Responsibility

"That was some building," my brother-in-law recollects with a wry smile, shaking his head in disbelief that he lived there.  "In the morning, you'd be frozen in to the blankets."  He's talking about the one-room country school where he was teaching circa 1950.   "That place had two stoves--an oil furnace I bought myself, right beside the bed.  Still, you couldn't change the sheets because they were frozen to the mattress.  The kitchen had a coal stove.  I'd stoke it about 12:30 a.m. when I went to bed, and the embers were still red when I got up.  Yet, the water in the pitcher on the other side of the stove was frozen."

My husband and I are lingering with him over coffee after taking him out for a birthday supper.  He's eighty-four now, and it must seem like another life ago to have slept in that school wearing long underwear, heavy pants, and a winter jacket  The memories are vivid, and we feel privileged to be sharing them.

We don't see him as often as we might.  He's a busy man, hunting, making sausage, baking bread.  His wife, Elmer's sister,  passed away four years ago.  With her gone, it's easy to get wrapped up in our own lives and neglect our extended family.  We have a responsibility, now, at our age, with our parents gone and Elmer's two sisters deceased as well, to maintain the ties that connected us for decades.

It's our turn.  Elmer places his insulated bag of hearty snacks and hot coffee beside his heated boots by the front door.  "You're going ice-fishing with Victor,"  I comment, noticing the bag of fish hooks and Elmer's layered look.  Nothing gets past me.

"We'll be back around 5:30.  Our reservation is for 6:30,"  he says.  I'm looking forward to the evening, and feeling a little guilty that we don't do it more often.  In the wake of Alannah's passing, we feel the responsibility even more acutely.  Cousins are leaving now, not parents, or aunts and uncles.  That truth is the subtext of our conversation with Elmer's cousin, who found us as we packed our music books after Good Friday service this afternoon.  She wanted to talk about Alannah.  Together we reminisced, and grieved, connected by our common family experience.  We talked a long time, not wanting to separate, as if parting would sever yet another link.

We need to preserve the bond that life has given us.  How doesn't matter--ice-fishing, birthday suppers, quiet conversations, email, Facebook messages, telephone calls.  The imperative remains, to check up on our present, tell and retell the stories of our past, and support each other in our future.

Loss

Reality bumped into me today.  I was striding ahead, looking nowhere in particular and everywhere at once, head full of projects on the go and ideas to pursue.  "Look around, Yvette," it said, as it crashed into me.  "This is the real world, and things happen."

We lost a loved one today.  Since I heard the news around noon, I've been remembering Alannah, who left us so unexpectedly and so soon.  Alannah was the family historian.  She collected family stories, photos, biographies, important dates, and painstakingly organized them for all to access.  We counted on her to remind us of birthdays and anniversaries, hellos and good-byes, and everything in between.  She dedicated herself to her family.   When I think of the potential of marriage, I think of her and Ross.

Recalling all the good times around their table, our table, and tables here and there, I remember silky chocolate cheesecake, pure white meringues, continuous conversation, interesting questions, challenging ideas, exciting plans, the simple joy of being  together.

True, saying good-bye is a part of life at any age.  As we grow older, however, the likelihood increases, and I am so much more aware of the fragility of life.  One of the challenges of aging is saying good-bye to people you love, and adjusting to the void their absence will leave in your life.

I can't imagine what her absence will mean to her family.  I know we will really miss her.

Conclave (2)

Habemus Papam
Post scriptum

Cardinal Electors,
all one hundred and fifteen of you,
in the recesses of the Vatican
or at home in your dioceses,
thank you for giving us a promising Pope,
one who prefers
cloth to ermine,
spontaneity to a script,
a bus to a limo,
brown sandals to red shoes,
people to the ivory tower,
his own voice to a secretary's,
presence to isolation,
a crowd to a balcony,
a prison to St. Peter's.
Twelve days in,
Hope flickers.
Thank you.

Words

I remember the shock when I first heard the words:  "The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word." (Isaiah 50: 4-7).  I was half-awake in a pew at morning mass, a self-imposed hit-and-miss routine intended to compensate for not being able to concentrate at Sunday liturgies because managing the music took all my byte-space.

I looked up.  Run that by me again?  The tongue of a teacher?  That's me.  I am a teacher.  So, what about the tongue of a teacher?  Sustain the weary with a word.  Sustain the weary?  If I am a teacher, I would know how to sustain the weary?  And if I know how to do something, I would have a responsibility to do it.  The words seared on my brain.  The rest of the mass was a blur.  I had never before considered my life's mission in those terms, sustaining the weary.

The implications of that line reoriented my thinking.  If my mission was to sustain the weary, then it wouldn't do to be weary myself.  How can the weary sustain the weary?  No, if I was to sustain the weary, I would have to let go of any weariness I might be feeling, and concentrate on brightening other people's lives.  At that moment, I decided not to allow any complications in my life to colour an entire day.

Today, Palm Sunday, hearing those words proclaimed again in the First Reading,  I was back in that moment, reliving the epiphany, wondering how I am doing with that mission.  Because not being weary is only the first leg of the journey.  The next part involves using words.

How could I use words to sustain the weary?  Right off, I could think of the obvious ways--greet people, notice things, take the time to chat, write letters, make phone calls.  There had to be more.  What would be the next level? Right about then, I happened on Peter Johnston's Choice Words.  This book sensitized me to the effects that even ordinary, innocuous conversation can have on people.  I could eliminate "but" from my vocabulary, he said, replacing it with "and."  That small change would make any feedback I gave students much more powerful.  Before, my left hand adding the "but" was taking away all the good from the positive comments the right hand was offering.

He had more to say.  You want to communicate your trust in people, he said; you want them to know you believe that they will do the right thing.  I thought I was doing that.  Maybe not always.  Was I unconsciously undermining my work?  Use the phrase, "It isn't like you to . . .", Johnston wrote.  Why not?  So I started saying to a student whose work was late, "It isn't like you to be neglectful of your work.  Could we talk about why it hasn't yet been handed in?"  That one simple phrase started so many surprising and meaningful conversations that deepened relationships and cultivated collaboration.

Recently, I happened on Inviting Students to Learn:  100 tips for talking effectively with your students, by Jenny Edwards.  Actually, the subtitle could be, 100 tips for talking effectively with anyone.  

Does that mean I am always successful at using words to sustain the weary?  I wish.  Sometimes, I get it right.  What's important is that I am at least conscious of what I am doing, or not doing, as the case may be.  With consciousness can come change, and I can get better.

As I age, I hope to refine those practices.  With serious aging, though, I've noticed (now, I mean pushing into the nineties and onward), losing filters and reverting to basic, raw habits can happen to some people.   That scares me.  I really would like to continue moving forward.

This blog, too, uses words--to chronicle events, share ideas, entertain viewpoints, tell stories, express hopes.  Maybe as well to sustain.  To sustain me, anyway.

Friday

8 am.  I am still cocooned under the covers, checking Twitter.  Sunlight is pouring through the garden doors, bejewelling the banks of snow on the deck.  As remarkable as the picture is, I would appreciate it more were it not the end of March.  My sensible ego is telling me to get up, get on with the day; there's lots to do.  Weekends evaporate.

Wait a minute--it's Friday, not Saturday.  One of my gifts to my "retired" self is a day at home to work other projects.

Later, I am enjoying banana muffins and tea with Elmer and a friend.  They talk music, as usual, and cars, and family.  Careless of the clock, I relish the conversation.  Elmer mentions playing at a dance tomorrow night.  What?  A dance on Sunday night?

Wait a minute--it's Friday, not Saturday.  This is my long weekend.

During the afternoon, I park myself at my desk to finish a section in my current project.  To stretch my legs, I head to the piano to prepare tomorrow's liturgy.  One part of my brain is thinking about choir practice tomorrow--should be getting that ready.

Wait a minute--it's Friday, not Saturday.  I can practice tomorrow as well, even if I am doing two liturgies this weekend.

All through the afternoon, I indulge my ADD.  I walk downtown for exercise and an errand, Google sites for inspiration for a costume party, rummage through my old clothes for possibilities, play a little piano, search for a music book I've put at such a good place I can't find it, chat with my daughter, laugh about our own private "normal."  Guilt attempts to invade my consciousness--not so much work on the project today as I had planned.  Music will usurp most of tomorrow.

Wait a minute--it's only Friday, not Saturday.  I have gained a whole day.

Fridays regularly confuse me like this now.  All through the day, a sense of urgency drifts over me like wisps of fog during an early morning drive, clouding my way, then lifting suddenly to clear the view, the result of a lifetime of clock-watching.

I'm getting used to my free Fridays.  They may lead to confusion for a while, but it's the good kind.

Focus

Keeping my focus is my consistent challenge as I get older.  Some days, I think I am developing ADD. Maybe it's been lying dormant all these years, coming to the surface as the host conditions optimize.  I begin to work, and think of a book I want to use for an upcoming presentation.  Better take it out now, or I'll forget.  Well, why not leaf through it, skim a few pages, search out the favorite passages.  Whoops--now I have an idea that I'd better write down, or it will be gone, too.  Never mind bringing up  my home page with all sorts of fascinating articles leading me ever further away from---oh, yes, the task at hand.

Which reminds me--I am having trouble maintaining my focus.  Right.  Almost all of my projects now require sitting for protracted periods, mostly in front of a computer.  I play with ideas all day long, and love it.  My body likes it less.  My shoulder complains, my back starts to chime in, the legs cramp up, and soon, it's a cacophony of protest that resolves itself into one word--Move!

So, every hour or so, I stop to move around.  Planned movement never occurred to me while I was in the classroom and moving every second of every day, rarely sitting down.  Now, however, movement must be timed and integrated into the day.  I am wearing a path in the rug between my office chair and the opposite wall in the corner of the office library where I work, stopping for sets of deep knee bends and heel-toe calf stretches.  Back and forth along that path, sometimes mulling over a thorny issue, sometimes planning part of a project, or, like today, reading a few pages of my current novel.  I take many opportunities to fetch documents from the photocopier.  Why go once, when several trips will do?  Tea adds ambiance, as well, and I have to walk to the kitchen for that.

At home, integrating movement is just as vital but demands less creativity.  After all, after an hour at the computer, I can reward myself with twenty minutes at the piano.  I can put in a load of laundry, then throw it in the dryer, and, finally, sort and fold when it's done.  In ten minutes, I can straighten out a drawer or chop vegetables  for the evening stir-fry.  Four or five times up and down the stairs does wonders for the concentration.

The consequences of moving, or not moving, are huge.  More movement, more calories used, more muscle tone, more brain activity, more ideas, more excitement, more concentration, more focus.  Yes!

Now

This weekend, I lived Saturday on Saturday, and Sunday on Sunday.  For that, I feel very proud of myself.

Well, Yvette, you might say, what's the big deal?   Doesn't everyone do that?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I didn't always.  I have lived Sunday on Saturday, or Friday on Thursday.  Worse yet, I have lived Thursday on Monday, Thursday needing planning, and Monday being merely the execution of a rehearsed and ordered model set in place days before and unfolding as it more or less should.  Multi-tasking, if you will, or making Wednesday's supper while preparing the evening meal.

So, what happened?  The story began in December, when I ordered tickets for Globe Theatre's Pride and Prejudice.   I love the story, having seen both the Ehle-Firth and Knightley-Macfayden versions several times.  My children once gave me tickets to a live production in Edmonton for my birthday.  Yes, weather in March is a crap-shoot, but why not take the chance?  I shocked the waiter at Beer Brothers, asking for a reservation in March.  He had to start a new book.  I even booked a hotel room, so we could make a weekend of it, and not have to drive home in the deep night.  I had a lot invested in this weekend.

Fast forward three months.  Why was I not surprised when the forecast predicted sun for Saturday, and 10 - 20 cm of snow for Sunday?  Subtext:  We would make it in to Regina for the performance; getting home might be a challenge.  When I was younger, I would have fretted about this.  I would have checked the weather several times each day, hoping the screen might read differently.  In doing that, I would have set myself up for losing not only Saturday, whether or not I was actually there, but also many hours of the days before.

I surprised myself.

Well cognizant of the potential challenges of getting home on Sunday, we drove into town on Saturday.  We stocked up on organic rice chips and unsulphured dried fruit from the organic supermarket.  We strolled through Chapters.  I took notes on titles I could afford to get from the library, mostly teen fiction to keep up with what kids are reading.   Paging through the table of contents of Jared Diamond's new book,  and walking around with Mitch Albom's The Timekeeper for a while, I finally settled on two must-haves, Room by Emma Donahue, and Tenth of December, a collection of short stories by George Saunders.  I people watched at Starbucks over hot chocolate.

After checking in to the hotel near the theatre, we strolled to the mall.  I never go into the city without a list, and this was no exception.  I needed martini glasses and a superfine cheese grater for salad.  Done. Now, time for dinner, and then the theatre.  Just a delightful day.

I tasted the day, savoured every second, smelled the bouquet, and swirled each sip in my mouth like a good wine.

We left early in the morning, before too much of the snow would have accumulated.  The Department of Highways had been out already.  Visibility was decent.  Tiny snowdrifts were beginning to form on the shoulder, some oozing onto the road.  We had to slow down to navigate build-up on the curves and in sheltered areas.   A few kilometers out of the city, however, I knew we would make it home safely.  But then, I had the trump card--Elmer was driving.

We aren't foolhardy.  Had conditions been unsafe, or the highway closed, we were prepared to spend the day in the city.  I had brought my computer, and some work, and we had lots of books.  We could have spent the day in the library, or in a coffee shop, waiting out the storm, or visiting friends, even staying the night if we had to.  Monday could take of itself, too.

Eckhart Tolle would be proud.  I lived Saturday on Saturday and Sunday on Sunday.  I lived in the now.  Rather than giving in to what might happen and letting fear get the better of me, I accepted what came and dealt with the reality.  That is real growth for me, and the thought of it makes me smile.