Little Old Lady … in Waiting

Tag: clarity

  • A Parting Glass

    “It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty years to learn to keep quiet.” – Ernest Hemingway

    “It is a kind of love, is it not? How the cup holds the tea…I’ve been thinking about the patience of ordinary things. How clothes wait respectfully in closets, and soap dries quietly in the dish, and towels drink the wet…and what is more generous than a window.” – Pat Scheider

    “A low inward thrum seemed to pass through the garden, as though the place itself had drawn breadth and held it. The roses knew first. A faint tremor went through their stems; their leaves turned ever so slightly as if in listening…The roses said nothing. They had long ago mastered patience. But in the folded centres of their blooms they kept their knowledge.” – Thackray of England

    We don’t always get to say a proper goodbye, to intentionally take our leave of one another, to say the words that will hold meaning and then pass into memory. As my 60th birthday looms and my year of writing as a little old lady… in waiting draws to a close, I raise a “parting glass” in gratitude for your readership and your always thoughtful and thought-provoking feedback. A special thank you to the “12” wise women who gave me their trust, and opened their homes and there histories to share their earned wisdom. A curated circle, chosen for their considerable and varied life experience, they dug deep for their gold and held out their best bits so I could take a closer look, reviewing over 600 years of collective learning. These conversations proved a deeply nourishing, uniquely rich, and stimulating experience.

    The Little old Lady …in waiting blog which began as a bid to slow down time as I transitioned to a life beyond the corseted years of paid employment and the heavy-lifting decades of parenting, was developed as a space to inventory and explore the bittersweet privilege of growing older; the good, the bad and the not so pretty.

    As a writing workshop the blog proved a perfect tool for exploring and consolidating my thoughts on topics like retirement and the mother choice, death and diet, loss and heartache, the importance of rest and transformative power of travel, creative engagement, the beauty and majesty of the Crone, the everyday therapy of walking, the art of happiness, the meaning of life, and even the possibility of an afterlife. I smile a slow inscrutable smile imagining my children, one day opening these essays, perhaps in their 50’s, and hopefully wearing similar smiles, reading my thoughts on subjects they are only now beginning to consider. I will have my say!

    I have learned a great deal in this last year of writing. I learned, most importantly, that when we distill our life stories down to the essentials: education, work, love of place and people, it is always a story of family, the backbone of our lives, that sustains us, those who came before us and those who will still be here after we are gone.

    Often the quality heralded as the “best thing” about getting older is a certain imperviousness to the opinions of others, while the “worst thing” about getting older, referenced most frequently, is pain, the emotional pain of losing those we love, as well as physical pain, or the breaking down of the body. It seems while our inner women may still feel twenty-something, the body keeps its own count of the passing years.

    Important life lessons that resonated with me include the deceptively simple truth that “happiness is an inside job,” the importance of “being in the moment,” the gift of “forgiveness… of ourselves and others, the profoundly freeing understanding “that control is an illusion” and the everyday magic of “leading with kindness.”

    Favourite quotes …an impossible task to be sure, but a few stand-outs for me include:

    “Well behaved women seldom make history.”

    “Would it help?” (a question to ask when tempted to plummet into a worry spiral)

    “If this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is.” (An intentional acknowledgement of everyday moments that bring joy)

    “Life is not difficult for those who prefer everything” (Excellent advice to accept the universe as it unfolds)

    I loved the experience of collecting favourite words, arguably my most telling interview question. Honorable mention must go to the expletives and the made-up words. “Kretzimah (soft or enjoyable, a gentle person…it describes everything delightful” and “Snigg,” an accidental emoticon. (Originally a typo denoting an emotional reaction, passed down in family correspondence, evolving to an intergenerational sentiment inspiring familial love and affection).

    Components of perfect days recounted invariably involve agendaless afternoons and time with family. Chapter headings chosen to reflect this part of our life stories were most often some variation of living intentionally, in wisdom and in grace or a kind of renaissance, or revival. Experiences that spark joy include meaningful conversation, time with close friends and family and engaging work. Guilty pleasures were for the most part verboten, discarded vestiges of younger versions of ourselves. Most everyone interviewed was open to the notion of an afterlife but most were unsure what it might look like. Some hoped we might fly, many wished to spend time with lost loved ones, but ultimately the afterlife proved impossible to imagine in any tangible way, one friend insistent on “a place of perdition if you’ve been just an absolute arsehole.” Never mess with a little old lady…in waiting.

    As to tea with real or imagined guests, many chose to invite personal heroes, and family members no longer living, with one thoughtful LOLIW choosing to come back some years hence and have tea with her grown grandchildren. What a great privilege that would be.

    As for eulogy, most women I spoke to wished to be remembered as kind, passionately engaged with their lives, a good friend, or as someone who leaves the world a bit better than when they arrived. My favourite eulogies were the succinct ones, “….and curtain“, ” I came, I was…I went, and the brilliantly comic, “That ass though…”

    I answered these questions for myself in a journal entry dated almost one calendar year ago to the day, and will attach them below as a gesture of respect and gratitude for the 12 extraordinary women who agreed to embrace social media and go public with their answers (I can be brave too), and as a legacy letter for my own children who may one day wish to know my answers. I encourage all my fellow cronies to do the same as a legacy project, as a writing exercise to distill personal meaning, and as a love letter to yourself, a guide to light your way in these last and hopefully most meaningful years of your journey.

    It was a great privilege to engage with you, my readers, in this year of writing as a Little old lady…in waiting and a real surprise to discover readers in places as far away as South Africa and Switzerland, Japan and Ireland, Greece and Australia, over 40 countries in total. I am deeply grateful for your readership and correspondence. My wish for little old ladies in waiting everywhere, is that we savour these last, unpromised chapters of our story, and if, as I have suggested many times, that “the end is where we start from,” it seems right to close where I began this journey, with Homer’s insightful invitation to mind your life in these last, most precious years.

    “Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.“

    I raise a parting glass to you, in gratitude,

    A Little Old Lady…in Waiting

    In Conversation with Sylvie Fitzgerald

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less.

    I was born on the first day of Summer and was originally to be called “Summer”. My dad decided on Sylvie instead, a French name that he found in a novel by Louis Lamour. I had the great good fortune to be born into a family where I grew up feeling deeply loved, with two older brothers, one a protector, the other a soulmate…I was the only girl, and the baby so I grew up feeling like a princess.

    I’m a very high functioning introvert, happiest at home, reading, writing and, to a lesser extent, discussing, so I spent half of my 20s at university, managing to come out without any working papers, so I decided on a teaching degree first, and much later a nursing degree. No work has ever made me as happy as the work of reading, researching, ruminating, and writing. Along the way I met a lovely man named Jeff and we’ve been together now for more than 30 years… he’s probably the best decision I ever made, he and our two beautiful twenty-something children.

    Closing in on 60, I have a growing awareness that my time is finite and I would like to spend it well, cultivating, to the exclusion of all else, engagement, joy, and kindness. I’m trying to live well so that I can reconnect with people I’ve lost, people who have gone ahead of me and that I miss very much.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    The best thing about getting older is laying down the mantle of responsibilities we assume over the course of our lives … work …, parenting, what to make for dinner, worrying about all the things beyond our control. I love the quote. “Don’t worry, nothing is in our control.” I guess for me the best thing is reclaiming my freedom, deciding how best to spend my life every day, every moment.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    The worst thing about getting older is losing the people you love, the people who matter most to you, people so much a part of you, you’re really not sure what’s left of you after they leave….and the aftermath of that experience…learning to live with that kind of profound loss.

    What would you title this chapter of your life?

    Beauty Everywhere.

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

    I’ve let go of many things that no longer serve me…a certain arrogance that my answers are the right answers, an analytic way of thinking that is quick to classify and critique and judge, an egocentricism that casts me as the star of the story instead of a single small light on a tree set with millions of twinkling stars, or the idea that we must set goals and achieve them, that the mountain is there to be climbed instead of simply seen. I’ve let go of a lot from my youth, none of which I would wish to reclaim… maybe taut skin and a waist.

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

    That kindness trumps cleverness, every time. I used to think that the pursuit of knowledge was the most laudable goal and now I know that kindness is, unequivocally, and that the best training in kindness begins with kindness to yourself.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    “With our thoughts we make the world.” (Buddha) It was the first big secret I discovered and it remains a central tenet of my philosophy that I return to again and again. That we, each of us, have our own unique lens on the world, a filter that colours our perceptions. Two people can read the same book or watch the same play or experience the same family dinner and one can come away, marvelling at a moment of great beauty while another is conflicted about the experience, a witness to discord or even tragedy. We create our own reality; we see what we expect to see. Physicists even claim that when we observe a thing, we actually change its composition on a molecular level. We give form to things. If we cultivate beauty within, then we see beauty in others. If we are hard on ourselves then we have a tendency to be hard on others, if we are ourselves injured, we will sometimes choose to injure others in anger. Anais Nin says it beautifully as well, “ We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Closely related is a quote by Rumi, “Out there beyond the idea of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” In reality there is nothing that is good or ill, its only our thoughts that colour in context and assign meaning.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    I love words so it’s almost impossible to choose only one. I’ll curtail myself to a few. I’ll start with “Sonder” a recent acquisition and new favourite, discovered in a book by Joe Koenig “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.” It’s the realization that everyone you pass by is living a life as intricate and complex and real as your own, complete with their own dreams, troubles and foibles, a similar hero’s journey that evolves, unknown around you, like an anthill sprawling deep underground with passages to countless other lives that you will never truly know, but may still appear in for a moment, like a photobomber, perhaps only once, sipping a latte in the background, or a blurry passerby in a dimly lit window at dusk. I love the notion of interconnectedness “sonder” conjures.

    “Copacetic” is another favourite. I like to say the word, the sound of it, and I like it’s meaning, that all is well. It also invites a posture of “equanimity” for me, a quality I have been in pursuit of most of my adult life, and another favourite word inspired in part by its illusiveness. Lastly, I must include, “Egad“ an old-fashioned exclamation that my father was fond of using. It helps me remember everything I hold dear about him, his humor and his love of language.

    Describe your perfect day.

    My perfect day starts early, maybe 6 AM, a quiet morning …coffee… it’s raining outside. I can hear the tapping of the rain on the window. panes. I love the rain because I don’t have to feel guilty about staying in on rainy days. I take my time, I write some morning pages and enjoy a second coffee with my husband, perhaps a fire, a lazy morning. Afterwards there is some physical component to the day maybe a long walk with my dog by the sea, or a swim in summer. After lunch I fall in to the pages of a perfect story, perhaps a woman in her 60’s, maybe a sonnet writer, surrounded by colourful characters that distract and delight. Later in the day my family gathers, there is slow atmospheric music playing, possibly jazz…maybe The Mercury Songbook. The lighting is orangey gold, Rembrandt tinted, I can smell seafood being prepared for dinner. Someone else is cooking, hopefully my husband, a glass of wine appears, as if by magic, just one. My kids are there and we sit down to a dinner together. We talk about our day, things that made us think or wonder, little beauties our eyes captured. There is dessert of course, because life can always be a little sweeter. Later another good story, for there can never be enough, perhaps a British mystery and then a blissful sleep.

    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 sit down with my mum and dad and brother, all of whom have passed away. I would also invite my living brother, so I guess my origin family. I’d have questions, but mostly I would just want to sit in their presence, to feel their embrace in a physical way, to hold hands, to hug them and be held by them in turn for as long as I could. I’d ask where they are. I’d ask how I might find them when it was my turn to follow them, and I’d ask how we might talk sometimes now, how I might best listen for them.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    My family, reading, and meaningful discussion, the kind that changes you in small important ways, that butts against your confirmation bias, the kind where you can feel your heart beating and know for sure that you’ve discovered something true.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    I love a good period romance, think Downton Abbey, Jane Eyre, The Austen novels. You know the story, always a dark, brooding hero. Just a little healthy escapism but never before dinner. Every little old lady in waiting knows that we rescue ourselves, that we are the architects of our own fortunes, that we craft our own happy endings, but sometimes it’s fun to make believe.

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

    Yes, I do. I choose to believe in life after death, in the absence of any definitive proof one way or another. I am not so arrogant as to discount what I cannot conceptualize or understand. I don’t believe that there is an end to what we truly are, our essence. I know that our physical bodies die, but not our true or higher selves, the part of ourselves that has no name, that listens deep within us. Death, I believe is only a small speed bump between this world and the next, a door opening and closing. Blake wrote ” If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

    What does it look like? I hope it’s like a book I once read, What Dreams May Come. I hope it’s a place where we flow in a stream of consciousness with our thoughts and desires. If I think of my mother, then I am suddenly there with her in her kitchen watching her make molasses cookies, or I float down to the seaside for a stroll with my dad and a long overdue chat. Later a trip to the library, where I find my way to the poetry section for a cuppa with my brother where we cast away with our latest literary finds. In the afterlife of my imagining there is no fear, no scarcity, no expiration, no worry…only engagement, adventure and love.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    I hope it will say that she was kind, that she loved well, that she honoured her gifts, and that she left this world a slightly better place for having been here. I’d like someone I have loved well to read the poem, “Kindness.” by Naomi Shihab Nai and perhaps Ulysses by Tennyson or maybe the Desiderata or almost anything by Rilke or Rumi. I hope I get to hear your words, and carry them home with me, carefully, to keep until I see you again.

    Kindness

    Naomi Shihab Nye

    1952 – 

    Before you know what kindness really is
    you must lose things,
    feel the future dissolve in a moment
    like salt in a weakened broth.
    What you held in your hand,
    what you counted and carefully saved,
    all this must go so you know
    how desolate the landscape can be
    between the regions of kindness.
    How you ride and ride
    thinking the bus will never stop,
    the passengers eating maize and chicken
    will stare out the window forever.

    Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
    you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
    lies dead by the side of the road.
    You must see how this could be you,
    how he too was someone
    who journeyed through the night with plans
    and the simple breath that kept him alive.

    Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
    you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
    You must wake up with sorrow.
    You must speak to it till your voice
    catches the thread of all sorrows
    and you see the size of the cloth.
    Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
    only kindness that ties your shoes
    and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
    only kindness that raises its head
    from the crowd of the world to say
    It is I you have been looking for,
    and then goes with you everywhere
    like a shadow or a friend.

  • In Conversation with Michelle Hooton

    I met Michelle Hooton a little over 20 years ago when I accepted an invitation to attend a book club evening at the home of a mutual friend.  We’ve been meeting once a month ever since with a small, stimulating, always surprising set of eclectic readers, opening our homes and our cookbooks, hosting rigorous debate, developing literary discussion points, and reciting deeply meaningful or contentious passages with the power to engage, transform and elevate. Not a bad way to spend some 200 evenings together, sharing meals, and laughter, drinking wine, and exploring a lot more than plot twists, and prose.

    You can learn a great deal about a person after perusing their bookshelves, and far more still, in the way a person approaches a book, what they find meaning in, passages they deem beautiful or poignant, what moves them to tears, what makes them angry, what words they underline to read out loud again later.

    I can tell you that Michelle Hooton is an intelligent and discerning woman, a reflective and respectful reader, less prone to deconstruction, always in earnest, mining an authors’ artwork for the gold within.  She is an immersive reader, with an ear attuned to a well-crafted story, and is often drawn to quieter books, with characters who have earned their place in the narrative, settings that transport the reader, inform, and enhance our experience, and ideally leave us with something to take away, to hold dear.

    If Michelle was a book, she would be a well-researched one. The cover design would be expertly engineered eye candy. The prose would be succinct and distilled.  There would be multiple passages where the reader could pause and rest a while in serene, inspired settings.  The heroine would be original and authentic, a self-made woman who believed in hard work, and her own powerful magic, and the ending would never disappoint.

    Michelle has the kind of confidence that comes from many years of self-reliance and trusting her inner compass. She is charismatic, a polished conversationalist, a flawless hostess, a gifted gardener, a celebrated chef, and an accomplished and award-winning entrepreneur.  An astute businesswoman, she is also a creative, and excels at designing beautiful settings and spaces where her circle of friends and family, may repose in charmingly rendered rooms that inspire and delight, while being treated to her many gifts, not the least of which, is her mastery in the kitchen.  As I sit in her highly photographable home, decked out in her curated Christmas finery, I feel a deep sense of comfort and joy. She tells me it’s her love language. It’s how she expresses her gratitude for you giving her your time.

    Michelle describes herself as a “serial entrepreneur” launching her first business venture at age 17. “Growing up I never heard the words ‘You can’t do it’…it was … ‘How are you going to do it?’ Once I realized that I could steer my own course and succeed, that was it.  I have worked for other people, but I didn’t care for it.  Whoever I worked for, I felt like I gave them my best, but I always operated like I owned the business, and when it got to the point where we were conflicting about the work …that was it…it was time to go”

    In 1982, Michelle opened Body Electric, an aerobic exercise studio in uptown Saint John.  A year later she opened Body Electric Aerobics on Broadway, in NYC, and a year after that, was listed as one of the top studios in Manhattan by the New York Times.

    In 1992, now back in Saint John, she opened The Secret Garden, specializing in fresh and dried florals shipping throughout Canada and the United States. In 1999, Michelle opened Sisters Italian Foods, a small Italian deli and imported food shop located in the City Market. She ran both businesses concurrently, until selling Sisters in 2005 after being elected Deputy Mayor for the City Saint John, serving from 2004-2008.

    Thirty-eight years and five businesses later, Michelle fulfilled a lifelong dream, opening Italian by Night in 2016 with business partners, Elizabeth Rowe and Gord Hewitt. This premier Saint John dining experience has been featured on Open Table’s ‘Most Romantic’ list for Canada for seven consecutive years, Best Italian Restaurants in Canada in 2017 and Top 100 Most Beloved Restaurants in Canada in 2022, accolades based exclusively on guest ratings.

    “My lifelong dream was to create the best Italian restaurant in Atlantic Canada. I don’t believe geography limits one’s ability to produce a world-class product. Achieving this requires intense knowledge, focus, the ability to inspire those around you to share your dream, and the passion and spirit to believe you can do it.”

    Michelle won Entrepreneur of the Year at the Saint John Chambers Outstanding Business Awards in 2024 and her immensely popular food blog Bite by Michelle enjoys a worldwide audience, surpassing 4,500,000 views. Her recipes are hearty and time honoured and easy to follow for even the most recalcitrant cook. They are, each one, small works of art…Michelle’s secret ingredient is love.

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

    At a really young age I had experienced great joy and great tragedy. At that young age I chose joy for the rest of my life.  I somehow always had the ability to follow my true north. I trusted my gut, but sometimes my gut feeling was wrong. When I made a mistake, I was never too proud to admit it, and then fix it.  So…on my second try I married the love of my life, raised the three most spectacular women I will ever know, and have built the life of my dreams. I’ve had the great fortune to have been able to turn every passion that I ever had into a way to make a living.  And that’s really the story of my life…that’s it.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    Clarity.  You just get to that point where you don’t need to see the world as grey anymore because you’ve had so many life experiences. I think people are kidding themselves when they don’t know the difference …when they can’t see whether its’ black or white.  I think it’s safer to live in the grey…and I don’t have any interest in that.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Running out of time. I’m in an industry right now where I am two and a half times older than the national average…and you know there is just so much more to learn, and figure out, and experience and time is not on my side anymore.

    What would you title this chapter of your life?

    Grace. I want to finish this chapter of my life with grace. The life Ralph and I built together has given me a gift—this time to live gracefully and with gratitude. I feel incredibly grateful, constantly. It’s like a prayer, like saying grace before a meal—giving thanks. For me, it’s an internal conversation, a continuous acknowledgment of how grateful I am. And I hope that gratitude shows to the world in a graceful way.

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

    The belief in endless possibilities.  It didn’t matter if I made the wrong decision when I was young because I had time…I could fix it …I was always gonna have time until all of a sudden I don’t.

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

    There is no finish line. All my life there was always that imaginary…when I get there…when I do this…when I accomplish that… Once I realized there is no finish line, I was free. Life is wide open. You just keep going. Be open to the universe and whatever else is thrown at you. Just keep going, without that nagging feeling that you’re running towards something.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    Definitely, and it’s the mantra of my life.  I cross stitched it and framed it and it hung beside the door in my house so the kids would see it every morning on their way to school.

    “Whatsover thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

    I’ve lived that way my whole life, in the way I work, and the way I love, the way I garden, the way I cook…everything that is a part of my life… that was just the way I approached it.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    Grammy. I adore my children, and I never thought I could love like that again. But I do—it’s remarkable. Being with my grandchildren is incredible. When I hear them say “Grammy,” my body experiences a molecular shift. No other word gives me that feeling.

    Describe your perfect day.

    I’ve had this day and I hope to have many more of them. Its summertime…I’m at the farm and all of my family are home.  I’m the first one up. I put on the coffee… and start to make breakfast. One by one they slowly start waking up. We have breakfast on the verandah. We drink slow coffee while the girls use ‘all their words’ …thats an expression the girls use when they they tell me everything that’s going on in their lives. We spend the day on the boat. We have a place further upriver where we like to swim…its magical. I take a picnic with Prosecco, some beer, and all sorts of treats. We’ll stay there until 5 or 6 o’clock and then it’s back to the farm. We get supper ready. My mom and dad will join us. We’ll dine on the veranda under  candle light. We graze until 10 or 11 o’clock at night.  We finish off by the fire table.  Yawns start and we all go to bed, and it is 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?

    So, I took some political license here.  If I could do that, I would come back many decades from now and have tea with my elderly grandchildren and we would talk about their lives, and all the things I’ll miss.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    The people I love.  Creating beauty.  And anticipating…anticipating Christmas, anticipating family coming home…anticipating what we’re going to do next… I love it.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    Dairy Queen. The first time that I ever tasted it, it was like a taste explosion…I couldn’t believe something could taste that good. and I’ve never lost that love of it. You could put the most fabulous European dessert on the table and a peanut buster parfait, and I guarantee you I’m gonna take the peanut buster parfait every time. It’s a special little treat and I usually have it alone.

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

    I guess it depends on how you characterize life. I believe that we have an inextinguishable life force and I believe that life force carries on after our physical bodies expire.  I’d like to think that my life force will find its way into future generations of my family.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    Life was not a dress rehearsal for her.  She lived her life like it was the opening night of the greatest performance she had the honour of playing.

  • The Richness of Retreat

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    “Silence is also a conversation” – Ramana Maharshi

    “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth.” – Albert Einstein

    I have never lived alone, and at 59 and a half, I can count on one hand the number of nights I’ve spent alone in my home.  So, when my daughter announced that she was off to Australia for a fortnight, and asked if I might cat sit, I decided to embark on a private retreat of my own, a silent, mind-spa staycation, an experiment in the single life, an escape to a ‘room of one’s own’. The setting was LOLIW perfect… posh, urban, ceilings to God, a spiral staircased brownstone apartment in the heritage quarter, the dream home of a much younger version of myself.  The street was Orange, the mood, indigo, and the first song I danced to, with abandon, in far too many years, was Yellow.

    I have always shared living space with close friends or loved ones.  I have never experienced the kind of solitude and silence that singletons exalt in daily, the bliss of soundless mornings, the peace of uninterrupted afternoons, the effortless, evening meal for one, or the coveted hours spent in one’s own sweet company, time whiled away without reference to the wishes or inclinations of another living soul. To keep one’s own good counsel and consult no one else (save an agreeable cat with excellent manners and clear boundaries) on how best to spend the day…what a gift to give yourself, perhaps most especially as a little old lady in waiting. There is a magic to be mined, an enchantment, a real richness of experience to be savoured in retreat. 

    As with any adventure, I overthought and planned every minute detail down to the quick. I packed separate bags for the gym, for work, and for pickleball. I made sure to include enough loungewear and smalls to avoid even the notion of laundry, and a series of comfy sweaters and toasty wool socks, as you do, unfamiliar with the heating in my new abode, a Canadian girl down to  my bones. One can’t be too careful when it comes to creature comforts.  I prepared and packaged enough food to last me about ten days, individually portioned, so I wouldn’t be troubled with cooking or cleaning dishes during my retreat.  I planned to supplement my defrostables with a few evenings of restaurant meals, I was on vacation after all…there were friends to be met, and those naan nachos from Thandi’s are a siren call that cannot be ignored.

    My car was already packed the morning I set off to drive my daughter to the airport. I kissed my husband and hugged my son and small geriatric dog goodbye.  A little old lady herself, I had a quick word and cuddle with my last true dependent.  I let her know it was alright if she had an accident or two in my absence, as the menfolk aren’t as attuned to her bathrooming pecadillos, an easy concession as I wouldn’t be there to look after any mess.  I wished her well and promised to make it up to her.  We settled on half my breakfast bacon for a period no shorter than one year, and a promise that she could come away with me next time.  Oh yes, spoiler alert, there will be a next time.

    After imparting a steady stream of last-minute motherly advice to my savvy, world travelling daughter, advice she did not need, but tolerated as best she could, I watched my baby pass through security, before discarding whatever illusion of control I still harboured, and then, mentally slipping off my mother cape, a favourite cloak, I turned with a little tear in my eye, before going dark, the start of a full-blown smile forming on my lips. I was a stranger in a strange land, alive to the endless opportunities that waited for me. I decided on a quick stop to Costco (I mean …I was in the neighbourhood) for a few emergency supplies…ready made bacon, the Christmas fruitcake (singletons host friends too) and then it was straight back to the little uptown palace I would call home for the next two weeks, party of one.

    I made my escape in mid-November, an excellent time of year for retreat, just at the onset of the introspective months of the Canadian winter, but before the circus of Christmas pageantry that engulfs most matriarchs in December and doesn’t let go until after New Year’s day. For the first few days I sat in a kind of meditative slumber, wonderstruck by the tidied rooms, the luxurious silence, the fragrance of aloneness, the cadence of a single set of steps. I floated from room to room, I listened to the voice of a girl set free from a set of inherited instructions for living, a voice that spoke softly at first, but eventually commanded my entire attention. 

    Most of what she told me is private of course, you understand, what happens on Orange stays on Orange, and anyway it would probably be lost in translation.  I can share that I never once felt lonely during my retreat, that it took several days to miss the loved ones I live with, and if there were any monsters under the bed I slept in alone at night, they kept to their dark recesses and didn’t intrude on my peace. Suffice to say, I was away long enough to remember that there is no better counsel than your own, there is no truer friend than yourself, and if you’ve been neglecting that friendship, then it is time to take yourself away for a long overdue conversation, the kind where you listen more than you speak. Our words can physically influence the world around us, most especially the words we recite incessantly to ourselves silently, in a closed circuit.  The truth is that every cell in our body is listening to us, which makes the quality of the interior dialogue so critical. Do we settle for questions like, “what’s for dinner?” or even “where to travel next year?”  or do we ask ourselves how we might best build joy today? Or “what exactly Elliot meant when he wrote, “I grow old…I grow old…I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind?  Do I dare eat a peach?’

    If you, like me, prefer Elliot’s poetry to a cookbook, these are the essential rules of retreat. There must be quiet. Your mind must be calm and unleashed from the concerns and demands of those closest to you.  So much of our action in life is economically or socially determined. Even love can feel like a Chinese finger trap some days. As we get older the claims of our immediate environment, our preferred living arrangement, can be so pervasive that we can actually lose sight of ourself in the family photograph, beneath the Wifee sweatshirt, behind the sacred veil of motherhood, to the woman who waits within like a nested Russian doll. We can become so consumed with what we perceive as the requirements of daily living; nutritious meals, a tidy home, daily exercise, the social scene, that we forget ourselves and our real work, discovering and exploring the beauty and mystery that lies within.

    Finding a quiet place to stoke your inner fire is an essential and sacred ritual, an absolute necessity for every little old lady in waiting. If you can’t get away for a dedicated retreat, then lay claim to a certain hour every day, a space of time inviolate to family or friends, where the news of the world cannot reach you, and where you do not recognize or acknowledge what is owed to others.  A space where you are free to simply experience who you are, and what you might be, a place of creative incubation, a venue to challenge your everyday assumptions, to grow, to follow the winds of your own inclinations, to feel your courage, and to care for yourself, like the treasure you are.

    At first it may feel like you’re wasting time.  If that is your experience, at least initially, I would encourage you to hold fast, it is, after all, your time to waste. We have a limited lease of time apportioned to each of us, and whether you spend that time truly awake or asleep in the detritus of daily living is entirely up to you.  Life has no pause button or rewind setting.  If you read this blog post all the way to then end, each of us is 5 minutes closer to our demise than when we started.  If you can stay present to this moment, if you can be here now, and genuinely engaged in pursuits that bring you joy, then you know the secret to a beautiful life. So often we become embroiled in activities we do not relish and have not chosen for ourselves but believe are required of us.   Fresh from my retreat I have begun to question everything I habitually tell myself needs doing. I engage in small acts of rebellion as often as possible.  I eat cereal for dinner some nights, my bed often goes unmade, sometimes I skip the gym to write or read …there is a feathery owl atop my Christmas tree this year, slightly askew, and it has never looked more beautiful to me.  I hold space for myself to wonder and to consider questions outside the realm of my daily routine. “Do I dare eat a peach?”

    It’s true that to create a pleasant and harmonious environment in our lives together with loved ones we need the cooperation of all those we choose to hold close in our immediate circle, but pleasure carried within ourselves, within our own body and mind, and within that part of ourselves that has no name, that is our business alone. This dark season of early nights and twinkling lights, I wish for you a happy retreat…I invite you to cast your eyes to the wintry sky, to stand alone sometimes, to “look at the stars and see how they shine for you.”

  • The Little Old Lady…in waiting sits down with Ottawa podcaster Trudy Chapman

    The Little Old Lady…in waiting sits down with Ottawa podcaster Trudy Chapman

    https://meanderings-with-trudy.simplecast.com/episodes/meander-with-sylvie-fitzgerald

  • 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.