Poems to Send Out - for Marija

On the Anniversary of my Mother’s Birth, After her Death

leaves have no need of birthdays

of marking the years

they unfurl perfectly minted

then wait and flit with wind

watch the caterpillars

at a certain time

falling down

their own silk slide

as they bounce

swing and spin mid-air

this is joy

leaves have no need of candles

 to perform the annual

rendezvous with reduction

in yellows and reds

they lose themselves beautifully

flutter down to brown

like ashes shook loose

from an urn

Showing up

I hadn't realized it has been so long since my last post.  Though I haven't been blogging, I have doubled the word count on a short story, written and submitted a story for children, and revised three poems in the last two months.

I took a long walk in the springlike-sun with a great friend on Monday and we talked about this feeling of inertia I've had all winter:  I want to make changes to the yard, but don't know where to start; I need to find more work, but don't know where to look; I need to move more, but stay indoors instead.  I told her how in my late twenties I stopped trying to be perfect, and avoiding activities that I feared I wouldn't excel at.  And for a year I did just that.  I showed up at bike races I knew I might finish last in.  I went skiing and was the person who had to stop and apply wax while the others waited impatiently.  My goal that summer was simply to show up and do my best.  I feel like maybe I need to repeat this lesson.

My friend, bless her heart, suggested that maybe after a woman has children, she needs to relearn how to follow her inclinations while balancing feelings of obligation and responsibility to her family. Of course!  It isn't that I am repeating a  lesson already learned, but that now the context is different.  Now there are not just my reactions and feelings to navigate, but also my husband and son's.  So I've decided to forge ahead with the yard, one doable project at a time, and be all right with the mistakes I make, as we are not here to get everything right the first time, but to keep learning, and taking away new ways of doing and thinking as we go along.  And I will take my rolls and widening hips out to the trails, or to a 5 km run to get some exercise, even though I will be the one at the back with the red face and the sore feet. Sometimes, winning is just about showing up.

Birthday Party Goes Bust

So in a fit of optimism I decided to plan a party for my upcoming birthday.  I think it had something to do with feeling like I hadn’t properly acknowledged or welcomed the decade I currently find myself in.  So, I sent out a few invites right away, and received enough positive responses that it looked like the night would be full of drinks, dancing, and fun. 

Now I have a history here. My birthday comes at a bad time, soon after Christmas, so not only have I often been on the road to and from family Christmases on my birth date, but if I’m home, often no one else is, or everyone is too broke and tired after the holidays to remember, or make much of an effort, for my birthday.

 I can remember birthdays past – in my childhood - when if I wanted a cake, I baked it myself, coins wrapped in wax paper and all.  My Mom was a single parent and busy or not much into baking, my sister was likely mad at me, and my brother didn’t ever give much of a damn about anything that didn’t directly involve himself and his own well-being. 

There is a feeling here, when you make your own birthday cake that is still with me; a question maybe of wondering if you are worth all the fuss. After all if you were important, wouldn’t someone else take the time to bake you a cake, and put icing and candles on it?  I can’t ask my late mother why I ended up baking my own birthday cake.  I can recall her telling me about my birth however:  how she drove herself to the hospital, how the mean nurses left her alone in the delivery room, how the doctor never came by, how she ended up shaking and scared, in shock, all alone during the delivery, though I’m sure someone at the hospital showed up eventually to cut the umbilical cord and write down the numbers.

Which is what happened at my party:  some key people cancelled at the last minute, others arrived late and not at all.  In the end I did visit with one friend until two other new friends came in carrying Nanaimo bars, which really added to my enjoyment of the evening.  And two of us did do some dancing. But I was left with the feeling of trying too hard.  And of disappointment.

I guess I remember now why I had been keeping my birthdays low-key; enjoying cake and dinner with my in-laws if we were visiting them; being grateful for the cake my husband buys or bakes when we are home.  And what I have learned over and over on my birthday - and again this year – is not to have too many expectations.  Don't pay too much attention to who does or doesn't show up to the party, but to who is with you in the quiet hours before and after, who takes time for the little things you like, and who spends time with you throughout  the year.

Cats and Bells

Hanging in between my dining room and den are a set of five bells dangling from a fake green log.  When I was a child in the Yukon we used to hang the bells on the front door so whenever the door opened and closed for visitors we heard tinkling. There was one evening when I was five and my sister seven that she and I heard the bells late at night Christmas eve and came running down from our bedroom to the front door.  We looked out through the porthole window and saw Santa and his reindeer silhouetted in front of the full moon.

I am a long way from my childhood home and from that time of magic when anything is possible yet the first day I hung the bells in New Brunswick after putting the tree up I had left the storage boxes piled up on each other near this by-way between two rooms. I was upstairs, my son was at school, and my husband was in his office, when I heard the bells.  I came down to see the bells rocking and tinkling.  The cat, Milo, was walking away nonchalantly.  But I don’t know how he could have reached up the remaining four feet between the top of the boxes and the bottom of the bells, unless he made a great jump and spiked the bells on his way down. And the picture of Milo catapulted in to the air, paws stretched out in front, and aimed for the object of his intense curiosity is enough to remind me that anything is still possible.

Becoming an Activist

On the weekend I joined a couple hundred people and marched the streets in protest of Shale Gas, an industry which I believe will bring New Brunswick very little economic gain at a much higher cost to our quality of life, our communities, and our environment.

On the residential streets people inside houses would look out at us from behind curtains, interested in the collective action, drawn to the noise and chanting.  Outside, pedestrians would stop and watch us pass. I wondered at the line, imaginary and profound, between me, marching and chanting, actively trying to change the direction of government policy, and those who stood and watched.  Where does that line begin and end?

Certainly two years ago, ten years ago, I would be one of the bystanders.  So what has changed?

It might have something to do with experiencing first-hand the failure of bureaucratic systems.  For example, the informal administrative policies at the University I used to work for no longer valued me as an employee when I returned to work after a maternity leave, and instead promoted in small and large ways the man hired to replace me.  For years after I had to watch as he benefited from a framework that sidelined me. 

Some of the people in the houses, and on the sidewalks who stand and watch us pass, would like to join us.  Some are afraid of displeasing others, of how they will be judged. The vast majority though, likely think it has nothing to do with them; they are not aware of how often and how massively the systems in place are failing: they haven’t been sick, so haven't experience the healthcare mess; they are men or childless women, so haven’t experienced workplace sexism; they don't know about lax government policies such as those that have allowed the use chemicals like bisphenal- A to line the cans of tomatoes, causing infertility and other health problems (http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/the-7-foods-experts-wont-eat-547963.html).

Change will need a collective action by those who are already marching and those who currently stand by.  Though they are, or think they are being served by the status quo, it is becoming increasingly apparent to the population at large that many of the assumptions they live with are untrue, that many policies support industry before people, govenment before citizens, that current systems are not only unequal but self-serving. And this needs to change.

In the end a system that promotes one employee at the expense of another, or a system that favours the oil and gas company at the expense of the citizen, his/her water, and landscape, as current government policies do – is a system that leaves us all poorer.

I believe this article is relevant to the discussion here: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/170

Sanctuary for Imaginative Play

As I hang curtains suspended from door way to door way to block my writing space off from the rest of the room I am struck by how well into my adulthood I am still creating forts for myself.  My after school children will quite often decide to have their lunch or snack under the kitchen table, creating a make believe circus or jungle or something equally imaginative while they eat. So, I know this urge to make a temporary make-believe cover is inherent, yet the shelter is not intended to keep out rain, or wind – my curtains are quite sheer, so the effect isn’t even to keep out prying eyes.  But the drapes do provide a sense of refuge and privacy, a sanctuary for imaginative play.

How often do we ignore the need for such a space?  Classrooms are not generally equipped to foster forts.  Once outside though children naturally congregate in small groups inside the ring of rocks, under the trees overhang, beside the giant tree trunk, and even under the manmade play structure.  As human beings we crave that sense of sanctuary – our space to be imaginative.

And when we grow older we are loathe to leave our houses – our asylum from the world, where we have spent a lifetime creating a refuge from reality.  It is no wonder seniors carted off to hospitals where nurses and doctors come in and out at all hours, where bathrooms are shared, where people cannot maintain a shield to protect them, it is no wonder they die in droves.  Where is the refuge for the old and ill and frail?  Because the need to take imaginative shelter is in each of us.

Doing All Right

Okay.  I didn't take the paper route.  When you are heading towards something that is right for you, that you are passionate about, you will drive three hours to hear a friend sing a song you wrote and then arrive home long after midnight. You will hop on a bus for one or two days, live in a tent, take cold showers for two weeks.  You will move any obstacle, find any solution you need.

When  you drag your feet, hum and haw, second guess yourself, then you are likely not headed in the right direction. The second I sent my "not gonna do it" email, my husband came out of his office to tell me he had recieved an email about an exciting job opportunity of his own. Hmmm.  Interesting timing.

So our financial problems are not fixed, but you know as far as problems go they are not so bad: we are not dying, we are not getting a divorce, we are not without loving friends and family.  We are doing all right.

Yesterday my life was in ruin
Now today I know what I'm doing
Got a feeling I should be doing all right
Doing all right

Where will I be this time tomorrow?
Jumped in joy or sinking in sorrow
Anyway I should be doing all right
Doing all right

Should be waiting for the sun
Looking round to find the words to say
Should be waiting for the skies to clear
There ain't time in all the world

Should be waiting for the sun
And anyway I've got to hide away

Yesterday my life was in ruin
Now today God knows what I'm doing
Anyway I should be doing all right
Doing all right

Doing all right

QUEEN