Little Old Lady … in Waiting

Tag: love

  • 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.”

  • 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”

  • In Conversation with Jan Lucy

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

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

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

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

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

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

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

    What is the best thing about getting older?

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

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

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

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

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite quote?

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

    Do you have a favourite word?

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

    Describe your perfect day.

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

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

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

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

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

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

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

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

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

    Name a guilty pleasure.

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

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

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

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

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

  • A Curated Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • In Conversation with Shova Rani Dhar

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

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

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

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

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

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

    What is the best thing about getting older?

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

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite quote?

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

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

    Do you have a favourite word?

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

    Describe your perfect day.

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

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

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

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

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

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

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

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

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

    Name a guilty pleasure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

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

  • The Art of Happiness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • In Conversation with Margo Beckwith-Byrne

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

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

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

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

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less? 

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

    What is the best thing about getting older?

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

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite quote?

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

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

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

    Do you have a favourite word?

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

    Describe your perfect day.

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

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

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

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

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    My grandbabies, my sports, and my kids. 

    Name a guilty pleasure.

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

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

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

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

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

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

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

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

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

  • Reading Room 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Little Old Lady to Little Old Lady Wisdom

    Sister Rhona Gulliver

    Author’s Note: The following profile is the first in a series of interviews based on a standardized set of questions designed to illicit insights and wisdom from Little Old Ladies in waiting. For me the exercise might be likened to what London black-cab apprentices refer to as ‘The Knowledge’; a mapping or learning the grid…the Grand Dame essentials, all the best bits and bobs to be discovered on the road to little old ladydom. The guiding spirit behind the profiles is best captured in a line by Rilke; “I want to be with those who know secret things, or else alone.”  I hope to interview women with considered and varied life experience, interesting and unusual career paths, a sprinkling of accolades, and maybe a smidgen more than their just share of “je ne sais quoi.”  

    The very first person that came to mind, satisfying all qualifiers, was Sister Rhona Gulliver.  I consider Rhona one of the most learned and wise women of my acquaintance.  She has a sharp intellect, a rich interior world, and a well-established and dearly appreciated wit.  She is a writer and an artist, with the singing voice of a sweet young girl, and the conversational acumen of a late-night radio host.  She has a genuine love of people, asking questions that open up all those who enter her realm, and paying us the ultimate compliment of her complete attention.  She may be the most skilled listener I have ever met with an unparalleled capacity for friendship. 

    Tell me your life story in seven sentences or less?

    What I have done… I attended 7 universities including Dalhousie, McMaster, Ottawa, as well as Dublin City University searching for a career and life values.

    Where have I been… I’ve been engaged three times to be married, looking for romance and companionship. I entered the Congregation de Notre Dame in Montreal in 1970 to become a religious sister and after three years they told me to go home. I had come to know and love the foundress, Marguerite Bourgeoys, of Notre Dame. Ten years later I entered the Sisters of Charity in Saint John and it felt more in keeping with the career I had chosen, leading to a deeper spirituality and giving of my gifts to others.  I worked many years in the community as a nurse, social worker, family councillor, and teaching at Queens University specializing in forensic psychiatry. My desire through life was to encourage others to learn and experience the best they could and give back to others.

    What is the best thing about getting older?

    The best thing is that you have less responsibility, and you can speak your mind without worrying too much about whether someone is getting upset… you also take things with a grain of salt.

    What is the worst thing about getting older?

    Always worrying that something else will go wrong with your health… some little thing that hurts. Your health starts to deteriorate and there is nothing you can do about it… you’re at the back of the line.

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

    Dancing… I love to dance. I took lessons until I was 14 or 15 and then it wasn’t cool anymore. I’d like to dance again.

    Do you have a favourite quote?

    Yes, it’s a quote my great grandmother told me.

    “When you educate a man, you educate a man. When you educate a woman, you educate a generation.”

    Do you have a favourite word?

    “Kretzimah” (Unfamiliar with this word, I requested a definition)

    I made it up. It means you’re soft or enjoyable, a gentle person… it describes everything delightful.

    Describe your perfect day.

    One that I would be free of all responsibilities – the telephone, visitors… with time to paint and write poetry, to read and have some spiritual time for rejoining my connection with God… maybe pieces of chocolate here and there.

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

    Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I find him very fascinating. He broke the rules of etiquette and of government. He did what he liked to do. We would have a swinging good time. We could talk about everything: great books, philosophy, theology, politics. There aren’t that many you can talk to about such things.

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

    Yes, I believe in life after death. Most of life is getting ready for death. Life isn’t always pleasant but after this life all will be revealed, and the feeling of love will be so powerful you won’t have time to think of anything other than the love of God. Sometimes in this life after traumatic things have happened, I have contemplated suicide, but in the end, I thought I might be cheating myself of a higher form of love. I don’t mean to say that suicide is sinful, I mean that the more you can accept and survive the hard times, the greater your capacity for love… for other people, for yourself, and for God.

    Tell me three things that bring you joy.

    Chocolate. People. The Arts – painting, singing, music.

    Name a guilty pleasure.

    I like flirting with men. My brothers always told me if I kept my mouth closed, I could find a better boyfriend.

    What would you like your eulogy to say?

    I came… I was… I went.