Of Maman, Adages and Awareness

This piece is a response to a prompt from my writing group.  We were to write about the sayings our parents might have shared with us growing up.  As today is the fifteenth anniversary of Maman's death,  I thought I'd share her wisdom with you.  Thank you in advance for reading.

Of Maman, Adages, and Awareness

 

Yvette Beutel

 

 

Today, the fifteenth anniversary of her death, I am recalling the dictons, the sayings, my mother bequeathed to me.  The coincidence of the day and the writing subject shadows my thinking. Like the snowstorm that will accompany me throughout my day today, the pithy aphorisms in Maman’s bountiful catalogue, dispersed with largesse to my sister and me, swirl in the echo chamber of my brain.  

 

Opportunities for teachable moments abounded.  After-schools were fertile ground.  When we got off the school bus in front of Marcel’s Autobody next door, we sat around our kitchen table, Maman with her ubiquitous cup of coffee, my sister and I with a glass of milk or juice and a cookie, chatting about the day, hers and ours.  She might interject, now and again, in the daily sharing of our stories, or pause while listing the highlights of her day, such as they may have been, aware of generational wisdom to be imparted, and then pull out the appropriate maxim from her collection. Deployment frequency of any particular adage correlated with the degree of universal applicability to a range of situations.  To any description of verbal or physical malfeasance, she would invariably say, “Quand tu craches en l’air, ça te retombe sur le nez,” or, literally, When you spit up in the air, it falls back on your nose.  So, in this much more graphic and populist articulation of karma, we were to learn that what goes around comes around.  Things you do or say will come back to bite you or to help you, and you can take consolation that, inevitably, the same principle will bring others their comeuppance or their reward.  That immutable law of life having certainly played out in my life, I have, in turn, bequeathed it to my own children, both the original French vernacular, and the karmaic iteration.

 

Other times, we would sit around the sewing room watching Maman weave her magic through her current sewing project.  While her deft fingers eased a sleeve around an armhole to the purring of the machine, she would relate experiences from her own multi-faceted life to our eager ears.  As she tucked the circle of fabric over the metal round of the button cover and into its bottom case, she would digress into complicated family stories that offered occasions for commentary on the importance of sound relationship decisions.  Working next on the complex bound opening for the button, she would choose the saying of the day, maybe Dis-moi qui tu fréquentes, et je te dirai qui tu es.  Tell me who you associate with, and I’ll tell you things about your character.  Ah, so that was the take-away nugget.  Be conscious of the influence of your associates on your own person and on your life.

 

I’m fairly certain that my mother, in sharing this dictum, was thinking of whom we might choose as acquaintances or friends, maybe even spouses.  As I reflect on this principle today, I wonder if she ever thought of it as I have been prompted to, as a tool of agency.  The associations I choose, the groups or the individuals, directly or indirectly, shape me and my world in two ways.  First, the individuals with whom I interact and the situations in which I am involved give me insights into different ways of thinking about life.   I am constantly reflecting and learning.  On another level altogether, though, in selecting those individuals and situations, I am also making a statement about my values and my worldview.  If I make a point of sitting beside someone who is regularly shunned, and then initiating a conversation with that person, I give a message.  So does where I choose to offer my time.   These actions can be more eloquent than any spoken message, which leads to another adage, A picture (read, action) is worth a thousand words.

 

These days, I wonder what the precept Maman quoted us that day at the sewing machine might mean in the larger societal context.   Our decisions communicate our values—our reactions to worldviews categorically different from our own, issues we take to heart and are ready to stand up for, political parties we support and individuals we elect to be our leaders.   Even nominally insignificant actions like where we shop or how we approach the personnel who support us daily communicate meaning.

 

Awareness is the intention here, not judgment.  Being conscious of the import of our actions helps us live more consequential lives.  Although it’s probable that Maman’s advice on associations could be applied in judgment, rightness or wrongness is irrelevant.  The valuable lesson Maman bequeathed to us is recognition of the power our actions have, both in our own lives and in the world.  Personal agency through daily decisions inevitably drives both individual and societal change.  Hopefully, we are conscious of that power.

 

The Certitude of Dread

 

The Certitude of Dread

 

Beyond cold sweats of the past,

 

the health and lives of loved ones,

bomb shelter construction how-to’s on the radio in 1961,

savings depleted in market free-falls,

the cruelty of ISIS and its copy-cats,

the Doomsday clock at 23:58:30,

 

the confluence of geopolitical events

 

disinformation (Black is actually white, you didn’t know?)

lies (This is true because I say it is, and I say it often)

pandemic,

war (Europe, Africa, and the Middle East),

wolves circling prey ostensibly to rescue, 

but only to use, disenfranchise, and impoverish,

 

and populism

 

individualism, the offspring of indifference, 

ubiquitous media offering false equivalences,

willful ignorance,

voting against the universal good,

eagerness to blame and scapegoat,                       

chasms in courageous critical analysis,

 

manifests in my soul as a visceral oracle, 

 

a leaden spirit

weighed down with

the certitude of a cup prepared for others to drink,

a fire started so others must walk through it,

a bed of nails on which others must lie,

the inevitability of calamitous upheaval accepted for others,

 

causing me to

 

grieve an inclusive and diverse country 

on the brink of regression,

counter falsehood in my circles whatever the cost,

support efforts to move the body politic forward,

seize joy in the present moment,

sow connections at every opportunity, to

 

know 

 

in my bones all the while 

the inexorable drift toward neo-feudalism,

consumed with

 

the certitude of dread.

My response to a prompt on a fear one has felt, and shared with the Parkland Writers' Alliance June 19, 2024

 

Thoughts on Agency

 I'm slowly resuscitating my very comatose blog to share some thoughts I pieced together in response to a writing prompt for a writing group to which I belong.

In one of those magical confluence of events that stop me in my tracks whenever I'm lucky enough to experience them, I stumbled on a quotation from Ryan Holiday and Pericles  while searching through my journals for my notes on a completely different subject. In Now Is the Time to Have a Civic Backbone (January 20, 2021), Holiday writes:

I urge you to consider the statesman Pericles’ warning: “One person’s disengagement is untenable unless bolstered by someone else’s commitment.” If you decide to ignore your human obligation, to ignore what’s happening in the world because it doesn’t seem to affect you directly, it might make your life a little more peaceful, but the result is an incremental increase in the suffering of others—whether that is the additional burden placed on others to carry your part of the load or an elongation of the injustice they are trying to ameliorate.

You will see the connection between Holiday's words and my take on the prompt,  "If I Were In Charge of the World."  Thank you in advance for reading.

having / taking / being in Charge

I have charge of the world already.

 

Not the earth, 

that miraculous, resilient creation 

that sustains life through integral symbiosis;

Nor the globe, 

that artificial construct that,

daring to represent the unfathomable,

veils the earth in human perception;

 

But the world,

the amalgam of disparate communities

striving at once to come together 

and remain separate

in a new alchemy of transformation.

 

Not, of course, the weather manifestations of a changing climate,

but a personal commitment to 

redefine convenience,

reassess habits from a different century;

 

Nor the plague of deliberate disinformation,

but a personal pledge 

to uncover in diverse sources 

the dots that connect to truth,

to confront falsehood and spin 

even at close quarters,

prepared to sacrifice the requisite pound of flesh,

to crack open my own mindset 

so questions and reflection can enter.

 

Not hardened tribal affiliations,

but listening no matter how difficult,

with questions to explore meaning, 

and 
soft language couched in maybes and what ifs,

a compassionate search for understanding;

 

Nor cavernous inequity tolerated 

as the way of the world,

but the eviction of the brittle and worn isms 

that still live in mental constructs,

so as to craft radical paradigms 

of fairness and justice.

 

I do have charge of the world already,

my own small corner of it, 

family, neighbors, community,

whom my own decisions

awaken or anesthetize,

bless or curse, in your face or incognito.

 

As I take charge of that world 

of which I already have charge,

As every person takes charge of the world 

of which they already have charge,

No one individual would ever be 

in charge of the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reads 2021 Fiction

 As it turns out, the shallow end of the pool is, well, shallow.  In number of novels I read in 2021, in total, and, as you might deduce from that observation, in the even smaller number that I would highlight.

 

The prize goes to Linwood Barclay for Find You First (2021), a mystery novel that enthralled me from the very first page.   It considers the question, How might donations to a sperm bank to earn quick cash as a struggling student come back to haunt you as a millionaire victim of Huntingdon’s disease?  Enough said.

 

The Guersney Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Schaffer (2008) is a historical novel centered around the German occupation of the British island of Guernsey during World War II, the struggles of the residents and the role of books in their survival.  The book is in letter form.  Enjoy the film as well; you will recognize many Downtown Abbey alumni.  View or read first, it doesn’t matter.   Both versions navigate several complex themes with sensitivity and delicacy.

 

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles (2021)

I found this novel quite by accident while scrolling through Hoopla.   Set at the beginning of World War II, with a generational parallel narrative in 1983, the novel takes up the tangle of unexpected events that impact our lives, both in the present and in the future.  Great read.

 

Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (2018)

The months I waited for my turn in the library’s wait list for this book were so worth it!  It’s a compelling narrative of a child coping with abuse and neglect, raising herself, essentially, making the most of each day in whatever way she can.  

 

Thanks for sharing my reading experience during 2021.  

Reads 2021 The Deep End of the Pool

Already, Reset 2021 has segued into 2022.  Phase 1 of this reset begins with the resurgence of my comatose blog.  What better way to plunge back into the pool than with the highlights of my reading life during the past year, in two parts.  Let’s jump into the deep end!  Non-fiction to start!

 

I read non-fiction to make some sense of complex subjects or mystifying trends around me.  This year, my selections seem to coalesce around four of those ideas:  

1.     the plight of Indigenous peoples in Canada, specifically, and around the world; 

2.     the word “deficit” as applied to the economy, especially around proposed funding for programs to support ordinary people; 

3.     the rise of individualism versus the common good; 

4.     appropriate action in that context.  

The following authors expanded my thinking in all of these areas.

 

Indigenous Peoples

Tanya Talaga in Seven Fallen Feathers, (2017)

No matter how much I read around Indigenous issues, I am always horrified at what was done and continues to occur.  Talaga’s book details the fates of seven Indigenous young people in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  In a sense, it provides the backdrop for the 2018 Massey Lectures, where Talaga focuses on the effects of intergenerational trauma and cultural genocide.  Her final reverberating question is, “Can the settlers and the Indigenous people come together as one and move forward in harmony?” (p. 315).  My response:  How can I contribute, as a settler?

The Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice in Listening to Indigenous Voices:  A Dialogue Guide on Justice and Right Relationships (2021) provides not only a succinct and powerful history of Indigenous peoples in Canada, but focused suggestions on action to move past that legacy.  Apology is not enough, is the message.  This guide, available in French as well, invites the readers or participants to reflect on individual and collective pathways to decolonization and the meaning of re:indigenization.  

Dr. Blair Stonechild in Loss of Indigenous Eden and the Fall of Spirituality (2020), a history of Indigenous peoples from their perspective.  Full disclosure:  I have not yet completed this detailed, sensitive, frank and compelling account.  Even so, this volume has already connected so many dots for me from other reading, and deepened my understanding of Indigenous spirituality and my respect for it.

 

Deficits

Stephanie Kelton in The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy (2020)

This fascinating explanation in layperson’s terms of how the monetary system works helped me understand why the books of a country with monetary sovereignty, like Canada, that is, a country that is a currency issuer, are not managed like the books of household.  I learned the difference between resourcing a program and paying for it.  I was challenged to consider that inflation, not deficit, is the critical factor, both in its management and monitoring.  What surprised me most is that preoccupation with deficits, unwarranted, according to the author, in countries that issue their own currency, dissuades governments from spending enough to provide the necessities of life for all their citizens.  Now, with this additional perspective, I am much more able to assess the messages politicians and pundits diffuse.  In short, I am more autonomous, less likely to be manipulated by messaging.

 

The Common Good

Michael J. Sandel in The Tyranny of Merit:  What’s Become of the Common Good? (2020).  

Sandel offers an explanation for the polarization that manifests in so many areas of society.  He sees this polarization as an unforeseen and largely unacknowledged outcome of meritocracy, of people getting ahead based on whether or not they have “earned” their success, and of the system and criteria set up to define “earn” and “deserve”.  If even this brief description unsettles you, then this book is for you!  In clear, meticulous, and reasoned detail, Sandel lays out his argument.  The salient piece for me, in the end, is the need for not only distributive justice (equitable access to resources), but also contributive justice (“an opportunity to win the social recognition and esteem that go with producing what others need and value” p. 206).  When people don’t feel their work is perceived as an important contribution to society, they disconnect.

 

How Can I Help?

Joan Chittister in The Time Is Now:  A Call to Uncommon Courage (2019).

You can see, I’m sure, the controversy inherent in the areas of my reading.  Some of the perspectives the authors grapple with are not dinner conversation, or even any conversation, with just anyone.  They challenge existing paradigms, and challenged paradigms aren’t good for blood pressure.  So, what to do?  Having lived an activist life, Joan Chittister is well qualified to speak on the subject.  We need courage, she says, and not the plain ordinary variety, as tough as that is.  We need uncommon courage, the kind that marks key moments in one’s life.  What to do, for example, if we’re in a group where unfounded ideas are shared as certainty?  How do we navigate those waters fraught with the potential for hurt feelings and broken relationships?  She acknowledges that challenge, and offers a path forward:  “It is finding the courage to utter the first word of truth in public that takes all the strength we can muster.  It is learning to say, quietly, unequivocally, ‘I think differently about that,’ and then explain why.” (p. 54).  The reflections at the end of each chapter helped me to clarify my thinking on her ideas and lived experiences.

Douglas Rushkoff in Team Human by (2019)

Intriguing perspectives on the society in which we live.  In short, if we want change and justice, Rushkoff’s message is: “Find the others.”  Check out excerpts of this book in Medium.

 

Full disclosure #2:  I didn’t tread water in the deep end like this the entire year.  My mental health just couldn’t sustain that heavy reading.  So, at strategic moments, every now and then, I would take breaks from the continuous treading water by resting.  Fiction provided that space.  The second Reads post highlights my experiences in the areas of the pool where I could touch bottom.  

Thanks for sharing your precious time with me.

My Life in Chairs

“Don’t even go there!” my back admonishes me.  

It must have seen me eyeing my cozy nestle chair by the garden doors, novel in hand, and is having none of it.  Better heed its warning.  Looks like a chair isn’t an option for me just yet.  The price to pay in back agony and leg pain is just too high.  More yoga, more stretches, more massage, more exercise.  Then, maybe?  Until that moment, the floor awaits. How ironic, that my life, traced in an astonishing variety of chairs, is now defined by a lack of one. 
 Cushioned against the couch on the floor, a bolster under my knees, cup of tea in hand, I am engrossed in a slide show of the chairs that have defined my life. 

 

My first official chair, a kitchen stool with a seat and back in soft grey and white swirls and retractable steps, found its higher purpose as a high chair.  My father added a tray, and, later, a hook, so that I couldn’t push it over my head and dump the contents, either by accident or on purpose.   Next came the wooden toddler chairs with matching table, a gift from parents on my first birthday.   My paternal grandparents added a matching rocking chair,  the blue cat decal scratched and faded with the years, an ID label under the seat in my mother’s characteristic hand. Now, my grandsons rock out in it when they visit.

 

The chairs of my youth were developmental chairs.  On the grey kitchen chairs, I learned to play cribbage.  On the desk chair in my Grade 5 classroom, I heard that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Glued to the den desk chair with the fluorescent green seat and dark brown half-back at age twelve, I taught myself to type using the QWERTY keyboard on a small blue typewriter my father obtained as a premium from an encyclopedia purchase.  On the fluorescent blue wooden chair in my room, I puzzled through algebra and trigonometry, and recited French verbs conjugations.  On the piano bench, I practiced scales and pieces and prepared for exams, building a skill whose impact on my life I could never have imagined when I was thirteen.

 

The adult chairs marked milestones.  The blue swivel rocker and the Bentwood rocker where I nursed my babies; the blue vinyl kitchen chairs where the children did crafts and my parents played bridge; the formal dining room chairs around a long, oval cherry table, witness to three generations of birthdays, anniversaries, holiday gatherings, graduations, and, yes, bereavements. 

 

For challenge and growth, the professional chairs led the way.  The black swivel business chair of my home office took care of the hidden, ubiquitous work of teaching,  the  late-night lesson preparation and feedback on student work.  Its twin in various classrooms and offices throughout the decades handled the conferences, the record keeping, and lots of planning.   From the professional chairs, the chairpersons  of meetings and professional development sessions over the years,  I learned the art of facilitation:  how to interact with participants, create a buzz in a room, effect smooth transitions from one activity to another, involve participants in active learning and conversation irrespective of the number of attendees.  The relative skill of chairpersons allowed me to maximize my tool kit, or conversely, imagine what could be done differently.

 

Mrs. Macquarie's Chair in a torrential
downpour, Sydney, AU Jan 2020

Ah, memories from the vacation chairs:  the deck chairs on cruise ships where I read and made new friends; two prized resort beach chairs scavenged from a wasteland of lounge chairs bereft of people but boasting a towel as the mark of proprietorship; an oversized bright pink easy chair on the streets of Mesa, Arizona, begging for a photo op; the giant Adirondack chairs on the crest of the Cypress Hills inviting visitors to stop, take a break, bask in the breathtaking barrenness; Mrs. Macquarie's

chair carved into the peninsula in Sydney Harbour, risky in a torrential downpour.

 

Those vacation chairs belong to a past that’s paradoxically recent yet distant, real but tinged with mirage.  Now, we think of COVID chairs, physically distanced,  two metres apart.

 

Lost in contemplation, my thoughts turn dark, to the chairs that might lurk in my future.    The walker/chair (rollator) or wheelchair or geri-chair.  Yikes!  These I hope to avoid.  Right now,  I count on progress to a dining room chair or even my desk chair.  No rush.  Better to heal well than risk further injury.  After all, that’s why, having heard my back loud and clear, I’m on the floor.

 

 

 

First shared with a writing group to which I belong on November 18, 2020.  

And yes, I'm off the floor and back in hard chairs, Working toward sofas and nestle chairs.

 

 

Reads 2020

Each year since I began this blog (except 2019 when both personal reading and writing played second fiddle to full-time teaching and a trip), I’ve posted a list of my reading highlights.  Covid did and does offer lots of time for reading.  Here are the highlights, fiction first, as it insulated me somewhat from what sometimes seemed like my masochistic consumption of news and news analysis in all its forms.

Fiction

 

To my surprise, perusing the highlights roster, these books share a theme.  The characters manage trauma that manifests differently both in its nature and in its consequences.  How fascinating, that, in a year replete with crises, random novels would ask how human beings deal with unexpected challenges or, even more aptly, insidious life events that infiltrate bit by bit, and manifest suddenly to threaten the very soul of these proverbial frogs in boiling water.

 

Il pleuvait des oiseaux (And the Birds Rained Down) de Joceylne Saucier.  

Top fiction read, and it’s not even close.  Strange, maybe, because I first came across this work as a film.  Each managing his own unique trauma, three men have chosen to live a hermit life deep in the forest of northern Québec.  Their idyllic life is upended when two women, each with her own reality, interrupt their routine.  This film / book provides a unique insight into the impact of trauma in its different forms.  Even more significant for me, as I age, it shows that, whether or not they ever existed at all for people in their youth and maturity, joy, love, and fulfillment can not only exist for the first time in old age, they can surpass anything life might have offered before.  Check out the trailer in French here and in English here.  I saw the film, and just had to buy the book.

 

In the same vein, the next books are inspirational stories of survival in diverse situations, none of which the main character could anticipate.

·      A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, a perennial favorite since I stumbled on it in high school, and which I purchased in Alice Springs itself during a visit to Australia just before Covid a year ago.  Jean, a young typist working in Malaya in the late 1930’s, emerges as a leader when the Japanese army takes a group of British women prisoner and sends them on a forced march across the country.  Patience—the story begins after the war, and flashes back as it moves forward.  Heads-up—the narrator’s life mirrors that of a few of the characters in Il pleuvait des oiseaux.

·      The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah and

·      My Abandonment by Peter Rock (check out the film version, Leave No Trace; trailer here), two stories of the effects of lifestyle choice on people in one’s bubble and the decisions those people are forced to make in the wake of those choices.  Very compelling both, if disturbing in parts.

·      A Heart in the Body in the World, by Deb Caletti, one of the best novels I’ve read.  This story tells a difficult and timely story within a sophisticated and effective structure. Best not to include any details at all, for fear of giving away anything that might detract from the reading experience.  I couldn’t put the book down.  I also read a few more of Caletti’s books:  Wild Roses and The Secrets She Keeps, both good reads but not in the same league as A Heart in the Body in the World.

 

For light(er) fare, you might enjoy

·      The Gown by Jennifer Robson, a story of one of the seamstresses who crafted Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown (available on Hoopla);

·      The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn, a psychological thriller that will keep you turning the page.  Check out the trailer for the recently released film. 

·      La bonne de Chagall by Karen Olsen.  Based on the decisions of a woman who worked for the artist Chagall, this novel is written by a former French consultant for Regina Public Schools.

 

Non-Fiction

 

For those of you, like me, who have absorbed the distressing political reports along with the Covid bulletins, these reads might entice you.  They illuminated my understanding of issues in our world.  Ah-ha moments on every page.

·      Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (2020), by Isabel Wilkerson, whose thesis is that racism is at the core of the polarization in the United States.  She explores this idea by comparing and contrasting race in India, Nazi Germany, and the United States, with astounding conclusions.  A startling statement at the end of her book presages the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.  She quotes Taylor Branch, a historian of the civil rights movement: “‘If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?’” (p. 352).  For me, this book was a page-turner.

·      The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (2020), by Vincent Bevins.  I stumbled on an essay version of this book quite by accident while preparing a unit on the Cold War.  I ordered the book immediately.  If you’ve ever wondered about the extent of American involvement in the politics of other nations, this book will strip any illusions you may ever have had.  It left me horrified.  Bevins says that the story is for “people who want to know how violence and the war against communism intimately shaped our lives today.” (p. 3)

·      Shrewed:  A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls (2018) by Elizabeth Renzetti.  Funny and insightful, this is a book I could have used forty years ago.  It spoke to me in its irreverence and unsparing honesty.  “It’s in the chaos that we find ourselves,” Renzetti says (p. 143), and my senior head nods in agreement.

 

Happy reading.  I would enjoy any comments on any of these books, at any time, as well as suggestions to enhance my own 2021 reading life.