on generosity, sort of

My darling granddaughter, Megan, ten, is endlessly passionate. Here is my recent phone conversation with her.

Megan: Mimi! Our family has the BEST plan for Christmas. We are going to draw names to give each other a small gift and then each of us is going to choose something from World Vision and give an animal to the people who are poor. I saw the information and it made me SO sad ... I am so glad to give to them and not spend it on ourselves.

Me: Oh, that is so great. I love it! Fabulous idea. So... how are your violin lessons coming?

Megan: Oh, I am playing really good. But my violin fund is not very good. I only have $30.00 in it. (Note: $25 of that is from me.)

Me: Well, you don't have to worry about that. Christmas is coming. ... Oh, we aren't doing that for Christmas.

LARGE PAUSE

Megan: WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

Me: Well, we aren't giving big gifts, we are giving to World Vision.

Megan: MIMI!! That is JUST OUR IMMEDIATE FAMILY. You are not in our immediate family.

Laughing... right. Got it. Message is clear.

just this side of hope...

I receive Cook's Magazine and pour over the best way to roast vegy's and how to properly glaze a turkey. The best part of the magazine is the editorial by Christopher Kimball. Always rural, always reflective, Kimball's short essay is worth the subscription cost.

Today he reflects on a box of old snapshots he is riffling through. The pics of his kids are particularly nostalgic to him. Then he says, "My guess is that whatever we think we've lost we never had, that waiting to find it again is as stupid as expecting trout to rise to the same dry fly two days in a row, and that life is best lived between the lost and the found, just this side of hope and on the other side of nostalgia ... to my way of thinking, nothing is ever really lost, even an old cemetery. We just have to learn to stop looking for it."

I have a friend who feels she has lost who she was, by way of life's harshness. She desperately wants what she was, to be that again. Life can do damage - in fact life DOES do damage - and we all suffer our unique blows. But what we had is always ours. And though we cannot go back, there is a lot in front of us. Life is unbelievably interesting, full of possibilities, and always unfolding into newness.

I held a lovely baby boy today. I remembered my sons, my babies. I love that my arms have been full of baby. That their eyes shone. I will always have them that way. And I also have them, boisterous and hungry in my kitchen. Steve sometimes longs for the prairies, for his western country and homeland. I remind him that he always has Alberta. It is in him. He doesn't have to search for it. My mom is buried in an unpretentious graveyard near Toronto. But she lives in me, and gazes back at me through the mirror now and then.

The years have taught me to hold on, but loosely. And to carry photographs in my purse just in case I need them.

Canadian Thanksgiving

Today is the start of Canadian Thanksgiving which lasts for three days. We don't have a specific day to eat our turkey - it can happen anytime over this weekend. I remember when Ben was about 15 that he and his friend decided to see how many turkey dinners they could get invited to. If my recollection is correct, they ate - and more remarkably, enjoyed! - 7 dinners, including ours.

I have these questions in my mind:

Why do turkeys have to suffer in a continent wide blitzkrieg (does that mean slaughter? It sounds like it does...)?
Why do Americans add macaroni and cheese to an otherwise lovely dinner?
Why is Thanksgiving dinner so beige? Did you notice that even the vegys - carrots, turnips, squash - are beige? The entire meal would lack beauty if not for the lowly cranberry.
Why does a pumpkin pie taste almost the same as carrot pie? True fact.
What did my gramma Iva put in her dressing that made it look green?

There is so much to ponder on this Thanksgiving.

Like why do I have so much blessing?
And why do I sometimes feel ungrateful?

As usual we won't have a 'family thanksgiving.' We rarely have family here on special occasions. There is always as sense of loss, but it doesn't last long when it isn't brooded on. It's lovely today to think of my fair country and my many friends with their many roasting turkeys, kids bursting in doors and loud laughing, jello salads and home made buns. Blessings sometimes come in bunches, like on a day of Thanksgiving.

Rules for Parents

My grown son sat on the couch yesterday afternoon riffling through his grade-school box of art, writing, pictures and report cards. One piece from grade 1 was particularly amusing.

The task was to write three rules for parents. Vince wrote these three:

1. Do not merder your child.
2. Do not beat your child up.

and ...

3. Do not be late for wurk.

What would a psycho-therapist make of this? I choose to believe that this is a kid who did not even know the low level violence of angry parents. Our home was pretty happy and creative when he was a kid.

In the box were other treasures. Stories about a monster and his pet turtle. Lots of brightly colored drawings of our green house with a Canadian flag flying on a pole in front.

And tales of hamster funerals. We had more than our share. Perhaps one of his rules should be, "Parents should not murder hamsters." It was always an accident of course. But none of our hamsters died of old age. I would take them out for a walk - since I can't stand to see animals in cages - and then things would happen. I could write a book series on the adventures of hamsters.

One journal entry from grade 2 made me laugh. Vince was hoping to win the 'neat nut.' I had to think a while to remember what the neat nut was. Okay - see who can remember this. The neat nut was a Gospel Walnut! You pull a little hook and out come the five or six colors that are supposed to reveal the gospel story: black, red, green, white, yellow... I was personally appalled at the whole cheesy idea of a gospel walnut, so I dubbed it the neat nut, prize for the tidiest room each day. Apparently it worked - Vince was motivated to win it.

Memories matter. But they are slippery. Most of what we discovered in this box I had forgotten. The work of remembering is spiritual work. And it is profoundly human work. I remembered who I am, listening to Vincent talk about his childhood views of our life together. And I loved him freshly.

p.s Our son Ben recieved his first note written by his son Blaise - emergent literacy! It said this, "I Um gowy tw cut YoR Hud off. Fum BLaise" to which I can only reply, "ARGH Matey!"

pockets full of tomorrow

Last night the air was still and cool. I went outside after our frozen pizza dinner (smile) and started walking among my flowering plants noticing some mature seeds. With care I harvested seeds from two beautiful flowering plants that spread around my garden. It was not like harvesting wheat - I pulled apart seed pods one by one and drew out shiny black seeds with a vivid white edge. Then I bent over seed cups and tipped out hard black kernels that look like small rabbit 'raisins.'

From behind me I heard children playing in our creek and on the climbing fort Steve has built in there. I heard one boy of six yell, "Fire in the hole!" and I heard a splash and then hilarious laughter. I moved from plant to plant putting one kind of seed in my right pocket and the other in my left.

It occurred to me that I had pockets full of tomorrow. Something about the work of saving the seeds filled me with hope and pure joy. I was connected to God in that moment, doing God things. Beyond that my creek was full of tomorrow, too. The noises of tomorrow echoed around my silence. As I get older the urgency to preserve and empower the next generation becomes a main focus of my life.

In the stillness of that simple work I was filled with awe at the life I have been given to live. And I was filled with awe at the power of creation energy that pushes toward renewal and rebirth. I am fading but life is preparing for the next bold flowering.

on being gramma

Today I went to the public school to act as surrogate gramma to two Kenyan girls, Blessing and Esther. Their names are great, arent they? You should see their hair - rows of braids always fun and funky. Anyway, it was really an exercise in frustration except for the part with Esther and Blessing. Crowds of grandparents, a sweaty room, standing and waiting til a teacher's name is yelled and then scrabbling past a hoard of kids to try and find THE kid who attaches to you.

All in all, it ended quite nicely, with Esther and I eating in the gym at a table with two other gramma/kid pairs. Here is what I saw though. One of the grammas sat beside her little fair haired grandson, and proceeded to spend the next half hour texting on her iPhone. I don't recall one sentence of conversation until she said, "Well, I think it's time to go." At which time the boy stood up and walked to throw his waste in the can. What is the point of enduring all that bother if not to actually pay attention to your kid?

The best thing I did, I think, was obtain a second chocolate milk for Esther, since I could have one and so could she. As she swallowed the last gulp almost licking the container clean she informed me that the rule is only one, so this was great. Victory!

My own grandkids are all over the world. I don't (usually) feel sorry for myself about that. And today I was able to make two little girls show me their wide grins and stand in for their African grammas. It was a blessing.

on the death of a friend

You have no knowledge of this, but yesterday a lovely woman in Calgary passed from this life to the next, quietly and beautifully. Shelley was a friend of mine from my years in Calgary. She had a beautiful appearance and a heart that shone through her face. Her work was in the medical field, and during a surgery she accidentally came in contact with tainted blood. From then on Shelley fought a battle with hepatitis and many accompanying problems. She lived for decades with awful symptoms and yet remained a giver, one who saw others and served them graciously.

And so, although her life and mine are far apart now, her passing brings me into a common experience of all our lives - the experience of multiple emotions and responsibilities piled on one another and very little room to sort them out.

In an ideal world we would go to the grieving tent when we were grieving. In an ideal world we would go to the silly space when we were feeling ridiculous. There would be a place or space for all our experiences to be processed and held and honored. But the truth is we grieve while we laugh, we talk when we long to be silent, we strategize when we feel little hope for the future.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours with an architect on campus, dreaming about ideal spaces for students to use. The conversation was an exercise in hope. Perhaps a way could be made for space to fit our life instead of our lives being forced into the space that is there. But even if such space is created, will time constraints accommodate the space?

Anyway, yesterday, for me, was one of those days when too many streams are flowing at all kinds of levels within me, so much so that I don't know what the emotion of the day was. All I know is that at the end, in the dark, what remained with me was a great sorrow for all Shelley suffered, and a sense of wanting to honor her life for it was a great one.

PS - one other thought that occurs to me. After a day of unprocessed emotions yesterday I ate a HUGE supper... hmmm. Wonder why THAT happened?