“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.
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.
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.’
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.
With apologies to Edward Gorey (The Gashlycrumb Tinies: Edward Gorey’s Alphabet of Death)
“Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes” – John Donne
“Memento Mori” (Remember Death)
I’m not saying I think about death a lot, but my best friend’s husband has nicknamed me ‘Terminal’ Sylvie. Perhaps a dozen or so years working as a palliative care nurse has left me marginally more noir than what strict social mores decree, but working adjacent to the dying, holding space for their final insights and experience, and catching glimpses through the eyes of those close to death, is a life-altering awakening. It’s difficult to capture with mere words, but as a little old lady… in waiting, let’s just say I feel a certain readiness to share what I’ve learned from the front row seats, as close as anyone can get without taking to the stage themselves.
Those near death understand a secret thing that we do not. Once you’ve been assigned an expiration date, you come to fully understand that there is nothing that we can truly own, nothing tangible or material that we can keep, there is no permanence, there is only the love we give away, the investment we make in others, and the ripple effect our actions have, for good or ill, is our only real legacy. Between you and me, I’m hoping for a bit more time to invest my ‘goodwill’ stock and watch my portfolio grow, but I know that nothing is promised. I try to stay awake to the end game and challenge myself never to overlook an opportunity for kindness. My record is sketchy at best, I’m a work in progress, of course, but I caution you now, that treating death as a taboo topic and putting our heads in the sand is ill advised, at best. A good death takes a little planning, and that starts with one irrefutable truth – that no matter how healthy or fit, rich, or connected (spiritually or otherwise), clever or credentialled you may be…no one is getting out of here alive.
Let’s start with the easy stuff – a quick review of the logistics. A few years ago, I attended a national palliative conference in Ottawa. There were a lot of very interesting and learned speakers there, but the lecture that got my complete attention was a presentation entitled ‘Getting ready to go.’ The lecturer provided some significant demographic data that suggested that the death trajectory as we currently know it, complete with nursing home beds, hospice care and access to in-hospital palliative care, may not be available to us. That is to say, we don’t currently have the capacity to accommodate the glut of Boomers that will die in a very concentrated time period. There is no more room at the ‘End of Days’ inn. The lecturer advised looking for community resources as we will almost certainly be dying at home. So have a look around you…know any docs or nurses, maybe have your kids practice injecting an orange or two … just thinking out loud here.
The lecture also included a detailed inventory of ‘good death’ questions for review. Do your kids know your passwords? Have you got a will, a DNR, a POA (medical vs financial)? What are your thoughts on MAID? Does you religion dictate that you suffer before death? Do you understand that if you lose cognitive capacity, MAID is no longer an option for you? Perhaps better to consider your position sooner rather than later and more important still, to communicate your ‘last orders’ to your substitute decision maker. You have a substitute decision maker… right? Isn’t it a kinder thing to consider your options now before your children or SDMs have to bear that burden? As a palliative care nurse, I’m reasonably confident that I can keep you comfortable as you lay dying, but my ability to comfort or mediate the pain and sadness of your friends and families sat beside you, holding vigil through the long days or possibly weeks as you lay dying… I know no medicine strong enough for that.
It’s important to have a think about what constitutes a meaningful life and what factors detract too much from that ideal to be tolerable for you, individually. It’s a very personal decision. If you’re asking me, I’m thinking I could possibly tolerate a little incontinence, I’m already acclimating to the indignities of cognitive decline (the forgotten pickleball scores, the word-finding, and could any of us LOLW get home if we didn’t have our key fobs to find our cars…just today I watched a friend open the door to an SUV that wasn’t hers…pretty funny actually, and tolerable I suppose. I’m going to go on record here and say I could, in theory at least, endure a modicum of pain (reserving the option to change my mind at any time on the pain piece…huge fan of pain management…give me the drugs – all of the drugs). However, if I was confined to hospital with no chance of returning home, or if I developed a dementia that meant I no longer recognized the people I love, then maybe a nice little hospital acquired pneumonia isn’t such a poor prognosis. Maybe comfort measures only at a certain point is the most humane treatment option.
Talk to your kids or your appointed decision makers about what you want and, more importantly, what you don’t want. I promise you that if I brought you to work tomorrow, even for an hour or two, you would be on the phone with your loved ones by the end of day. Think about who it is you want standing around your deathbed. Invite them to dinner, open a bottle of wine… maybe three. If possible, wait for the dessert course before you dive in to the deep end…ask about their day, tell them how much they mean to you, and as you cut into the pie, begin the difficult but essential conversation about what a ‘good death’ would look like to you. A mildly uncomfortable dessert course now, will spare your loved ones from having to make unthinkable decisions on your behalf at a time when all they’ll want to do is hold your hand, share a laugh about pie night, and find the strength to say goodbye.
Now, to the really important bit. It’s been my experience that those who make a happy end…those who die well, are those who live well, investing themselves in the people around them, and in whom others depend. The best death scenes I’ve witnessed are alive with love and rife with family folklore, where stories are shared of times well spent, and laughter erupts, and perhaps some tears as loved ones share their memories from over the years. ‘The day I met your dad…the day you were born…remember that big snowstorm…the camping trip from hell…’ or any number of Christmas poemics. I remember a famous local watercolourist whose family met in his hospital room every day at 5…Happy hour they called it. The wine was poured liberally, a hand-picked playlist in the background, the dulcet tones of Vera Lynn, ‘I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places…‘, the dying man, the guest of honour, enveloped by his chosen few, every afternoon the same bespoke soundtrack, storytelling and laughter, until the music stopped.
All we accumulate in this life, the acquisitions… the accolades…. they mean nothing in the end. It’s more about kindness brewed on darkest nights, and passions discovered and developed in ourselves and encouraged in those around us. What is most important in the end, are the broken hearts we helped to mend, our fortitude, our dedication, and our prowess as a friend, and all the little beauties we cultivate in whatever sort of garden we decide to tend. What matters most I think, as you take your last breath, is the love you gave away and the joy you helped create, in the time you were here. It’s our only job really … to love and be kind, if we can, and I have found that those who die well, with peace and with grace, find the time to be kind despite the many burdens they face… some even in their last hours and days. I will never forget a gentleman who rang his call bell at change of shift, with no ask or agenda, only to serenade his night nurse with the most beautiful rendering of ‘Fly me to the moon’ that I will ever know. I can still hear his voice a decade later, and I pray I’ll find it in myself to sing a little song in my last hours, to know such grace.
For me death is only a door to an unseen place, a speed bump between this world and what comes next, ‘it is the last unprinted snow‘ (Stoker). I think of it as a final adventure, a quest, a magical mystery tour. I know for many it may seem scary… the travel restrictions are untenable, you travel alone, no company, no carry on. I think the only thing we get to take are the string of moments when we are fully awake… the Fly me to the Moon occasions of human connection, a cache of all the unspeakable beauty we are capable of conjuring … a steadfast heart, a gentle word, an earnest ear, the softest kiss. All the love we give away is the only investment we need ever make, and the only prayer we need ever pray. But if, like me, you’re looking to hedge your bets, to grow a little more in the time you have left, there are three little questions I like to ask now and again: am I honouring my gifts, have I learned to love true, and is the world a slightly better place, even a smidgeon, because there was you? If you can answer these questions with any degree of satisfaction, I can almost promise you a beautiful death, where a parting glass will be raised in your name and those who loved you best will stand together in the “coke machine glow” that was you and mourn the loss of your incandescant light. In the meantime, dig out your rolling pin…it’s time to make pie.
I first met Maria Kubacki when we were still teenagers. She was a friend of my brother’s… think artsy, intellectual, an outsider, by choice or design. Recently arrived home to Saint John from a Toronto private school, she was the iconic, underground campus ‘it’ girl, a ‘Lit chick’- all cat’s eye eyeliner, black tights, and arthouse lipstick. She was clever and cool, straight out of a Sally Rooney novel, this quixotic mix of edge and vulnerability that was foreign and familiar all at once. Her style acumen was just the pretty wing man for her real talent, an unpretentious academic mind, a well-spoken confidence, and a reverence for the written word.
Fast forward 40 years, Maria, a fellow little old lady in waiting (possibly in denial) forwarded her initial remarks with a disclaimer: “I’m a little embarrassed and intimidated by this. I don’t want people to think, ‘who does she think she is?’ I have no particular accomplishments. I’m just answering these questions as a fellow little old lady in waiting who is in the thick of middle age and thinking about how to make the most of the last third of life.” This same little old lady in waiting, earned a Master of Arts degree in English Literature and has worked as a book reviewer and freelance writer as well as an associate editor, and editor. Currently she lives and works in Ottawa as a communications manager for the federal government. She took up writing fiction a few years ago and has published her short stories. She is married to a lovely man named Ken and has two twenty-something children, Jane, and Mike. She sidesteps the 7-sentence limit of the first interview question so adeptly, using a series of semi-colons, dashes, and ellipses, that I had to allow it. Maria Kubacki is still very clever…and cool, maybe even more so as a little old lady…in waiting.
Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less?
I was born in Warsaw, came to Canada when I was 4 ½, lived in Quebec City briefly and grew up in Bathurst in the 70s, where we were one of the few immigrant families, but it was pretty idyllic …double-dutch in the street with my friends, summers at Youghall Beach. I went to high school at a girls’ boarding school in Toronto where I was more focused on smoking, drinking and New Wave music and fashion than on my education, and where I started going by my middle name, Maria, instead of Iwona (my actual first name, pronounced Ee-vohn-ah and mangled by nearly everyone because of the “w”), or Yvonne (what everyone called me in Bathurst because it’s the French version of Iwona) – it was fairly common back then for immigrants to change their names to something easier for Canadians to pronounce, but it was weird and embarrassing to me to have all these names, and sometimes still is, as my parents, Polish family and friends still call me Iwona (or Iwcia, the diminutive, pronounced Eef-cha)…Bathurst friends and some cousins call me Yvonne, and everyone else calls me Maria.
I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I loved reading – my parents were and still are big readers so we always had lots of books in the house, and also I learned English the summer I turned 9 from a British family from the Isle of Man who had all kinds of children’s classics all over their house, the Narnia series and that sort of thing – so I ended up getting a BA and then MA in English at UNB.
I was quite lost in my twenties and dragged my MA on for many more years than I care to admit, but during that time I started doing freelance writing as a way to earn a bit of money and avoid my thesis – art reviews for a magazine called Arts Atlantic, and book reviews for the Telegraph Journal, which eventually led to a job as associate editor and then editor of the New Brunswick Reader, the Telegraph’s weekend magazine.
I got married and had my two kids in Saint John before moving to Ottawa where we have lived for 22 years and where I wrote for the Ottawa Citizen and worked as a writer/editor at what was then Canwest News service (now Postmedia).
For the last 16 years I have been working as a communications manager for the federal government and recently I started writing and publishing fiction, which I had never even thought about doing until I turned 50.
What is the best thing about getting older?
People always say things like not caring what others think anymore, or not sweating the small stuff. Sadly, I still sweat the small, medium, and large stuff – I sweat all of it. I haven’t yet reached the part of getting older where you’re relaxed and just flowing and enjoying life. I’m still in the thick of it – middle age, work, responsibilities. I think the “best thing about getting older” hasn’t come yet, or maybe I’m just doing it all wrong.
What is the worst thing about getting older?
Becoming set in your ways and more reluctant to try new things, acting and thinking like you are even older than you are. You’re drunk and high a lot more when you’re young, maybe that’s why you’re more open to new experiences then. Children are like that naturally…they’ll be friends with anyone, they’ll try new things, and as we age, we tend to stick to what’s familiar, what we know we will like, people like us etc. Our world can get smaller and smaller.
If you could retain or retrieve one quality from your youth, what would it be?
Being open to life, people, and experiences.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far?
Children and dogs have it all figured out – be in the moment, and enjoy every little thing, every day. Our beloved golden doodle, Tippy, who we had to put down a few years ago, was still chasing rabbits, making new friends, and wagging her tail the night she died.
Do you have a favourite quote?
Does anyone actually have a favourite quote or do they just Google “famous quotes” when asked? I don’t have one off the top of my head, but whenever I see one from the Stoics, it resonates – like the Marcus Aurelius one at the top of your blog, which I love and need to meditate on every day, because I don’t think I am living my life this way now: “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly.” I have lived a pretty cautious, small life. My anxiety, a lifelong affliction, has always held me back in life, even when I was younger. I would like to become a more fearless or at least less fearful person. Do more, see more, travel more. One of the reasons that it’s fun to read and write is that we all only have one life to live, and we have to make choices, and for some of us fear holds us back, but through writing and reading we can vicariously live many lives.
Do you have a favourite word?
‘Actually‘ – with index finger held up, because I’m a bit of a know-it-all, as my family and friends will tell you. One anecdote: on a family trip to Florida we took a drive through a ritzy area in St. Petersburg where there were big mansions…so we’re driving around and all having a nice time, and we drive by this house that has these ornate pillars and my sister-in-law says ‘oh look, there are statues of dolphins on them’ and I was trying to fight the reflex and telling myself, ‘don’t do it’ and then it just came out, ‘Actually, I think they’re manatees.’ Everyone just rolled their eyes at me but they actually were manatees! It’s become part of the family narrative.
Describe your perfect day.
Any day when I’m on a beach anywhere, in almost any weather, or just somewhere near the ocean or near water. It could be Venice, or Seven Mile Beach in Grand Cayman, or Bar Harbor, Maine. Or Brackley Beach in PEI, Sandbanks Provincial Park, Saints Rest in Saint John. I think it connects back to happy memories of growing up in the Maritimes, spending a lot of time at Youghall Beach in Bathurst every summer throughout childhood and my teen years, and then living in Saint John for many years going to places like Cape Spencer, the Irving Nature Park, St. Martin’s. I guess to me water also feels very open to possibility. I think I like imagining what’s on the other side of the ocean. I also love the feeling of being on the water, I love kayaking… it’s just very freeing.
If you could have tea with anyone, real or fictional, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you talk about?
I know people often say Jane Austen, Shakespeare, or Churchill but I can read them, no need to have tea with them. I love Jane Austen, but I think she would be really catty and judgmental in real life – I would be afraid of her. Maybe hanging out with Churchill while he sat around in his pink satin undies and robe while drinking and trying to figure out how to defeat Hitler might have been cool. But I think what I would really like is to have tea with both my grandmothers, although separately. I would ask them about their lives in Poland. My mother’s mother had a farm outside Warsaw and raised 5 children during the Second World War. She was not educated but was very smart, wise, funny, kind, and resourceful. She was milking the cows at like 4 am, made all the kids’ clothes by hand…during the war, German soldiers took over their farm and the kids all had scarlet fever as well …and somehow, she managed to keep everyone alive. And found time to make beautiful hand-embroidered tablecloths.
My father’s mother was very ahead of her time. She went to medical school in the 1920s when there was a “numerus clausus” – a quota that only allowed 10 % of the students to be women, and she was smart and tough enough to be one of the 10%. She did a PhD and was a specialist in internal medicine. She also loved to travel and trying new foods and was sporty and adventurous – she would rent scooters for her, my dad and his brother and they would all go adventuring together.
Tell me three things that bring you joy.
My family and friends. Walking/hiking/kayaking. Travelling almost anywhere, whether it’s a day trip near Ottawa, a road trip to New York or New England, or Europe. I’m going to cheat and list way more things because many things bring me joy. Going to museums, big or small, almost anywhere. Cappuccinos and spritzes. Chocolate. Music. Going to movies at the Bytowne, our local rep cinema. Conversations about life with my kids, Jane, and Mike. Family dinners with the kids and my parents. Rewatching favourite movies and TV shows with my husband, Ken – Remains of the Day being the movie we rewatch most often, because it’s perfect in almost every way – from the writing and the acting to the period costumes and interiors and the incredibly sad but beautiful score. Ken and I also like making up our own words to songs and making ourselves laugh. Sometimes we also meow songs – we don’t remember why we started doing that, but I think it was when our kids were little, but anyway it makes us laugh. It’s not possible to list just 3 things.
Name a guilty pleasure.
Taking a day off just for myself to do whatever I want. Or years ago, when my kids were little, Ken and I would sometimes take an afternoon off work to go to a movie just the two of us.
Do you believe in life after death? What does it look like?
I don’t really think about it. It’s probably just oblivion – we probably just get reabsorbed into whatever the universe is made of…ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But if there was some kind of life after death, it would be nice if it were an eternal sleep where we dream forever and get to be with everyone we loved and experience everything we ever wanted to but did not get to experience in life. In this eternal dreamworld I hope I get to fly, and look down over the earth, like Google Street view, but better.
What would you like your eulogy to say?
I guess my kids would be writing my eulogy. I hope they say I was a decent human being who taught them to be decent people. I think they might say that I gave unsolicited advice very freely, but I hope they feel that sometimes it was good advice. I hope they also remember our Amazing Race-style family trips where I made them see and do everything, even if we were exhausted and our feet were sore from walking 20,000 steps a day.
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso
“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me what I did at work. I told her that I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, ‘You mean they forgot?’” – Howard Ikemoto
On the recent occasion of my 59th birthday I signed myself up for a workshop on the ancient art of Japanese book binding. I’m not what you would call ‘crafty’, at least not in that sense of the word… a maker of things. I’ve never successfully knit a whole sock, my Christmas decorations come from Canadian Tire, and my sour dough starter-baby died of neglect…twice. I thought it might be the right time to reawaken my inner maker and so, accompanied by my daughter, an artist with a defined skill set, we entered a beautiful old heritage building, the library of my youth, and found seats on the second floor, which once housed the reference section. (For my Zoomers, I refer here to a time before almost every academic question could be answered with a thumb scroll on your smart phone, from the comfort of your couch.)
We little old ladies in waiting may not have had to walk 10 miles to school through drifts of snow as tall as we were (Boomer narrative), but we did have to leave our homes to look for the answers. We juggled 50-pound encyclopaedias searching for the illusive truth or some reasonable facsimile. We took notes in an ancient script called cursive. It was the dark ages kids, before the information age and the internet, before group work started trending and you could pawn the research part off on the kid who would rather disembowel himself than speak in public.
But I digress…awkward segue back to the book binding workshop, the setting for a timely and reflective lesson in humility and a powerful endorsement of the restorative power of making art. We were provided with all the necessary materials including what looked like a small ice pick or a long sharp little doorknob. I believe the proper term is an awl, and we were advised not to use it if we weren’t confidant in handling the tool. ‘Look for a helper’ the instructor advised, making direct eye contact with me as she did so. I tried not to take it personally, but it did take a little of the glitter off my crafting confidence. I’m happy to report that I wielded that awl like a card-carrying Cape Breton craft guild member. No blood was lost, and at the end of the day, my paper was pierced to a standard capable of being assembled in a perfectly adequate journal.
There were a few challenges of course. The eye of my sewing needle was too small to see, my thread refused to cooperate, I may have been overzealous with the glue, and at one point I fell so far behind in the binding instruction I was forced to go freestyle. I looked over at my daughter for clarification but, after accurately assessing the situation, she shook her head and whispered “I can’t help you” with a smug little art-savvy smile on her face. I sensed some residual anger about wasting a high UV summer afternoon in musty smelling rooms. There was definitely a mean-girl twinkle in her eye as she effortlessly wove her journal together, her hands adept to any artistic enterprise. In the end, the teacher took pity on me and salvaged my journal. I was… accommodated. It was my birthday after all, and I wasn’t leaving without a finished product.
A few hours later, sitting by the sea with my bestie, a very successful artist herself, attempting to salvage a little birthday esprit with a few pre-dinner cocktails (code name beach walk), I began to unpack the experience and consider the merits of engaging in art for its own sake, process over product. How did it feel to create something ? I hand crafted a beautiful journal, with complete artistic control over design and construction…well, maybe not complete control… but every choice, every small flaw or mistake, was my own. It felt…nourishing, making something from scratch, even with unpracticed, non-nimble hands. Cultivating your inner maker feels a lot like play. It’s like leaving your mind for a time and living only in your hands. You spend a few hours purposefully, intentionally, unplugged and unreachable, and when playtime is over you have this lovely little objet d’art, perfectly imperfect, bespoke, hand crafted, and all by you, a maker in the making.
In today’s highly specialized world, unless you work as an artist or maybe an entrepreneur, we have, as individuals, lost touch with what it feels like to conceive, design and produce a finished product completely on our own. Most of us are cogs in the machinery of industry. We contort ourselves to fit the spaces defined by the job market. We make ourselves small to succeed as cogs and move up the ladder to coveted cog spots, perhaps with a corner cog office, but in the end, unless you are designing your own work and workday, whether your uniform is a set of scrubs, a pair of overalls, or a thousand-dollar suit, it still says cog in the small print of your contract.
In Ancient Greek mythology, Procrustes was a thief who offered travellers a bed for the night and then stretched those too short, or cut off the limbs of those too long, to make them fit the bed’s dimensions. In many ways I feel like I’ve been sleeping on a Procrustean bed my entire working life, perhaps earlier if we consider the public school system as pre-employment prep, conditioning children to conform to an unnatural or arbitrary standard, “a veal-fattening pen” (Copeland) for the cog culture.
As a quasi-retired, little old lady in waiting, I’m more than ready to embrace the artisan in me. I’m interested in work of my own choosing, designed, and created entirely by me. While I may never be a master book binder, I’m not ready to abandon the maker mindset quite yet. I think a fiber art class in the Fall might suit, or perhaps a creative writing assignment to chip away the icy cold months of the long, reclusive Canadian winter. I remember enjoying drawing and painting as a younger woman and I may still have all the tools needed to make a cosy east-cost hooked rug, art to keep out the cold.
The experience of engaging in making art is tremendously satisfying, especially if your inner maker has been starved to the point of mummification. I propose making artist dates with yourself: writing morning pages, evenings of experimental cooking, or maybe even acquiring a knitted sock mentor. Treat the artist within like an honoured guest who inspires and delights and brings out your highest self. What I’m suggesting is pursuing a path of gentle exploration to set you inner maker free. Above all, and this is crucially important, never… ever allow your left-brain critic to cut its razor sharp teeth on your vulnerable right-brain art, with its practiced vivisectional rigor.
Making art is a clarifying experience. It opens us and illuminates everything we are inside. The art we produce as little old ladies in waiting may never pay the electric bill, but becoming a maker is an investment in yourself that pays incalculable returns. For me, good art elicits emotion and deals with questions of meaning. Likely too high a bar for evaluating one’s own artwork. I’m pretty sure none of my experiments in becoming a maker will ever garner any critical praise. What I do know is that consummating the creative impulse is an immensely pleasurable and stirring experience and one this maker in the making plans to chase habitually and unreservedly.
“If a book is well written I always find it too short.”
Jane Austen
A book review is a highly subjective exercise and so, in the interest of full disclosure, as a Little Old Lady in Waiting, I know you won’t be surprised when I tell you that I like little old lady subjects and settings. I like my people past their prime and living by the sea or someplace equally sublime. I like subtle, nuanced, tender narratives with a philosophical bent and characters who feel like friends I’d like to know. People who have lost important relationships and parts of themselves, and know its possible to keep on existing…people who understand that ghosts are real…people who have paid a price for their place in the story. Layer in fresh, visceral language that routinely makes you stop to reread or recalibrate your breathing and I’ll stay with you untill the very end, and when it’s over, I’ll take a little piece of you with me.
The rating system I assign is roughly as follows:
10/10 – The illusive unicorn. “Your heart understood mine”
9/10 – I loved this book, it changed me in some way
8/10 – Great read. I’m still thinking about it
7/10 – A good read. I’d pass it to a friend
6/10 – Adequate I suppose
5/10 – Flawed in some subtle but no less dissapointing way
4/10 – Major story flaw (cardboard characters, poor pace, sledghammer story-craft)
3/10 – The author has failed the reader, the editor should be escorted from the building
2/10 – No… just no
1/10 – I will never get those hours back
I have long admired the personal and professional life of Agatha Christie. I’m a fan. I’ll read anything about her work and career and so when I discovered The Christie Affair in a used book store it was a little like finding a thrift-store cashmere cardi in a colour that suits. The Christie Affair is Nina de Gramont’s first novel and takes as its subject the eleven days that Christie went missing and the marital discord that immediately proceeds it. In the novel, Chistie’s husband, Archie, is conducting an affair with a younger, Irish woman named Nan O’Dea who reads like Saoirse Ronan from the film Brooklyn , a clever compassionate character that carries the story in many ways, and has a compelling back story of her own. The book becomes a multi layered mystery to be solved, complete with a war weary police detective, a tragic love story, and a satisfying tale of revenge. I loved the characters, the post war UK setting and the glimpse into Christie’s private world. 7/10
There was a lot of buzz about this book on social media and a sequel already in print, so I picked up a copy of this novella for a vacation read. It’s marketed as a transformation story of a young woman who drops out of her life and spends a year reading in the cramped upstairs quarters of a family run second-hand bookstore. A perfect story premise for a bookish woman of any age. Set in Tokyo, the heroine of the book is a love spurned 25 year old named Takako, a non-reader, immersed in a hip deep depression post a humiliating break up, when she accepts the invitation of her eccentric uncle to live and work at the Morisaki bookstore. This is Yagisawa’s debut novel and it did not deliver on any level. The characters are unsympathetic, the story line is non existent, even the theme, ostensibly the joy of reading as a transformative experience is poorly executed. The most generous thing I could write is that any merit or charm Yagisawa may have conjured in his original work is wholly lost in translation. 1/10
Peggy is the fictionalized portrait of Peggy Guggenheim, American heiress, art collector and feminist icon who begins life as a New York debutant and becames embroiled in the bohemian Paris of the 1920s, dallying with the likes of James Joyce, Emma Goldman and Samual Beckett. Peggy, begun by Rebecca Godfrey who passed away in 2022, was finished by the author’s good friend, Leslie Jamison and in some ways the story does feel like two separate books. The heiress is portrayed as a poor little rich girl who suffers the loss of a beloved father who goes down with the Titanic, a dear sister who dies in childbirth, and a son lost via a dissolved marriage with an abusive, parasitic poet. She is snubbed by an anti-semetic society as a Jewess, and ridiculed in the boheniam art world as little more than “a wallet.’ Despite her millions she has the reader’s sympathy as an intelligent, philanthropic outsider with a keen understanding and appreciation of the post war modern art movement. This fictional biography is an interesting look into the elite world of early 20th Century New York aristocracy as well as post WWI Paris and the intellectuals who mingled there and became known as the lost generation. 6/10
Depressed mid 40’s academic, Phoebe Stone, distraught after her husband leaves her for another woman, her career stalling, her geriatric cat found dead at home, decides to treat herself to an expensive evening gown and a posh holdiay at a decadent hotel, all with the intention of killing herself. A dark tale indeed, except Espach’s voice is so intelligent and noir comic that the reader tags along despite the downer of our heroine’s final destination. Enter the wedding people who descend on the hotel as the only other guests and, despite their annoying, narcissistic and waspish ways, they ineveitable disarm, distract, and detour our hero’s journey. The setting, Newport, Rhode Island, is a charming backdrop to Espach’s first novel, but the real winner is her smart heroine whose thoughts, suicidal and otherwise are always authentic and relatable and rife with literary references that appeal to readers who are fans of the Brontes and Virginia Woolff. A great book to pass to a friend with a Litt degree and an appetite for a dark night of the soul. 7/10
Anne Lamott’s book, Help Thanks Wow is a call to prayer as well as a prayer tutorial for the uninitiated and the out of touch. It is a book about gratitude and finding perspective and it is an invitation to cultivate a state of wonderment. Lamott’s simple, comical and self deprecating style could charm even the most determinined non-believer. She keeps it simple, three one word prayers to recite, to hold fast through the tough times, and to stay mindful and intentional through the mundane everyday; to look for the good, and experience all the beauty that lies in wait for us if only we have the eyes to see it. I found Lamott’s style and non-denominational approach inviting and pragmatic. She didnt alienate her readers with old fashioned God talk, “asking an invisible old man to intervene.” She understands there are no words for the ‘broken hearts of people losing people’; there is no fixing the unfixable. But prayer as a spiritual experience, a one word incantation that helps you become more generous, more patient, more kind to yourself and others, there surely can be no harm in such a practice. I loved Lamott’s comical, tender, and real life prayer book, made for misfit souls of all ages. 7/10
Julia Cameron, best known for her book , The Artist’s Way, delivers a comparable artistic toolbox for writers who work with story craft, routinely tackling the often intimidating blank page to create meaning and art. The Sound of Paper is essentially a workbook with a series of exercises and disciplines designed to open the creative narrative approach, so often stymied by a writers own critical voice, that values product over process and atacks fledgling writing projects before they’ve had a chance to mature. Cameron’s writing drills are designed to explore and develop your authentic voice, to place emphasis away from a perfect script, with a series of self care indulgences that cultivate a safe space for creative work, and structured play projects designed to reignite a love of writing. Daily rituals include walking, and morning pages, and being open to the idea of working poorly, breaking free of the ego’s need to be brilliant, and instead contenting ourselves to being functioning wordsmiths, with the freedom to embrace new forms. This is a perfect gift for any writer looking to learn or advance her craft. 8/10
Emilia Hart’s Weyward, chronicles the lives of three Weyward witches, separated by generations but related by blood; the three principle characters include , Altha, on trial for witchcraft in the 16th Century, Violet, at the mercy of an opportunistic father and an unscrupulous suiter in the 1940s, and Kate, the victim of present day domestic violence. Their stories highlight a history of patriarchy and misogeny that targets powerful women and condemns or attempts to harness that power. I’ve always enjoyed a good witch story, ever since I watched Bell Book and Candle with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. The Weyward witches are more like botanists with animal familiars, less broomsticks and incantations. The book is at its best drawing attention to the understated, undocumented power that exists between women, “the most feared…and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.” The story’s pace is a little slow moving in the first half, and the book reads a bit like three separate novellas with tie-ins too carelessly woven, and coming too near the book’s close. I have read better witcherature and while Hart’s story gets a passing grade, it didnt put a spell on me. 6/10
I read this book several years ago but as it is always on my night stand and as I am continuously rereading passages, a review seems in order. I have recommended this book to many, many friends, particularly those who have experienced their first ‘shot across the bow’, a personal health scare, and have come face to face with their own mortality. If I still have the capacity to read and understand this book’s ancient teachings as I lay dying, this will be the last book I hold . I take great comfort in its thesis that what we are has no beginning and no end…what was never born may never truly die. I can hear the critique of my scientific rationalist friends prpeparing their remarks as I write, but the little old lady that waits in me, made peace with Pascal’s wager decades ago.
I Am That was first published in 1973 and is a collection of teachings from the great Hindu spirtitual teacher and seer, Nisargadatta Maharaj. This book takes its title from the Upanishads and delves into who we reallly are, “nothing perceivable, or imaginable,” and is a guidebook to cultivate an awareness of our natural state. Topics include acceptance, the way through pain, a ‘do no harm’ discipline and is a call to “wake up” from the daydream that enchants us. Reading this book is like donning a cloak of grace or a cape that insulates us from fear of death. I cannot recommend it highly enough, particularly for readers who have received a disappointing diagnosis and believe their time is finite. 9/10
“How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then to rest afterward.” – Spanish Proverb
“Shut your eyes and see.” – James Joyce
I have always resisted the arguable allure of rest, and the notion of daytime napping triggers a little anxiety somewhere deep in my little old lady amygdala. I’m not sure we need to investigate exactly why that is …well …ok, since you asked, it could be fear of lost finite time, or years of positive reinforcement for multi-tasking and maximizing efficiencies… go to work, work out, work at home, homework. For most women, rest is the thing you do 15 minutes before you pass out at the end of the day, while you’re making a to do list for tomorrow, right? Well, those days are done. The truth is, and I’m going to whisper this bit in italics, as a little old lady in waiting, there is not all that much on my to do list anymore. I have more free time than ever before. Shhhh … experiments in daytime napping in progress.
After a few weeks of unstructured bliss in your retirement infancy, you may, like me, find yourself contemplating the most optimal use of your time, and exploring the scientifically proven compensations of good sleep hygiene and the merits of ritualized rest seems a suitable starting point. Leading sleep experts advise 8 plus hours of sleep a night. That’s a big piece of life pie that we’re never getting back, so just how essential is rest, if our goal is to savour as much pie as possible.
The world hangs, quite literally on a good night’s sleep. Mathew Walker, a leading neuroscientist, in his book, “Why We Sleep”, points out that we conduct a worldwide experiment on the significance of sleep twice a year during daylight savings time. Walker’s research indicates that when we Spring ahead, effectively losing an hour of sleep, bad things happen. After only one hour of lost sleep, there are more reported traffic accidents, heart attacks, and suicides, and judges even hand down harsher sentences. Conversely, when we gain an hour of sleep in the Fall, the opposite is true, with statistically less incidences in all categories. Message received… sleep is good and, according to Walker, more sleep is better, indicating that most of us aren’t getting enough.
My husband is like a Zen master when it comes to the impromptu snooze. I find myself studying his napping habits, squinty eyed, coveting his capacity to drift off into restful slumber without a moment’s hesitation, and wonder why it is that the idea of a little mid-afternoon siesta seems so anathema to me. Despite my inherent discomfort with the practice of daylight dozing, my little old lady in waiting body and mind is telling me, even now, that it’s time to embrace the nap habit and all of health benefits associated: enhanced relaxation, mood, alertness and improved performance, reaction time and memory. Staving off cognitive decline is something I have a keen interest in and so, properly incentivized, I have begun experimenting with taking rest when tired, no matter what time of day.
Right now, I’m setting my timer for 30 minutes, and skulking back to bed for a midday nap. I feel a little self-conscious, but two coffees in, I am still sleepy. It’s a sunny day, my deck is calling, the dog needs to be walked, the breakfast dishes are still strewn across the counter, I could be reading right now, but I’m choosing to prioritize my neuroplasticity, I’ll see you in 30. (Half hour time lapse) Initial clinical trials are not promising. When the alarm sounds, I can report only a half hour of horizontal ineptitude, eyes closed, mind wide awake and running, nary a wink of sleep. But I have had some thoughts…a million of them in fact, a chaotic, slip stream of consciousness that feels like the opposite of rest. What I feel now, after a botched nap, is the sensation of lost time. Time I could have been, writing, reading, walking, even cleaning, or maybe just figuring out how to con someone else into making dinner tonight. Also, there is the added aggravation of renewed sleep fatigue, the brain fog that accompanies your first several hundred vertical steps, not to mention the bed head.
Alas, maybe napping is not for me. I know what you’re thinking… give it another go, the Land of Nod wasn’t built in a day, I mean even babies know how to nap. How hard could it be? But the truth is I have always found focused mental or physical activity, engagement for lack of a better word, far more restful that actual sleep. Maybe that’s just how people like me…the tired, the cranky, rest, or maybe I just don’t excel at rest, at least not yet. I’m willing to continue my daytime sleep trials but between you and me, I’ve lowered my expectations considerably.
Perhaps before I attempt a master class like daytime napping, I need to do some preliminary work in getting comfortable with doing nothing…not so easy as you might imagine. Simply to sit, without occupation, no task, no agenda, seems a little like walking into the men’s room by mistake, the crib of some slack teenage manboy in the middle of a growth spurt, or maybe the diary of a little old man in waiting. I’m not sure I have enough testosterone for this.
What I do know is that there is kind of gold to be mined in each of us, and rest is how we frack it. Not only does it allow our brains to reset to the so-called default network that lights up like a Christmas tree when we are at rest, it also opens a conduit to connect disparate ideas and potentially solve problems in new and imaginative ways. This is the value of going quiet, being still and resting. Stopping the assembly line of constant activity for a short time each day, turns out can be pretty productive. Quiet can be very loud, and some of our best ideas are born in stillness. Rest is being re-branded as the radical new prescription for many of the ills of modern life. Anne Lamott writes, “almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you.” So, while practicing doing nothing might make me feel uncomfortable, and even incompetent, at least initially, the contemplative, creative, and therapeutic inducements of doing nothing are too persuasive to ignore.
Little old lady to little old lady, I highly recommend a daily discipline of doing nothing. Being still, learning to simply be a “silent witness” watching the world unfold, a world oblivious to all our attempts to contain or control it, maybe that’s enough of challenge for a nap novice like me. You’ll think of a million things you could be doing. It’s hard to resist the seductive lure of a checked off to do list, the ever-present temptation of a clean house, the silent scream from the heights of a towering TBR pile, but tomorrow instead of a nap, I’m shooting for 30 minutes of sitting and doing nothing, I’m scheduling nowhere to be.
Join me. Just steal away somewhere, alone, maybe near a window where you can hear the birds sing and smell the morning air. Practice doing nothing before your morning workout, before breakfast, before you think about the demands of the day. Don’t open a book, or a journal, or your phone, don’t even begin a conversation with your cat; don’t allow anything to come before you and nothingness. After a while the art of doing nothing, resting in stillness, starts to feel like a holy thing, a mystery to be illuminated. Just go quiet for a time and see what you can hear. I listen to the breeze in the trees, the flap of a bird’s wing in flight, the dog’s yawn, the tread of morning walkers, my own heart beating, and always the ticking of a clock. Sometimes the silence is deafening. Thoughts will come and go like clouds floating in the sky, I watch them like they belong outside myself, and then I Iet them float on by. This is how I know for certain that “I am not my thoughts, I am the one who hears them.” And that is an immeasurable treasure, mined after only a single day of doing nothing.
Author’s post script
A successful daytime nap experiment was conducted within one week of commencing clinical trials. It is my working hypothesis that a daily discipline of doing nothing is a statistically significant independent variable.
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” – John Steinbeck
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Elliot
Hemingway in his novel, A Moveable Feast, wrote, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” Perhaps that’s because you might be tempted to leave them en-route if you cared for them any less. Travelling despite all the anticipated splendour and excitement, the unforgettable moments, and the memory making, can be hard graft. Navigating in unknown streets, deciphering foreign languages, walking 20000 steps a day, and surviving only on world class pastries and untested wines…these are mighty challenges indeed and not for the faint of heart, or poorly heeled as it turns out. Little old lady in waiting to little old lady in waiting, sandals that feel like sneakers, at least pre travel, are still sandals … but honestly can you really be expected to pair Reeboks with a slip skirt after 50?
The demands of travel and its accompanying tribulations, can test even the most tenured and enduring relationships. I am recently arrived back on the continent from a tri city European tour with a much-loved Gen Z daughter. As you may expect, she outwalked, out navigated, and generally out travelled me at every turn. She slept better, she knew when to stop and insta the roses, and, maybe most importantly, she knew how to work a travel boundary, to carve out space for herself within the confines and constancy of the vacation vortex.
The donning of air pods was my cue to retreat behind the veil of a novel where we both exhaled deeply into much needed solitide. Alone, together, we enjoyed daily retreats from the uncensored, stress-born commentary characteristic of unconditional love. That is to say, we, at times, annoyed the “fodors” out of each other. Still, after a few days at home, each immersed in our own self soothing rituals (Cortados, yoga, pickleball, Netflix), I can, after less than a week in-country, regard our time away as a perfectly sublime excursion with my favourite girl in the world. I have the pictures to prove it. But this trip has got me thinking about the true value of travel and in particular, the part that comes home with us… the part we get to keep.
Jon Kabot Zinn in his much lauded book, “Wherever you go, there you are,” suggests that no matter how many miles from home you travel, you can’t escape yourself. Kabot Zinn goes on to say some very powerful things about mindfulness and I can’t recommend his work highly enough, but as to his initial premise … I have some notes. I think travel changes you in significant and lasting ways. Free from the hamster wheel of our daily lives and the safety of our usual routines, we are forced to navigate differently, to tolerate the stress of unknowing in a foreign landscape, and, if we’re lucky, we may begin a process of unbecoming. Without the mirror of our usual relationships and roles, who are we…without the reflecting pool of our everyday lives? Answer…whoever we want to be.
As a little old lady in waiting, travel is a tremendously liberating experience, far more intoxicating than the constant stream of eye candy and the sugar coating of clean rooms and meals made by another’s hands. There was wine on occasion, of course, but that wasn’t the real elixir. Free of the demands of everyday life, walking and watching our principle occupation, my mind was let loose to travel too, with a renewed intellectual energy reminiscent of years long past,when I had only my own path to consider. In Budapest I stood near “the shoes” on the Danube and felt a little disoriented by my freedom. I was steeping tea in a strange teapot, brewing a history of ideas that belonged to a much younger, more politicized version of myself. In Vienna, I was bedazzled by beauty at every platz and struck by the metaphorical significance of the German aphorism, “Auch die pause gehort zur musik” (the rest, or silence also belongs to the music). In Prague, the city of Kafka and Kundera, I felt immersed in a dark story book setting and began narrating a conversation inside myself that is still ongoing.
I think it was David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas, who wrote, “travel far enough, you meet yourself.” I couldn’t agree more. Travel never goes completely as expected. I’m referring here to the missed flights (never… ever book impossible to get concert tickets within 48 hours of touch down); the too packed itinerary (trying to do everything ensures you’ll enjoy nothing); the high season, overcrowded attractions ( Mona Lisa mosh pit in June); and the disasterous over-hyped venues( read the reviews my friends – the Szechyny spa in Budapest looks like a refreshing break from the castles and cafes, but in truth it’s a 3rd rate, dirty aquatic center whose thermal pools are tepid at best). The point is the seasoned traveller knows how to wash off the detritus of a disappointing day with a good pinot grigio and the promise to buy yourself a small objet d’art to remember the day ironically.
The planning and negotiation of a journey is a labour of love, an entity all it’s own, but once you land at your destination, all plans are fluid and so must your approach and acceptance of “what is” be, because fretting, bemoaning and catastrophizing about what a journey “is not”, is a waste of your travel budget, literally and figuratively. Maybe if you’re say…a highly structured, control-loving mom, a trip hiccup is an invitation to float (2025 aspirational word of the year) to be frivolous or dare I say, even selfish. Maybe a daughter takes the helm and suddenly you’re transported to a very pink Viennese café that sells an ice cream called Kardinalschnitten, that apparently corresponds to the colours of the Catholic Church and tastes like God herself is inside. Before you know it you’re having a serious conversation about God’s existence and what a poor chalice language is when it comes to discussing she who has no name. Or maybe a highly anticipated classical concert enjoyed on tortuous church pews gives way to a meaningful discussion of uncomfortable life choices, the importance of maintaining a relationship with yourself, and the longing for a space of one’s own; a beautiful setting for your baby to announce her decision to leave home.
The point is that without the usual trappings of life, the social cues, the roles and masks we all wear, we are free to reinvent or re-imagine ourselves. We meet ourselves on distant shores and it’s the best kind of homecoming. Travel changes you, if you let it. You are not the same person as when you left, maybe only in small ways but it’s there, this tiny voice inside; the woman who tasted God in an ice cream and decided to cherish herself like someone she loves, or the girl who bought a new watch in Vienna, and knew it was time to leave home.
The Dalai Lama suggests “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” He doesn’t say why but I believe he is prompting us to open our minds and experience all things with new eyes. St Augustine wrote that “the world is a book, and that those who do not travel read only one page.” I think he’s right. I have been an armchair traveller all my life but have only found opportunity to travel in the real world in the last decade. It is a different kind of education, a remembrance of who we are, an understanding of our own acquired lens on the world. Anais Nin knew a secret thing. She said “we do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” I read this truth in a book long ago, but I understand it best because of my travels. I have had many occasions to remove my glasses in transit, en-route, in unfamiliar terrain, to see things with different eyes. It’s knowing that our glasses are there at all that has the power to transform, to make all that we left at home, new again, and that, I guess, is the real enchantment of travel…a reawakening. It’s the part we get to keep, long after the unpacking.
Little Old Lady … in Waiting 