Little Old Lady … in Waiting

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  • Solvitur Ambulando…It Is Solved by Walking

    “Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” – Linda Hogan (Native American writer )

    “‘But it isn’t easy ‘ said Pooh. ‘Poetry and hums arent things which you get, they’re things that get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.’”- A.A. Milne

    If I’ve ever invited you on a walk then there is a fair chance you’re someone I love very much…family, and a handful of friends I keep close, like “a cloak, to mind (my) life.”(O’Donahue) I don’t walk, as our ancestors once did, to arrive at a particular destination, nor can I honestly say that I walk to safeguard my health, although, as a nurse, I know it to be powerful medicine, and an essential practice in the Little old lady in waiting’s handbook on how best to live a long and healthy life.  For me, walking is a sacred sojourn, like writing in a journal, or sitting down for a cup of tea on a busy day to savour a last bit of cake; it is a solitary ritual, a reflective exercise, a rich, sensual, fortifying experience, that grounds me in the present moment, and reveals a deeper way of looking, illuminating a world just beyond what our sedentary eyes can capture. Walking is a portal to the natural world where time may stand still, where we may even disappear for a while, as our unconscious unfurls, and insights and creative leaps lay waiting on well-trod paths like so many flowers to be gathered, an endless bouquet of ideas and dreams waiting to be revealed and rehomed.

    I have always believed a regular walking regime to be a salve for most of life’s ailments.  All those feel-good neurotransmitters dormant and eager for activation. I won’t bore you with the overly marketed health benefits…well, maybe just a quick review. Just as the doctors have always preached, walking, even a little, can significantly increase your lifespan, and reduce your biological age (marginally more appealing to the chronologically disadvantaged).  Walking also lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and depression.  If that’s not enough to persuade you, there is also statistically significant evidence that walking lowers your stress level and reduces rumination and negative thinking.  Wait… I mean I’m down with the stress management, but I’m kind of trauma bonded with the rumination and negative thinking, that’s half my material.  Whatever…you get the idea…the health zealots are spot on, walking is good for you, body, and mind…but when has that ever been sufficient incentive to lace up, or drop the fork, if you see what I mean…again with the negative thinking and rumination. Let’s try again. Little old lady in waiting to little old lady in waiting, post-menopausal women who walk 4 hours a week have a 41% lower risk of hip fracture.  I like that. That’s positive…right?  I’m not sure where they get these exact numbers but I found it on my socials so it must be true. 

    Health considerations aside, here is what I know about walking from my own clinical trials, population of one.  No matter the setting for my walk: be it the sleepy, maturely tree’d, largely childless suburb that I call home, or any of the woodland parks scattered liberally in our beautiful picture province, or possibly the sea paths that wind along the miles of coastland in our stunning port city, nestled on the Bay of Fundy, or even a streetscape in the heritage block of Canada’s oldest incorporated city; a walk out of doors is a way through the wardrobe to a bountiful sensual world, where a steady stream of eye candy and auditory enchantments remind us to embrace the wild animal within, an invitation to howl for all the little old ladies in waiting, sat at home disguised  in grandma’s clothes, both figuratively, and literally some days.  We are meant to move our bodies, we our built to explore on foot, our ancestors walking ten times the distances we typically cover today. 

    Outside, in the natural world I am routinely transported by the startling beauty of the Disneyesque birds that sing in choirs on my quiet street, their sweet sad tunes in perfect pitch; or the spiral dance of autumnal leaves twirling upward as though commanded by the invisible hand of some ancient sorceress, reciting a spell to safeguard the woodland wildlife from winter on its way.  I hope she remembers to include me and mine in her magic. The animals nearby have a narrative all their own as they go about their daily errands and I nod to them when we meet: the black-sheep squirrel who lives in the tree at the front of my house, alone and happy to be so, or the family of deer who eat from my neighbours unpicked apple tree, heavy with fruit. I met, by chance, a beautiful fox not long ago, but neither of us had time to stop.

    Near the sea, I always envision I am walking with my dead relatives and even imagine I can hear their whispers in the wind and on the waves.  Walking in the woods, the air is perfumed with spruce and pine and something more elusive that smells like childhood and brings me back to a more innocent age, when the scariest monster I could imagine lived under my bed, not some beast who throws Gatsby themed balls, an evil, self-proclaimed king whose every soundbite is some variation of “let them eat cake.”  In the woods, while I’m walking at least, the king is dead…long live all the wild beings who walk this beautiful planet in peace.

    Saunter, stroll, scuttle, scale or stride,  I walk faithfully, alone, into the halcyon summer breeze of fresh cut grass and full strength sunny days, or the warm spring rain that bursts gardens into bloom, or my favourite, the crisp autumnal harvest days scented with chimney smoke and alight with golden interior tapestries of life, the window frames of  our neighbours homes in the gloaming, or out into the first snowfall of winter, a crampon crawl up and down frozen streets,  footfalls in virgin snow where I spy the tracks of smaller species, freshly awoken from a winter’s sleep.  Garlanded in cap and scarf, mittened, earmuffed, and balaclava’d, I’m adrift, a snowman flying through the air…la la la la la laaaaa.

    Outside, enveloped by ancient all-knowing trees, or surrounded by heritage architecture older than three little old ladies in waiting counted together, or stood at the thin space adjacent to the sea, there is a clarity of mind to be discovered that cannot be found in a book, or sat safely by the fireside, nor even under the tutelage of a wise seer.  There is a reverie known to the solitary walker (Rousseau), an enlightenment, an illumination, a flow of insights around every corner we turn. One foot in front of the other, there is space to think and puzzle and solve all the vexations visited upon us. Walking costs us nothing but time, no special gear required, only the capacity to listen to the resounding truth of our own intuition, a voice inside that speaks louder in silence, in the quiet found out of doors.

    A walkers’ trail is alive with imagery that invokes tangential lines of poetry and philosophical enquiry.  There is a hum when we walk…a higher frequency, a quiver of ideas and creative sparks. “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” (Oliver) “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” (Elliot) And if while walking we by chance fall awake for a moment, to know this life is only a dream, how do we stay awake long enough to remember we are dreaming? (Wittgenstein). Walking is a whirlwind dance of ideas, a flow, an unconscious current in a deep primordial sea. And the story we rehearse inside ourselves, making up the parts we can’t quite recall, is a conversation I am happy to host most every day.

    I like to walk at a slower pace now, not quite the crawl my geriatric dog prefers, stopping to sniff every few feet, but I’m more interested in exercise for my mind and the quieting or distilling of my thoughts, than I am in exercising my body or protecting my cardiovascular health or even promoting longevity…still, perhaps aging backwards is something to aspire to.

    For me walking is a meditation, “with every step, I arrive.” (Thich Nhat Hahn) I practice slowing down, I come awake and allow time to stretch out before me, like clotheslines where birds gossip with their friends and freshly laundered linens flap their wings.  I see winter bared branches with captured notes and receipts, escaped from recycled bins, adrift in the wind like so many clues. I listen to the sound of my own footsteps and then deeper still to my breath, and my own heartbeat, and the hum that hangs over everything, the sound of the universe, I suspect, like an hourglass set close to a microphone recording the ever-escaping sands of time.

    I have found many treasures on my walks: old coins and worry stones, sea glass and driftwood art, lost letters and grocery lists, emblems of lives lived next to our own, and reminders that we are, none of us, alone.   I have heard the voices of lost loved ones and remembered the thoughts and images of versions of myself long since lost with them.  Walking I have found the answers to problems, big and small, I’ve found perspective, and gratitude, an abiding peace, and a strong feeling of connection with something greater than myself, something capable of conjuring the unspeakable beauty that is all around us, best viewed by foot, moving at your own pace, walking alone, in the natural world.

  • In Conversation with Jan Lucy

    I wasn’t looking for a new friend when I met this captivating woman.  She was waiting for me in what we now refer to as the ‘therapy pool,’ the LOLIW early morning aquacise class at the local YMCA.  A large part of me believes she was sent to me by someone who now ‘walks invisible.’ Jan’s scientific rationalist core would smile at the notion, but there are days when I believe I have her half convinced in the power of a good God Box.  Exquisitely kind, intelligent, politically progressive, community minded, and sea-loving, Jan moved to Saint John from Ontario with her husband, Don, three years ago to be close to the water in retirement. 

    Graduating with a degree in English from the University of Guelph, a proud Guelph ‘Griffin’, excelling in competitive swimming, Jan lived and worked for much of her career as a campus administrator at a satellite campus of Nipissing University in a small Ontario town called Bracebridge, cottage country for the rich and famous including such stars as Stephen Spielberg, Goldie Hawn and Martin Short.  ‘I bumped into Kurt Russell at a bar once,’ she laughs. 

    Born in Picton, Ontario, her early childhood was spent in Germany as her father was a meteorologist seconded to the military. She grew up in Ottawa and met her husband by putting an ad in the Toronto Star classifieds. ‘Where are all the Alan Aldas in the world?’ she wrote.  ‘He was a feminist, he was a humorist, and he was political,’ she explains. She received 44 responses. ‘Don was in my ‘no’ pile,’ she laughs.  ‘It was my girlfriend who pulled out Don’s letter and said, ‘What’s wrong with this guy?‘  So, I wrote to him, and he wrote back and the rest, as they say, is history.’

    After a series of unsuccessful pregnancies and adoption attempts, Jan eventually privately adopted her first child, Vincent, from Brazil.  ‘It was my labour,’ she remembers, describing the painful journey that eventually led to the great joy of bringing home their first son.  ‘When he was 4, I knew I really wanted another child and so it was back to Children’s Aid to begin again. This time it was different. Now we were considered a ‘black family,’ and so it was more a case of how many do you want?  We went to the front of the line and through a progressive adoption process we eventually welcomed our second son, Omar.  I was 39 by the time he arrived, and he was like a kitten climbing the drapes.’

    Since arriving in Saint John three years ago, Jan, socially dexterous, with charming old-world manners, and an earnest desire to connect and give back, has worked with new Canadians helping them navigate and acclimate, she has become an active member of the Saint John Naturalist Society, engaging in  ‘citizen science’. and data collection, and is a member of the Lift Community Choir, singing and supporting local causes. Most days she can be found hiking or bird watching in our beautiful province in the company of her husband, Don, and her LOL dog, Siskin.

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

    I grew up the youngest of 3 children in a loving home. I lost my father at aged 14, when he died in a British-European plane crash…no survivors.  I went to the University of Guelph and received a degree in English where I was also a Guelph Griffin, a synchronized swimmer.  I have been married to my husband Don for 38 years, after meeting him through the Toronto Star’s Companions Wanted section. I have 4 children, two stepdaughters and two adopted boys…I like to say they were all born in my heart.  I worked for 20 years as a campus administrator for Nipissing University’s Muskoka campus where I had the best students and faculty to grow along with.  I moved to Saint John three years ago at the age of 64, buying my house online, not knowing what would come next or who I would meet.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    The best thing…is that I’ve had the opportunity to get older.  So many people don’t. Whether it’s disease or accidents or suicide…and I think maybe it’s because of Vincent (son) being ill… and family member struggles with mental health…this idea that it could end for any of us.  So just to make it this far has been great…I hope I still have many more years, but you don’t know.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Feeling like I’m running out of time…and again maybe it’s because my dad died so suddenly…he was only 46, that I worry about my life being taken away from me before I’m finished doing the things I want to do.  I’ve always been a big list maker and I like to accomplish many things in a day. What’s that old expression, “I want to arrive at the graveside all dishevelled, skid in and say, ‘Wow, what a ride!’ I don’t want to sit in a lazy boy…that’s not my thing.

    If you could retain or retrieve one quality from your youth, what would it be?

    Being more playful, I think.  I grew up with this ‘What will the neighbours think?’ mentality.  So not worrying so much about what’s expected, not worrying if your socks match.  I almost didn’t give my husband a second date because he didn’t put his cutlery together on his plate.  Or when someone is coming over…are there dust balls?  I was more playful as a younger woman.  We stayed outside and played until the streetlights went out.  So, I find if I’m given an opportunity now, I try to be more spontaneous, less wary.

    What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?

    I don’t know who said it to me about your impact on your environment or on the world…that a single drop of water can overflow a cistern or a well… so not to underestimate what your small gesture or your small action can do, positively. So, I try to lift others up…I need to listen more…I know that…but by listening… if others want my advice, to try and provide what is needed. I also know I need that too. So…we all struggle in life, and I guess that’s why I love the pool so much…and why we call it the ‘therapy pool.’ It’s sharing those struggles that helps us remain optimistic and hopeful. And celebrating the high notes too, like when your son asks to speak to your friend on the phone, because he knows she is important to you.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    “Don’t tell me not to worry, the things I worry about never happen.” (Unknown author). The other thing that my mother used to say all the time that kind of ties in to that is…’this too shall pass.’  And the whole idea that anxiety happens in the past or in the future but not when you are truly here, in the present.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    I do. It’s a made-up word, it’s ‘snigg.” So my mom and my grandmom were very progressive with their use of technology…I think they were probably emailing before I was.  My mom meant to type, after a very sentimental message, the word ‘sniff’…like after a sad story, ‘sniff’.  But typed ‘snigg’ instead.  So we’ve all taken on this accidental word whenever we come across anything sentimental or that touches our heart, we’ll always write ‘snigg,’  And what’s kind of cool is that my son does it now too, so it’s a three generational thing now.

    Describe your perfect day.

    This one was a little more challenging for me, but it has to do with water…being near water, being on it, being in it…that’s where the day starts…with water.  And then learning, I’d like to learn something and whether that’s something I’ve read, something I’ve researched, gone to a lecture or a play, but something that I’ve learned.  And lastly sharing thoughts and time with friends. 

    If you could have tea with anyone, real or fictional, dead, or alive, who would it be and what would you talk about?

    So… I thought about this one and I think it would be my mom’s mom, my grandmother. She was born in 1894. I just thought she was amazing.  She was an equal partner in her marriage to my grandfather who was Professor Emeritus of Botany at the University of Alberta.  She always felt it was important to be an intellectual equal with him and provide him with companionship.  She was pretty educated for her era as well.  She attended Alma College, a liberal arts college, but she also helped my grandfather type and illustrate his work for his PhD. And she raised two amazing, strong women, my aunt and my mother.  One of the stories that sort of exemplifies her is that on her 100th birthday there was a big reunion of family and she remembered everyone’s name, what they did, what their partners did, and asked wonderful questions.  Also, that same year, she was in a nursing home at that time, and she played the Virgin Mary and was on the front page of the Victoria paper wearing her blue scarf and holding a live baby, a little brown baby.  Before she died, there was a picture of her in the pageant by her bed, and her last words to my mother were, ‘I like to look at that picture and imagine I’m holding baby Vincent.’ Snigg.

    Another story is that when she first learned that I was moving in with Don, my grandmother’s response was, ‘Does she have a prenup?’ And then, I have a gay older brother, and it was just at the peak of the AIDS epidemic when he came out and he didn’t know how she would respond, and he went to her apartment and said, ‘am I allowed to come in?’ and she just reached out her arms to him.  So, I would like to have a discussion with her around how she became so wise, beyond her years, when there was homophobia, there was racism, and women were subservient in society…what drew her to be more? What was her thought process?

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    Taking some risk..like joining a choir…I mean, not bungee jumping, but I guess maybe moving to New Brunswick. I think sometimes life can be too comfortable. Do you know the story about the lobster?  The whole thing about how a lobster grows…how it has to shed its shell because it’s getting too tight, and becomes very vulnerable because it doesn’t have its hard exoskeleton. It could be dashed against the rocks…but to grow it  has to shed its shell. I always loved that story.

    The other is obviously learning new things. I never thought I would be a bird watcher until I moved here.  I love the fact that we are so multicultural here too because where I used to live it was very white…boring…one dimensional.

    And then helping others…which is a big part of my experience in Africa. It started with my sister probably fifteen years ago or more when she went on her dream vacation to Tanzania, and she met a young safari guide who had dreams of owning his own safari vehicle. She befriended him and helped with a website and referring some clients and creating itineraries for guests.  The guide’s wife was a schoolteacher, but she donated her salary back to their community.  They are incredibly lovely people and wanted to do more for their village. The guide eventually became a village elder and reached out to my sister for some help, initially for water, and then for a school.  They started very small… educating the village children and then as time progressed and climate change was affecting their livestock and food, our family became more involved.

    We ended up doing a sibling safari and as part of that, my brother who is a huge permaculture believer, suggested we might bring in a specialist from Kenya who had some success there, to see if there were possibilities for the village. We thought if they could start a small farm, then they could harvest the fruits and vegetables to feed the school.  They started teaching farming skills in the school and the kids began working with the permaculture and redirecting water runoff, and within 3 months they were feeding the kids at the school. After that some of the mammas started planting as well and the school expanded, and we were able to fund kids who couldn’t afford school fees through the ones who could, and the garden was expanded to 7 acres, and they sold the extra produce.  This all happened over the course of many years but we still talk to the village the first Friday of every month. I asked them once if I could ever be a Maasai chief.  Women don’t traditionally have much position, but I was told, not long ago by that same guide who my sister befriended, ‘Jan, you’ll be happy to know, I have three women on my advisory board now.’ Helping others brings me joy…we’re a ripple in the pond.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    I try not to feel guilty…but I do. It’s around sweet things, specifically chocolate…really good chocolate. I never feel guilt over a kitkat…I mean going out and spending a fortune on high end truffles, because it’s money for sugar.  I feel like it’s a drug and it seems so silly and petty and something I should just let go of but at the same time, as it provides me with pleasure, why should I feel guilty about it…why don’t I deserve it?

    Do you believe in life after death? What does it look like?

    Ahh…I wish I did. I believe energy leaves me when I pass.  I want to hope there is something … maybe it’s living with a scientist. I don’t think there is, but I’ve also had these things happen…and I can’t explain it …so maybe there is something beyond what we know…but I don’t know what it is.  Is it the pearly gates…I don’t think so.  When I went on my sibling safari with my brother and sister…we were in Kenya and we were sitting at a resort and this man was wandering around singing, and all of a sudden he started singing ‘You Lift Me Up’ by Josh Groban  which was my mother’s funeral song and my brother and sister and I all looked at each other…I mean…in the middle of Africa…a song so meaningful to us all.  So, it’s those kind of things, but at the same time…I don’t know.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    I think I would like it to say…and this is a big task but…’She left the world a little better than when she arrived.’

  • A Curated Life

    “If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris

    “Those who commit to nothing are distracted by everything.” – Bhagavad Gita

    I’m twelve weeks into a “down to the studs” reno of my basement. We are getting there…almost ready for paint and wallpaper …yes…that’s right…I said wallpaper. I happen to like wallpaper…just not the 50 year old striped job that lined the stairwell leading from my kitchen to the lower level of our home. I’ve hated that patterned stairwell since we moved into the house almost fifteen years ago. That’s a long time to abide an abhorent passage in your home. So…ankle deep into quasi-retirement, and my baby moving out to a beautiful space of her own; it’s got me thinking about embracing a less lackadaisical, more curated life. I refer here not only to my immediate setting, and decor choices in my home, but also to a more bespoke aproach to everything I allow entry into my mental and physical space. How we spend our time and who we choose to spend it with are weighty considerations indeed, particularly as the sands of time accelerate through the LOLIW hourglass.

    I am a woman who has always known what she loves. I’m never at a loss for how to spend my time. My baseline is reading in bed, followed closely by reading upright in well lit rooms, rooms with doors to discourage the detritus of day to day discourse. Toss in a daily walk, a few writing hours, and few games of pickleball (a smattering …mind), and maybe a sprinkling of meaningful communication with friends and family and you have the basic components of my perfectly appointed life.

    It won’t surprise you to learn that with respect to decor I like to sit in spaces that smell and feel like 19th century reading rooms. Jane Austen meets functional, animal-friendly, old-world elegance and comfort, with Rembrandt lighting in the shade of expensive cognac and furniture made to last let us say, longer than me. I like plain lines…nothing busy…smalls piles of books in every conceivable nook, and walls overfilled with art that makes me think and feel.

    Approaching 60 it seems long past time to take charge of my decor and embrace a more curated lifestyle. With more time at home to play and ponder and be, its important to invest in our space and make it conform to our notion of how to live well. Out with the acquired furniture that found its way into every corner of the basement (granny’s telephone table, the uni trunks, the side tables the dogs used as chew toys, the wedding art, the chairs I reupholstered one time too many…gone). What would your space look like if you started from scratch… what gets to stay, what gets dumpstered in the night?

    To curate is to carefully gather sift, choose and organize so that everything is handpicked, assembled, and edited by you. This might mean the dedication of an old bedroom to a fly tying workshop or a yoga studio or a writing room. The downstairs grand room might be reworked as a cozy british bar, or a working library, or a music or pottery studio. Adult spaces like day nap chaise-lounges in light colours might be positioned near full window walls for stargazing with telescopes or simply to watch the dancing autumnal leaves or the spring rains pelting your garden seedlings to life, or the magical snow that falls on Christmas eve.

    Of course lighting is everything… my mother taught me that. She liked rose tinted bulbs for evening ambiance, strong enough to read by in the after dinner hours but not so bright you can see the skin wrinkles on your LOL hands as you turn the pages…its a delicate balance ladies. A comfortable seat by the fire built for you and yours is essential for the long Canadian winters, perhaps a dartboard, a drinks cabinet… you get the idea. It’s time to focus less on containment of mess and sticky fingered childrearing chaos, and more on zones of comfort and joy for the soft bellied adults who remain. Don’t forget a posh pillow for the geriatric dog.

    Take your time visioning how to create yout LOL space.. explore your options…think about what you want your home to provide now, and build it from the inside out. There are no design rules that can’t be broken except one, namely, abandoning your own ideas on beauty and functionality. This is your home we’re speaking of, you have only yourself to please so if you want to string eddison lights from the rafters, share space with too many plants or cats or books, create an industial feel by painting the piping black or steel coloured… do it. If you want to showcase some macabre collection of antique surgical instuments or early century pharmaceutical elixirs (weirdo), now is the time to make your space into a reflecting pool for all your darlings. An invitation to your home should always feel like an invitation to you.

    Outside your home it’s equally important to curate the spaces you decide to inhabit. In rertirement if you don’t decide how you’ll spend your time, others, well meaning friends and colleagues, will ensnare you in their version of a life well lived. The siren call of casual work, the escalating addictive properties of pickleball, best resticted to promote injury preention, the silent scream of the sour dough starter and its incessant demand to be fed. That little white bread baby isnt the boss of me.

    A few years ago I read a little book called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” which espoused a pretty basic but essential philosophy with respect to time management and boundaries. Summarily, the author suggests that in an age where we are inundated with information and competing demands on our attention, and very often incompacitated by overstimulation and endless options, its important to decide to live deliberately and in accordance with a few key individual values and interests and spend our time and ultimately, our lives, accordingly. The book advises adopting a maximum of 5 things to give a fuck about. Thats not a lot if family and healthy living are 1 and 2. If reading, writing and pickle ball are my 3,4,5 then maybe maybe pottery and painting, knitting and felting, are curated out of my daily living line up…at least this year. Every LOLIW must choose how best to spend their time. Maybe you’ll make your garden and greenhouse your second home from May to September, perhaps you’ll join a rug hooking guild or a choir or an arts collective during the long winter months. Let your interests drive your pursuits and don’t be cajoled, or convinced to spend your time in settings that don’t meet your individual criteria for comfort and joy.

    A quick comment on mental space. I live so much of my life in my mind it’s important for me to dine on a steady diet of images and words that resonate with meaning. I hold space for vetted novels and films and converations with new and old friends who know secret things. Stories and stimuli that bring comfort and joy and occasionally cast out to higher things. While I have just as much of an unseemly fascination with Ed Gein and his skin suit pursuits and niche decorating vibe, I’m not sure I need to absorb the 8 episode narritive of the man who was the inspiration for Psycho, The Chain Saw Massacre and Buffal Bill. I mean I guess he didnt eat anyone …so thats good…right? My point is that curating that series out of my mental space and protecting my inner sanctum and sleep hygiene is probably for the best. I don’t need a visit from Gein in my dreams at night. But if real crime horror is your LOL jam, maybe Ed Gein gets a pass.

    You are the gatekeeper of your mental and physical space. Guard your boundaries, with knitting needles if need be. Allow entry only to what you decide to give a fuck about. Design a space and a life dedicated to your passions… an art room…a dream kitchen…a library…a pocast studio… a music room. It’s waiting for you beneath the debris of a lifetime of collecting the residue of other people’s idea of how to live well. So if you’ve been neglecting your mental and physical space like I have, begin an inventory of everything that you find beauty and comfort in, then drag the rest to the curb and begin again, consulting no one but your own inner curator. I believe you’ll find her taste is unerring.

  • “What’s for Dinner?”

    Edinburgh Tea Biscuits

    As a little old lady in waiting I try not to think about what’s for dinner anymore. For years it was the first thing I thought of each day, even before my feet hit the ground. I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about food, too much of it. What’s best to eat, when to eat, what not to eat, what to pack for lunches, the daily miracle of coordinating, mandating and delivering family dinner at the table, the sometimes dubious nutritional value of said dinner, and the fallout of loosing the family dinner battle. What should I eat to maintan a healthy BMI? What does a healthy diet means beyond the parameters of the food pyramid? Which diet is best: vegan, vegetarian, low fat, low carb, high protein, one meal.. three meals…four, ‘one potato, two potato, three potato, four.’

    As a woman who stayed home for a dozen years and felt the full weight of the domestic hausfrau experience, food purchase, prep and delivery was a significant part of my work day. Suffice to say, I’ve steamed my way through several rice makers and peeled enough potatoes to feed the whole of Ireland. I’ve menu planned and scrutinized thousands of grocery lists and contemplated how best to infuse two growing humans, with as many fruits and vegetables as possible, a herculean task in an age of ‘lunchables’ and packaged candy in the shapes and flavours of actual fruit…highly processed, heavily marketed frankenfood. I take pride in the fact that my daughter refers to us as an “ingredient family’, where very little comes from a box or is overly processed (notable exceptions – yogurt, cheese and bread…we’re in the 21st Century friends… I draw the line at kneading, churning, aging or vigilent attention to temperature). There is very little that is instantly consumable in my cupboards…all food stuffs require some sort of preparation: rinsing, dicing, slicing, roasting, toasting..or a quick commingling in the Ninja.

    For my 50th Birthday I decided to hang up my apron for good. Back to work outside the home for a number of years, I was ready to resign from my second job as menu architect, head chef, prep chef, pastry chef, bus boy, dish diva, and lunch maker. Happy Birthday to me. I explained to my family that I would cook only if the spirit moved me and that dinner was no longer to be expected by any of my spoiled, unskilled, hangry housemates, especially on days when they arrived home before me. Looking back it was the death toll for the family dinner, that and competing schdules. The kids were both in high school at the time. Ten years later, on the road to 60, I can report only mixed success in divesting my culinary role…I blame myself, and my misguided attempts to safeguard my family’s heath, protect my kitchen, and reduce ceiling splatter and any permanent damage to appliances.

    “Whats for dinner?” is a kitchen query that still eminates from my hungry adult children in the late afternoon from time to time. Shoulder deep into the fridge or pantry, desperate to make the ingredients on display coalesce into something approaching a satisfactory meal, but too inexperienced or myopic to see the beauty of ‘breakfast for supper’, or the fact that chickpeas are really hummus in disguise. I think it’s important to acknowledge here that my husband is too clever to ever broach the subject of dinner. When the kids do slip up and ask whats for dinner, I smile a happy little boundary smile, and if I’m not hangry myself, I might suggest cereal, or eggs or pb and j’s. At other times I simply repeat, “dinner” with a slightly stupefied, quizical brow, as though they were speaking in some foreign language… a look I learned from my husband, a master at navigating family life with minimal effort on his part.

    The subject of supper aside, as a little old lady in waiting…who am I kidding here…at all stages of ladydom, I have given a great deal of thought to my diet, in an attempt to consume nutrient dense, high volume, low caloric-load foods, to look good in my jeans, to avoid suburban square arse syndrome, a hideous plague of middle age, and later, as a nurse, to avoid carcinogenic foods like processed meats and cardiac villains like trans fats, and more recently, to restrict inflammatory culprits in order to reduce pain…that’s right…I’m going after the sugar and simple carbs, to reduce the meno-pot, the 10 or so pounds of fluff floating around my mid section. No, its not there to protect our organs as we age. Closing in on 60 it’s time to quit the cake … not the wine though (maybe ditch the fruity sugary stuff), but wine’s a living whole food ..its not processed… its allowed to age. LOL to LOL no one is taking the wine off the table.

    Dessert, however, and the bread basket I believe are a fair trade for decreased joint pain, ease of zipper glide, improved meno head and energy levels, and potentially increased longevity with greater functionality and mobilty in the last quarter of our lives. After a lifetime of exhaustive and ongoing research on the topic of food and diet I can recommend only three books on the subject that form the genesis of my LOL approach to food. The first, Michael Pollan’s In Defence of Food – an Eater’s Manifesto” can be distilled in a simple maxim: “Eat food (real food), not too much, mostly vegetables.” Next, Savour: Mindful Eating – Mindful Life by Thich Knat Hahn which encourages a mindful reverence when eating and a grateful appreciation of all the work and people involved in bringing food to your table. Lastly, French Women Dont get Fat by Mireille Giuliano, which promotes a self awareness of individual food challenges and suggests a highly customized self-taught approach that respects your personal food picadillos and preferences. No foods are off the table for les femmes francais.

    I’ll be honest and say that if I get to choose my last meal, one final opportunity to taste, smell and enjoy food, my pedestrian pallette will no doubt yearn for a tea biscuit made by some proper little old lady…perhaps of Scottish descent. I’d lather each half with a generous mound of clotted cream (the kind from a jar imported from England) and lemon curd (also imported from the British isles…not the lemons mind). I love simple carbs and homemade sweets. I grew up on them. Cheap, easily portable and quickly put together, some of my fondest childhood memories by the Bay of Fundy in the wilds of the Maritimes, star these cheerful oven baked ‘rib stickers.’ My mother taught me that there isn’t much a good tea biscuit or pan of fudge can’t cure…except maybe diabetes. I know sweets are not recommended on anyone’s food pyrimad, even the ones heavily influenced by “Fat/Sugar/Salt” pressure groups …yeah …they’re out there, doing a sweet business with their sugar-coated promise of a 10 second dopamine high that will keep you coming back for more. Hanging onto my fifties by my fingernails, I have grudgingly come to accept that my dear old friend, bread, the plain sister of the sweet family, is nothing but a nutritionally void filler… bread is bad, and I’m finally ready to embrace a life without sugar laden simple carbs.

    For this little old lady in waiting, dinner for the foreseeable future is some variation of fruit and veggies, legumes and lean protein, like fish, quinoa, nut butters and beans. I’m allowing for reevaluation at age 80 depending on the efficacy of a clean diet as regards pain management and cognitive capacity. There may come a day when tea and toast and biscuits lathered in cream become a mainstay again but for now this LOLIW is off the edible dopamine drip and opting for foods that promote less fluff, more energy, a clear head and ideally a pain free active lifestyle for many years to come. That’s what’s on the menu.

  • In Conversation with Shova Rani Dhar

    Shova Dhar is my oldest friend. We met in third grade.  She was the smartest kid in my class, and in most rooms she enters I suspect.  Becoming her friend changed the trajectory of my life, motivating me to push myself academically in a way I might never have done had we never met.  I can still remember our Grade 3 Health project, a beautifully drawn portrait of a boy skeleton, with breakout close-up drawings for the more intricate bones.   Shova was the artist, I, the lucky bone labeller. We wrote a play together some years later, titled, ‘How do you like your murder, steamed or boiled?’ earning a solid A for our efforts in advanced English.

    Shova describes herself as a ‘gregarious introvert.’ She is, in fact, a peerless, exceptionally gifted human, a scientist and a seer, an artist and a stargazer…there is no one else in all the world like her.  She is an ageless, exotic beauty, and ‘my brilliant friend.’  A biologist by trade, an accomplished artist by nature, and an animal lover (all species), Shova exhibits the kind of charisma that only storybook heroines possess.  Fiercely loyal, generous in spirit, she is a boundless treasure to anyone lucky enough to call her friend.

    Shova earned a BSc in Biology and a Bachelor of Education from UNB. She has published research in marine biology, worked as a lab instructor at UNB, and as a Laboratory manager at the NB Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. She has studied salmon anemia, virus tested potatoes, and worked in animal health and rabies.  She has been responsible for fish, meat and dairy inspection, food recalls and risk assessment.  For the last twenty-five years she has worked for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and for the last 17 years as a food safety specialist, currently residing in Halifax, N.S.  

    Of course, I asked her what she eats, and while she wasn’t comfortable discussing her food choices on the record, she did share that listeria is real, and that as we get older, we can’t fight it off as well, or if we’re too young, or don’t have enough stomach acid, or are pregnant. ‘I’ll be eating a lot of mush that’s hot or frozen as I get older,’ she laughs, ‘and I don’t eat out much as I am too leery of food handling practices that I can’t control.’

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

    I was born with mixed heritage in the heat of the summer, the younger sister to one older brother but grew up with my Canadian extended family on my maternal side, as my father was killed in a car accident when I was only 8 months old. I grew up outside of Saint John and was formally educated at the University of New Brunswick.  I am a biologist, an educator, a Food Safety Specialist, a Reiki Master, and a Theta Healer™, with a love of artistic expression, especially the performing arts. As a strong unionist, I have always focused on championing the rights of others who cannot fight for themselves. I have married my best friend, travelled to many countries, enjoyed the company of many beings (human and other species), and have learned to work in light and energy. That’s my other side…the ‘woo-woo side’ as people would say.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    Ahh…perspective. You can see the bigger picture and therefore there’s less drama about every little hiccup that happens.  Even though there are times I don’t do that, as we age our edges get rounded off a little and you have a better perspective of what life is … you see the span of your own life, and things you used to think were the end of the world are no longer the end of the world for you.  That’s the best thing.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Coping with loss. That’s the thing that gives me anxiety.  Can I do it?  Losing the ones you love, the pets you love, your cohorts, your generation.  The feeling of gradual obsolescence.

    If you could retain or retrieve one quality from your youth, what would it be?

    I found this a very difficult question because there are so many things I would want to retrieve and some I wouldn’t want to, however, the sense of endless possibility, and the feeling of immortality, or ignorance of the finality of this temporary corporeal existence that we’re in right now, is something I would love to experience again.  As younger women we were more present in our lives, we lived more in the moment, we weren’t worried so much about what’s gonna happen when our time was limitless, we weren’t concerned if we could squeeze it all in… we never even thought about all that, we were just living, and I miss that, that spontaneity, being in the moment, a time when we were less reflective and less conscious.

    Now with perspective we’re always weighing one thing against another, whereas younger people are more present in their lives…even if you were full of angst as a young person, you were still anchored in the moment…not worrying about the quality of the experience.  People say youth is wasted on the young.  It’s not. They’re not wasting it…they’re really in it. They don’t even realize how precious it is.  That is the sad part. They don’t yet own their magic…they’re magical but they don’t know it yet.  The magic of being fully immersed in living.  If we were able to go back in time, we would be super powerful, and we could use that power for good or ill.  I would hope we would use all that energy and power of youth for good, but it depends on the trappings of the soul.  People are still flawed even armed with perspective.  Maybe that’s why we can’t go back.  God is pretty smart.

    What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?

    I don’t know, I haven’t learned too many easy ones.  I have so many lessons to learn.  For me, so far, forgiveness is the big one …forgiveness and gratitude. Forgiveness of yourself and others.  It’s hard to do that. But gratitude is huge as well…to learn how to maintain gratitude…because you cannot be unhappy and feel gratitude at the same time. Those two emotions cannot exist at the same time.  That has changed my life knowing that.  So, whenever I’m terribly unhappy, I imagine a scenario, even if I have to invent one, a scenario where I feel grateful.  I’ll share my go to scenario with you.  I imagine I’m carrying a big armful of priceless china in boxes, not very well packaged, and I have to get through a door, and I can’t manage it without maybe dropping a parcel.  There is a guy on the other side of a busy street, he sees me struggling…he crosses the busy street, arrives at my side, and opens the door for me and I can enter in and I think ‘Thank you,’ and I feel gratitude washing over me…gratitude for him being so kind, and then I go through the door.  And at that moment if I’m unhappy I allow the gratitude from the scenario to wash over me and it helps…small acts of kindness, real or imagined, help a lot.  I use it all the time. The shift is immediate when you feel that gratitude wash over you and the sadness may come back but its less when you can feel gratitude.   It brings instant perspective.

    Other lessons I’m still trying to learn are trust, to trust in God, and to accept the things that I cannot change.  Those are hard lessons that I’m still trying to learn.  Forgiveness…I’ve worked hard on forgiveness… and I’m getting better at it.  I used to be full of resentful thoughts. I’m a very protective person of the people I love. I’m a grudge holder from way back.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    I have four quotes on two themes.  I couldn’t pick.  First, ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it.’ And I put in brackets…this is not part of the quote, Begin it now,’ because I’m a procrastinator.  I had it in my university dorm room, its Goethe, and it has served me for many, many years.  A second quote on the same theme is from the Ghost of Christmas Present (Dickens), ‘There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish.  The thing is to try to do as much as you can in the time that you have. Remember Scrooge, time is short and suddenly, you’re not here anymore.’  I always think, let’s not procrastinate with the important things.

    The second theme is again from Scrooge, the 1970’s soundtrack from Leslie Bricusse on happiness.  ‘Happiness is whatever you want it to be.’  I had that at my wedding as one of my songs. And finally, a quote by Kurt Vonnegut, ‘If this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is.” It’s a quote I learned from my husband, and when I hear his voice in my mind saying it, it calms me down and gives me perspective and makes me feel gratitude.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    ‘Justice’ and ‘perseverance’. I have two, but I love justice, just the sound of it, it’s a sweet sound to my ear.  It’s a real part of who I am, and it always has been.  I’ve always been a bully fighter in school, a fierce advocate for others…and courage is there because of it.  It takes courage to fight for justice.  In tarot, the symbol for strength is a lion and, being a Leo, I’ve always felt it was just part of who I am. It takes strength to fight for justice.  And ‘perseverance’, it’s a very important word for me as well.  You have to persevere…things aren’t instant, and you have to keep fighting for the things that really count.  You have to persevere against your own weakest nature. If you want to obtain things you have to work hard and again that comes back to my quote, ‘begin it now.’ When things aren’t easy you have to persevere and if you don’t, you’re giving up on yourself.

    Describe your perfect day.

    This was harder than I thought it would be, but I experienced the perfect day not that long ago with my family…this summer actually, and I reflected on that day when I formulated my answer.  The day starts with me waking up from a restful sleep and with good energy.  There are some planned activities but nothing stressful.  A nice morning stretch…I move my joints…I have a good breakfast.  I spend time with the ones I love, and unexpected events lead to unanticipated fun.  There is the sense of surprise, camaraderie and sharing laughter.  The unexpected events put you in the present.  I don’t always want to be planning and then judging whether or not things went well…it harkens back to the youthful joy of just being alive.  And after camaraderie and laughter, then you come back to your place of peace and revisit the day’s events together with your family.  You retell the story of the day, sharing your impressions, enjoying it all a second time in the telling…and then you go to bed feeling grateful knowing you’re loved and that you’ve loved others.  That’s a perfect day. 

    If you could have tea with anyone, real or fictional, dead, or alive, who would it be and what would you talk about?

    I would want to see my father.  I would want to talk to him about his decision to agree to leave this life when he was only 38. He died in a car accident. But I believe that people talk to their creator before beginning a new life, we choose our soul family and choose the lessons that we want to learn.  Maybe my lesson this time around was learning to be a woman who grows up without a father. His absence in my life has been so huge and yet I never really got to know him. At some point he decided he would come here and be my father and leave, allowing me the space to learn the lesson I had chosen. I’d like to speak with him about his decision and ask why he left me…because I know he loved me.

    Just recently I looked at my father’s passport picture and I feel like I saw him for the first time, and I’ve looked at that picture a thousand times, and I realized that he is in many ways still here with me.

    The other person I’d like to have tea with would be Carl Sagan.  I’d like to talk to him about intelligent design.  I’d like to explore his thoughts on that.  I had the hugest crush on him, I was in love with him for so long.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    Creating things… creating things for others to enjoy, and myself.  Anything from food, a good meal, making baklava, or creating a more fair, stable, and safe workplace. I do a lot of   Occupational Health and Safety (OSH)…that’s near and dear to me.  I also like making music…learning a new piano piece or improving my vocal range while I’m singing in the car.  Nobody needs to hear it, but I get great joy when I manage to expand my range and enjoy little successes.  Artwork of course, I like creating art, that gives me a lot of joy.  I don’t do it a lot anymore, but I will again… soon.  I’ve been doing some needle felting and making some 3d figures and those are fun little projects and after making art I always think that was so much fun, why don’t I do this more often.  And maybe writing too because this project and thinking about my mother’s story…I think I’d like to delve a little deeper into that.  I’d like to work more in watercolour, I have to persevere there, watercolour is unpredictable, and trust is not there, so learning to trust the process and persevering… and then revel in the outcome, whether it’s what you planned or not.

    A second source of joy for me is being the presence of or caring for animals, especially baby critters of any sort.  To have a kitten in your hand, and care for it is the most joyful thing. Looking after the young of any species I find very joyful.   We have an unofficial office cat named Spooky and I enjoy looking after her right now.  She is my therapy cat.  We do a daily session before I enter the office.

    My third joy is stargazing.  I look forward every year to watching the Perseids meteor showers that peak on my birthday in August. I usually go out to the cottage and lie on the beach or in a field near Freeman Patterson’s place at Shamper’s Bluff to watch them.  I watch as well for lunar and solar eclipses, and, of course, the aurora borealis.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    Again, I found this question difficult because I don’t feel guilty about too many things except for maybe online shopping and surfing the internet… scrolling, that’s a guilty pleasure that I’d like to get rid of… it’s a bad habit.  It’s wasting your life.  It’s instant pleasure, but it’s a distraction from the real work that we’re here to do. I could be in a studio, where I can make messes.  That’s real pleasure. ‘Boldness is genius.’ We need to stop procrastinating.

    Do you believe in life after death? What does it look like?

    Absolutely. The basis of my belief in God and in an afterlife is from my grandmother. She…as a child had blood poisoning and died and went to another place, a beautiful garden with a man who she described as very much like Jesus, lovely white robes, a gentle man…holding her hand, walking along a path and she was so happy, she had never felt such joy and contentment in her whole life.  They walked for a long time and then he said, ‘Fern, we’ll soon be near the end of this path and when we get there I’ll have a question for you, and I want you to answer honestly. He said, ‘You can stay in the garden with me or if you want you can go and see your mother.’ At that point she looked down from a height and she could see her lifeless body and her mother bending over her, weeping.  And then she said, ‘I think I want to go see my mother,’ and she was returned to her body, and she lived a very long life.  Every day, twice a day, she was on her knees on the hard floor kneeling beside her bed, in the morning and the evening, and she would pray to God and say how grateful she was for being allowed to live.  She lived a life that showed me that what she experienced as a young girl was the truth. The rest of her life was a testament to her decision to return here. She would feed homeless people.  She never knew if that was the man in the garden coming to test her or see if she was still happy to be here. That’s how she lived her life.

    My father grew up in the Hindu tradition and although he never shared that with me, I think it worked its way into my understanding that God is there all the time. We drove across the site where he was killed every day, twice a day my whole childhood life, and we could feel him there.  My brother, a year older, as a child saw his “Daddy” standing at the accident site there once.  

    Finally, through Theta Healing …Theta uses the theta brainwave state, a very relaxed state, where you can access your subconscious beliefs. Part of my training to become a Theta healer involved accessing spirit and listening to what they have to say.  We worked in teams to access spirits we did not know, rooted in our training partner’s life, not our own.  And in your mind’s eye, images reveal themselves with qualities recognizable to the person you’re working with, and you could ask the spirits questions.  Spirit is there.  Our souls continue and come back in other forms…I think all those things are possible.  Obviously, there is continuance of our souls.  Theta experiences have helped me know that.   Sometimes you might worry, ‘am I making this up,’ but sometimes being open, things come to you that you don’t understand but when you share it with the person asking questions, they understand it.  They know what I’m talking about…I don’t…I’m just a vessel, I’m just a process.  The other person is the authenticator.  So yes, I know there is something more, and I don’t fear death.  And when we do die, I don’t think we’ll be very far away.

    What does it look like…the afterlife? A hyper reality where we are totally supported all the time…where we know we are taken care of always.  We are complete there.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    How I would like to be remembered…I’d hope someone would say that I was kind, and also that I was fierce, a protector, a good friend, and that I knew how to have fun, that I was fun loving… I’m self-described as a perpetual adolescent…that I was confidant, and had lots of personality.

  • Reading Room – Series 4

    “So often, a visit to the bookstore has cheered me, and reminded me that there are good things in the world.”

    Vincent Van Gogh

    The Dictionary of Lost Words is the story of a young girl who grows up beneath the sorting table of a Scriptorium where words were collected and scrutinized and judged worthy or discarded by a small group of learned lexicographers who produced the first Oxford dictionary. Esme is indoctrinated into a culture that cares for and reveres the written word, that understands the import of language, and begins her own collection of discarded words, those deemed unworthy due to their pedestrian nature or obsolete status…words like bondmade and other words that coalesce around the language of women, words like suffragette and cunt. William’s work is an interesting exploration of the social history of the first half of the 20th Century, including women’s emancipation and the onset of the Great War. The novel is a love letter to anyone who loves language and saveurs words, and who understands the power of written script and the importance of preserving what may be so easily lost. I am a lover of words like my father before me, he collected them like they were something to treasure and hold dear. This book is a perfect read for a bookish woman who dreams of scholarly hours and endless days within the stacks of The Bodlean Library which has a starring role in the novel – 8/10

    This book was recommended by a friend after discussing The Thursday Murder Club books. Killers of a Certain Age, as the title implies, is the story of a group of four post-menopausal assassins on the precipace of retirement. Meet Helen, Mary Alice, Nathalie and Billy our engaging, intelligent first person narrator. They are embarked on a cruise that goes very wrong very quickly and they are forced to fall back on their killer instincts. While the book offers an interesting premise and is no doubt headed for a big or small screen adaptation, it did not read as well as the Thursday Murder Club books. I found it hard to distinguish between the title characters, with the exception of the narrator, Billy…the others weren’t drawn distinctly enough, and the murky nazi-hunting “museum”, the assassins employer, which may have been a source of endless fascination, seemed almost farcial in its presentation. While the lead character, Billy, was well written and sympathetic, as was the dexter-like work ethic the assassins used as a code for killing, erasing only the morally disposable, the book reads like its arrived a little late to dinner. Flashbacks to training days and themes like the invisibility of the older woman are definate high-points in the book, but we’ve read the aged gang of adventurers story before and the writing was better. – 6/10

    Blue Nights by Joan Didion is a heartbreaking remembrance of the life and death of her only daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne. Didion recounts blue nights, the gloaming moments, what the French call ‘l’heure blue, “the end of promise, the dwindling of days.” The book’s subject is very weighty – what greater grief can there be for mortals than to see their children dead. (Euripides). Didion’s narrative explores what it means to be without your child, what it means to let them go, and what it is to be tasked with “protecting the unprotectable.” It invokes the terrible pain of remembered parenting, “Brush your teeth, brush your hair, Shhhh, I’m working.” It is painful and poetic and hard to look away from. It is a meditation on the scourge of depression and anxiety, the imperfect art of medicine, and the horrifying realization that we can never deserve our darling children, that we may fail to keep them safe, and that in death we may begin to forget them. A haunting read. – 7/10

    The Novice is a departure from Hahn’s usual meditative prose. It is a short work of fiction that will resonate with anyone who has lived a life and experienced injustice or unwarranted judgment. It is based on the true story of Quan Am Thi Kinh, a tale that every Vietnamese countryman is told from earliest childhood. Kinh was a woman who masqueraded as a man in order to join a monastery and is revered for manifesting infinite forgiveness. A character accused unfairly of misdoing, she endures many hardships while cultivating a spiritual life, and aquiring the qualities of loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The book is a parable for our times, a simple powerful fable that counsels us to “go home to the island within ourselves,” While the book is not my favourite of Hahn’s, I am perhaps not evolved enough to feel transformed by his simple beautiful message, at least on this occasion, I recognize The Novice is an important read, one that will stay with you awhile. – 6/10

    Copeland’s Eleanor Rigby, as the book title suggests, is a swansong to the lonely. Liz Dunne is a frumpy , middle aged, over weight, friendless redhead and the story centers around her transformative relationship with her newly found son. Written in first person narrative, my favourite, Copeland’s story is sad and funny, sometimes both at once, and explores what it means to be lonely in the modern world. “Loneliness is my curse – our species’ curse – it’s the gun that shoots the bullets that makes us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.” It is a salute to the invisible among us. At one point our narrator asks if she should finish up, “perhaps you might not wish me to go any further.” But as Copland wisely suggests a little later in the narrative, “nobody’s story is boring who is willing to tell the truth about himslf.” I liked Liz, a woman who knows she has lost many chances and opportunities for new experiences and is finally ready to embrace the gift of being alive. – 6/10

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    I picked this novel up on a recent trip to Prague with my daughter. I handed her The Unbearable Lightness of Being which I read when I was her age and then grabbed a copy of Immortality for my little old lady in waiting library. The story held great promise. Agnes a little old lady herself, living life in a tenured marriage on the mean streets of Paris, revisiting her childhood and coming of age including former love stories and complex family relationships…pour me cup of tea and lets get lost together I promised myself. Sadly the book did not deliver with its incessant back and forthing to a classic love affair between Goethe and Bettina. A running parallel story that I was, no doubt, not clever enough to enjoy. I wish Kundera could have contented himself with a simple contemplation of death in real time, less high theatre, metaphorical references, more…death is coming and do I want to spend eternity with the people I made a life with here, the interesting idea of the world as an ad agency, or how about “hypertrophy of the soul”, or maybe the changing nature of time, just a few of the loftier notions he introduces…aren’t those themes sufficient to build a novel on? Overly academic and ambitious Kundera…we know you’re smart, you dont have to reference every page…you told us so much and showed us so little, and left us with nothing to keep. Cardinal sin…you broke your contract with the reader. –2/10

    Love etc. is a dark ad twisty menage a trois between Gillian and husband number 1, steady, reliable Stuart, and husband number 2, witty, entertaining, out of work, Oliver. The story is told in the voices of the three principles, with a few fifth-business cameos inserted for respite care of the reader I imagine. The three stars of the novel tell their truth without interruption or the contamination of conversation. The book is a sequel to Barne’s eariier work, Talking it Over and reads a lot like a one man play, spoken in three distinct voices. Perhaps I might have enjoyed the work more if I had read its forerunner first, but I doubt it somehow. I found the characters very real and clever and charmless, and the narrative full of pithy one liners like “lets just fall into bed and not have sex.” Barnes talent is without doubt, he expertly conveys his weighty themes – the inexplicable sadness of things (“I want mommy to be more cheerful”), the advantage of age and the priviledge of not explaining everything (“you are very naive about us, the old people”), and the last gasps of a used up marriage (Do I still love Oliver? I think so, I suppose so. You could say I’m managing love”). I applaud Barnes mastery and his keen eyed take on the larger life questions and still I did not enjoy this work and cannot recommend it. – 5/10

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    Thurber’s book of essays and amusements is a collective look at the imperilled english language, disdained and disfigured in the mouths of users and abusers of the spoken word. The well known humorist invites readers to “urge up a footstool, loosen your stays, and saucer a scotch,” as he makes fun of our child centred culture, warning us to watch out for “the darlings at the top of the stairs.” Thurber’s work is a call to arms for phrases like “ya know” spreading like viruses, and his essays read like a fairwell speech to proper diction or the decline and fall of the King’s English. He accuses the nation of breeding a band of “tired teachers and apathetic students.” Other topics include the decline of comedy in our time, the poor standards of pronunciation (“mindless, meaningless mumbling”) and other verbal atrocities like the smokescreen of political jargon, and the overuse of idioms. You might have to be a bit of a language geek to get your money’s worth on this read, the comedy is niche, but pleasing if wordplay is your cup of tea. – 6/10

  • The Art of Happiness

    My mother, Mary Eileen (Bunny) Lewis caught in a moment of everyday happiness

    “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.” – Jane Austen

    “Letting go takes a lot of courage. But once you let go, happiness comes very quickly” – Thich Nhat Hahn

    Happiness is a slippery state of being, an elusive, inconstant companion. Like a feckless lover or an indifferent cat, it’s never near at hand when you need it most. It’s approach is often unheralded, it’s visit, never long enough, it resists all enticements to stay. It cannot be captured…it will not be held…we cannot keep it. It is as impermanent as an ice cream on a hot summer afternoon, as fleeting as a first kiss, or a glass of fine wine, it lingers briefly, and disappears into the realm of memory. The art of happiness sits haplessly in the space between our first world sense of entitlement, and our readiness to cultivate a sense of wonder, that magnifies the trace elements of happiness drawn from everyday dealings. Little things like the dog’s yawn, the carol of the wind in the trees, the smell of freshly brewed coffee, or the uncalled-for-kindness of a stranger can, with practice, conjure a sensation of peace, an ‘invisible cloak’ of contentment, protection against the certain storms of life. There are glimmers everywhere if we learn to spy them, and they can sustain us, even on our darkest days, if we apprentice in the art of happiness.

    First lesson – kill all expectation of happiness. It’s Buddhism 101, the first noble truth, ‘Life is suffering.’ Happiness is not our baseline or our birthright. We don’t deserve it, and we can’t earn it. We are not on some episode of Friends with a laugh track running every 30 seconds. Chandler Bing died of drug use disorder, and Rachel’s husband left her for Angelina Jolie. We’re in the ‘real’ people, and to quote the venerable Monty Python, ‘Life’s a piece of shit…just remember it.’ (It works better if you sing it). My kids would say that that’s a bit dark or defeatist, but I’m with Schopenhauer and the Pessimists, you need a sense of humour to get through the tragicomedy we call life, and ‘the safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.’

    Buddha’s second noble truth is that we’re the problem…we are the root of all our suffering…we build our own hell. The art of happiness is to desire less…stop trying to make the world conform to our preferred narrative…that way lies madness. Relax…we control nothing… and anyway, sometimes bad news is good news in disguise, if we wait long enough. It is a mighty thing to slay your expectations and lay yourself open to your share of frustrations, disappointments, and loss. My mother always told me that ‘acceptance is liberation.’ She was a very wise woman, a gift earned from enduring her measured cup of sorrows.

    William James wrote ‘We need to stop deciding how we want things to be and then getting ourselves upset when things don’t turn out that way.” Easier said than done Willie, especially when you discover the last piece of cake gone, or the poop your geriatric dog deposits on the dining room floor every night.  Still, I say give it a try next time you’re provoked by an uncapped toothpaste, a Sunday driver when you’re running late, a rainy day when you wanted it fine.  Start there and when you’re ready you can move on to little old lady sized stuff, like chronic pain, or learning about a friend’s new cancer diagnosis, or loosing someone you loved very deeply…someone you thought you could keep forever…a loss that feels like the sky’s gone out and taken all the stars away. It gets a little harder to wash down then, even with a good red.

    James would say, ‘If you believe feeling bad, or working long enough will change a past or future event, then you are living on a different planet, with a different reality system.’ He’s right of course. we can’t get so mired in the shitty pieces of our story that we miss the good bits…the glimmers.

    We can’t be ‘shiny, happy people’ all the time and I guess we shouldn’t even try. Don’t we need a certain measure of malcontent to get anything done? It’s only unhappiness, disappointment and disenchantment that puts our clay feet on the floor every morning, isn’t it, that fuels our pursuit of wisdom…some magic beans to make the daily grind a bit more palatable? If we were happy all the time, we’d stay at home all day and roll around in it, wouldn’t we, hedonists supping on donuts and Netflix until our brains and our bodies turned to mush.  That’s Hotel California my friends…’and you can never leave.” (Again, much better if you sing it with me)

    If we can’t capture happiness and keep it caged, as we might like best, then we can cultivate habits and practices that invite happiness in, offer her tea and something sweet to encourage a long and robust relationship.  Gratitude is the first and best invitation to happiness that I’ve discovered.  It is that great looking glass that magnifies all the beauty and riches around us, large enough for us to see all that we have been allowed to keep… legs that take us walking, minds that may still read and discuss, running water still clean enough to drink, maybe even a hand to hold.  I’ll add to this the extraordinary occasion for a fine cup o’ tea and in good company.  Vonnegut suggests we recite in such moments of clarity, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

    We must fall in love with the beauty that is all around us.  Cast our eye about ourselves each morning and count our blessings.  Oscar Wilde wrote that ‘most of us are living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’  We need to look for the glimmers.  They’re everywhere once you start practicing: the dance of late summer leaves, the first line of a new book, or that feeling of being understood…an easy, effortless fellowship that lets us know we’re not alone.

    Friendship is the second essential pillar in my study of happiness.  Friends come in many shapes and sizes.  They can be fictional, or four-legged, they can be blood, and people we grew up with, or choose to grow old with, but more often than not you’ll find them out roving on some adventure.  They arrive unexpectedly, a happy surprise, and their company can feel like coming home after a long time away, or a gift you didn’t know to ask for, but have wanted your whole life. ‘The secret Alice, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile, it’s then, only then, that you’ll find wonderland.’

    If you’ve not yet landed in Wonderland, then I suggest you take a break from your own troubles and concerns and look around you for a way to help others with theirs.  Service is chapter 3 in the little old lady book of happiness.  My brother was in love with Emily Dickinson, she was a dear friend of his.  She wrote, “If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, I shall not die in vain.”  I say do harm to no man and never miss an opportunity to do a kindness. Be a light for others.  I love the old Indian proverb, ‘Blessed is he who plants a tree under whose shade he will never sit.’ To my mind there is no better way to cultivate your own happiness than to contribute to the happiness of others, unseen, unacknowledged and with great humility. If we’re all made of the same stuff in the great fabric of being, then watching out for a dropped stitch here and there only makes good sense…keeps us all from unravelling. 

    If we can stay with the knitting analogy for a minute, then I suggest that the fourth practice in this little old lady’s guide to a happiness, is to keep to your knitting every day.  The work we choose to do is key to practicing good happiness hygiene. If you love your work, then every day is a delight and you’ll be a success, no matter the weight of your wallet. That’s not to say you won’t have to find some job to keep you in beer and bread and a roof over your head.  But you must never let those necessary hours detract from your real work, the work you recognize as your own. And if you haven’t yet found this work then, to quote Ms. Dickenson once more, you must be ‘out with lanterns, looking for yourself.’ 

    John Muir the great naturalist counsels that ‘nothing dollerable is safe.’  That’s the way, he implies, to Thoreau’s ‘life of quiet desperation.’ I say be curious, go adventuring, stretch yourself beyond your imagined limits, investigate, take yourself away, let yourself go quiet.  Your work will find you…artist, teacher, carer, baker, candlestick maker…it matters not.  Trust only that which speaks to your soul, that engages you wholly, that causes you to lose time and that you can’t wait to get back to again each day on rising. ‘It’s foolish for people to want to be happy,’ wrote Georgia O’keeffe, ‘our interests are the most important thing in life.’ ‘Happiness,’ she said, ‘is only temporary, but our interests are continuous.’

    Lastly, and maybe most importantly, happiness lives principally in the present moment.  We need to slow down and stay grounded here in the now, and as the Stoics suggest, ‘do every act of our lives as though it was the very last act of our lives.’ All the greats say the same. To quote my favourite Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hahn, we must ‘drink our tea reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves.’ ‘Eternal life’ wrote Wittgenstein, ‘belongs to those who live in the moment.’  But the poets say it best, To see a world in a blade of grass…heaven in a wildflower.’  It’s that moment when the musician understands that he is not only the strings of the instrument he plays on, but also the music that fills the room and touches the heart strings of everyone who hears.  There can be no higher experience of happiness to my mind then being fully present and awake to your surroundings.

    If you asked me the raw ingredients of my own happiness, I would quote Tolstoy, ‘Rest, nature, books, music, such is my idea of happiness.’ I also try to practice what my brother taught me… to live in a state of radical amazement.  E. B. White urged us to ‘always be on the lookout for wonder.’ So, I get up each morning and try to look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. The art of happiness lies in extracting it from commonplace things and as a little old lady in waiting, I’ll give the last word to that old sage, Socrates, ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves,’ now, ‘It’s later than we think.’

  • In Conversation with Margo Beckwith-Byrne

    At the grand dame age of 65, Margo Beckwith-Byrne self-identifies as a ‘little old lady’ proper, although her trim, athletic figure and sporty lifestyle are characteristic of a much younger woman. An avid tennis and pickleball player, Margo is a spitfire that punches well above her fighting weight in any given scenario. She is confidant and decisive, and a natural born manager of men. On the personality tests that assign an animal archetype I’d guess Margo is more at home in the shark tank than the petting zoo. She is spirited, and salty, and strong…she’s had to be strong. Widowed at 42 when her husband went out for a swim on a family vacation and never came back in, she became a single working mom overnight, her kids were then 2,5 and 7.

    Equipped with a B.Ed. in Home Economics, Margo taught for two years in Labrador City before transferring her skills to work more in keeping with her natural aptitudes and temperament. She became a boss.  With the mind of an engineer, and an innate understanding of process and efficiency, Margo started her career in business, first at the Saint John General Hospital, where she very quickly assumed a supervisor role, and later in HR, first at Fundy Cable and later at Labatt Breweries, as an HR Manager.  Her last job was as Senior Vice President at Wyndham.  She was downsized at 54, which today she describes as a gift, one she did not recognize at the time.  An astute businesswoman and investor, Margo never worked another day, and is a poster girl for how to retire well.

    About a year ago, Margo visited the ER with what she describes as stomach discomfort and was eventually diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer. Since then, she has undergone surgery, and chemotherapy which she says is “the most miserable thing you could ever do.’ Margo tells me she is lucky because the cancer she has, MSI-H, is rare and responsive to her current immunotherapy. Her cancer-versary is July 31st.  She shares that the hashtag for colorectal cancer is ‘KFG…Keep fucking going.’  

    Margo speaks with the clear-cut, resolute voice of a woman who has found her truth, and in the process of documenting her wisdom, I caught myself re-evaluating a little of my own inner engineering. I am grateful for what she shared with me on a sunny afternoon, at her beautiful home that overlooks the sea.

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

    I was born a Saint Johner and I grew up wanting to leave.  I had children, and then I wanted to come back.  I went to school first at St. FX and then finished at UNB Fredericton … I really liked sewing, I liked making clothes, I didn’t like cooking so much, but I ended up with a B.Ed. in Home Economics and after that I knew very quickly that I didn’t want to teach.  What was important to me at a young age was financial stability and so I spent the rest of my life trying to achieve that. There were lots of twists and turns but ultimately, I spent my whole life believing that happiness and contentment lay in things outside of me, and now I realize I was wrong.  Not everybody is afforded the knowledge that it’s not the external circumstances but rather the internal…because maybe they don’t achieve as many of their material goals, and I was very lucky to acquire mine, only to find out it doesn’t work. Some people still think it’s that car they’re saving for that will bring you happiness… I know it’s not that. 

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    I know it’s cliché, but it’s not giving a fuck about the good opinion of others. Hands down… the best.  Fuck you all!

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Your body breaking down. Not being able to physically do the things that you used to be able to do.

    If you could retain or retrieve one quality from your youth, what would it be?

    Let me flesh it out this way. I wish when I was young, I had had a better sense for how good I really looked.  I spent a lot of time in my youth wrecking vacations, get-togethers, events, thinking about my weight. I resent that time now. The focus growing up in my house and with friends was often about, ‘Are you fat or are you skinny.’  And the thing is, when I look back at my life, I was never fat, but it’s all relative.  Your appearance was more important than any kind of achievement.  I still have high school friends who’ll ask, ‘is she fat or skinny’. I was like 125 poinds and I would be obsessed with my weight.   Recently when I had to weigh in for chemo, the nurse said, ‘that’s great you haven’t lost any weight,’ and my natural thought is well fuck, and I’ve been exercising my ass off.  I guess I’m answering the question in reverse, but I’d like to go back and tell my younger self that no matter what you weigh or how you look, you’re still beautiful. They say youth is wasted on the young.

    But what do I wish I could retain, to answer your original question, my memory… I wish I didn’t have to write everything down to remember it.  But I guess the flip side of that is I can be humbled now because fuck…I can’t remember anything. Some days even with the ball in my hand, I can’t remember who’s serving.

    What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?

    Oh my god… again it’s going to sound so cliché but, happiness is an inside job. It has nothing to do with your external circumstances. I’ll give you an example, someone came to my house and looked out at my view and said, ‘oh my god you must be the happiest person in the world to be able to look at this every day,’ and I looked at them and went, ‘are you out of your fucking mind?’ because ‘wherever you go, there you are.’  I don’t strive for happiness…happiness is relative and the word is overused.  I strive for peace and contentment, and I recognize that it’s a moment-to-moment thing, and the minute I move past where I’m at, to the future or to the past, I lose the present, and that does me no service, nor is it of service to the people around me.

    The other interesting thing that I’ve learned, and I’m going to try and not come off all Christian when I say this, but so many things in my life I have orchestrated, worked hard towards, and wanted so badly, that achieving the result was all I cared about, with the belief that if I achieved that result I would be happy. Things would be good…I’ll finally have what I wanted.  But the things that have brought me the most joy in my life, were unexpected things that I did not orchestrate.  So, I’m gonna say it two different ways… now, I don’t try to determine how the day will unfold… I let the Holy Spirit do it, or to be more universal, I let the universe decide because to quote the Desiderata, “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    “The great way (life) is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” (Seng-ts’an, the 3rd Chinese patriarch of Zen)

    Or Michael Singer, who I love, his take on it is “Life is not difficult for those who prefer everything.”

    Let things come and let them pass through. It’s resistance, our free will to resist, to hold onto all that stuff, that’s what affects us and causes pain.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    Oh, you know I have a favourite word, ‘Fuck.’  It’s so versatile, it is the most versatile word on the planet, and I like it even more that it’s harsh and it’s disapproved of. 

    Describe your perfect day.

    You know I thought about this, I thought about this long and hard, and I don’t have one, and I’ll tell you why. My mother said something to me years ago and I never really understood, but I do now. She said, ‘I am only as happy as my unhappiest child’ and I thought about that and thought, oh my god, she’s right, and no matter how I try to separate myself from the lives of my children in a ‘they’re on their own journey…it’s not my journey…they need to experience whatever they experience and the universe is there to teach them,’ it’s a lifelong lesson for me.  But if you want to know what I love doing everyday- it’s playing a racquet sport and knitting.  I think for me it’s like working a Rubix cube or something…it’s a puzzle. When I’m playing tennis, every game is fresh and different and challenging. When I’m knitting, I can’t knit the same thing over and over again because I’d be bored out of my mind. I like a challenge, and I like to keep my hands busy. Also, I guess I better say this in case my kids read this, I love spending time with my grandchildren…preferably without their parents around.

    If you could have tea with anyone, real or fictional, dead, or alive, who would it be and what would you talk about?

    That would be Anthony De Mello.  I discovered him in 1992, after he died, in 1987. He wrote a book called Awareness. I had been reading Wayne Dyer, but De Mello took me up to a whole different level.  He was a Jesuit priest who woke up one day and thought, the Catholics don’t have all the answers so he incorporated Hinduism and Buddhism and every other ‘ism’ that you could possibly imagine and was basically the first person who helped me understand that it’s all the same.  All religions, at their core, they’re all the same.  And I read his book a million times and gave it to as many people as I could find.  When my husband, George died, De Mello was instrumental in getting me through it all.  It helped me understand the cosmos on a different level.

    We would talk about how he got to where he is, his whole philosophy of life, death, and everything in between.  Now that he’s dead, I’d ask ‘How’s it going on the other side?’  The book, Awareness was released posthumously, it’s  just snippets from talks that he had, and it gave me a whole new lease on life, a whole new way to experience joy in ways I didn’t understand before and it started me on a journey of self-awareness.  I would love to know how he got there.  Here is an example of a story that he told.  He was a Jesuit and a professor, and he travelled extensively, and he was in a rickshaw somewhere and the guy pulling him had TB and had just pre-sold his soon to be corpse for science, for the sum of 10 dollars American. De Mello wrote that the driver was a happy man, and thought he himself, was miserable, always complaining, and so he asked the man why he was happy, and he said, ‘well, why wouldn’t I be, what’s not to be happy about?’ And for De Mello that was a beginning of understanding.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    My grandbabies, my sports, and my kids. 

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    Guilty…I don’t feel guilty about stuff… ever,  so I can’t really think of one.  Maybe lame TV, I mean I’m watching Agatha Raison right now which is really poorly done but set in the Cotswolds… so I don’t care. I like lame tv and lamer murder mysteries and I mean really lame, like Midsomer Murders lame…because I can knit and not pay attention.

    Do you believe in life after death? What does it look like?

    I certainly do, but not in the way we experience it.   Do I think that the avatar Margo goes on? No.  Do I think the consciousness that is watching Margo as she goes through life, the consciousness that neither lives nor dies, continues…yes I do. When I wake up from a dream sometimes, I really have a hard time trying to figure out whether it was a dream or reality.  Sometimes it feels like real life, starring the Margo avatar, the life that we think of as reality, is actually just another kind of dream.  I believe that when we die, we just wake up and go ‘God, that was a rush, what was that about?’

    I remember watching some three-year old’s get into a fight and I remember them being upset and thinking…that’s just kids.   Well, that’s how a higher consciousness is likely looking at us and thinking oh, that will be over soon, don’t worry about it.  I mean how can you possibly believe and take seriously anything happening on this planet when you know that there are billions of other galaxies and multi verses… and you’re gonna take this seriously, I mean, come on. I always thought if Merle Haggard’s mother died when he was 21 and in prison she would have died thinking she was a failure as a Mom.  Ultimately, he ended up a rich, country western singer. Why worry about kids…you don’t know what their journey is gonna be.

    What does life after death look like…It’s impossible to imagine. When I look up at the stars on a really clear night, I say I’m not even gonna try to figure it out. I have no frame of reference. The Buddhists have a saying, something like ‘when the Sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger, or something like that.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    I don’t want a eulogy at all.  I’m not interested in the traditional experience of death. I am not arrogant enough to think that anything I say or do will matter anymore than it did when my great great great great great grandmother said whatever she said. I mean the framework that humans have established, the goalposts for life… buy a house… go to school… all that stuff is just a concept that we all agreed on.  It’s like money, money is only worth something because we’ve agreed that it does, and assigned it a value, but if money means nothing to me now, then you saying it has value is meaningless to me. 

    I never understood Jesus in the desert, when the devil comes to him and says you can have castles and all the money you want and Jesus goes, ‘yeah, no thanks, I’m good’.  I never understood that.  Now I get it.  Because no matter what you get…a big house…a fancy car…then you’ve gotta work your ass off to keep it and worry that its gonna go away. So instead of it being something to aspire to, it’s a thing that loses its joy.

    One of my favourite quotes from when I was in leadership is, “Of a great leader they will say, we did it ourselves.”  So, if I shaped anybody, or if I influenced anybody, it wasn’t because that was my intention.  If they got something out of anything I ever did, power to them, but that was not my intention.  I’m just doing my dance and if other people benefit by my dance, good for them, even if all they’re saying is ‘I hate that dance.”  I never ever wanted to be a leader, but I certainly was someone who wanted to control things, and those are two very different things. It’s funny, every now and then my kids will say, ‘you were a good mom,’ but ten years ago when they were teenagers, they were saying something else entirely…it’s all relative, and it’s all irrelevant.

  • On Pickleball – An Addiction, a Meditation, a Playground for Graybeards and Dowagers

    Photo Credit – Joanie Lawrence

    “And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but stong in will, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

    Alfred Lord Tennyson

    Hello. I am a little old lady in waiting, and I am … addicted to Pickleball. It started innocently enough…it was between the early morning Aquacise and the Active Aging strength training class that I first spied them, the Pickleballers (contemporaries, mostly retired, not exactly sportswear models…maybe for the vintage lines), slamming the hell out of a whiffle ball with what looked like oversized ping pong paddles. I stood there transfixed, my nose to the gym windows, mesmerized by the speed of the play and the unique center court positioning, which I later came to refer to as a ‘kitchen party.’ I could hear what sounded like actual whooping and wailing, ‘ooo’s’ and ‘ahhh’s,’ yelps of triumph and elation, and grunts of exertion and defeat.  It was a far cry from the mantras and abiding calm of the yoga studio, or the punishing routines practiced by the contortionists who lift and press and strain in the weight room, teeth clenched. So, when an old friend, I’ll call him ‘Dark Larry’ to protect his identity, invited me to play one day, I ‘screwed my courage to the sticking point’ and grabbed a racquet. I mean how hard could it be…right?

    Half an hour later…ok…20 minutes, I was drenched in sweat and red faced from sprinting and, well… shame and mortification.  I made my excuses and hobbled out. Full disclosure I’m not exactly ‘sporty spice’ unless you count reading outdoors or strolling with my geriatric dog. I couldn’t even return the ball unless it landed on my paddle by some stroke of luck, my eye-hand coordination was… shall we say, non-existent.  It felt like I had a learning disability. My synapses were firing fine but, not fast enough for my body to translate into something approaching athleticism. I sucked. We got pickled…twice, which means we failed to score a single point against our opponents. They say they didn’t know it was my first time, but I’m not sure I believe them.  I’ll never forgive those mean girl grannies.

    Two years later, including an 8-month hiatus for a back injury and surgical repair, I’m still playing pickleball.  My doctor said if I continued to play it was ‘at my peril’, given the number of injuries associated with the game, but when my surgeon, a sports enthusiast, gave me the all clear, I was back at it before the stitches melted away. Today, on a good day, I self-identify as an intermediate level player. I won’t bore you with the metrics, suffice to say, I feel like a badass when playing novices, and cannon fodder when flanked by advanced players, predators of placement, magicians who wave their hand back and forth at the kitchen line, a subtle roll of their paddle and its done; an unreturnable serve to your backhand, a ball that makes no bounce, a paced shot to your dominant shoulder that requires the reflexes of a teenager to return.

    Advanced players drill more than they play, they do battle with ball propellers until they perfect each shot, while intermediates, “the middle children” of the pickleball world,  mostly play each other, shrieking in satisfaction or allowing ourselves small knowing smiles of quiet delight when we land a 5.0 serve, or execute a perfect kill shot that ends a long dynamic rally.  A new favourite partner with the gift of the gab, let’s call him, ‘the Winemaker’‘, always says, “that one’s going on the fridge,‘ in those prized moments of unexpected glory.

    While those adrenaline fueled 10 second highs are satisfying in the extreme, I’m not convinced that’s sufficient reward to tempt a recluse like me to expend the energy required for  my daily pickleball fix. We’re out there for hours most days.  I like people fine, but I find them lovelier from a distance.  My social battery is three times too small, a birth defect I believe.  I have a decided preference for the “usual suspects” of long acquaintance, and well-trod social settings.  I do like the structure of organized play, however, and the fact that very little conversation is required during play. 

    Pickleball has its own vernacular: we speak of drives, and drops, the dink, the lob and my new favourite reset strategy, the drive-drop.  There is the infamous kitchen, or non-volley zone, the seat of power in pickleball, much like the center quad in a game of chess.  She who reaches the kitchen first controls the play, it is where all kill shots (overhead slams or smashes that end a rally) are born. There is the postage stamp at each corner of the court where all good serves hope to land.  Then there are the basic strategies like serve and stay, the deep return, the third shot drop, or the party pieces like ATP, the Ernie, the Houdini, and of course things to avoid, the double hit, the double bounce the foot faults, the net balls and the lets (rallies that must be replayed for any reason).  We won’t even start in on the unique scoring articulation that includes the score and server position, to be announced before each serve. It takes a moment to master, and in the end, no one can remember who is serving anyway, let alone the score. As a friend said only last week, “Sometimes I’m holding the ball and I still don’t know who is serving.”  I usually defer to the youngest player on court, rather than waste precious play time arguing with peers in the early stages of cognitive decline…no one wins those debates.

    Once you’ve learned the basics, and the lingo, then the task is to learn the players.  The lefties who encroach on the center court shots from the right, the lobbers who take advantage of the mobility compromised, the ball hogs, the blind men whose line calls are questionable at best, the players who like to call their opponents’ line calls, your basic complainers, and whiners, the cheaters and liars, those prone to unsolicited advice, those who intentionally misrepresent the score to their advantage  a second before serving, the unkind casual remarkers, passive aggressive mind fuckers….and those are just my friends. Just kidding…I adore my squad…truly. There are vexations of course, any pickleball club is a microcosm of society at large, complete with social miscreants, but for the most part the community, at the intermediate rec level at least, is honourable, inviting, observant of established etiquette, and focused on good solid play.  You win some, you lose some, and most everyone lands a shining moment, even if it never ‘makes the fridge.‘

    While I’ve met some amazing people playing pickleball, artists, musicians, landscape designers, neuro-surgeons, businessmen, accountants, IT types (all mostly retired); and acknowledge that for many the soft, social side of pickleball, ‘a place where everyone knows your name‘ is a big draw, I can honestly say that for an introvert like me (masquerading as an ambivert because it sounds cooler), the sweaty social petri dish of court society is most definitely not the source or even a triggering  factor of my pickleball addiction.

    So, what is the allure?  If it’s not the thrill of blood sport, or the social networking, what exactly is driving my pickleball predilection? Why do I routinely leave the house, against my better judgement most days, to play a sport that I am only arguably competent in, flailing about with quick furtive movements that can’t be considered optimal exercise for my crumbling spine, and osteoarthritic joints, and that often overwhelms my inner agoraphobic (I mean…I could be home, reading)? 

    Something is driving my need to hit that perforated, neon yellow, plastic chew toy of a ball, and I think it has more to do with my relationship to the ball itself than to any of the dear friends I count myself lucky to have met on the courts. When the ball is in play I am hyper focused, almost as though I was encapsulated in a speed game of Atari pong.  My brain likes the readiness position, awaiting the ball’s rapid-fire approach and the subsequent response signal it sends to my unruly body to return the volley. It likes to look for openings for ball placement and opportunities to dink or lob or drive as it draws me to the kitchen as if by a magnetic force. While my brain is engaged and my body, the recalcitrant slave to its unreasonable demands, I experience a heightened sense of relaxation. At play I am immersed in a thought-less slumber, I’m cocooned in an unconscious whiskeyesque oblivion.  I go animal.  Playing pickleball is a reprieve from the constant flow of thoughts that plague the modern mind.  It is a meditation, a place to rest from the narrative that has no end in the curious mind of this little old lady in waiting.  This emptying of cerebral space to all but the most basic objective, to hit the fast-moving ball, coupled with the therapeutic endorphin ride that accompanies the exacting physical exertion, and the dopamine high of a well played point, I believe that is the root of my pickleball addiction.

    You understand that win or lose, novice, intermediate or advanced, I’m still an introvert sloshing through a sweaty- peopled mosh pit to play pickleball.  Why do I do it? I do it for the dopamine.  Don’t get me wrong, I love  to win, but win or lose, the best games for me are those that are over in a flash, equally matched or playing slightly above your natural abilities, surrounded by the ‘usual suspects’, the squad that invite you out to play each day, the partner that taps your paddle after a missed shot in a show of support, the victories, the defeats, relentless humanity in all its splendour.   In the early morning hours, I tentatively open my car door in the crowded car park of the pickleball courts and am assailed by a chorus of laughter and comradery coming from a cohort who have worked hard all their lives, old enough to have earned their place in the playground, and still young enough to understand the importance of play.  It is a beautiful sound, uncommon and contagious, and sweet enough to cast a reciprocating smile on the face of even the most determined introvert. 

    Author’s Note:

    This blog post is dedicated to my very first pickleball friend who I’ll call ‘Spreadsheet girl’. We started this crazy game together, and she is currently out with an injury.    I hope I’ll see her soon.

  • Reading Room 3

    Sally Rooney is a favourite writer, maybe more than a little old lady in waiting should admit. Her characters are brilliant, ruined twenty somethings who overthink their way into clinical depressions trying to outrun their Irish childhood trauma. Rooney’s writing is fresh and smart and made from the modern gestalt. The Observer in their review of her latest novel, suggests there is no better author at work today.

    Beautiful World, Where Are You is essentially a correspondence between Alice, a novelist, nestled in the Irish countryside, freshly arrived from a psych ward, and her best friend Alice, an underpaid intellectual living in Dublin. They write about their relationships, and their work, and the state of the world they live in, “standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something.” The book earns a high rating from me for the sex scenes alone (I’m imagining you making note of the title now). I’d rate the story even higher, I believe, if Rooney was my contemporary, perfectly capturing the age my children are living in now in which “the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.” Her characters are “untouched by vulgarity and ugliness” and looking for moments of “something concealed …the presence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world.” 8/10

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    I picked this book up at a favourite design shop uptown last winter. I liked the title and her chapter headings had quotes from writers I admire like C.S. Lewis, Anne Lamott, Carl Jung and Pema Chodren. I believe the author is local, a Maritimer, which makes my less than glowing review a bit more uncomfortable. While I appreciated the author’s true to life anecdotes and the general premise of her book, that bad things lead to growth and a more evolved self, I hated her God-squad vernacular and her overly familiar tone. I liked the road she is taking, I just didn’t love her running commentary as she journals about her boundaries and her conversations with her God. I applaud her vulnerability, I abhor her candor. 2/10

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    I’ve read enough Kate Quinn to understand that she is a no fail formula story writer. She creates strong period pieces, in this case 1950’s Washington in the heart of the McCarthy trials, when the rights of women were predicated on their status as wives and mothers, where reputations were guarded, and romances were discreet, and every woman held a secret in her wasted heart.

    The Briar Club is the story of a supper club in a women’s boarding house that brings together and bonds a motley crew of women ranging from widows and war brides, to single moms, and civil servants, a mobster’s moll, an immigrant artist, and an injured baseball star, to name a few. Quinn captures unique, compelling narratives, drawn and crosshatched by a master story teller who showcases our social history, as seen through the eyes of women, our stories, lesser known and more delectable for their subtleties. 7/10

    Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy is a unique story, intellectually challenging and structurally unorthodox, it is essentially the documented therapy sessions between a brillaint twenty year old mathmatician and her psychiatrist in 1972 when she voluntarily commits herself to a psych hospital as she processes the death of her brother, Bobby. With a history of paranoid schizophrenia and suicidal ideation, this is not her first visit to Stella Maris hospital, but her first conversations with a new therapist who engages her in a game of cat and mouse that makes a voyeur of the reader and keeps our attention despite the challenging sections that review the magic inherent in advanced math. The rewards are exponential as we meet her chimeras, the highly constructed hallucinations only she can see, and follow the “My Dinner With Andre” conversation that swings back and forth in the space between philosophy and quantum mechanics with cameos from Wittgenstein and Topos Theory that transport you to the edge of another universe. Stella Maris is a master work of intricate ideas and an absorbing examination of the “billion synaptic events clicking away in the dark like blind ladies at their knitting.” Warning – this is no beach book. Have wine at the ready for the deep thoughts aftershock . 8/10

    Doyle is a delight to read on any occasion but Life Without Children, a collection of Corona stories, is truly superb. His eye for the everyday detail distills something true and generalizable for every reader who anxiously sang the Happy Birthday song while washing their hands like surgeons, and danced the supermarket side step, or binged their way through the Netflix scandi-noir series, and social distanced themselves out of work and relationships.

    Doyle’s brilliant story collection looks at the masks we wore, discarded, like “underwear on the footpath“, and examines lives under lockdown, “that ripped away the padding“, with “no schedule, or job, no commute, nothing to save us.” His characters explore their smartphone addiction, and earworms, and engage in real conversations, “the tricky ones that stray from the usual.”

    Doyle’s book beautifully frames the silent, deadly days of our very recent past when Covid hemmed us in, he shows us our fragility, our interdependence and our essentialness, and will make you laugh until you cry. 8/10

    Pema Chodren is a Buddhist nun and meditation teacher who I have read for many years, including her meditation series which I highly recommend. Taking the Leap is a series of teachings designed to help you stay open to the many vexations of human life and build a space or pause within highly charged situations before reacting with our smaller selves, and further contributing to the deepening and seemingly entrenched polarization that governs so much discourse in today’s world that labels the ‘other’ as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. What she offers is a Buddhist prescription with the potential to reduce suffering.

    It starts with staying open and present and awake to whatever is going on no matter how uncomfortable or seemingly intolerable, no easy task when we are, most of us, pleasure seeking, or putting our heads in the sand.

    Pema is big on the pause and embracing impermanence and the underlying uneasiness that is an integral part of the human condition. Her book is a guide that coaches us to stay with the “tightening” when it comes, to break the habital chains and reactions that rule us unconsciously. Taking the Leap offers a formal teaching, a map to a more peaceful approach to living, but it is no easy journey. There is an undertow, a dopamine hangover that will distract and discourage your efforts…still its worth a read even if all you get is that there is a spiritual toolbox waiting for you when you’re ready to open it. 8/10

    Alexander McCall Smith, a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University, turned highly successful detective story writer, is a very popular and commercially successful storyteller. He understands that great detective fiction has more to do with setting and the personal charisma of the detective than any murder or plot device. Career mystery readers are rarely surprised by the denoument of the books they devour. We read mysteries because we love to be in the company of the detective, or immersed in the world that the writer places their heroes and the villains they sort out. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is McCall Smith’s first run at a winning detective series and it does not disappoint. Mma (Precious) Ramotswe is a keen and unusual gumshoe, “the only lady detective in Botswana,” with an unerring understanding of human nature and a love for her native Africa. “A good woman in a good country, one might say.”

    McCalls stories document unrecorded lives, the narratives of ordinary people who see beauty in simple things and find happiness with very little material wealth. Detective Ramotswe deals in absentee husbands, African gangsters, and witchdoctors, and a disinterested police presence, outsmarting her fellow characters, armed with nothing more than a detective manual and a small inheritance from her father. She is a unique sleuth with a Columbo like innocence, an interesting backstory, and a determination to succeed that will have you routing for her. Best ecapist read this summer. 7/10

    This book came to me via an interview I did for the blog that will be dropping later this month. It’s a life changer… the kind of book you buy in bulk and try to force on everyone you love. Published posthumously, it is a compilation of wisdom teachings presented by Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest and psychoanalyst, who describes a paradise on earth, waiting inside each of us, just beyond the reach of our conceptualized world and the limitations of language, out beyond the boundaries of our egos and all our charitable good works (a more refined ego construct).

    Awareness shows a way to wake up from the modern day miasma, an all consuming mass illusion that keeps us trapped in a hamster wheel of self absorption and unhappiness, derived from a short term self soothing dopamine cycle that breeds a disquiet we’ve acclimated to through a lifetime of conditioning.

    De Mello asks us to kill our expectations, to remain open, and to detach from our desires.

    Awareness leaves readers with a series of excellent prompts but the real work comes after the close of the book. De Mello’s message is a little like “trying to capture the feel of the ocean in a bucket of water.” Its a beginning. It starts in awareness. You cannot strive for the world he describes or, he cautions, it will elude you. It begins with a willingness to sit in the present and observe the majesty that is the reality hidden beneath the ego and its self serving thought stream, it glimmers only in the present, turning to dust in a mind that travels to the past or the future.

    He coaches the reader to watch everything within you and around you as if it were happening to someone else. He counsels that real happiness resides in you and no where else, in no thing, in no other person.

    De Mello’s book is a call to awaken from a world in which we are dying of spirtual thirst surrounded by a sea of fresh water, living in a world filled with joy and happiness and love, but brainwashed, hynotized and sirened to sleep, trained not to see what is all around us.

    Awareness is by far the most important, insightful and funny rendering of the truth of the universe that I have found in a decade of searching. I cannot recommend this book highly enough not only for how powerfully it could impact our lives individually but also what it might mean for an awakening world. 15/10