Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Eternity in Ten Seconds

We stand next to eternity every day of our lives. Some are closer it seems to the profound nature of being in the world than others. They have no need to question their actions. They simply respond to a higher natural order than the rest of us. And so it was for a man named Isidor Howson of Kazabazua, a humble 40-year-old carpenter. 

Isidor is just a man. A man living his life. He had a fairly long drive home from Shawville to Kaz and as he usually does he left his shoes unlaced so he could take them off if he wanted to. That Saturday he hesitated undoing the laces. He didn’t know why he hesitated but he did. But then he untied the laces. Just outside Shawville he saw a house on fire. Two older women were standing by the road. He stopped his truck to help. 

The women were shaken. They told him there was a man inside. He hadn’t come out.

Isidor immediately ran to the house. How many of us would have done that? With the flames on the roof now fierce, the heat rattling the air, the smoke acrid in the wind? Isidor tried the front door, the back door, the windows. Through the front window he could see a man in a chair in the living room. And despite the screaming and banging, the man did not respond, already perhaps overcome by the smoke. Isidor only describes his actions as driven by a higher will than his own perhaps. By right action, by adrenaline, by divine providence. That’s the mystery of men like this. When asked, Isidor confused almost by the question simply says, “it was the right thing to do. I’d do it again."

Isidor went to the front door and began kicking it in. He lost his shoe in the process. His laces were untied. He was cut, bruised and shaken but managed finally to break in. He retrieved his shoe, and just 10 seconds from having broken in the door he reckons, the entire upper floor caved into the living room burying the man in the chair.

Isidor was 10 seconds too late. 

That’s how Isidor told the story. That’s how Isidor remembered the story: he was 10 seconds too late to save the man. If only he had not stopped to get his shoe. If only he had laced them up. If only. And Isidor went home eventually broken and haunted. It was 10 seconds. And that defines a man like Isidor. He did not see it as 10 seconds where he himself could have died (as his friend eventually pointed out to him), but as the time he did not have to save the man. What makes men like this? Who can really know? Just a man. Just a man living his life.

But life has a way of making its profundity manifest. It has a way of teaching us things we don’t understand. For a man like Isidor, who was haunted by those 10 seconds, by the unlaced shoe, there was no comfort really. Only perhaps time would heal. 

Isidor went reluctantly to work the next day at a construction site in Wakefield, exhausted from a sleepless night. Why he happened to be standing right there when his co-worker took a phone call from his wife, Isidor doesn’t know. But that co-worker was from Shawville and his wife told him their neighbour had set the house on fire and then shot himself. Isidor could not have saved the man even if he had had those 10 seconds. These were facts that Isidor may never have known if he hadn’t been standing there to hear it. The details are still under wraps.

Isidor could not have saved the man. Instead he was given 10 seconds of grace. And that 10 seconds saved his own life. That is how providence works. That is the irony, the twist of the archetypal story. Isidor thinks about how he could have died for nothing if he hadn’t lost a shoe.

No longer haunted, but simply sad. It is a story to tell now for Isidor. Not the one he thought it was, but a different one altogether. It is a sad story but a transformative story for him in ways words can’t describe. He is just a man. Living his life, 10 seconds away from eternity.

Saturday, October 27, 2018

What then is happiness?

Some of us live on the boundary line, the slow shuffled measured pace between black/white and the known/unknown, the right/wrong, the tragic/comedic, the coward/hero, the stupid and the bright. It is not a striving for equilibrium but a condensation of our divided Being funneled to a finite place on this planet where we roost to watch the affairs of our fellow creatures. It is a precarious vantage point--neither here nor there but in between. It was never a choice we would have made if we had had the choice.

For some of us the leap to a conclusion is a slow emergence from unfathomable depths to make our way in a languid drift to a faraway shore. It is why we are old before our time, for the blustery skies we fly in batter our very souls. It is why we are quiet for our solitude exists in a noisy crowd and has no answer to what it sees. It is bewildered by the pain of others demanding reason and yet others suffocating in emotion. It is partly nature and partly circumstance that held us in what we thought was confusion but was in reality capacity. It was a clarity defined by images and not thought. It was a clarity of emotion and not reason. But the painful translation of that clarity to reason brings depths of understanding for those who live in-between and can suffer the journey on that fragile bridge from here to there.

There are not many who have the time to think. And for those of us who do, it is our curse to do so.
Hence the painters, the poets, the writers, the philosophers, the mystics and the misfits. And even the mad, for they dance and sing and cry and rage in memory and prophesy where most have never been and would never choose to go.

What then is happiness to those who skip-trip to the heavens? And does it even matter. Predestined perhaps to lives of living in between, they play translators to a universe few seek to understand. They bleed their love at daybreak and gather it again at nightfall from the stars to strew across the vast clamoring daylight. They never had a choice.



Thursday, September 20, 2018

In honour of all the bears we seem to be sighting, this is my story from 2010 from my book "The Get-Over-Yourself Self-Help Book" written before I understood bears...


The Unbearable Lightness of Beans

The bear was sitting at the entrance to the deck looking at me. Well, at first it was just looking at me but then, it decided to gaze off into the trees in a very zen-like fashion as if it was contemplating the meaning of life and I was just some static in the way of the transmission of a universal collective unconsciousness. It seemed to be having a revelation.

This I could perfectly understand given that it had just salvaged the trashcan leftovers of a frozen cabbage-roll entree that I'd found on special just last month at Walmart. I myself felt that very same way after having tasted the stuff. I'm certain those leaves were not cabbage at all but then, the Walmart spokesperson insists they were, even though I insisted right back that if I'd dried those damn things out and smoked them I would have gotten far more bang for the buck I'd say. They never listen to me, these spokespeople; that's because they earn their degrees in Communications and then spend their entire working careers trying to find ways NOT to communicate the truth as it really is, such as the use of psychotropic "cabbage-leaves-my-arse" in their entrees. But anyway...

The bear had resumed looking at me. It wasn't a major bear, really. It was a little bit bigger than the dog, but considerably more hefty... a "big-boned" bear. I figure it could easily have wrestled me to the ground and killed me dead, so I was grateful to see I apparently had a Buddhist bear on a spiritual quest at the end of the deck instead.

The only reason I knew, of course, that we had a bear was because the neighbours were good enough to call out and let me know. The dog, who goes into an apoplectic barking frenzy over june bugs and chipmunks, was sitting at the other end of the deck looking at me... quietly. Now, the thing was, I had to walk towards the bear in order to get to the door in order to open it in order to tell George to call
 the fire department, an ambulance, the SPCA, my sister in New Zealand, Chelsea Pizza and CSIS.

Anyway, I decided to walk towards the bear because sometimes you must throw caution to the winds and leap headlong into your destiny or lack thereof. The bear lifted its paw and continued to look at me. It was obviously a bear with some fashion sense that gravely disapproved of my orange striped outfit, because he shook his head back and forth in deep condemnation. I just knew I should have bought the other outfit instead, but the salesladies were completely disinterested in helping me choose because all they do is spend their days watching to see if you're shoplifting instead of helping you make a decision between plain plaid and orange stripes. I figure I'd have had better luck if I'd brought the bloody bear to the store for an opinion. Not that he seemed like he'd be the kind of bear that would like to go shopping, really, I was thinking.

So I opened the door... I did this apparently for the dog. The dog, deeply relieved, practically knocked me over as she ran like the wind itself into the living room to cower behind the recliner where George was watching a documentary on the building of the White Canal by slave laborers in Stalinist Russia.
"George," I said, "there's a bear on the deck." Given that the bear was about six feet away, I thought I did rather well keeping my voice and all.

"Don't be silly," said George.

George, as it turns out, was no help whatsoever because we ended up in the kitchen arguing over whether to use the fire extinguisher or the rocking chair to defend ourselves. Eventually we decided to scare the bear by banging pots and pans, which didn't work out so well because George wanted to use the cast iron skillet along with the brand new Teflon-coated crepe pan. Well I couldn't have that! So we eventually found ourselves standing out on the deck peering into the now darkening landscape with an eggbeater, a broom, and a can of Heinz old-fashioned maple-syrup beans.

The bear, having listened in on the debate, had left, no doubt deciding to forsake all forms of civilization thereafter--which is a good thing... for a bear with any sense whatsoever.

Next, we may be discussing why Hitler was a better dancer than Stalin.

Monday, September 10, 2018

How do we make it different this time?

What if Canada's first nations people looked at the people who arrived here on ships and said "Look at them! They have no respect for nature or our gods, they are destroying what we believe in, they are having lots of children and more and more are coming, they have their own laws, they are taking our land, they don't respect women as we do, they are going to force us into becoming like them or we will pay the consequences because they have powerful weapons, they are not like us and they have no respect for us, they stick with their own and won't mingle with us." What if they did? They would have been right. We see the results. We are all immigrants. How do we make it different this time?
 
It is important to understand that the Syrian refugees are just that--refugees. They are not immigrants in that sense. These are refugees fleeing from a country in ruins. They had no choice. They are uprooted, displaced and dispersed far from family and what they knew, running from a horrible situation. Why are they refugees in the first place is a question best left to others to determine. Canadians saw an influx of refugees during and after the Second world war. One of its sad realities is that the children of these refugees often were subjected to being raised by traumatized and alienated parents. It became for many a source of great suffering through the generations. How do we make it different this time?

One thing is clear: Politics will not solve this problem. If anything, in this political climate, it is creating greater divides than need be. Polarized as it is. This is a people problem. This is a neighbour to neighbour problem. If a person is hated, they learn only to hate. Hate is a function of fear. That is all. For this, the onus is on all of us and on the refugees themselves, struggling as they are to learn a foreign language and foreign ways and deal with trauma and isolation, to dispel the fear and make common ground. And that common ground is one that requires dialogue and good neighbours.

Out there in the world, law enforcement is facing the results of what happens when fear rules. This is an undeniable fact although it is denied. The level of frustration, anger and concern is palpable because these are men and women who have put their lives on the line to protect the public. And the general public does not know what they know. And they are burning out, leaving, if not committing suicide. Their reaction is understandable because it is not discussed in the public arena in a meaningful way. Their hands are tied and they have no place for honesty. And by not being discussed or faced then how can there be solutions? It is not up to the media nor the politicians to silence reality. Reality is what it is. No amount of social engineering or positive thinking can replace honest dialogue. The onus belongs to those who can see a better way and that includes overcoming fear to bridge the gap. I believe it is possible. It requires good will from both sides. How do we make it different this time? That is a question I put to the politicians, the law enforcement agencies, the refugees themselves and we ourselves.

No amount of arrogance; of race, religion, class need be tolerated from any of us on any side. When it comes to human to human relations, one is no greater than the other. We are all in this together. How do we make it different this time?

Sunday, September 9, 2018


You never quite heal. Not quite ever...

I will never leave Himself to rest. Why should he have all the fun cavorting through time without me? I know right this instant he is at the pyramids and all the questions he had about time and meaning and existence are answered. He has found the why and all I can do is know he holds that for me and for the ones he loved, one day found when we follow. But now, I will not leave the man to rest. I guess that's just the way it is for some of us. 

And for all that I've gone through I have no advice beyond a dedication to not becoming bitter. That there is no point to blame. That the rest of your life is a remnant of your love carried to your last day with courage and a prayer and a faith forward. 

And love the one you're with, with the aching understanding of how precious the time we are given is. For it is precious.

It was both a curse and a gift that we were given knowledge of our own death one day. Life's struggle is to find the gift whether you are the one that is to go or the one that is to be left behind. And when you find that gift, much becomes irrelevant; the affairs of the world a sad if not mad distraction. Love is all we have. The fear of loss is the curse, the understanding that comes with it, the gift. And if you can find the laughter, well, you've found it all. Just love the one you're with. But do not cast your pearls before swine. Forgive when you can. Kindness always. Compassion within reason.

That's all I've learned. 

Have a loving week everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmactMIhrRM

Friday, September 7, 2018

Love and Peace

Some days it feels as though we are surrounded by fear and anger and judgment and the failed expectations of a generation. There are people who would call those who ask that we practice peace and love, naive and idealistic. That’s fair enough in one sense. Yes, there are bad things, bad actions by people, groups, governments, countries. In this we are not, any of us, naive. But idealism is not a dirty word. It represents hope. And that is what we have to foster for our children and grandchildren. It is vital.

Those calling for love in the face of atrocities and miscommunications and greed and disappointments are not naive. They are the wise. And that wisdom is powerful. It is the act of loving understanding and compassion that is the antidote to anger. It is the antidote to fear and it is the antidote to despair. To bitterness. To futility. It is the antidote to divisiveness. And it is the only “rational” response to the world we have now.

I am going to quote Scott Alexander who said: “I don’t know how to fix the system, but I am pretty sure that one of the ingredients is kindness. I think of kindness not only as the moral virtue of volunteering at a soup kitchen or even of living your life to help as many other people as possible, but also as an epistemic virtue. Epistemic kindness is kind of like humility. Kindness to ideas you disagree with. Kindness to positions you want to dismiss as crazy and dismiss with insults and mockery. Kindness that breaks you out of your own arrogance, makes you realize the truth is more important than your own glorification, especially when there’s a lot at stake.”

There was a time after 9/11 when Canadians desperately attempted to explain to our younger siblings, the Americans, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and they didn’t really need to invade it. They didn’t listen to us of course but the point is, we Canadians were sane then. Whatever has happened?

No matter what the issue, We can observe. Not absorb the hysteria. That is the difference. Observe, support, work towards whatever we believe in, bridge the gaps of understanding most importantly, but we cannot absorb such nonsense of divisive politics and judgment. We have to remember who we are. Canadians. We are a peaceful people. We make peace. We are neighbours.

IMHO We do not need any more social justice warriors. We need social justice peacemakers. This does not mean giving up ground or gains achieved or goals but an understanding that the present and the future needs to be negotiated with good will at its heart between all sides. And though sometimes this is not possible when some are incapable of good will because they are lost in anger and righteousness, absorbing that is incalculably damaging. Observe. Forgive and if necessary move on.

Loving kindness is the simple solution to a complicated world with complicated issues.

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

The Climate Debate


When I was 10 years old I received my first Barbie Doll. It was made of plastic. Did I know indeed for the first forty years of my life that plastic was going to wreak havoc on the planet? No. I did not. We walk in the light that we have. And we did not have that light. I’m writing this for two reasons: 1) Guilt serves nobody but self-flagellists and 2) Hope is important.

It does not matter who caused global climate change; if it is man-made or a natural occurrence. Most would suggest its man made and that it is undeniable. It does not matter. What matters is that in fact it is happening. What matters is that we do our bit in the light that we have now to change our own behaviour. What matters most of all is that we do not put this out there as the end of the world. We have children and grandchildren who see no future. And worse, feel responsible to fixing the whole world.

Of course it is important to teach, guide and model behaviour that respects and attempts to remediate the planet’s woes to our children. What we do not need to pass on is this self-loathing of a generation for having wrecked the planet and this sense of hopelessness that pervades our lives for the future. It also creates divisiveness because one person cares more than another person and so begins the judgment cycle. Who’s to blame! Who’s to shame! 

Let me tell you, it’s not individuals. It is big picture greed. And if I’ve learned something in this life, it is that you don’t fight evil directly. You increase the good. We do not encourage our children to hate our generation, themselves or those who do not respect the same values. We increase the good by showing them what it is indeed that is to be loved about nature, and the planet. We don’t chastise them for using plastic bags, we show them the way the fish flash sacred in the water. We don’t tell them you ride a bicycle instead of getting car rides because the air is fresh with the season and the sound of their heartbeat is universal connectedness. We don’t apologize for what we did not know and model this form of self-hatred for our children. We show them that when problems happen, you begin where you are and work from love instead of self-hatred. It’s pretty basic.

But we cannot teach our children that the tree they love is in danger. You create fear and panic and sadness. You teach them only to love the tree so that they grow with love and faith in a future they will participate in. Let's ensure they do not do so from a place of fear.

And when they say to you, “but the tree is going to die, and we are killing all the trees,” you show them the new trees growing from the seedlings of the tree they love and explain that yes the tree is going to die for all things will die a long long time from now but new trees will come and they will be the ones you must love and nurture. And you explain that one day when they are grown they may decide that that is what they will want to do with their life or they may do other things but there will always be someone who will love the trees. And when they say the planet is dying and we’re killing the whales and everything is bad, you say, “right now there is a tree to love and that right now is all we will ever have or have ever had.” All things pass away but the right to hope and the understanding of the cycle of life is what we must bequeath to our children and their children. Even in the face of what seems to be overwhelming odds, that hope and that endurance is what we can give, not sadness, guilt and despair.

---
I guess I was thinking of the child that gets up in the morning and puts on his proper shoes that it has been explained to him are not the result of child labour in china and his jeans that are not produced by exploited non-unionized workers in pakistan and when he eats his breakfast it is not made with monsanto-engineered corn and when he walks to school it is not because fossil fuels are creating wars and when he's learning about wildlife it is not because they are all in danger and when he comes home it is not to a home full of horrible people who are guilty of destroying the planet. There are some things that children should not have to carry throughout their day. They have the right to joy and to love and to hope and to a certain innocence.

I guess what I'm saying is that a certain segment of our generation think they are teaching their children how to fight for the planet but in fact are teaching them mostly fear and anger and despair. One child will become a warrior and the other a worrier. When I was a child we worried about nuclear war. Now they are worried about every single thing the planet has to offer.
 

Monday, July 16, 2018

What the bees taught me



When I was 11 years old, we moved to a house on a street in a small town. My room, if that is what you could call it was a curtained off section of the basement. My bed was under a window whose ledge was at ground level. There were flowers there when we arrived. Most of them were not there when we left, grown over with weeds. One morning I woke up and something had stung my calf. A bug of some sort. It was quite a ferocious bite and when I jumped it stung me again. I whipped the sheet off and found a bee. 
I captured it with a glass and a piece of paper and took it upstairs. My brother or my father, I don’t remember which, told me it could not have stung me twice because bees will die if they sting you because they have barbed stingers that end up being left behind in whoever they bite and that kills them. Two days later I got another sting and another bee. So my brother killed it. And this became a regular occurrence for a number of weeks, waking up to a bee. I became quite adroit at whipping the sheets off when I first woke up to avoid being stung. Sometimes they bit me anyway. I would find out later that there are indeed types of bees that can sting twice.

The thing was, I began to feel sorry for the bees. Because if I brought them upstairs they would be killed. So I got a bowl of water and a dinner plate that I smeared with honey and then I began to collect the bees. They lived on the plate of honey in my bedroom. I would collect them and feed them the honey and watch their antennae-like things slipping into the honey. They seemed quite content to stay there. I had quite a few of them over the weeks. So I lived in the bedroom with the bees until one day I took them outside and let them go. That bothered me because I didn’t know who would feed them then but I had thought it the right thing to do.

On the surface of course one could ask why on earth no one cared enough to find the source of these bees that would sting me. No one cared to even notice that I had a plate of bees in the bedroom. But that is, although a factor of my life, not the thing that defined me. What defined me was that even though the bees stung me, I cared for them. It is why I have cared for even the monsters of this life who will sometimes sting you. It is their nature. Just as it is my nature to forgive. But I will not have a plate of bees in my room again. Forgive and set them free. That is what the bees taught me.


What the wicked weed taught me

 

Oh it tormented me. I’ve lived here 31 years (minus one year where I made that mistake which is a terrible story in and of itself and has nothing whatsoever to do with what the wicked weed taught me). The point was, for 31 years I lived with this stupid weed bush thing on the side of the road on my property. Drove me crazy. It was a tenacious horribly ugly looking thing with many branches and innocuous leaf-like things.

 I would hack at it and chop it and even once tried digging it up but the damn thing had roots that went all the way to China. So I just cut it down every year. And the people whose job it is to clear the side of the road would sometimes haphazardly with their machine on any given year lop the top off and that would please me. “There!” I’d say to the horrible thing.

Then the dog-strangling vine came and gardening of any sort took on an air of misery. And then I got quite ill and so the wicked weed went it’s wicked weed way for awhile. I would still lament it’s growth so ridiculously misplaced even for a weed thing, half on and off the slope to the road with its jumbly moth-eaten greenery lacking any symmetry of form. On the days when I was feeling better I would make an effort to dig out the dog-strangling vine around the thing so that it looked somewhat like a presentable if poorly chosen plant.

The summer when George had died and the silence of my soul came and turned my very being into a numb and broken thing; that summer was not even summer to me. It was just what it was. I would sit looking out at the sweep of trees and sky and feel nothing. Nothing made sense. Nothing at all.

Outside, the weed grew taller and the man who was clearing out the dog-strangling vine came into the house and handed me a perfect apple. One perfect green apple. And I said, “where ever did you get the apple?” And he told me it was from the apple tree on the front by the side of the road. It had produced an apple, my wild wicked weed… one perfect apple. No more. No less. So I went out and looked and there it was… my wild wicked weed grown tall into an apple tree. And me, a country girl, hadn’t even figured it out. Me, the one sent out with baskets to collect apples in the orchard up the road as a child. Me. I did not see what I should have seen.

Sometimes the demons that we fight. Sometimes the battles and the judgment and the struggles turn out to be a blessing. Sometimes we even forget that what we knew once can be forgotten and life may be a re-learning. Sometimes there are unexpected graces and they have no reason for happening. They simply do. This is what the wicked weed taught me.

Saturday, July 7, 2018

The 1001 Things List


When I was really at the point of my darkest despair in my grief I had stopped eating. I was barely functioning. I went to the doctor and insisted something was wrong with me because I couldn’t eat. I had no appetite whatsoever and that had never happened in my lifetime before. But the tests came back normal. I realized I’d better see a therapist because a person has to eat.

This year, on the anniversary of George’s death I went there again. The dark place and there was a part of me that rebelled. So I wrote a list of 10 things that made me happy because surely to heavens this kind of pain has to have a balance. I took it to my therapist. He said make it a list of 100. I made a list of 100. It was becoming very difficult. I figured I had to restrict how many times I mentioned food like escargots in garlic butter sauce and how many times I mentioned every animal I and my friends owned. He said make it a list of 1000.

And that is where I am. A list of 1001 things that make me happy. Mine took months. See something happens to you. You start spending the day looking for something to write on your list that makes you happy. It's the darndest thing. In the middle of despair.

I started out monosyllabic. By the time I'd finished that had changed. I started out with me. By the time I'd finished I realized it was about others. I started out with grey and ended up with God, however you can conceive he/she/it/they/them/zem to be. This is this antidote to this world we are living in. Watch the news: write something for your list. Someone maliciously attacks you: write something for your list. Wonder how you're gonna make it through the day? read your list.

When the whining starts, which it will at around about the 212th thing on your list, remember I'm not asking you to sail the high seas in a raft in a hurricane. I'm just saying build a raft for when you end up in the high seas in a hurricane.

This is my gift to you. Because sometimes, happy as you may be right now, sometimes life is a nightmare. I know you know that. So you go back and you read your list. By the time you’ve finished your list you have found so much gratitude for this life, I can’t begin to tell you. You are to make a list of 1001 things that make you happy. And it will be hard! You’d think it would be easy but around about 437 you start listing TV characters…. Don't give up. My advice. Start with a colour. Green makes me happy.

Love to you all.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

I hope to start a website soon. Stay tuned.
Peace always.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Born to the Dream



Of course the child would be born on a cold night which turned snow to ice pellets to rain and sleet. Before Easter he was born to this world. He is the first native-born Canadian in the family and he is bright with newness, pink plump with a full head of hair. He is a gift. He is a promise. He is beautiful. 

His mother is glorious with her accomplishment with that rare vulnerable essence that speaks of the ultimate strength of women caught like light at her eyes. She is also exhausted. 

The father of course is proud as punch and I left them as he was holding the baby against his skin. They ask that now of new fathers when the mother is momentarily preoccupied. The father’s skin is warmer than the mothers and the baby needs that warmth. The little guy was quiet. I think he will be a studious sort. But his wide mouth looks ready for the smile of bedevilment.

We in Canada cannot appreciate the level of community that this family left behind. In Syria before the war the mother at this point would be surrounded by intergenerational family, women clucking and cooing and handling things; the cooking, the cleaning, the comforting, the stories. In Canada, technology attempts to replace that with Skype to relatives back home. I felt a great sadness that without knowledge of Arabic I had so little to offer.  I tried to explain to the father at one point that his baby now “is.” He is the ultimate expression of the verb “to be” and present tense even.

The father has found work. He is happy.

He has also registered for a month long evening course in English in Ottawa. He is a determined man. In Quebec no such courses seem to exist in this region. Politics and reality sometimes don’t agree. My hour weekly simply cannot bridge the knowledge gap he has to leap. It’s a big leap. 

Simply looking at written Arabic shows us how big a leap it is. Their beautiful almost pictorial language is full of nuance and meaning. The letters of our alphabet to them is as if we were presented with Arabic and being asked to learn it in six months to a year. And your very livelihood depends on it. The father insists that Arabic is far far easier. The way they handle past, present and future seems interesting from what I can grasp. The verbs don’t change but the addition of yesterday or tomorrow informs the verb. I’m quite fuzzy on that. Their language seems beyond my capacity beginning with the sound that comes from the throat. I laugh with the young son because he keeps insisting I learn that sound. And I’m utterly hopeless. Similar to my husband’s Polish, where 6 consonants in a row is simply inconceivable to an English speaker. I am, if nothing else, a source of great amusement trying to speak either Polish or Arabic. I’m absolutely certain I’m pronouncing it exactly as I hear it. But I am not. It is humbling to be a source of great gales of laughter. I suppose. There is no place for pride when learning another language. But humour. That wins every time.

Driving home in the sleet on the empty streets along Verendrye avenue I work at paying attention to the bright red lights and green lights shimmering on surfaces and catching at the dull slush of the road. I know I have to concentrate because my mind waxes philosophical. And birth of a child ranks right up there with musings. What world will he have? Will he grow up strong, tolerant, wise? Will this country embrace him and all that he will be? Are we a tolerant multi-cultural nation? Will he understand that? Will he love Canada geese sweeping high in the sky? No matter where he might go in this world he will always be ours. He was born here.

Welcome to the world child. It’s not perfect but it is yours.






Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Life: It’s meaning

There was this thing. I found it one day in my less than stellar wanderings attempting to spring clean. It was a metal thing painted blue, about four feet long and it had a thingamajig at the top connected to a doohickymabob and at the other end there was a crooked whatchamacallit. I had no idea what it was. But we had it. It was there. It must have been a thing worth having at some point by someone in our life. So I took this thingamajig dookhickymabob to Himself and put it on his lap and said: “What is this?” And he examined it closely, turning it about in his hands and holding it up to the light and then putting it on the floor. Finally he looked up at me and said, “I have no bloody idea.” So we both looked at this thing with great reverie. And so then I eventually said, “Should we keep this thing?” And he said, “Well, we don’t know what it is. We don’t know what it is for. We don’t know where it came from and so, Yes, we should keep this thing.” And I agreed. And this was the conclusion we came to. Because it was the obvious conclusion to us.

So I would occasionally come across this thing and I would sneak it under George’s pillow so when he went to bed he’d find it. Sometimes I put it in the shower stall at night knowing he would come across it in the morning. Once I put it on the car seat. And once I put it inside his winter coat. One day I snuck it inside my jacket into Giant Tiger and put it in the sock bin before George made his way down the aisle to the sock bin. The unexpected. I did this just because it was bloody absurd. It became a game to play all our years together. Putting this thing where it was least expected. He would hide it after my prank and it would take me a few weeks to find it again. But I always did. I would drag it out of the back of the linen closet and put it on top of the wood pile where he would be chopping kindling the next day. Once I wrapped it carefully in a big box and gave it to him as a birthday present. He would look at me with a ragged flat expression and sigh. And I would do my triumphant smirk. And then we would laugh and the game would begin again.

There are people who are reading this who are trying in their head to figure out what that thing was. I can see their brains logically reconstructing and supposing and concluding. There are others who can’t understand the whole point of this and why we didn’t throw the doohickymabob out. And then there are the other ones who realize how funny it is. But most importantly there are those who truly understand how extraordinarily funny it is. Those are my kind of people.

Life is a doohickymabob: We don’t know what it is for. We don’t know where it came from. We decide to keep it because it is there. We don’t know what to do with it. We hide it when we can. Sometimes we pull it out and play with it and laugh. It always keeps turning up somewhere when we least expect it.

There are many people who think that we are living in a hell world now. That we have culminated our entire human history into an amorphous mass of conflicting angry and righteous opinions without sense. That we have descended into a theatre of opinion and rationalizations. Some think we are in the post-Ideological age, or on the cusp of robotic dominance, or creatures now reduced to living in a meaningless universe. We are none of these things. We are simply absurd. Meaningfully absurd in a foolish kind of way. And in our deepest being we know this. That our lives are a bitter irony leading to our biggest fear, that of death.  That we are, after all is said and done, insignificant. I’m going to tell you something. We "are" insignificant. We are deeply absurdly utterly insignificant. It is this fact alone that makes life worth living. How in hell else can we not find that deeply worth living for? It’s extremely funny. And the search for our own significance is the funniest thing we ever will do. How many times do we find ourselves sitting inside the shambles of our deepest failures and darkest despondency desperately attempting to at least pretend to look like we’re not bloody idiots? How many times do we rush out to buy a book to teach us how not to look like bloody idiots? Or take up causes so we can join all the other bloody idiots trying not to look like idiots? We are all idiots. There are no exceptions.

The only difference between the bloody idiocy of our lives up until now has been the number of choices we have to mitigate our own idiocy. We have a lot more choices now. We’re standing at the Starbucks counter of life looking at the menus trying to pick the right coffee. No one ever chooses the coconut latino raspberry  latte. Because nobody in their right mind would choose the coconut latino raspberry latte. This is why you have to try the coconut latino raspberry latte. George taught me that. It’s not the fact of life we need consider. It is the fun we can make of it. And the ultimate answer to life is the love that guides us in that direction. 
 
In memory of my George. August 24, 1953 - March 21, 2016
I will always love you.
 
 

Tuesday, March 20, 2018


BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Lunar Terminator


The clear cold night of March stuns the sky with its moon. The waning crescent blinding in its beauty. Sometimes when it is particularly clear you can still see the outline of the shadowed part of the moon; as it was when I drove home from Hull. Stubbornly in the way of the full-on brightness of the sun, the earth itself was playing puppet shadow on the wall as we did with flashlights and fingers as children.



Between the bright dazzle of the crescent and the false shadow is a boundary line called the lunar terminator. It is the space of the moons hemispheres that separates the darkness from the illumination. It is in between the dark and the light. It could go either way. For some reason teaching my Syrian family English makes me philosophical in a foolish kind of way I suppose. The crescent symbol of Islam comes to mind. And that mostly round shape of the shadow of the earth echoed in the round belly of a woman whose child is taking his time to come into this world. His life is a promise. It could go either way.



Back months ago in the dark of winter I met a family and we could not talk to each other. And the slow sometimes painful weekly sessions stretched ahead of us. A mutual goal. A crucial goal far distant. And then one day you discover you are speaking to each other in English. You can’t touch that feeling when you realize it is happening. It is beyond words. I don’t think I ever saw a man work so hard at something. He’s devoted. And, it turns out, he’s bloody funny. 



Despite never having taught English as a second language in my life I think I can safely say that the people you are teaching teach you how to teach them. This family just wants to talk. They want to share their life. They want to explain what happened to them that week, a year ago, when they were born. They want to know about our lives. They want to communicate. They want normal. And nothing beyond the love they have of their family is normal. And that, for everything there is in this world, is their saving grace. That, and apparently a wicked sense of humour.



In our last session, I had to explain that the past tense of buy is bought and not buyed. I explained that most verbs can be made into the past tense by adding ed because they were regular but SOME verbs are irregular. This ended up as there are two types of verbs: Verbs and Crazy Verbs. The father took this glumly. For he felt very encouraged with regular verbs. This week I was explaining the Crazy Verb “To Have.” He looked at me wickedly smiling and said, “Past is Syria” “Future don’t know.” Now Canada. ONLY Present. He said he only would learn present tense then. “I did not walk to store. I am walking to store.” And so, he brilliantly articulated every single philosophical theory in a nutshell. He was going to live in the present moment. It was easier he decided. And we laughed like fools. Who was I to argue with that?



I did not write last week about my session with my Syrians because it was a dark subject. Suffice it to say, health care in Quebec is bordering on Third World. At 39 weeks pregnant, the wife has not seen the same doctor twice. They are all giving some conflicting information and mostly it is “okay, out you go, next patient please.” They can’t find a family doctor. It is not the fault of the doctors but a ridiculous unforgiveable provincial government that fails its people miserably in this department. Consistency of care is key for everyone but critically so for new immigrants who speak neither English nor French. Their world has already been traumatized and rendered bewildering. Negotiating Quebec’s healthcare system becomes a reminder both of disenfranchisement and oddly the better health care they had in Syria before this debacle, this horror, this proxy war began. Consistent meaningful care after trauma needs to be a priority for new immigrants. If we really mean what we say when we “open our arms” to these desperate people. Particularly for photo ops. Talk, as they say, is cheap. Put your money where your mouth is. These are some idioms I could teach. If I wanted to get all political, which I am not going to do. So far anyway.

Monday, February 26, 2018

BEYOND FACEBOOK: Reality Refugees--Scatterlings of Syria

How sublime a day it was today because you can taste the spring in the air waiting. We will know it is time when the Canada geese begin their symmetry in the sky and clutter the winds with their raspy singing. The moon in early evening sits high in the sky to remind us of eternity and our insignificance, while down here on the planet we scramble and play and make war and all the voices of all the human beings that live here are just whispers to the universe. We struggle and we love and we play and we die. We are each a singular journey sweet with memory, inattentive to the present and wistfully dreaming to an end we do not know.

I cannot find the world anymore sometimes for it horrifies me. I have to force myself to sit back and watch the children play and hear the giggle of babies and touch the soft fur on my fuzzy little dog to re-remember that it is not all bad. It is not all bad. That there is laughter in the hope and there is hope in the pain. And not everything is forever. And why would we want it to be?

I read this week the Guardian newspaper from the UK that "It has been a quieter than average week in Syria. More than 400 people were killed in the unimaginably awful siege of eastern Ghouta, most of them civilians. But in the seven years since the regime of Bashar al-Assad set in motion the Syrian civil war, almost 500,000 people have died – well over 1,000 a week.” My mind understands. My heart does not. My spirit cannot accept this but that is what it is.

I am apolitical. Mostly perhaps from ignorance. I don’t know who is right and who is wrong. I don’t know what in all honesty is going on over there. I know that all of the various entities playing out their games of war have all, each and every one, promised to protect and save the people. They’re not doing a very good job. Not one of them. What does the little child covered in dust from a nearby bomb too frightened and shocked to even cry say to these leaders about peace? What could this child say? It makes no sense. It is irrational to the heart. One small child. One very big world of rationalizations. Greed. Scrambling. Survival. Profit. Democracy. Power. At what price? At what price? And for who? These terrorized people?

It feels like, it looks like, it is quite arguably genocide.

The Syrians are left as refugees in flight, dropped into bits and pieces of places all over the world for those who will take them. Scatterlings. They bring with them no doubt fear, suspicion, anger and pain. This kind of stuff is not fixed overnight. I was asked why I was choosing to teach these refugees English and I say that I want this family, just this family, to know that we do care and that they are now safe. That they will not be hurt, that their children will grow up to a country that will not physically harm them in any way. That they can breathe again. It is a hard thing to explain if they have not known it for quite awhile. Perhaps they think that is just a dream. It is hard to know.

I am aware that the father in my refugee family has experienced torture and imprisonment. I don’t know by who or why or where and do not ask. The story does not go with this funny extroverted gentle man who so obviously loves his wife and children well. They tell me that their country is like a pizza. It is being cut into slices. It is crazy says the father. I agree. Is there anything crazier than this I don’t know? But that is politics and I am there to teach them what the word breathe means so that when the doctors tell the mother in labor to breathe she will know what they are saying. I say it also in French so she will understand.

This little child will be a big baby. He is still not quite ready to come out into this world. I want to say to him that it is okay now. You are safe here. I, for one, will not let you be isolated, judged or alienated. As long as I can and I have no idea how long that will be, I will teach you in what small way I can. And if not you, then at least your parents. Some of the refugees in Quebec, if they learn enough English will find work in Ontario where there is more opportunity and will possibly move back. But as long as I can, and with great hope I want them to know that not all people judge and/or discriminate. That they are welcome here. That people in Canada have good hearts and don’t wish them harm. I want to believe that.

These refugees don’t necessarily bring fear, suspicion, anger and pain. They may have all that. They also have strength, strong will, intelligence and fortitude. They also have laughter and kindness and love. I think this little baby that will be born will grow up and watch the Canada geese fly overhead perhaps all the days of his life. I want him to smile when he does.






Thursday, February 22, 2018


BEYOND FACEBOOK Reality Refugees: The helpers and the helped

I often wonder now why I am a hermit for the most part. Whenever I’ve wandered out into this world off of Facebook I meet some amazing people. Amanda Cliff who has spearheaded help for Syrian refugees continues to amaze me. While I bumble along with my now beloved family, she has managed and cared for approximately 60 refugee families for a few years now. And she is humble with the work she does in a way that makes everyone who meets her, a better person for knowing her. She is so humble she will squirm for me having said that. So squirm. :) :) It is what I believe.

This night we had the very first meeting of the volunteers who are teaching these families and I met some more remarkably good people. Clearly the woman who arranged the meeting Susan Chabot is brilliant, helpful and a prodigious resource of ideas and philosophies and understanding. She too has a way of humbling us with her insight and she’s a godsend to us all. I might have driven her crazy with questions. I’m turning into one of those little old ladies that people cross the street to avoid because I talk too much. She had every answer and I’ve never been so relieved.

The old way of learning a language is no longer how it is approached. I found out what I’ve done wrong and what I’ve also done right. Some things are instinctual I think. Other things are going to be a concerted effort. I believe for the most part that the families will teach us how to teach them. They are likely being more patient with us than we are with them. 

The other volunteers are lovely. I felt an immediate comfort in their shared experience. One thing that is already coming of these meetings with other volunteers is the reality of these newcomers’ lives. The real needs becoming clearer when shared experiences happen but the greatest difficulty is ensuring we do not define the problems from our own experiences in the western world and from our own culture. And very importantly we cannot define solutions to our perceptions at this point. We may see a need that they do not see as important and vice versa. It is a fine balancing act requiring a great deal of ruthless self-exploration of cultural norms. Do the women need to be more assertive?  That is my need perhaps. It is not their need. Yet each family seems to be different in what expectations are. How do we teach the children and the parents all at various levels? We focus on the parents because the children will learn English simply by living here. Don’t overwhelm them. Celebrate the small victories. It is a matter of time and patience. When there is a quiet time, it’s likely because they are thinking. Give them time to think. There are no awkward pauses necessarily. Have a purpose to the class. Only speak when necessary or when modeling language. Use hand movements and visuals. When you speak use full sentences. Don’t use idioms. Get them talking. We talk 20% of the time. They must do the other 80%. (That's no small feat for someone like me I might add.) These are all things I’ve learned from our meeting and from the wonderful Susan Chabot. I feel stronger for the experience now and look forward to our next meeting.

My family is still expecting. She is over the 9-month period and is due for an ultrasound on Tuesday. They may have to induce. It’s amazing how being relatively new to English these complex ideas are explained. It’s really unfathomable. It’s the difference of being in person that does it I think. There isn’t a computer program in the world that can simulate hand gestures, facial expressions and little drawings and the odd word or two to create such a symbiotic understanding. It would be an interesting study.

We had quite a laugh together our family. The husband explained that he had received a phone call from the government about how his French language training was going. He has been absent for a while. He said to them “I register. I three month. I run.” It is funny because I said, “You know the verb to run!” His tortuous ordeal learning French is painful to hear about. Refugees in Quebec are given benefits up to two years with the stipulation that they learn French. After that they are expected to find work. Imagine the nightmare “that” presents if language training is not going well and you have 3 children, one on the way and a wife to support. Yet the husband is resolute in learning English. He is beginning at this point to correct me. I don’t have a handle on the number of different avenues he is accessing to learn the language. He is using the computer. I explained that there is a hard “g” and a soft “g” and he explained that it is a soft “g” if it is followed by “e.” I dunno I said. I don’t think so. I have to look that up. I was a bit disconcerted being corrected at this point. That also made me laugh.

The wife is getting that “oh lets get this over with” look to pregnancy. She grimaces slightly then smiles and laughs when the baby kicks. He doesn’t want to come out, she explains. We all chuckle communally examining her great girth. The children are rambunctious. They have the apartment door open and are racing up and down the stairwell. The father keeps a watch on them from the corner of his eye. They always serve me coffee. This time I received both coffee and tea at one point. It is always sweet and hot. She had baked some lovely muffins and a cake for my last visit. She loves to bake. I’m thinking of doing a recipe with her so she can learn measurements. There is so much to learn.

Outside the parking lot is no longer icy from a deluge of rain. On the way to the car I see how bright the stars are. I feel the immensity of it all, the universe and the odd circumstances of me being where I was at that very moment doing what I was doing. It is nothing and it is everything. A gaggle of teenagers pass me. They are on their cellphones. They do not see me. But I see them. I wish they would look up and see the stars. Just for an instant. The stars watch these teenagers’ destiny from their perches in the dark. I look over to the window where the family has settled in behind the dark curtain and I think of little Rohan who will soon be born.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

BEYOND FACEBOOK Reality Refugee 3

A part of me dreaded visiting my refugee family this last visit because I’d left them inadvertently in the conditional past of regular verbs without having explained the simple past. True troopers, they took it relatively well. The past is never easy I tried to explain. We’ve concluded that a simple “ed” at the end of the verb is enough for the moment. Apparently they might not be interested in learning to read Shakespeare in its original text. That is most definitely something I must remember for the next family.

The landlord of the buildings has done very little if anything to handle the absolute treachery of sheer ice on the driveways and walkways of these buildings. I wonder if I should get their name and start raising hell but I remind myself that I am not here to solve everything. I think about this mother 9 months pregnant walking on that ice. I'm hoping that it was just an off-chance day and that it will be fixed next visit. The mother is riotously plump with her due date. I figure it should have been yesterday by the looks of it but there are a few more days to go. She is, and the children are, giggly and yet reverent with the imminent arrival of the family’s first Canadian child. It really is fun to anticipate this new child in the world. My family is under strict orders to call me and say “baby” and I’ll be there. That is all they have to remember in the flurry of activity it will no doubt bring.

It is a different thing to sit at a table with a family, particularly the parents, who are so keen on learning. It is written in their eyes, in their manners, in their effort. I wish I could wave a magic wand and it would be instantaneously understood but I can’t. In his effort to learn English because French proved utterly impossible for him, the father had registered with an on-line English program. I don’t know what it is but I know it is likely more than they could afford but that is what desperation can do. It is reality, not wishful thinking. Not ‘political will’ but reality.

Many of the refugee’s wives do not know how to read or write in their own language I am told. So learning to read and write is a real issue on different fronts. I’ve not run into that here. The father, who is a born teacher, spent five minutes explaining what a distributor in a car was and by gum, I think this Syrian refugee from far across the ocean explained something I never did understand. The translation program on the computer is a little dicey; reading fire sticks for spark plugs. He also wrote a word. It made me laugh. Their language is infinitely precise with tiny little nuances in how a character is formed. To me it seems it is both pictorial and written. It is beyond my feeble or even less than feeble efforts to understand. It just makes me laugh. I also am having a difficult time pronouncing their names. But that will eventually arrive. Repetition. It is all repetition.

Driving home I think about where I live. In this privileged community there is great generosity and it is this generosity that is making the difference in many lives. There is, also, unfortunately a poignant if not disturbing reality that not more than 10 minutes, possibly less down the highway is a very different world. I am asked why I volunteer here instead of the good charitable and/or non-profit organizations in my fair community and I thought long and hard about it. I decided I needed to go most definitely where I am needed, utterly needed if not desperately needed. This is not a group of people who chose to live in a foreign country without language skills. This is not something they did or didn’t do for whatever reason. It was politics and war. They were ripped from their lives and dumped here. They are bewildered and contending not just with language, but bureaucracy and technology. And winter. It is a world of Kafka. They are also not a group who are necessarily familiar with poverty and familial isolation and societal prejudice. I imagine they are learning quickly.

I am far from an educated woman on this matter but I believe we need to accept differences in a healthy way. If we can stop the fear and prejudice here at this point, with this family, with these children with this new child, we can possibly find peace side by side. Yes. This family is culturally different in many ways but they are also intelligent, extremely hardworking, patient, considerate and polite. We cannot necessarily expect such a strong culture to suddenly assimilate to our values. And what are those values anyway? Respect of differences is critical now.

I remarked to myself that I was making headway with the parents but the children are still watching French television. I think about whether I even remotely want to teach them English. What have we got to offer these children culturally? Justin Bieber? Video games? It is a pipedream to suggest they will not gravitate to whatever their peers are into. Is our current cultural reality any kind of shining example? I don’t know. It could be me being darkly judgmental and probably seriously ignorant on the matter however I feel a small pang of regret that a certain innocence will be lost.

 A few have told me that I am naïve. That this group will soon take over the country just through population growth alone. Okay. So what if they do? I am not at all concerned about it. It is after all, why they are here partly. If we have shown tolerance and acceptance it can work both ways. I believe it is possible that they have more to teach us than we have to teach them. But I avoid politics for I am not here for that. What we have to strive for is that respect of differences. Beyond everything. To each his own. It is what Canada is about. Isn’t it? If that is naïve I’m sure I’m in good company.

As I lock the car and wander into my cozy home overlooking the river I think about the hard times I’ve had in life and I think, at least I did not have this nightmare of war and displacement and cultural divides. Knock on wood. We must be grateful always for not just what we have but what we don’t have.