Little Old Lady … in Waiting

Tag: little old lady

  • On Grief and Loss and other Incurable Conditions of the Heart

    “Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?” 
    ― James Joyce, (The Dead)

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

    -Naomi Shihab Nye (Kindness)

    My brother, Kelly Blaine Joseph Jude Lewis or KBJJ, as he signed all our written correspondence, was 90 percent angel and only 10 percent human…always…not just in death like some knighted memory where all our flaws are conveniently forgotten. Even as a child, the middle child to be exact, he was everyone’s favourite, a good son, a sweet man, a comic, a sage, a poet, a most excellent companion, a loyal and honest friend, and a beloved brother. He was a quiet, thinking man…he noticed the little things…he was careful with other people’s hearts.

    A fit, 58 year old vegan, my brother died of a massive hemorrhagic stroke on a beautiful summer day, three and half years ago now, and the sense of loss and grief I have held every day since his parting is still so close I can barely breathe when I remember him. My days are laced with little daggers that keep him alive and I am grateful for every one…the rough cut decal fore-edge of a new book, cinnamon raison toast and earl grey tea, bookstores, and coffee shops, an Irish lilt or a Scottish burr, nature walks, and the sea…always the sea, or the tang of the sea scented streets of this dirty old town he so loved, never more so than on a crisp autumn afternoon. He was all of my favourite things … “my talk, my song,” and “everywhere he walked was holy ground” to me.

    My brother lived alone, a singleton, and it was only the kindness of a concerned co-worker that alerted us to what was to be the last day of his life. He was rushed by ambulance to hospital where neuro-surgeons explained that there was nothing to be done. So, we sat in shocky silence by his deathbed and held his still warm hands. When death came close, I lay my head on his chest and listened while his heart stopped beating and his lungs swelled with his last breath. To the woman who gave our family those last few hours with my brother, to sit with him as he left this world, to say our last goodbyes, I will forever, be in your debt.

    The physical sensation of such a loss is acutely painful … a panicky breathlessness takes hold of you, the ground is swept away, and the sky goes out. There is no place to run away to, no safe space, no comfort, no medicine to alleviate the crushing weight that comes to rest squarely on the center of your chest and refuses to shift. It makes a home inside you, and though you pray for the blanket of unconsciousness, the horror and ache is still there when you wake. You wonder how your own heart can hold out… it remains a mystery to me.

    As a nurse you can imagine the cornucopia of magic beans and pharmacotherapy that arrived at my door in the days directly following my brother’s death. Although I was desperate to forget for a few hours that he was was gone, I was afraid to venture into uncharted terrain… “what dreams may come.” I settled on a steady diet of day drinking which made it possible for me to breathe in the first few months after he left us. “Grief felt four dimensional”, weighted, surreal, and still faintly familiar… I was always cold. People bring things. I remember food arriving, food I could not eat …and friends and family saying things I could not really fathom. I nodded, I let people hold me, but I couldn’t feel their warmth. I absented myself, I learned to cry quietly. I was adrift in the dark, night swimming far from shore, unreachable, inviolate… unspeakably sad. Still, I was grateful on some unconscious level…for the people…and their words…and their offerings …distant reminders that I was still here, that my own heart still beat it’s unwanted song. I let the mourners come, and my brother’s friends, such beauties, brought some solace with their stories.

    There is no medicine that I know of, no antidote, no cure for grief. No sutures to close the gaping hole in your chest. It does not heal …you bleed out slowly …you die a death as well. Our dead take a bloody big chunk of us with them, the part that only they could see, the part that they loved best, and you don’t get that part back. You learn to carry the cavity inside you, and after a time if you are very brave, you can repurpose the space as a kind of light catcher.

    Of course, the immediate shock of such a loss is nothing to what follows … the deep hollowing out, the exquisite loneliness, a yearning for everything you saw reflected in their eyes, and all you held dear in them, the staggering loss of what you thought you could keep forever. C.S Lewis in his book, A Grief Observed, originally published under the penname Dimidus (Latin meaning cut in half), writes in his opening line, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

    After 6 weeks of staying as numb as I could manage on cheap pinot grigio, it stopped working altogether. Deep into my cups I was still stony cold, and I was terrified. I felt abandoned, alone, and inconsolable. Eventually I was desperate enough to attempt the unthinkable. I put down the bottle opener and stopped trying to hide from the full flare of the pain…I leaned into it, I stared at it’s sun. I stopped trying to outrun it, I stood my ground, and braced as the pain unfurled inside me, it intensified and it was eviscerating. Could I stand it…would it kill me, could I actually give it it’s head and let it run free inside me… was I strong enough? I’m still not sure.

    Today when it comes for me, the sadness, the memories, his voice, his heart, his poetry, his beautiful mind, I stay with him for as long as I can, I nod to the pain, like some old friend that crosses my path. I soften, I approach slowly…carefully now… I ask myself in a gentle voice, a voice I might use if speaking to a 4-year-old child…I ask where it hurts, what I’m most afraid of… and then I ask what might help a little, and the answer is always kindness.

    What is unbearable becomes bearable in time. Not because the grief goes away or gets smaller, but because we grow stronger around it, by holding space for a loved one who lives within us still. The transition is deeply unpleasant, like walking a “razor’s edge”, but befriending the pain and discovering the gift inside the grief, the gift of empathy and kindness, invokes an evolution of the spirit, a parting gift from the ghost of your lost loved one.

    Grief and all its jagged little teeth is the price for the privilege of being loved and having loved.  I know too that the size and shape and depth of grief is in direct proportion to the quality and breadth of that love. People ask if I’m better now. I always say ‘yes’ because it’s easier than explaining that the ache never leaves you…it’s only that I made friends with it.

    How do I keep him with me… the man called Parker Stephenson in my phone contacts, named after a tv sleuth of our youth, because he looked at life like a great mystery and always smiled like a boy pretending to be a detective, in the moment before he solves the case. I sit by the sea, I haunt the poetry section, I practice silence until I get a sense of his nearness and hear his voice, my own personal guardian angel. I look for every opportunity to practice kindness towards myself and all those I meet. Kindness ideally unobserved and undisclosed. I acknowledge daily what a grand thing it is to live a life and to know such love.

    If I could tell him one last secret, boil the kettle for tea just once more, or read a single line of poetry to him, I’d whisper

    ” …here is the deepest secret nobody knows

    (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

    and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;

    which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

    and this is the wonder that keeps the stars apart

    i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)” (Cummings)

  • The Meaning of Life

    “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breadth of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of snowbirds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years.”

    Rachel Louise Carson

    “I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
    down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
    to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
    when someone sneezes, a leftover
    from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
    And sometimes, when you spill lemons
    from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
    pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
    We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
    and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
    at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
    to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.We have so little of each other, now. So far
    from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
    What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
    fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
    have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.    “

    Danusha Lameris

    150 odd days shy of turning 60, I’ll admit, a blog post titled “The Meaning of Life” seems a little ambitious, even arrogant… utter hubris really.  Shouldn’t I be a bit closer to posthumous before attempting such a feat.  Still, it’s a dark, rainy, January day as I write this, and on rainy days when the lights glow orange, and the rain patters against the windowpanes, “no one…not even the rain has such small hands” (Cummings), I find myself incapsulated in liminal space, a portal between what has been and what will be.  It feels like the clocks have stopped and the kettle is whistling shrill, and I have been gifted stolen hours to decipher secret things, adrift in a liminal sea. I have some notes… and as the house settles around me, if I’m honest, I find myself engaged in a full-on discourse with my dear, departed brother.  If that lends the following any weight, I’m glad of it…most days I think all my thoughts are his alone anyway, truly, and I, but the scribe.

    Greater minds than ours have contemplated this age-old riddle a time or two, certainly, but, of late, I’m all the time wondering about meaning, a penchant of little old ladies in waiting, especially as we begin to lose loved ones. What are we meant to be doing, do you think, with the time we have left to us?  What’s the meaning of life?

    Maybe every soul is charged with solving this particular puzzle to their own satisfaction. But standing on the shoulders of giants, Victor Frankl, a beautiful mind if ever there was one, is as near a perfect starting point as possible. Frankl wrote that our greatest task in this life is to find meaning, and maybe what meaning we find, he suggests, depends on who we are, inside, or the eye glass we peep through for a look at the world around us. It’s important work, this search for meaning, and I’m sorry to say that a great many of us are asleep at the wheel.  Kierkegaard believed that we’re all too busy focusing on the ‘minutiae of life’. We ‘tranquilize ourselves with the trivial’, he wrote.  He called these poor souls, ‘immediate men,’ men engaged in the mundane, lost in a life of endless, repetitive deck swabbing, and never looking out to sea.

    Still others among us get so weary in their search for meaning, they convince themselves that there is no meaning to be found at all.  Even wise old Uncle Bill wrote that, “Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” A beautiful line, but complete blather of course.  Shakespeare isn’t alone either.  Douglas Adams’ answer to “life, the universe, and everything” is just a number, 42 to be exact. Literary critics have worked themselves into a frenzy of deconstructive contortion, mining for meaning in Adams’ enigmatic answer but, it’s just a random number. Adams is suggesting, ever so smartly, that the universe is, in fact, random, morally neutral, an accident, and that there is no actual meaning to be found at all. I confess, a much younger version of myself took some shelter here for a time, but nihilism is a lonely planet, and not the one I intend to die on.

    Adams is a fine fellow, I concede, but my brother taught me to start with the poets when looking for the truth, or at least something to be getting on with, a figurative foothold, if you will, as we hang by our fingernails, over the vast existential abyss. It’s Whitman’s lines about life’s meaning that come to me now, “Answer: That you are here, that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” So, perhaps, it’s finding purpose, or a life of service or some combination of the two that makes for a meaningful life.  Picasso wraps it up pretty, “the meaning of life” he said, “is to find your gift, and its purpose is to give it away.” Bleck…sugar spike…I promise that’s as greeting card, sickly sweet derivative as I’ll get…do read on dear friends.

    Cultivating your passions, and finding purpose, are, without doubt, excellent cards to play in the boardgame of life. It’s important to find work that you love to do… daily, if only as an antidote for boredom and disenchantment…it’s like a get out of jail free card that you can play anytime, a ticket to the ferris wheel of full engagement. Of course by this calculation, a meaningful life might equate to making a lot less money, and living without many of the material comforts we hold dear in this country… a home… a car…a Sunday pot roast. Still, I’ve always found soulless work to be the greater poverty, a cost far more dear than a slender pocketbook. Finding meaning may come at a price, but it’s a fair trade I believe, just not for the faint of heart.  Maybe meaning is best mined by the brave.   Certainly such a virtue can only help. 

    It takes a bit of courage to start you on the road less travelled, but on the plus side, any quest for meaning is also, where you’ll meet your people…the ones that you’ll carry in your heart, that you’ve somehow always known, but never met before…they’re waiting for you there…on your chosen path…and such fellowship, when you find it, is like a cheat code for unlocking lasting meaning.   Thomas Merton wrote, “we do not find meaning by ourselves alone, we find it with each other.”  I’ll add to this a little venerable Vonnegut, a wise man if ever there was one, ‘the purpose of life,” he wrote, “no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved’.” That certainly has the resounding sound of truth, to my ear at least.

    Fellowship, a sense of belonging or kinship, is like a keystone, the puzzle piece that opens up a blue sky horizon or the gate to a secret garden in full bloom, each piece unique, all connected, waves moving in tandem on a wild primordial sea. Albert Schweitzer wrote that “life becomes harder when we have love for others, but it also becomes richer and happier,” and, with apologies to our learned German friend, more meaningful. “The full measure of a man,” he wrote, “is not to be found in the man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others because of him.”

    “Above all, when I am finished with my days, wrote Schweitzer, “may those who knew me say, ‘He was so kind.’” Hell of an epitaph, that, and maybe the best and truest route to real and lasting meaning in this life, and further still perhaps. It’s the sort of thing people said about my brother, and the kind of person I’m working hard to become, as a little old lady…in waiting (some of us are slow learners).

    That old high school dropout, Einstein, told us that “although we experience ourselves as separate from each other and the universe as a whole, it’s actually a mass optical delusion, and that the delusion is a kind of prison.” Our job, he said, is to free ourselves from that prison and widen our circle of compassion to include all living creatures and the whole of nature.

    The natural world is a multifocal Mecca for encountering meaning. It’s encrypted in the birdsong, falling leaves and snowflakes like so many clues, and the perfume that hangs in the quiet wooded trails and winding coastal paths wakes us from our slumber, like an ancient wind that whispers the wisdom of our ancestors, and lets us walk alongside them awhile. John Muir, the renowned Scottish naturalist, wrote that, “the sun shines not on us, but in us,” and “the river flows not past us but through us.”  Muir believed that going into the woods is like going home. “Into the forest I go,” he wrote, “to lose my mind and find my soul.“

    My brother tells me that meaning is all around us, but you can only see it if you nurture a sense of wonderment.  “We need to watch things” he says, “as though they were worth watching…and not just the fireworks, and the bonfires, and the birthday cake candles, mind, but all the little beauties…everywhere.  I mean the dog napping, and everyday early morning bird chatter, the laundry lines alight like kites on windy days, or the chorus that echoes from a stand of trees. It’s the rough decaled edge of an old leather bound book with a secret inside, or a kettle boiled, the first lick of frosting on a cake made with love, and the last; it’s a letter penned, a pillowed plumped, a perfectly paired sock drawer, or the glow of a lamp lit at dusk that envelopes a common room with a golden Rembrandt hue.  Even the remembering of such moments takes my breath,” he tells me.

    Is that it then…we need just look at everything with a sense of wonder…that’s where life’s meaning is found, I ask? “That’s always been enough for me,” he replies, a knowing familiar smile on his face, “and maybe one thing more.  You see, I think we’re meant to learn something while we’re here, and if we’re good students, well…then the lessons get a little harder.  The ultimate lesson of course is unconditional love. I mean, all the best people we know have experienced defeat, and struggle and loss, haven’t they, and they found their way back out of the dark, and with an even brighter light inside themselves; the sort of light that tends to ignite a spark in everyone they meet.  It’s a light that others can warm themselves by, isn’t it?”

    “Maybe we don’t need to search for meaning at all.  Maybe if we just watch closely enough, we catch glimmers of it here and there, as we swirl past.  Life is like that isn’t it, just a waltz around the room really.  There is nowhere to go, or be, nothing that must be done…maybe let go of all that sister, and just fall into step when you hear the music.”

  • In Conversation with Sherry Fitzgerald

    Sherry Fitzgerald is my extraordinary sister-in-law and the youngest little old lady in waiting I will be interviewing in this series celebrating women over 50, a project devised and designed to elucidate wisdom teachings from my peers as we enter our last and ideally most intentional years. I have learned a lot from this dynamic, pocket-sized, ‘powerhouse’ wellness expert over the years, and I saved our conversation especially for January, a time when so many of us are reflecting on lifestyle changes to optimize health and wellbeing.

    Sherry’s life story sits unequivocally in the action-adventure category.  She rises at 4 am each day, works out twice a day, running, swimming, and biking 3 times a week, and making time to strength train 4 to 5 times each week. I often see her in Yoga class as well, she calls it her ‘treat’. In her early 50’s, Sherry has a body that most women in their 20’s would covet, and her biological age is, I strongly suspect, at least a decade younger than what her driver’s license indicates. She has run dozens of marathons in her athletic career and began training for Ironman competitions in her 40s, completing four of these grueling tests of strength and endurance to date, notably in Lake Placid and Mount Tremblant. For non-sporty types, these are triathlons starting with a 3.9-kilometer swim, followed by a 180-kilometer bike race, and for the closer, a full marathon, a 42-kilometer run. Mountain climbing was Sherry’s first physical challenge, climbing Mount Katahdin at age 18 and working as a mountaineer for a time in her younger years, spending 3 months in the fiords of Newfoundland. She is proficient at rock and ice climbing, she has jumped out of planes and bungee jumped, and was married in a hot air balloon.

    I asked her where such fire comes from, the genesis of her tremendous discipline and a lifelong devotion to fitness.  She shared with me that losing her father two weeks after her 17th birthday was a traumatic and profoundly impactful experience. “To be honest with you, I think I didn’t want to be on the earth for a while…there was a period in high school where if I knew more about suicide, I might have taken my life.  Once I figured out that wasn’t what I wanted to do, I kind of went in the opposite direction and said ‘Ok, who are the healthiest people in the world…I’m going to mirror what they’re doing’, and I did a 360 turn from there.  That’s why my fitness roots are so strong.  Every triathlon, every Ironman I complete is a little memoriam to my dad…most marathons I don’t even stop for the medal…it’s never been about that.”

    How she maintains such discipline has always been a mystery to me.  I asked her the secret. “I know our minds are very powerful, and sometimes not in our favor,” she tells me, “They’re always trying to keep us from doing anything hard, and I know that about my mind, and so now it’s the behavior that has to override that, so I just put actions first, before the feelings.  I am good at moving.  I get the endorphins, and I’m lucky in that I feel good when I’m moving.  But I also want to make sure that I move in a way that’s good for me, that includes rest and recovery and sometimes trying something new.  I’m not so good at sitting and that’s an area I’d like to explore more now.”

    No interview with a fitness expert would be complete without asking about diet, especially as the new year begins.  With respect to food, Sherry prioritizes longevity and optimizing feeling good above all. “I know instantly when I eat something whether it’s going to support my health or betray me.” Sherry eats a colorful rainbow of food, securing as many phytonutrients as she can get, and maximizing healthy fats and proteins.  Her diet is research-based but also customized to satisfy her palette.  “You have to make it your own, so you don’t feel hungry, or like you’re missing out. The food I eat leaves me feeling my best and if I didn’t feel that way, then I would still have some work to do.  I eat a plant-based diet. I don’t eat meat, or processed foods…no dairy, no wheat, no alcohol…I stay with whole foods. But there is no set formula. I’m not religious about food. I do take supplements and enjoy a pea or hemp protein smoothie daily maybe with chia and collagen and creatinine.  I do believe in fasting as well for my body to detox and clean.  During the day is my grace period. I graze and stay light during peak movement hours.  At the end of the day, I eat an enriched salad with a warm veg as well and I try to include 9 to 12 different colours on my plate.”

    Sherry has volunteered and worked contract and salaried positions at the YMCA in Saint John since she was in high school, initially as a fitness instructor and later as a personal trainer. Today she works full time as the Fitness Supervisor at the Y, where she is a well-loved and tremendously popular icon of fitness, a wellness mentor, and a stellar ambassador, exemplifying the philosophy and principles that the YMCA has long championed, embodying core values like inclusiveness, and kindness. I have on many occasions considered writing to her CEO to let them know what a magnificent asset they have in her and would have done so had we not shared the same last name. She has saved my life more than once.  After suffering great personal loss and working to overcome injury, it was often her voice that kept me moving and held me together on the hard days, and her steps I followed to find my way back to myself.  

    A wellspring of positive energy and a beacon of light, I know she has helped a great many others transition through similar periods of challenge with her characteristic humour, relentless encouragement, and deep hearted kindness. There is a small legion of little old ladies in waiting queuing up at the Y most days for the full Sherry experience, where she is leaving a legacy, fortifying a cohort of bodies, minds, and spirits, ensuring we live full and active lives, one standing abdominal curl and suitcase squat at a time. She makes movement fun, she creates a culture of safety that meets us where we are on our fitness journey, she distracts us from the hard parts, and encourages us to experience and enjoy the challenging work of staying healthy. She asks us to imagine what feels impossible some days and empowers us to find our own stride and strength, leading us in classes that build our muscles, create community, and elevate us all.

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less.

    I grew up fast after losing my father at a young age, and it changed the entire direction of my life. Health, movement, and taking care of my body became a priority from the beginning. That path led me to a lifelong career in fitness and wellness, helping others live the life they don’t want to lose. I built a family of my own, two children and a husband who anchor me, inspire me and remind me why every minute matters. I’ve learned to chase joy, strength, and connection with intention. I believe in living fully, honestly, and with purpose.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    Understanding what truly deserves your energy and letting go of everything that doesn’t.  It’s a gift to grow older, as we know.  My energy and my first priority has always been my family, but especially now, after the kids moved out.  I make a point to keep up with what’s going on in their lives, checking in on a regular basis, and making connections when I can, when they let me, she laughs. I make dates with my mom, celebrating her is a priority to me as well.  But at the start of each day, I prioritize myself.  The stronger I am, the more strength I can lend to everything else.  So, it always starts with me.  I’m up early and in bed early by 8 or 9pm.  It would be a wild night for me if I didn’t get to bed until 10, there would be some mischief happening.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Realizing that time moves faster than you think, and that you can’t get any of it back.  I set intentions every day and at the end of day I usually do a little recap. In my bed I’ll revisit what went well not only with respect to my goals but also regarding my personal values, so if I can be authentic and live up to the values I’ve set for myself, then I count that as a win, to have lived a good day.  I don’t wait for Friday every week to weigh in and see how I’m doing…I think we’re past that.

    What would you title this chapter of your life?

    Living with Intention and Purpose

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

    That living authentically and staying true to my values matters most, especially when life is going well. It’s important not to take anything for granted, to appreciate your life every day.  Every day is a gift.  Choosing to look for the brighter side and trusting that every experience, even the difficult ones, is something I am meant to learn and grow from, here to shape who I am becoming.

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

    The ability to bounce back without overthinking. As a child when something happens you tend to get distracted by something else so quickly and it’s easier to just let things go; whereas as an adult, and I’m getting better at this now, but if someone looks at me a certain way or if I potentially hurt someone’s feelings, or someone hurts mine, it stays with you. We have more experiences at play and more meaning behind those experiences because of the life span, and things can become more emotional.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    What you give out always finds its way back. I do believe in karma. I think angry people hold that inside themselves and I wouldn’t wish that for anyone.  My mom is very religious and brought us up on the ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’  So even if no one else is around when you do something bad you still internalize it, and it will come back to teach you again.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    Kindness.  It’s my number one strength.  Not only in how I treat others but also in how I treat myself.  I wasn’t kind to myself for a lot of years and it’s a fine balance between giving and not taking too much away from yourself.  I’m just getting it now.  I wasn’t as kind to myself as I was to everybody else for many years.  I practice kindness in a more balanced way now and that feels good.  A coach once told me to imagine someone you love very much and consider how you would treat them or counsel them in similar circumstances. You would want to treat them kindly, and so now hold the mirror up and take that approach with yourself.

    Describe your perfect day.

    A morning workout to set the tone, followed by time with my family, unrushed, present, connected. A long walk in nature and meaningful conversation. I have that perfect day every week with my friends and with my family.  Now whether that’s my husband’s shining moment of the week I don’t know. (Laughing) No… marrying Derek was probably the smartest thing I ever did, and I think there was a higher power that brought my husband to me.  He is pure kindness.  Meaningful conversation for me includes our speaking about our shared memories and the future, dreaming together, and listening to stories from my mother’s childhood as well. I’m at age now where I have the capacity to care and listen better.  I ask more open-ended questions to learn more from the people I care about most.

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

    My father. I’d want to tell him who I became, and introduce him to the family he never met, and I would ask him everything I never got the chance to ask. I’m very proud of the life we’ve built together.  It doesn’t just happen, as you know, it’s a lot of hard work and a lot of sweat, a lot of time and effort and sacrifice, but also lot of joy and a lot of learning.  My husband is a gift, I’d just have to present him. The same with the kids, they are just so unique. I would just send them in.  I never really got a chance to know my dad as an adult, to learn what he liked to do, what some of his favourite things are.  I would like to learn more about him, to really know him.  I was just so angry that he left, it made for some very hard teenage years.  I would love the chance to get to know him, and to like him.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    Movement. Family. Helping someone discover their own strength. In my work at the Y, where I get the most joy is having those conversations with people and them speaking out loud their goals and dreams and the privilege of being that person that can help them get there.  I’ve been given so many tools throughout my education to support people and I feel so fortunate to be that person that can help them unlock their potential or rediscover their passion and joy. Those conversations…they’re a big part of my intention and my purpose, and my joy, catching people when they need a hand up.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    Reality T.V and Kind bars.

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

    I believe our spirit continues, maybe as energy, maybe as memory, maybe as a presence that never fully leaves. I like to think that the people we love are nearby in ways we can’t see but sometimes can feel. Years ago, when I was in Newfoundland, I had hypothermia and was evacuated by helicopter to hospital, and I feel like it was my father who saved my life.  I think there was like a tap on my shoulder that kept me from falling asleep and I’ve always attributed it to my dad.  A lot of people wouldn’t have survived, but I did.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    She will be remembered for her warm smile, contagious laugh, and unique, spirited personality. She loved her family and friends with her whole heart and always put others first, while learning to be kind to herself as well. She had a gift for seeing the brighter side of life, supporting people when they needed it most, and making those around her feel truly cared for.

  • Embracing the Crone

    “The crone must become pregnant with herself, at last she must bear herself, her third self, her old age, with travail and alone. Not many will help her with that birth.” (No Time to Spare – Ursula K. Le Guin)

    “When howling gale is rattling doors, or call of lonely wolf is heard, or cry of raven on the wing, or crack of frost upon the ground, tis she, tis she, tis she. (Calleach – Siobhan Mac Mahon)

    Less than a week before Christmas, when family matriarchs are customarily exiled to Santa’s sweatshops, wrapping gifts like Edward Scissorhands, and frosting shortbreads until our collective glycemic index reads “critical,” I decided to take a night off from the Christmas chain gang. I ventured out on a dark and stormy night, in the company of a close friend of comparable vintage, to attend a workshop that promised to introduce, depict, and interpret the power and majesty of the Crone, a feminine archetype, traditionally the last in a triad, after maiden and mother.  The Crone, often portrayed in our culture as a warty hag, complete with kerchief and shawl, is cast as the most powerful as well.   A sage, a witch, a guardian, a memory keeper, a storyteller…these are just a few of the crone synonyms we might try on for fit, as we move into this last, magical, and mysterious phase of feminine folklore.

    The workshop was led by a woman who called herself a ceremonialist, a Cailleach, or “veiled one” in Gaelic mythology, who helps people transition through significant life events.  Like so many formative moments in a woman’s life,  it began with a fairy tale and the promise of a little-old-lady felted doll of our own making by night’s end, so we charged our tenuous social batteries, did battle with our homebody hearts, discussed whose eyesight was least perilous for an after dark adventure, packed a journal and a sacred object, as directed (Jesus …will there be sharing), and set off on our quest to Encounter the Crone.

    Sat close to the sea in a small conference room, the wind outside serenaded us like a siren call, a slow whistling sea shanty, and the doors rattled loudly, heralding the night’s import, like the ghost of Christmas past. We were offered tea and invited to sit around a makeshift altar decorated with bones and stones and candlelight.  We added our own holy relics: jewelry passed down from our mothers, artwork, a pinecone, a bird, a doll, the shell of a sea urchin, a heritage Christmas angel, and a witch stone, known for its magical protective properties. We were 12 women together, artists and academics, nurses, and teachers, travelling in the dark, a winter’s walk to honour our experiences, mine for meaning, and navigate together a transformation to feminine elderhood, a privileged freehold of wisdom and authenticity, sovereignty and self-possession. The magic in the room was a palpable thing…not enough to levitate… first time out mind, but strong enough to elevate us all.  I’m certain it surprised no one in the room when the lights went out and we were forced to close our circle prematurely, but not before we built something true and lasting together.

    The fairy tale recited so beautifully by our host was the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, a kind of hybrid Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel.  Our heroine, Vasilisa, is gifted a tiny doll with magical properties from her dying mother, that protects her throughout a perilous journey to safety.  Spoiler alert she lives a full life and eventually returns to her origin story, living out her days as an elder in the forest.   The tale is simple but rich in imagery and metaphor.  We were asked to share the images that lingered in our mind’s eye.  The death scene between mother and daughter and the gift of legacy, chicken legged furniture, the impossible task of finding poppy seeds in dirt, a metaphor for discernment, and a fire torch crafted from a skull, the instrument that leads to the story’s denoument, all had honourable mention.

    For me, the lasting power of the story was not an image but an incantation.  Vasilisa called upon the power of the doll reciting, “Little doll, little doll, drink your milk my dear, and I will pour all my troubles in your ear, in your ear.” The notion of a talisman for the storms of life, a mother’s magic, an enchantment to conjure a place of safety in our darkest hour, when we’re not sure our own strength will hold; to call on the inherited love of our ancestors and open a portal of protection, or peace abiding….definately worth the price of admission. Were we leaving the workshop later that night with such a prize in our possession, a felted doll infused with magic, a protective cloak spun from our collective sacred offerings? What sorcery was this?  I started thinking maybe I should leave the house more often, even as a tempest raged outside, and Christmas at ours, still only half conjured.

    Properly incentivized we turned our attention to working with archetypes.  We chose a role from the alter at the center of our circle. Interestingly no one chose the same archetype.  There were so many wonderful choices.  I passed on Hag, and Old One, Elder and Witch.  Hearth Keeper and Herb Wife didn’t quite fit either.  We had a Weaver and a Word Witch, I remember. My friend, selected Sage.  A new grandmother, she is interested in legacy building and passing down family tradition and wisdom.  I picked Storyteller.  I’ve always been addicted to story.  It’s my preferred way to learn.  For me it’s high art, allowing us to live a thousand lives in one, a talisman against loneliness, a cure for myopia and polarization.

    After sharing our selections and thoughts around the archetype alter, we moved, some of us more tentatively than others, to worktables set up for needle felting, a dangerous, dexterous art, that comes with small sharp stabbing needles and raw wool to be shaped and prodded into small objets d’art, a felted little old lady…in waiting.  I wish I could tell you there was no blood lost but I’m sure I wasn’t the only hag there to stifle a silent scream that night as the needle pieced my presumably pre-loved stabbing pillow, and caught the delicate skin beneath my fingernail.  Maybe the bloodletting is part of the spell, maybe human sacrifice is the elixir that makes the doll magical.  All I know is that I stabbed my doll a thousand times or more before she came to life in my hands and the stabbing was oddly therapeutic (“psycho -killer…qu’est-ce que c’est”). I plan to continue my felt making education and have already created a companion for my doll, but maybe I’ve shared too much. Still, friends are important…even felted friends.

    The power went out when I was attempting to style my doll’s hair.  Every woman will understand the import of such a moment.  Our felting mentors came to the rescue and held cell phone flashlights for us to finish this crucial phase in the work. Suffice to say, I was never so happy to own such unruly, unkept tresses. It was the work of a moment to complete the effect and even in the dark I recognized the crone I held in my hands as my own, a story keeper and maker, a sovereign in the final decades of her reign, confidant in her unique gifts, generous in her attention to those she held dear, and determined to live intentionally, according to her values and passions until her last moments in this realm. 

    I was afraid the storm raging outside would prevent our eclectic circle from sharing our thoughts on the dolls we created. Insatiably curious, I had an almost visceral need to know how the others would answer the last question on the agenda for the  night, “If your inner doll could speak to you tonight, what would she say?”  One doll spoke of cultivating more trickster energy, to seek opportunities to laugh and have fun, another counselled that there was always something new to learn and explore, others said to ask for help and not to imagine we can do it all ourselves, that it’s ok to be messy, to rest, to be steadfast, to practice unconditional self-love, to keep moving, to offer guidance, to stand in the wind, to practice childlike wonder, and to embrace and celebrate all the beauty within.

    I know the doll is just a small, symbolic, hand-built ornament, but it feels so much bigger than that to me. I know we make our own magic, but I also know that there was a wisdom teaching waiting for us in the dark that wintry night, an introduction to “crone-ology,” a threshold for letting go of all that no longer serves us and a turning point in the pages of our story.  You may cackle, but I have plans to build my doll a small house with a door that opens with ease, so whenever I need to hold her close and feel my mother’s magic near, I’ll find her waiting for me there, her spell unbroken, a warm cloak of protection against the storms of life.

  • In Conversation with Michelle Hooton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

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

    What is the best thing about getting older?

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

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

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

    What would you title this chapter of your life?

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

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

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite quote?

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite word?

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

    Describe your perfect day.

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

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

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

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

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

    Name a guilty pleasure.

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

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

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

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

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

  • The Richness of Retreat

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    “Silence is also a conversation” – Ramana Maharshi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • In Conversation with Kate Elman Wilcott

    I first met Kate in the home of a mutual friend a few days before our first-born sons, both redheads, set off on a grand adventure, the public school system. I remember we talked about phonics and kindergarten teachers, A Mrs. Fox, and a Ms. Roach, aptly named for the wild animal tamers they turned out to be.  ‘Let the Wild Rumpus’ take a seat…at least until recess.  While the boys toiled at school, we packed up our preschoolers and headed out to each other’s homes, together with a few other like-minded women, and while the littles mingled, we formed a small wolf pack of our own.  We called ourselves the Coffee Mommies, but don’t let the name fool you…there was enough intellectual energy and collective sweat equity sat around those suburban kitchen tables to take over the world, and still be home in time to help with homework.

    I learned a lot about Kate Elman Wilcott during those years. I can tell you that she is a builder.  After earning a degree in Theatre from Dalhousie University, Kate spent the 90’s in Halifax, returning to Saint John in 2001, where she continued to build and expand on an eclectic teaching career in theatre, notably through her very successful not-for-profit venture, Interaction, a children’s theatre.

    Kate has built innumerable theatre sets, and produced countless theatrical productions, while simultaneously engineering a thriving playground for the arts in our city, principally for the youngest members of our community, and in doing so, has helped to build confidence, self-esteem, empathy, and a lifelong appreciation of the arts in a cohort of young minds.

    “Training in the arts is so good for kids.  If you just focus on the people you’re working with and build a strong group dynamic, creating a safe space where people can take risks and figure out what works and what doesn’t… if you just focus on that process, then the product is guaranteed to be great.  At the same time, you’re always working to deadline…the curtain must go up.  I was very much conditioned to work to that deadline because at 7 o’clock on a Friday night at the Imperial Theatre with 600 people in the audience, the show must go on. That’s great training for any career.” 

    As the former Arts and Culture Coordinator for the City of Saint John, and a recognized leader in community development within the region, Kate has worked as a teaching artist, producer, facilitator, collaborator, and director. Her professional and volunteer experience includes policy development, university lecturer, developing public safety protocols, organizing community events, fundraising, and even touring with Symphony New Brunswick. She has performed in an award-winning film, played the bass, trumpet, piano, drums, and guitar in a series of bands, and was named a YWCA Woman of Distinction.  She sits on the Harbour Lights Board and is currently at work writing a series of stories based on anecdotes from her studios.

    Presently serving as our Member of Legislature for Saint John West Lancaster, Kate is at the helm of a very busy constituency and is out working hard most days to build a better province for all of us to enjoy.  At an age when her peers are winding down and looking to divest responsibility, Kate, with her deep-rooted work ethic and sturdy moral compass, is taking on a greater community role, exemplifying the credo of a favourite literary detective, “Everybody counts, or nobody counts.” Kate is an honourable human being, a neighbour you can count on…the kind you want to run for office and represent you, to sift through the politics of competing interests, to search for solutions, and build a better world where we can all belong.  She has my respect, she has my friendship, and she will always have my vote.

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

    Ok… so, let’s go backwards for the origin story. I’m the MLA for Saint John West-Lancaster and have served in this role for just over a year, and prior to that I was the Arts and Culture Coordinator for the City of Saint John. For 18 years I ran a non-profit arts organization that focused on community development through the arts, which I founded in 2001 when I moved back to Saint John from Nova Scotia. During those years I also raised my two children and a couple thousand more that I worked with in my studios and in schools throughout southern New Brunswick. I spent the 90s in Halifax, studying and working at Dalhousie University, and professional theatres and schools across the province; that’s also when I met my favourite person in the world who’s been by my side since 1992…that’s my husband, Mike.  And before that I was a west side kid who loved to climb trees, and swim at Dominion Park, and play music, and act in plays, and play sports. For the first two weeks of my life, I lived at 53 Elliott Row, before the Elmans moved to the west side, where I’ve lived ever since.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    Ok so when I was young, you’re often focused on getting to move on to the next phase of life…so middle school to high school, or graduation from university to the career world. But when I hit 50, I realized that the best part of life is who I am right now. It changes… I change each day with new experiences, but I enjoy being the age I am now, and while I know that I have opportunities ahead of me, I also know each day is to be savoured. And by savoured, I mean we have work to do, and we have to get it done. I fully feel with every ounce of my being that we’re here to serve and make the world better for each other, whether it’s through charity, or making people feel they belong, or nurturing, or entertaining, or problem solving. It’s our legacy and our purpose. I also embarrass far less than I did as a younger woman, and I like that.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    The little physical things I guess, that remind you that you’ve lived a good life. The aches and pains remind us that we’re still here…some of them I wish I didn’t have. My dad is 94, his sister and brother-in-law are 92 and 93, and they have such amazing humour and chutzpah…a certain mindset. I can only hope to be as blessed.

    One of the absolute worst things about getting older are the targeted ads on social media. The algorithms that think I really want to do chair yoga, or buy progressive lenses, and I really want to lose 30 pounds this month, or help my daughter raise her 13 kids on the farm. It’s insulting.

    What would you title this chapter of your life?

    GSD (Get Shit Done)

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

    The boundless energy and time. I like to think I have managed to hang on to the inner workings of youth. Maybe it’s because I spent so many years playing with young people as my career, or maybe it’s because age…ahem maturity, never seemed like a good enough reason to stop playing, and that’s probably because my coworkers were teenagers for many years and that was very nourishing. I’ve never given aging a lot of thought … it was never something I placed above being genuine and kind…or just being myself.   My grandmother lived to 94 and she lived with us in her 90’s, and I remember in my 20’s shooting baskets in the driveway and she would come out and shoot baskets with me and to me that was normal.   My mom who died at aged 84 was doing yoga until the very end and had a chin up bar in her closet.  I think I’ve managed to hang on to the playfulness of youth, because that’s how I was raised and that’s the perspective I have, but it’s the time and energy that is imbalanced.  I think of my father, a mischievous charismatic prankster at 94. I guess we never appreciate what we have now, comparing ourselves to our 20-year-old selves, but why?  Sure thirty-five-year-olds have it good, but they don’t realize they have it good.

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

    Oh, this was a hard one.  Living a public life brings with it so much, but at the end of the day just knowing that you were honest and true and worked damn hard, is the greatest way to fall asleep. That’s not a lesson I needed to learn myself but one I need to remind myself of when the work gets hard to turn off. I wore the weight of a lot of little people’s lives and their turmoils for decades, and later as a municipal worker with a portfolio working with various demographics and files, and now the lives of constituents and people all the over the province. There will always be buzz and easy trolling comments flying around, but I know I’m solid with people close to me who are good, kind, and honest. And people can disappoint you, but that’s on them more than it’s on you. At the end of the day, we have our own truth and I sleep well at night.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    It’s a quote by Viola Spolin, who was the premiere leader in the modern improv world, Spolin was a large influence on my approach to creating with others, and I still use her ideas today.

    “Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people’s findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.”

    I spent almost 30 years teaching and directing in studios and rehearsal halls, and the majority of that time was focused on play and intuition. I also used this theory to work in non-theatre environments such as corporate groups that needed a refresher on group dynamics, or classrooms, and community groups. Sometimes a person can get so bogged down on “the way it’s always been done” or “the end goal has to be…” or “they just don’t behave the way I want them to…” and this mindset of comfort can prevent progress or reaching the goal.

    Do you have a favourite word?

    ‘Yes.  Well, I have far too many favourite words but a word I use a lot is a Yiddish word, chutzpah. Chutzpah doesn’t just mean character, charisma or moxy…it’s very nuanced, like a lot of Yiddish words.  You know it when you see it. Sometimes it can mean a little mischievous, sometimes it can be a bit darker, but it’s always said in a positive way. My dad and his friends at The Villa… they have a lot of chutzpah.’  I ask Kate if she has chutzpah.  She smiles in a reflective, playful way and says, ‘yes, I have chutzpah, and I can up the chutzpah ante when needed.’

    Describe your perfect day.

    Well, I thought it was last Thanksgiving Sunday and then I stepped on a nest of yellow jacket hornets… but really it was a beautiful day.  We brought our Thanksgiving dinner up to the cottage.  I think everybody was at peace that day…until the peace was dispatched by the yellow jackets.  A perfect day for me is a day surrounded by the people I love; walking along city streets and popping into good coffee shops or a pub; being in a studio and creating with people; playing in the woods; learning; great conversations; time spent with my children; and a great meal made by Mike, which is every day.  

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

    Well, first of all, I wouldn’t have tea, I think I’d like to host a dinner party…Mike would cook. There’s a great play called Top Girls by Carol Churchill, and the second half of the play is a dinner party with all sorts of more obscure famous chicks: Pope Joan, Dull Gret, Isabella Bird, Lady Niko…I saw the play when I was 22, it was staged when I was at Dal, and I have often pondered who I’d invite over the years. I prefer a feisty dinner party to a quaint tea. 

    I would absolutely love to spend time with my mom, and my mother-in-law who passed away in August, both of whom still had so many stories to tell, and my grandmothers as well… I would love to be able to talk to them at this point in my life. My mother had me when she was 43 and she passed when I was 40 so I didn’t get to experience that relationship as a more tenured woman.  I would love to share some of my more recent life events with her.  Both of my grandmothers were kick-ass women who quietly but boldly broke the glass ceilings of the early 20th century in their own ways. My paternal grandmother was one of the first women to drive in Saint John, and my mom’s mom ran a business. 

    You know there is a great photo wall in Fredericton in Chancery Place of all the female MLAs who served in New Brunswick, some living, and some passed… I’d like to invite a few of the pioneer female MLA’s as well, and at the head of the table I would seat our current premier, Susan Holt.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    Hearing people laugh.  I like following the lives of the kids that I’ve worked with over the last 35 years, seeing them grow, and following their adventures as adults.  I’m also extremely happy organizing something in the community and then standing back and seeing people connect and find their joy…that brings me joy.

    I absolutely love the camaraderie my little family has. We don’t have much time together lately but those stolen 48 hours when there’s a weekend visit or a stopover are the absolute best.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    I don’t think I feel guilty about anything, but I do enjoy taking naps during movies and a cozy night in…they are few and far between these days.

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

    I believe that we stick around through the energy and work that we do while we’re here. It’s like we are little ripples in time. I know that there are people who came before us, either blood relatives or mentors who are living on in the work I do, in lessons I’ve passed along to children who are now teachers and parents, so if that is living on after we die then yes, there is a life after death. It’s a very agnostic way of looking at things, and I also think it’s important to focus on the here and now. 

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    Oh, I couldn’t possibly start with a eulogy…it’ll be a long party.  But the epitaph would probably read “….and curtain” which can signify the end or the beginning.  The curtain opens and closes the play.

    Authors note:

    I have included an additional question to the LOLIW interview this session: What would you title this chapter of your life?  I was curious how previous interviewees might answer as well…so I asked them.

    Sr. Rhona Gulliver

    “Wisdom, Wit, and Woolies”

    Dr. Margaret Anne Smith

    “The Intentional Years”

    (Iwona) Maria Kubacki

    “Ch-Ch-Changes”

    Margo Beckwith Byrne

    “Coming Full Circle”

    Shova Rani Dhar

    “Renaissance”

    Jan Lucy

    “Revival”

  • Solvitur Ambulando…It Is Solved by Walking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • In Conversation with Jan Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

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

    What is the best thing about getting older?

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

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

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

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

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite quote?

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

    Do you have a favourite word?

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

    Describe your perfect day.

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

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

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

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

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

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

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

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

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

    Name a guilty pleasure.

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

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

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

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

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