Lists make my word go round or, at the very least, give me a false sense of security that my world is intact, that as may variables as possible have been tied down, placed in order to some degree, allowing me to manoeuvre (that's a really tough word to spell) through the dangerous waters of cooking or cleaning or the ever-perilous grocery shopping. I need lists because once I leave the house, step over either the front or back door threshold, my memory is wiped perfectly clean, without a trace or a hint of what I was headed for.
I arrive at the grocery store hopeful, excited, adventurous. I could have simply needed milk, my list stark and bare save that one item. Without a list, I wander around the grocery store gathering pomegranates (that will soften and eventually be laid to rest on garbage day), avocados, a writing journal (because one can never have enough of those). My healthy intentions flourish at the grocery store. I've always wanted to cook eggplant, if for no other reason than its remarkable colour. I intend to make gazpacho soup and eat dried cranberries. N0, no, no. The list keeps me and my bank account safe.
This time of year I make gift lists, my favourite of all lists. I prepare them on my computer, secured by my secret password from prying eyes. I use a green font for those things I've purchased and a red font for those I haven't found or that may be subject to reconsideration. I refer to my list at least once daily and feel the excitement of Christmas wiggle in me with the sense that this will be the best Christmas ever.
While I was out for my run this morning (well, I did run 53 steps which is exactly 3 more than yesterday so that qualifies as a run), I got to thinking about my favourite gifts over the many past years. I got some grand ones and some curious ones but the one I remember is a fluorescent study lamp when I was about thirteen. When I built a nest in my bed out of
pillows and blankets, the light made me feel creative and safe, as if I was the only soul on earth, a lovely feeling when one isn't really alone at all.
My most precious gifts are easy to list:
- an unexpected hug from my teen-ager (which almost all hugs are - unexpected)
- a daughter running in the door with a breathless account of some experience, with the words best day ever mixed in
- a kiss on the back of my neck while I did dishes
- my father exclaiming what an amazing rhubarb pie I had made for him while he tried to saw through the crust with subtle strength
- someone I love uttering the words in an almost prayer-like tone, I need you
- a hug when I don't know how to ask for one
- friends showing up to help me move without being asked, bearing lasagna and wine
- the sound of my daughters getting along, their laughter floating in the window and settling over me like a warm blanket
- sunshine in November
None of these things can be wrapped with pretty paper and ribbon, but they are the things that matter most.
by W A Stewart, Nov 27/09
Friday, November 27, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
RECYCLING AT ITS BEST
The cuffs were frayed, frayed almost through and the thin red stripe on the cuff was almost faded away. The zipper had been repaired, replaced even, with a zipper that was just a bit too long and the ends had been folded in, the teeth scratching at my chin if I wasn't careful. I loved that jacket.
I loved that jacket because it had been Dale's. He was my cousin, the one who hated milk. I loved his jacket because I loved him and admired his perseverance while he sat with two glasses of milk in front of him that had to be consumed before he could play, a torture test of sorts. He never won. I wondered why he didn't just drink the milk with meatloaf and mashed potatoes or with cookies. It was one of life's puzzles.
There were many days when I refused to take the jacket off when I came indoors, refused and stomped my feet and folded my arms. One of the few battles I won. Maybe the only battle. I wore that jacket until my arms were much too long and the waist of the jacket crept up my torso and I found myself wishing I wouldn't grow.
Hand-me-downs, bags of surprises that made an ordinary day special. Rummaging through the pile of treasures from a family with girls slightly older than my sister and me, made me feel like a very lucky girl. Hand-me-downs were recycling before recycling had a name. Hand-me-downs were recyling at its very best. The chain was well established in our circle of family friends. Our house was the last stop. Growing up on a farm provided enough opportunities for scuffs and frays and rips, so that the usefulness of the clothes found its end and I never had to part with those items that were on my favourite list.
I dragged Dale's jacket around for years, kept it as a shrine to childhood, that glorious time when labels meant nothing and donning a beyond-worn-out jacket with stains and elbows out made me feel capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, made Dale feel close enough to touch.
I have a box of "things" that my daughters wore when they were little, clothes I can't part with, can't recycle. I stopped the chain before it became one. This bag of clothing is like grade one artwork or a mother's day card. I can picture Aimee with her four-year-old body in her gymnastic suit, twirling and bending and imagining all things, trotting along behind me while I coached children in gymnastics. I can hold the fabric against my cheek and the twenty-six years vanish. Laurie played the piano in her huge cloth diaper and rubber pants, one sock on and one off, her eyes wide with a huge smile, her little fingers gently pressing the keys, the sound gentle and undisturbing, comforting even. The sound of the rubber pants now is much like the music then. Thea and her little yellow dress that became a top that became something too small that I had to sneak out of her room at night to wash and put back before morning. I see three-year-old Samantha toddling across the yard in her fleece-lined denim jacket, a hand-me-down, with her arms out-stretched, wanting me to save her, when I still could.
by W A Stewart - Nov 23/09
I loved that jacket because it had been Dale's. He was my cousin, the one who hated milk. I loved his jacket because I loved him and admired his perseverance while he sat with two glasses of milk in front of him that had to be consumed before he could play, a torture test of sorts. He never won. I wondered why he didn't just drink the milk with meatloaf and mashed potatoes or with cookies. It was one of life's puzzles.
There were many days when I refused to take the jacket off when I came indoors, refused and stomped my feet and folded my arms. One of the few battles I won. Maybe the only battle. I wore that jacket until my arms were much too long and the waist of the jacket crept up my torso and I found myself wishing I wouldn't grow.
Hand-me-downs, bags of surprises that made an ordinary day special. Rummaging through the pile of treasures from a family with girls slightly older than my sister and me, made me feel like a very lucky girl. Hand-me-downs were recycling before recycling had a name. Hand-me-downs were recyling at its very best. The chain was well established in our circle of family friends. Our house was the last stop. Growing up on a farm provided enough opportunities for scuffs and frays and rips, so that the usefulness of the clothes found its end and I never had to part with those items that were on my favourite list.
I dragged Dale's jacket around for years, kept it as a shrine to childhood, that glorious time when labels meant nothing and donning a beyond-worn-out jacket with stains and elbows out made me feel capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, made Dale feel close enough to touch.
I have a box of "things" that my daughters wore when they were little, clothes I can't part with, can't recycle. I stopped the chain before it became one. This bag of clothing is like grade one artwork or a mother's day card. I can picture Aimee with her four-year-old body in her gymnastic suit, twirling and bending and imagining all things, trotting along behind me while I coached children in gymnastics. I can hold the fabric against my cheek and the twenty-six years vanish. Laurie played the piano in her huge cloth diaper and rubber pants, one sock on and one off, her eyes wide with a huge smile, her little fingers gently pressing the keys, the sound gentle and undisturbing, comforting even. The sound of the rubber pants now is much like the music then. Thea and her little yellow dress that became a top that became something too small that I had to sneak out of her room at night to wash and put back before morning. I see three-year-old Samantha toddling across the yard in her fleece-lined denim jacket, a hand-me-down, with her arms out-stretched, wanting me to save her, when I still could.
by W A Stewart - Nov 23/09
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
THAT SEX THING
I was thinking about sex this morning. I thought that might get your attention. It's not the easiest subject to discuss so perhaps it's better that you aren't looking at me, that we aren't both in the same room.
I've had a vision, most of my adult life, of what good sex might be like, an idea that formed right after I discovered what bad sex was like. I figured I'd recognize it, it being good sex, right away, the way you know a good friend immediately when you've been introduced. You shake a hand that feels at once safe and trustworthy, as if you've been through all kinds of things together, sort of like coming home.
I know there is sex for sport and fun. I've heard of this or certainly seen it on television when they're selling toilet bowl cleaner or knives that cut through shoes. But at my age, I'm hardly up for games of that sort. If I were, I would imagine a panel of judges seated at desks beside the bed or beside the kitchen table or wherever this game is to be played.
There'd be an announcer. All official sports require a deep-voiced announcer. The microphone would drop down from the ceiling and maybe the announcer would be in a boxing ring sort of apparatus. "In this corner wearing no shorts is ..." and his voice would boom from the speakers with lights dimmed. "Come out fighting and may the best man win." Not that the man has to win but why break with tradition. "Judges are compiling their results," he'd shout, pretending to be speaking in a whispering manner while spitting into the microphone on the piling part. The crowd is hushed waiting for the scores. The judges look strained, as if the weight of such decisions is almost too much for them.
The Russian judge, always less lenient with the west, is the first to raise her card. 6.4 it reads. The audience exhales dramatically and they look at each other confused and uncertain. The judge tips her head and raises her eyebrows as if to say, "Well, there was definite excess skin on the neck and the upper arm could have been tighter and her rhythm was slightly off." She isn't swayed by the crowd's ill-placed affection with the underdog. I put my teeth together and suck the air through them as if I've just been given a flu shot in the hip with a ten-gauge needle.
The German judge holds up her a 6.8. Ouch again. I don't even imagine her reasons, but I'm sure it includes lost points for getting a charlie-horse in my right calf. I run my fingers across my shins to confirm if they were freshly shaven. Not. Damn. An oversight.
Then the Canadian judge leaps from her chair with a generous 8.0 and waving her card madly. "I'm sorry," she begins. Did I mention she's Canadian? "She did her best. She really tried. So the dismount was a little wobbly, the entry was smooth. She has had four children. Let's not forget that. She didn't ask for much in return. More of a peacekeeper really."
Bless her soul. Can always count on the Canadians.
That's the scene that plays out in my head, sometimes with a sprained ankle or twisted knee. Perhaps my first inclination to take up tennis instead was the better choice. So, sex for sport just isn't in the cards for me.
There was a time, probably somewhere in my teen years while trying hard not to imagine my parents in the clutches of sexual passion, when I thought sex was abandoned in middle age in preference for reading or meditation or cycling. I may have been a bit presumptuous. I do apologize. It seems the longing for physical contact and intimacy prevails through our entire life.
Nudity at my age seems a scary proposition. But it shouldn't be, should it? If sex is about caring and intimacy and respect and all those wonderful things that each of us craves and wants, then sex should be easy and fluid and there shouldn't be a panel of judges present. There should be trust before there's anything else, trust that assures you that what came before certainly had value, but it is this moment that counts. Trust that assures you no comparisons are made to younger participants and no instruction or evaluation is necessary, just the gratitude that being together is all the ingredients required.
I think life is about relationships and the rest is just details. I saw that on a notice board somewhere. So, if we're lucky enough to have someone that we wake up thinking about and go to sleep caring about, then the cuddling up and all the rest of that stuff called sex should not require a rating of any kind.
I've always been a bit of a dreamer, longing for things that maybe don't even exist, imagining how it might have been had I been whole. Perhaps my vision of sex is just the nonsense of foolish schoolgirls. Or ... maybe not.
I've had a vision, most of my adult life, of what good sex might be like, an idea that formed right after I discovered what bad sex was like. I figured I'd recognize it, it being good sex, right away, the way you know a good friend immediately when you've been introduced. You shake a hand that feels at once safe and trustworthy, as if you've been through all kinds of things together, sort of like coming home.
I know there is sex for sport and fun. I've heard of this or certainly seen it on television when they're selling toilet bowl cleaner or knives that cut through shoes. But at my age, I'm hardly up for games of that sort. If I were, I would imagine a panel of judges seated at desks beside the bed or beside the kitchen table or wherever this game is to be played.
There'd be an announcer. All official sports require a deep-voiced announcer. The microphone would drop down from the ceiling and maybe the announcer would be in a boxing ring sort of apparatus. "In this corner wearing no shorts is ..." and his voice would boom from the speakers with lights dimmed. "Come out fighting and may the best man win." Not that the man has to win but why break with tradition. "Judges are compiling their results," he'd shout, pretending to be speaking in a whispering manner while spitting into the microphone on the piling part. The crowd is hushed waiting for the scores. The judges look strained, as if the weight of such decisions is almost too much for them.
The Russian judge, always less lenient with the west, is the first to raise her card. 6.4 it reads. The audience exhales dramatically and they look at each other confused and uncertain. The judge tips her head and raises her eyebrows as if to say, "Well, there was definite excess skin on the neck and the upper arm could have been tighter and her rhythm was slightly off." She isn't swayed by the crowd's ill-placed affection with the underdog. I put my teeth together and suck the air through them as if I've just been given a flu shot in the hip with a ten-gauge needle.
The German judge holds up her a 6.8. Ouch again. I don't even imagine her reasons, but I'm sure it includes lost points for getting a charlie-horse in my right calf. I run my fingers across my shins to confirm if they were freshly shaven. Not. Damn. An oversight.
Then the Canadian judge leaps from her chair with a generous 8.0 and waving her card madly. "I'm sorry," she begins. Did I mention she's Canadian? "She did her best. She really tried. So the dismount was a little wobbly, the entry was smooth. She has had four children. Let's not forget that. She didn't ask for much in return. More of a peacekeeper really."
Bless her soul. Can always count on the Canadians.
That's the scene that plays out in my head, sometimes with a sprained ankle or twisted knee. Perhaps my first inclination to take up tennis instead was the better choice. So, sex for sport just isn't in the cards for me.
There was a time, probably somewhere in my teen years while trying hard not to imagine my parents in the clutches of sexual passion, when I thought sex was abandoned in middle age in preference for reading or meditation or cycling. I may have been a bit presumptuous. I do apologize. It seems the longing for physical contact and intimacy prevails through our entire life.
Nudity at my age seems a scary proposition. But it shouldn't be, should it? If sex is about caring and intimacy and respect and all those wonderful things that each of us craves and wants, then sex should be easy and fluid and there shouldn't be a panel of judges present. There should be trust before there's anything else, trust that assures you that what came before certainly had value, but it is this moment that counts. Trust that assures you no comparisons are made to younger participants and no instruction or evaluation is necessary, just the gratitude that being together is all the ingredients required.
I think life is about relationships and the rest is just details. I saw that on a notice board somewhere. So, if we're lucky enough to have someone that we wake up thinking about and go to sleep caring about, then the cuddling up and all the rest of that stuff called sex should not require a rating of any kind.
I've always been a bit of a dreamer, longing for things that maybe don't even exist, imagining how it might have been had I been whole. Perhaps my vision of sex is just the nonsense of foolish schoolgirls. Or ... maybe not.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
JOB HUNTING
I think I might have mentioned that I am seeking gainful employment. I try not to whine or put my panic on paper but I woke up this morning feeling as though my credentials or job strengths would fit on the back of a postage stamp. Not a good feeling. I can see my resume in my head. Specific skills ... I kick ass at kakuro and sudoku. Then I got stuck, couldn't think of anything else.
I am an accountant by training and education but a writer in every cell of my body. Writing, however, does not pay the hydro bill. I have moments of utter despair. Am I unemployable? Too old? Should I be put out to pasture?
So I sat and got nostalgic for a moment. (yah, I know ... my favourite pass time). I was remembering my first job. My first paying job this side of polishing my dad's shoes on Saturday nights for a dime. (First of all I remembered stashing my dimes in a pony hair change purse and then realized how morbid that was. Some pony gave her life so that I might save my coins in the pursuit of personal wealth - I felt regret, but I digress. )
I just realized I have my sweatshirt on backwards - no wonder I can't find a job.
My first job was at the Fort Frances Clinic where I walked round and round a large ping-pong table for 50 cents an hour. It was the new age of computers. The OHIP billing records came on dot-matrix printed forms that were all connected and would have stretched from one end of town to the other. They were sorted numerically and of course, had to be ripped apart and sorted alphabetically. I was thirteen and my comprehension of the alphabet became flawless. I got this job because my dad was the manager of the clinic and no one else wanted it, least of all him. I put on hundreds of miles around that table and learned immediately that my get-rich-quick scheme needed some tweaking.
I was promoted sometime later to filing clerk and part-time receptionist and general all purpose go-fer-girl. I loved working where my dad was, loved looking at him in his glass-walled office and knowing he was the most important cog in this wheel and feeling immense pride.
From that I became a dissector in the anatomy lab at university getting the cadavers (human bodies) ready for lab class the next day. Sounds gruesome but it was fascinating. I got paid $10 an hour, which was considerable in those days.
I worked for the Ministry of Natural Resources on creel census and deer survey and on fires. It sounds fun but the deer survey literally meant finding deer feces (yah, poop) and counting it. Glamorous? Not so much. I coloured maps for the MNR, too, and stayed between the lines.
I left university knowing full well I was not going to be a phys-ed teacher or use my minor in Calculus for the greater good. So I stumbled headlong into accounting and that took up the rest of my working life with a few side trips with my real estate licence and being a dairy farmer. Oh, it's all so colourful. The real estate thing was my most detested job. It was 1988. A chimpanzee could have made money, so that wasn't the issue. It was the selling thing. I would struggle to sell water in the desert. Selling requires a healthy dose of self-confidence. I'll say no more.
I was a flight attendant. In the north. Briefly. It was fun. I pretended it was glamarous, but I like the stories that have come from it, stories that give my past a bit of colour and shape.
My point is, I've held a lot of jobs over the thirty-four years of pretending to be an adult. The notion of feeling used up and/or useless is slightly overwhelming and wakes me from a deep sleep with alarming regularity and with night sweats that I refuse to blame on menopause. My resume (or should I say my CV) would be fourteen pages long if I rambled on about all the jobs and skills I have developed.
I've never been afraid before to try something new. Or perhaps I should state more clearly that I haven't been afraid to be afraid, if you know what I mean. So what has changed? Is this what aging does? Takes our courage and messes with it?
Maybe I could be a server in a lovely restaurant. I could make a pleasant evening even more pleasant for those who dine out. I'm friendly and cheerful. Or maybe a grocery store checkout person. The lady in Hanover always gives me recipe tips and makes me feel like we are friends. I could do that.
Or what about a hardware store clerk or in a building centre? I've built a barn. I learned a few things about power tools doing that. Surely that gives me some credentials to find the right aisle for the three inch screws with a robertson head. I know the difference.
I could be a greeter at Walmart but I'd rather not. Please, not yet.
I could pump gas but the cold makes me stupid and forgetful.
I could ....
I am an accountant by training and education but a writer in every cell of my body. Writing, however, does not pay the hydro bill. I have moments of utter despair. Am I unemployable? Too old? Should I be put out to pasture?
So I sat and got nostalgic for a moment. (yah, I know ... my favourite pass time). I was remembering my first job. My first paying job this side of polishing my dad's shoes on Saturday nights for a dime. (First of all I remembered stashing my dimes in a pony hair change purse and then realized how morbid that was. Some pony gave her life so that I might save my coins in the pursuit of personal wealth - I felt regret, but I digress. )
I just realized I have my sweatshirt on backwards - no wonder I can't find a job.
My first job was at the Fort Frances Clinic where I walked round and round a large ping-pong table for 50 cents an hour. It was the new age of computers. The OHIP billing records came on dot-matrix printed forms that were all connected and would have stretched from one end of town to the other. They were sorted numerically and of course, had to be ripped apart and sorted alphabetically. I was thirteen and my comprehension of the alphabet became flawless. I got this job because my dad was the manager of the clinic and no one else wanted it, least of all him. I put on hundreds of miles around that table and learned immediately that my get-rich-quick scheme needed some tweaking.
I was promoted sometime later to filing clerk and part-time receptionist and general all purpose go-fer-girl. I loved working where my dad was, loved looking at him in his glass-walled office and knowing he was the most important cog in this wheel and feeling immense pride.
From that I became a dissector in the anatomy lab at university getting the cadavers (human bodies) ready for lab class the next day. Sounds gruesome but it was fascinating. I got paid $10 an hour, which was considerable in those days.
I worked for the Ministry of Natural Resources on creel census and deer survey and on fires. It sounds fun but the deer survey literally meant finding deer feces (yah, poop) and counting it. Glamorous? Not so much. I coloured maps for the MNR, too, and stayed between the lines.
I left university knowing full well I was not going to be a phys-ed teacher or use my minor in Calculus for the greater good. So I stumbled headlong into accounting and that took up the rest of my working life with a few side trips with my real estate licence and being a dairy farmer. Oh, it's all so colourful. The real estate thing was my most detested job. It was 1988. A chimpanzee could have made money, so that wasn't the issue. It was the selling thing. I would struggle to sell water in the desert. Selling requires a healthy dose of self-confidence. I'll say no more.
I was a flight attendant. In the north. Briefly. It was fun. I pretended it was glamarous, but I like the stories that have come from it, stories that give my past a bit of colour and shape.
My point is, I've held a lot of jobs over the thirty-four years of pretending to be an adult. The notion of feeling used up and/or useless is slightly overwhelming and wakes me from a deep sleep with alarming regularity and with night sweats that I refuse to blame on menopause. My resume (or should I say my CV) would be fourteen pages long if I rambled on about all the jobs and skills I have developed.
I've never been afraid before to try something new. Or perhaps I should state more clearly that I haven't been afraid to be afraid, if you know what I mean. So what has changed? Is this what aging does? Takes our courage and messes with it?
Maybe I could be a server in a lovely restaurant. I could make a pleasant evening even more pleasant for those who dine out. I'm friendly and cheerful. Or maybe a grocery store checkout person. The lady in Hanover always gives me recipe tips and makes me feel like we are friends. I could do that.
Or what about a hardware store clerk or in a building centre? I've built a barn. I learned a few things about power tools doing that. Surely that gives me some credentials to find the right aisle for the three inch screws with a robertson head. I know the difference.
I could be a greeter at Walmart but I'd rather not. Please, not yet.
I could pump gas but the cold makes me stupid and forgetful.
I could ....
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