Emptied Out

This will be a scattered post, I am afraid. Part catch-up ... part rumination.

My first response to the big news --- the global financial crisis --- was to remind myself that I had almost nothing invested anyway; that I had resigned myself to the fact that my RRSPs looked small on paper and much smaller when I cashed them in. Then I checked and discovered that they hadn't lost a cent. I had told the banker when I withdrew the last lot that I would likely have to cash in the rest very soon and he said I should secure the balance --- so I did.


I am not a gambler and, I have discovered, not greedy. Oh, like everyone else, if an opportunity to make money falls into my lap I will not refuse. But I don't care enough about things beyond the basic necessities and few pleasures to want much money.

This "failing" has hobbled me over the years. I didn't work hard enough to sell my novel. I was easily discouraged. I didn't see any need to sell my teaching and administrative skills so I gave them away to teachers and children in developing countries. I have no regrets about my volunteer work overseas, but I do wish that I had not aborted Explosion. It deserved to be read, especially by young people in Nova Scotia.

My failure to value money has also served me well when times have got tougher. When I first retired I determined to discover how to live well on less, and every time there has been a down turn in my own finances, I have adopted the viewpoint that once your basic needs are met you can enjoy things that cost little or nothing.

And that, I believe, is what many people will have to realize now. It's not such a bad lesson to have to learn. Sure beats throwing oneself out a skyscraper window.

And now for the catch-up news:

1. Kenya is well again.

2. She had a visitor in her outside water bowl yesterday.

3. Life with Tango was fun except for his forays into forbidden foods.

4. It was good to see Marta and Henry on the weekend and Sarah and Remi on Wednesday. We ate well on both occasions.

5. My trip to town on Thursday was more tiring than fun but I stopped at Tammy's on the way home for a cup of tea that bolstered me for the final leg of the journey. I really hate shopping, especially in sub/urban stores where everyone is faceless. Here in Wakefield a shopping trip is a social occasion.

6. I started working on the tiles for the tub surround during Friday's pottery class. They flow like the landscape of these hills.

7. When I got home I made a batch of spaghetti sauce and took a couple of meals over to Barry who just got home from Toronto after having his knees replaced. Everyone on the lake is feeding him just now, and he likes the visits as much as the food since he faces eight housebound weeks.

Today I am going to a Thanksgiving dinner feast at Erin's. Her brother is smoking a turkey. Tomorrow afternoon I will go to a concert at the Black Sheep where her house guest, Danny Everett from Texas, will be performing.

On Monday I will just relax and remember Thanksgiving weekend two years ago when I broke and dislocated my finger hiking with dogs on a ridge when the weather was fantastic and the leaves as magnificent as they are this weekend. That accident changed my life quite radically and I changed as a result. It wasn't just the pain and time spent having surgeries and undergoing therapy. I lost my self assurance and my faith in our medical system. Two things I in which I had had unshakable confidence were revealed as fragile.

One of Carol Shields' characters, Daisy in The Stone Diaries, believes that "old people are better off obsessed than emptied out." I keep hoping to find something that will grab me by the throat so that I go back to being an old woman who is obsessed. I am tired of feeling emptied out.

Fall is really here

September 30, 2008
Fall is really here

Yesterday after blogging I took Kenya for the first of the walks. We went about 2 ½ miles stopping every so often to cut wild flowers for a dark corner of the livingroom. They are all ones I hope can be kept dry, bull rushes, ornamental grasses, sprigs with red and yellow berries, an oak branch whose leaves are beautiful.

I discovered absolutely beautiful mushrooms along the road.

Flock upon flock of Canada geese flew overhead all day, streaming V's of loud honking below the clouds. I heard the last flock after dark when I took Kenya for her evening walk. Here is a small sample of one of the earlier groups.



I love fall but its colours are often dull until the leaves burst into flame. I wrote a poem about it a few years ago.

I'm Reminded

September flowers are mauve
like estrogen pills.

September leaves are shriveled
like our aging skin.

Some turn porous and lacy,
old demented brains or osteoparotic bones.

Last week sumac was red.
Today it reminds me of
dried up menstrual blood.

But some plants flare into life
like magic sunsets.

Dead embers exposed to air
for that last party.

Back at home I did some cleaning, and, as I washed the oil lanterns, realized that I quite like cleaning when everything else in my life is under control. And if I were cleaning someone else's house for money I might quite like the sense of creating order and beauty for them (and the money which might help me get my own house in order.) So I checked on the going rate and answered an ad in the local newsletter.

Then I shortened a pair of slacks I bought at Frenchie's this summer. They are a pair that would be perfect if I get the house cleaning job.

I talked to a few people during the course of the day ... Dirtwitch who is looking at a place with an extra house for me in the summer or after I leave the lake ... Claire who is doing well with her chemo ... Tamarack who is back from a weekend at a cottage ... and Linda who cleans houses for a living.

Linda was in a four car pile-up at the end of the summer and has had a real financial setback because it occurred in Quebec. With no-fault insurance you have no recourse if some idiot squashes you between two trucks, totalling your car and preventing you from working for a couple of weeks. Oh, your insurance company pays the going rate, but that does not equal the value of the car, and there is no recompense for lost work. She is philospophical if displeased. That seems to be all any of us can do, I guess.

Imagine how it must feel to be an American right now strangling in the mess that is the Wall Street failure. I hate my RRSPs so much I figure my best bet is to use the remaining ones quickly, accept that they have half their value, get out from under the financial load I am carrying, and forget about savings.

What I will probably do, instead though, is live today almost as if there is no tomorrow. I will file the house insurance bill due the end of October, pay Bell with a postdated e-payment, call the municipality to find out what their incomprehensible tax bills mean, write letters to a couple of friends, phone a couple of others, walk the dog, feed the cat down the road, greet Tango when he arrives, and feed the wood stove to keep the house cozy. Of course I will also continue to prepare for winter. There are boards and fencing to move, rosemary to pot and bring indoors, and summer chairs and boats to put away till next summer. I hate to put away the kayak till the last minute, but I have faced the fact that the ladder to the lake will serve no purpose till next June.

Lazy Saturday

Another beautiful day ... I considered doing a bunch of stuff but discovered when I began to sweep and mop up mounds of dog hair that I was not operating competently at all, so I left the broom and anti-static mop leaning on walls, and wrote something for my blog. Then I ate breakfast. Both Kenya and I had tenderly poached eggs for breakfast. Hers accompanied kibble. I had homemade multigrain toast smeared with dandelion honey on the side.

That made me remember that I wanted to buy local honey as house guest gifts for the trip so I went to the Saturday morning market in the village. While I was there I picked up a couple of bags of soil and some chives and sage for planting. Then Kenya and took the long way home along River Road.


We parked on Maxwell and got out to walk for a while. Kenya smelled wonderful things ... I recognized horse manure and cows and we followed the sound of rushing water to a patch of woods where a piddling cow and several calves hid among the trees. And then there were the wonderful flowery scents. Kenya kept dragging me away from these to clamber about in the long grass on the verges of the road. She emerged covered in the frothy spittle that is left on leaves every night.





When we got home I made Coconut Milk Bean Soup. It is an east African recipe and is chockful of veggies and very good. I was still not operating competently and there is a huge mess for me to clean up when I return to the scene.

But first I want to play some more. And finish this. And post photos. And plant the herbs. And re-pot the plants that needs a trough to contain them now.

Then maybe I will vaccuum up the dog hair and sand, dust, and clean the kitchen ...

But perhaps before I do any of that ... I will bring the laundry in off the line. It has been getting re- rinsed and re-dried for almost two days now. It will smell glorious, and when I wear the cotton nightgown tonight I will be reminded of this lovely lazy day.

An Utterly Peaceful Day

Yesterday was one of those perfect days, a day when the air feels invisibly light against your skin; a day in which things are in balance and there is no pressure. I had fun with Kenya and spoke briefly to two neighbours, but it was a day when everything I needed was all within me and my place.

It helped that the weather was perfect and the bugs unobtrusive. One storm rumbled about behind dark clouds but moved out without dropping any of its precipitation.

Any attempt to list the highlights will make us all (myself included) wonder how that could constitute a perfect day. After all not much happened between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

I used to be a Type A person who had to accomplish three days' work every single day. I almost never took holidays, even when I thought I was doing so. A day without work, without accomplishing something, was a day wasted. One of the blessings bestowed upon me by ageing has been the ability to enjoy leisure time.

What I did on my perfect day:

1. ... walked around the lake with Kenya to try to take more photos of nesting turtles. I didn't see any adult turtle mommies, but saw three nests of shell fragments and hope that means the turtles hatched. I also spoke to Rosemary who was gardening and we walked over to see the hydro pole that had burst into flames when the tree fell on the wires on Friday.

2. ... wrote a Father's Day piece for my blog and answered emails.

3. ... hung the hanging basket of petunias Erin brought for me yesterday.

4. ... moved all the pieces of the raised garden down to the spot I wanted to use for a garden this year, put them together in a half-assed fashion and poured in the soil I had brought down from the car. I started with the wheelbarrow and then hefted each one onto my shoulders and moved them singly down the last flight of steps.

5. ... exhausted and sweating, I took a break and went swimming with Kenya. We swam to a neighbour's cottage and I spoke briefly to them from the water.

6. ... still not ready to go back up to do the planting, I went out for a kayak ride with Kenya alternately swimming alongside and scrambling along the shore.

7. ... planted tomatoes.

8. ... re-potted the peace lily and took it inside. (It was getting sunburned outside)

9. ... had a sandwich and apple juice lunch down on the deck, read my book and threw sticks for Kenya.

10. ... had an afternoon nap.

11. ... brushed Kenya and bagged her undercoat hair for Rosemary's garden (it discourages groundhogs and raccoons)

12. ... made a pasta salad and barbecued ham slice dinner for myself, listened to Sara McLaughlan, and ate dinner with a very nice Italian wine.

13. ... curled up on the couch with Kenya and watched The Painted Veil.

14. ... took a lovely leisurely bath scented with some kind of evergreen, maybe balsam.

15. ... and went to bed where I slept soundly the entire night.

It was a wonderful day.

Close-up Side Vew

Side view for Max

Walking with Turtles

The Apology

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. -Buckminster Fuller

And there is even less in a nest of snapping turtle eggs. I saw several nests on my way home from Sarah's yesterday. The one closest to the smallish turtle resting on the dirt road was full of scattered shards of white shell. The others were covered in loose dirt. The turtle waggled her head and I continued on my way, thinking about the enormous turtle we had seen years ago at our shore. Out of fear our next door neighbour shot that venerable creature. It was over two feet in diameter. This descendant of hers was only the size of a man's palm. Thank heavens these turtles live in a lake whose environment is healthy and nurturing, and that most of their human neighbours value and protect them. Thank heavens that only one nest had been ravaged by a predator, likely a natural one.

Yesterday I watched Canada's apology to the first Nations, Inuit and Metis people. Thank heavens the Conservatives finally agreed to allow responses. It became what it should have been ... an historic beginning to a new era in the relations between the people wronged so long ago and the rest of Canada.

Sarah had asked me over. She wanted to judge the sincerity for herself. I am not sure anyone can judge sincerity based on prepared speeches, and my own feeling was that this was a political necessity and an opportunity for Harper and his party to look good. But I am glad he did it properly, because he was apologizing on behalf of all of us.

I was gladdened, impressed, surprised, interested, disappointed, and touched.

* glad to see Stephane Dion take responsibility on behalf of his party.

* impressed that Harper thanked Jack Layton for not giving up on him and pleasantly surprised when he admitted that Layton had pressed the matter every week for a year and a half.

* interested in the intelligence of the Bloc's apology but disappointed that it deteriorated into a political speech against the Conservatives.

* glad that Layton spoke specifically about the harm done to these survivors and to the generations that followed them, and about what must be done to remedy their situation. He was also the one who asked us to imagine a village in which there were no children between the ages of 6 and 16.

But it was the responses of the leaders of the peoples who suffered in those residential schools which touched my heart. Some spoke with humour. Many spoke extemporaneously. They all spoke from the heart. I guess for me it was the final speaker, the woman who represented the association of women, who spoke most directly to me.

She was a warm woman, and a wise one. She didn't harangue, but she made it very clear that seven generations of her people have been badly damaged by laws that tore apart the very fabric of her culture by destroying the traditional matriarchal system.

She spoke about how ripping children away from their mothers and their influence in those very important years and keeping them away from the women who carried within themselves the bond with the earth, had created young people who were lost.

And there were seven generations of these lost children, children who could not parent, children who could not know how to protect their own children from the same kinds of harm they had suffered.

And she didn't let our political leaders relax complacently now that the apologies had been given. She reminded them with a smile that this was only the beginning.

We never had a legitimate right to force assimilation on these people. We took advantage of our superior strength to commit that crime against them, and then we turned a blind eye to the other abuses that occurred within those residential school walls far from the protection of families.

Yesterday our political leaders said what needed to be said, and we Canadians were reminded that we have an obligation to protect and nurture children ... all children. Parenting and political stewardship are similar. Both are about nurturing, not about wielding power over other beings. They are about allowing caterpillars to become butterflies and leathery eggs to become turtles. They are about keeping the places in which they live healthy so that they can grow strong and beautiful.

Eclectic Mix

Does anyone know what this flower is? Sarah and I saw many of them in the woods. They grow on tree-like bushes and look like Queen Anne's Lace surrounded by strawberry blossoms. They have a bit of an aroma ... neither entirely pleasant nor terrible.

The walk in the woods happened during a break in the weather. It has been cold, damp and windy all week. I have been comforting myself with the knowledge that the rain must be good for the clover and day lilies I planted.

Also on the plus side is the fact that the wind drove the hordes of blackflies away for a bit. When it died down again, I found myself breathing them in and swallowing them.

The last few days I have spent more time snuggling up with Kenya on the couch with a fire going watching movies than I have outside. It is supposed to get warmer and sunnier on Friday.

Movies

Born Romantic ... a feel good movie about some disparate people linked by a desire to find love and dance.

Water ... This film reveals how women are denigrated in the name of religion by people who use religion as a means to their own ends. Set in 1938 colonial India as Mahatma Ghandi's rise to power begins, it deals with Brahmins ... but its message is universal, and the film is excellent on many levels.

Notes on a Scandal ... Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett give excellent performances in this very uncomfortable film about two school teachers whose lives become horribly tangled.