year old Daniel was tuckered out. 

"Looks like we’ve found the trail head.  Let’s rest for a while, and then we’ll continue," his father said.

I lifted Daniel’s two-year-old sister from her seat on the back of my bicycle, and we set the bikes down.

"No.  I’m not biking any more," he repeated, as he collapsed on a nearby log.

We had set out from our campsite that morning to bike along a trail that seemed manageable, according to the park map.  Finding the actual trail head, however, had proved a time-consuming challenge, and we had already been biking for more than an hour.  No wonder Daniel was tired.  As we munched on granola bars and Rice Krispie cake,  and passed around the juice boxes, we analyzed our options.  Clearly, we would not be doing the trail today.  The more problematic question was, How were we going to get back to the campsite?  I didn’t like the movie of a long trip back with a recalcitrant rider that was playing in my head .   How far had we come, anyway?

"I could bike back alone, and come back and pick you up with the car," he suggested.  Well, yes you could, but that might be a long wait out here alone with two small children.  We continued to munch and sip.

"Hey, Daniel,"  Elmer said.  "See that post over there?"  The post was maybe ten feet away.

"Yeah."

"Do you think you could bike to the post?"

 

"Oh, sure."   Daniel climbed on his bike, rode to the post, and rested.

"Would you like some more juice, Daniel?"

"No thanks.  I’m done."   In more ways than one, I thought.

"I bet you’re too tired to ride to that tree down the road,"  Elmer ventured.

"Oh, no I’m not,"  Daniel assured him.  "Watch."

Off he went.  Right to the tree.  Elmer followed him.  I strapped little sister back into her seat, and joined them.

Now, we had a strategy, and we leap-frogged back to the campsite, from a tree to a cairn twenty feet away, to a rock thirty feet away, to a sign forty feet away, all the way home.  We sputtered back to the trailer, with the perfume of the pines, the birds’ chatter, and a tail wind for encouragement.

I thought of that summer morning so long ago all day yesterday, Father’s Day, as I reflected on my husband’s fatherhood.   Already thirty-five when Daniel was born, he didn’t know what to do with a baby—the hair pulling, the collic, the spitting up, the diapers.  But give him a child that could walk and talk, and he came into his own.

As soon as the children could talk, he recorded long conversations with them about tea parties, Lego constructions, bath time, and books.  What have come to be known as the "Voices Tapes" now preserve a three-year-old voice reading, "I is for Iguana, impala, ibex, and ibis,"  or  "How many trucks can a tow-truck tow.  One, two, three, four, I don’t know."

He passed on to them his love of gadgets and everything electronic.  They played Birthday Cake and Lemonade Stand on an Apple 2e, and operated VCRs and turntables before they were four. 

He created as many experiences for them as he could.  He registered them in skiing lessons, even though it meant heading out early Sunday morning when he had just returned from playing at a dance a few hours earlier.  He coached baseball and soccer, until we realized that, if we were glad when the games were rained out, maybe baseball and soccer weren’t our collective thing.  He bought a boat and some tubes, and they learned the thrill of water sports and time at the lake with friends.  We traveled.  They learned to play polkas, old-time waltzes, and Latin tunes, and to dance to them, too.

Mostly, though, he respected their ability to make sound decisions, and insisted that they have practice doing that before leaving home.  Serious decisions, not artificial, concocted decisions designed for rehearsal.  Decisions with consequences.  Never a Net nanny in our home.  "They have to deal with the Internet when we won’t be there—they need to start now," he maintained.  Whereas I would have tended toward protection and supervision, he favored discussion and openness. 

I am so grateful for the life lessons taught through the actions more than the words of a good father.  Grateful, too, for the lessons the children have not yet mastered; they still don’t track important events by the make of car they were driving at the time.

Voices

Not a murmur, not a peep, not even a whisper.  Just silence.  Where was my inner voice as I pressed the off button on my computer despite the screen advisory.   Please do not shut down your computer, it warned.   Installing update 1 of 12. 

Great, I thought.   The computer picks this very moment to install updates.  Doesn’t it know that I have a meeting five minutes away in eight minutes?  I can’t wait for updates.  I pressed the off button, slid the laptop into my bag, and left, the little voice still mute.

Not until the blue screen appeared fifteen minutes later as I tried to boot up in preparation for the meeting did I have any idea something might be wrong.  Once I’d followed the prompts in a fruitless cycle of non-repair, I knew I had to bite the bullet.   The little voice chose that moment to awaken.   "Confess your sin to iT," it advised.

Like just about all tech support people I have ever consulted, our iT guys communicated factual information without judgment.  They told me interrupting update installments wasn’t a good thing to do.  That much I had now figured out.   

"How much will I lose?"  I asked, thinking of the documents I have started saving on the desktop to make working from home easier.  I wasn’t worried about the stuff on the office server.

"Hard to say," they answered.  "Maybe nothing."  Really?  In my mind’s eye, I had been matching the critical desktop files to copies I had elsewhere.  I thought I was probably good except for two hours’ worth of work the day before.

"This won’t be a quick fix," they continued.  No doubt.  For the first time, I cringed. A couple of weeks?

"Define a quick fix."

"Well, it will be longer than ten minutes."  I would be happy with any fix, really, no matter how long.  So, this was no surprise.

'It might take two hours."  Just two hours?  Good news, in my world.

"Oh, that’s nothing," I said, relieved.

"You must have a lot of confidence in us," they concluded.  Yep.  If anyone could bail me out of this one, they could.

They picked up the computer, and, later in the afternoon, they had recovered all my files.  A-l-l my files, including the one I was sure was a goner.

"That was two hours of our afternoon, Yvette."

"Two hours of both your afternoons?"

I heard the little voice this time.  "Feel badly, Yvette."

I did and I didn’t.  I felt very badly that they lost time because of my indiscretion.   They have enough on their plates without rescuing someone whose little voice went to sleep.  On the other hand, I was quite proud of myself.   My other little voice—the self-deprecating, belittling, and chastising voice, remained silent, too.  I didn’t feel any particular dread; I didn’t panic.  No cold sweat.  No lead ball in the stomach.  No preoccupation that precluded work.  I just followed the steps, ready to manage whatever would happen. 

This is my older self reacting, diametrically opposed to my young and younger self.  It was philosophical; it envisioned Solitary Me; it remained balanced.  Instead of creating rants, it wrote poetry in the style of William Carlos Williams:

so much depends

upon

two iT guys

restoring

a laptop complaining

about update interruption

so much depends

upon

calm

trust

philosophy

in the face of

a laptop’s revenge

after update interruption

My little voice piped up again.  "Those guys invested a good part of their afternoon for you, Yvette.  Don’t just say thank you.  Show thank you."

Believe me,  I listened.

Linchpins

Over the weekend, I read An Abundance of Katherines and The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, two books perched atop my reading list since February when I finished Looking For Alaska.  Neither disappointed.

In The Fault In Our Stars, Green’s heroine, Hazel, cites the American poet William Carlos Williams:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Hazel tries her hand at a few imitations.  I thought I would try mine, too.  The best of my attempts:

so much depends

upon

a Yes!

with details to

come later

so much depends

upon

participants

thrown into the deep end

being able to swim

so much depends

upon

a text message

that reads,

"Home"

so much depends

upon

openness

to ideas in heaven and earth

not dreamt of in

our philosophy

so much depends

upon

egos

shed at the door

like winter clothes

Grandfathers

How long did he live with the knot in his stomach?

Did he fret, preparing his tools,

half an hour before starting to build the crates?

Did dread mestastasize each day,

as he aligned the nail heads so he could work faster?

Did he have a premonition that his son, my grandfather, would never return

when he left to visit his cousin in Saskatchewan?

Where in the world was Saskatchewan?

Ridiculous, might he have said, to comfort himself? 

To reassure himself? 

To convince himself?

After all, here, in Holyoke, in 1918, they had

running water,

electricity,

sewage,

a big house, 

where they all lived together.

Did he notice the messenger stride up the walk, telegram in hand?

Did he peer over my grandmother’s shoulder as she read it?

Or did he give her some space, knowing she would confide in him?

What?  Impossible!

Sell everything, and move out West? 

What is he thinking?

Did they even ask him if he wanted to go along? 

Would he even have considered it, at 67?

How could he live without the grandkids? 

How long before the eyes dried, after they left?

Did he accompany them to the train station?

Or did they say good-bye at the house,

suspecting they would never see each other again,

my grandmother heartbroken to leave,

the grandkids wrenched from their home,

great-grandfather loathe to see them go?

What did he do to mute the silence?

He died.  

At 68.

Another telegram, another town.

Same regret, same sorrow.

Hervé

I got the call from the care home at 11 am on Thursday, June 2, 2011, just after period 2.   My father was not doing well, and I needed to come.

Papa and I at his 100th birthday celebration.

I knew it was the end.  That’s how Murphy works.   For one thing, I had decided not to drop in on him that morning, before going to work.  I had seen him three times the day before, the last at about 9 pm.  True, his mouth had looked a little contorted, but I had chalked that up to a deep sleep.   I would see him after work, and I could use the extra minutes.  For another,  I didn’t have a vehicle.  Elmer had business in the city, and we had gone in together.   For probably the only time during the six months since Papa had been hospitalized, I didn’t even think of what I would do if I needed to go home, a half-hour drive away.

I told the office I was heading home.  But I couldn’t get Elmer on the cell.  I scribbled out a few instructions for a sub who would cover the rest of the day, shoved my computer and some books into my bag, said good-bye to the students getting ready for period 3.  Still no phone contact with Elmer.  Panicked, I asked the principal if someone could drive me home.  He gave me the keys to his car.  Bless him.

Papa had just left when I got there.   The chaplain and a nurse were with him.  He was so serene lying there on the bed, still warm, looking dapper in a gray checkered shirt and burgundy sweater.   Even in death, he didn’t look 100 years old.  Death presses out the wrinkles, softens the skin to a delicate translucence,  pushes age back.  La mort rajeunit.

How could I not have been there when he died?  I collapsed on the chair beside him, took his hand, and sobbed my regret.  The nurses were so good.  "He just didn’t want you there, for his own reasons.  We see it all the time.  Families keep a vigil for weeks, 24/7, and then someone goes to the bathroom, and the loved one leaves," they comforted.   He had gotten dressed in the morning, they said, even gone to the neighborhood dining room for breakfast.   A few hours later, he told the nurse, "I’m dying."   I wanted so much to be there for him, always expected I would be, the last thing I could do for a man who had devoted his entire life to taking care of other people. 

The women left, and we were alone, Papa and I, for the last time.  His spirit filled the room, and I had time to remind him yet again of how much I loved him, and of the legacy we would carry with us forever.

Respect the power of nature.  (Hail and tornadoes means business).

Give up your dreams for those you love.  (Even if it means you won’t be a pilot).

Be innovative.  (No matter what your friends or neighbors might say.)

Read.  (like National Geographic, Popular Science, books from Catholic and science book clubs).

Take classes.  (Correspondence course assignments written out on the kitchen table, if you have to.)

Do crossword puzzles, and play cards.  (Keep French and English dictionaries on the kitchen cupboard for reference, and play cribbage and bridge at every opportunity.)

Take the time to yuck it up with friends over coffee and spirits.  (In the shop, in the field, in the kithcen, no matter.)

Savor good food and good wine and good company.  Linger over meals.   (Memories are made around the dinner table).

Eat slowly.    (Especially leaning against the wheel of the combine, in the field during harvest.)

Find out how things work.  (An internal combustion engine,  a manual transmission.)

Go to church.  (Even when it’s a beautiful harvest day, and you have acres in swaths.)

Drive a manual transmission.  (And parallel park, too, and start after being stopped on an incline.)

Do what it takes.  (Get up at 4 am, come home at midnight, fall asleep at the kitchen table, stirring your coffee with your finger, go to bed, and do it all over again, for weeks on end.)

Don from the funeral home arrived to take care of Papa.    It was still only early afternoon.   Elmer and I drove the principal’s car back to school.  I began the phone calls that marked the beginning of life without Papa.

Ledger

Life is a balance sheet.  With every decision, we  end up in the black or in the red.  Of course, we aim for the black, weighing the pros and the cons in concert with the information we have at the time, and hope for the best.   Our decisions, however, exend way beyond ordinary financial matters, like buying a house, or a car, or accepting or rejecting a position.

Everything has a price.  We pay up, whether we realize we are paying or not, and in currency much more valuable than money.   How would I reconcile the needs of my children with my need for a career, for example?  I decided to resign my position to stay home with my children full-time for a few years;  later, I returned to work only part-time.     Today, I look at my three capable adults, and at my career path, and I can say, Okay, I’m in the black.  When I decided to return to work full-time, the decision affected our younger son, who was four at the time, the most.  Today, I look at him, and think, Okay, I’m in the black.  (Hopefully, he feels the same way!!)  When the nature of a new position breached the scope of what I perceived as my expertise, and I worried about ending up in the red,  I rejected an extension of a secondment in favour of a return to my school division.  I’m still in the black.

The ink is red on some of my other balance sheets, though.  I don’t compost or plant a large garden, and I know that puts me in the red.  I’ve had frank discussions with people that have left me in the red.  Who knows what the balance sheet shows today with respect to community involvement?  The volunteer positions that leeched so many hours when the children were still at home have become obsolete, now that they are gone.  Add to that scaling back my musical obligations, and I’m probably not doing my share.

Living in Canada has its price, too.  Taxes.   As my husband and I travel, both at home and abroad, non-Canadians we meet often ask us how we feel about what they see as the tax burden in Canada.  People are surprised at our response, I think.  You see, we have always perceived taxes as a responsibility rather than a burden.  Let’s be clear—we don’t go out of our way to pay as much tax as possible.  Yet we know that, beyond providing for the health care we enjoy, the education system, employment insurance, and the infrastructure of our country,  taxes enable us to fulfill our responsibility to our fellow citizens who struggle, for whatever reason.  Hardly ever do we find people heartily endorsing that position.

Until the other day.  Listening to CBC’s The Current with Anna Maria Tremonti, on the way to work, I heard one of her guests articulate the view with the simplicity and eloquence that could make anyone wonder how any other perspective could make sense.  First, some background on the report.  Tremonti was discussing online home rental sites like Airbnb, that provide accommodation outside the scope of regulation and the tax bureau.  Tremonti calls it, "the law clash[ing] with the ‘share economy.’"  Her guests included Alan Ganev, an apartment owner who rents accommodations to travelers online, and Rob Ross, co-owner of La Loggia, a bed and breakfast in Montréal that operates within established regulation and tax systems.  This second interview is the jewel.

My sense is that Tremonti would have expected Ross to express dismay, at the very least, that Ganev and others are operating without being sanctioned.  But that’s not what happened.  In fact, Ross doesn’t feel threatened at all.  He and his partner have an established clientele, upscale, by his own admission, that chooses his establishment for a worry-free vacation.  He goes on to say that, as wealthy people become even wealthier,  people left stagnating in the middle will find ways to access the same opportunities as the rich. 

Even more surprising to some, Ross see taxes as his responsibility. "We live in an incredible social democracy," he says, "and, for that to continue, we all have to pay for it in a certain way, if we want our chldren and our nieces and nephews to inherit this kind of social democracy. . . . We pay a huge amount of taxes . . . we pay $5 000 to the government every year for each room, essentially . . . We’re happy to remit those taxes because it helps to contribute to the social democracy we have in the province, things like education, daycare, all those good things."  Wow.  Such conviction expressed in a calm, reasoned, voice.

To me, Ross is an example of living from the point of view of abundance (cf the May 1 post).   Airbnb is no threat to him.  No need to worry—both his establishment and Airbnb can share the market.  Targeting different clienteles and offering different levels of service and security, each business has a niche.  Furthermore, Ross is happy to pay his taxes, knowing that he is doing his part to preserve the society he cherishes for future generations.  Whether others are doing the same doesn’t matter.  He will have followed his principles.

 What an inspiration.  Ross is happy to pay the price; he knows he is in the black, and others coming after him will be too, because of his actions. 

The entire interview is well worth your time.  Check out  The Current: Airbnb: When the law clashes with the 'share economy'"