January 9, 2011

As I was going to bed last night, Mike assisting, after staying up a little late to blog, I thought that the day had been so fulfilling, so replete with authentic experience, that I could happily die with no regrets. Well, I didn’t die. I awoke to a day of more video taping in my winter coat under camera lights, more Farmville, more apple pie, and beautiful sunshine. The vision out of my lake facing window was just like so many of those Christmas card scenes with brilliant sun shining on neat and even tiny houses with perfectly snow covered roof tops!

I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.

At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.

Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!

A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?

So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.

Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.

Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.

Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.

I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!

December 25, 2010 - Signing On Again

Well, I’m signing on again. It took two days to assemble 475 pages of stuff I have been writing since 1992 or so. Andrew K. printed off the pile; Mike Skubic is doing a quick read through to make a rough division between autobiographic material and theory. Then my real work starts – to pull it together and to write the necessary bridges to get two books ready for a serious edit.

Anyway, even with reinstating Farmville – under an alter ego, Alex Rooke - I have time and I missed writing, so I’m back!

Obviously, today is Christmas Day. Lots of eating! Lots of driving! Lots of Christmas songs and one Chanukah tune on the radio that either I have never heard before or were in “covers” I am unfamiliar with. Lots of stuff I don’t like but mixed in with all a string of moments and events that are whimsical, nostalgic, magical or just plain funny. It adds up to another memorable Christmas.

The good stuff:
- My brother Jim pulled off on short notice a truly family Christmas brunch, with Dad, Rosemary and Armand present, and Ian and Maude (still a little hung over from Ian’s 65th birthday celebration two nights ago!) Skyping in from Yuma, Arizona.
- A kiss and a beautiful red candle from Cristos.
- Being at Camphill Nottawasaga for Christmas dinner – a true feast.
- The setting sunlight on the forest trees.
- Getting the coffee stains out of my bra and shirt AND having a second red shirt to change into between feasts!
- Getting a new recipe for cranberry sauce.
- Having ten people LOVE the apple pie I brought.

I began to think that maybe next year I could pull off a Christmas that I would fully feel was “right” for me. Of course, as soon as the thought crossed my mind I began to back away from it. The mere effort to “make” something “right” can cause me so much stress that it can never be right. Just the same, besides the plain reality that Mom is no longer with us to set the pace and declare what the standards are, there are other missing factors that perhaps I could take on having in place.

I realize that I have not put my oar into the water Christmas-wise for some time. Last year I was too freaked out from Camphill having ejected me and the unanticipated return to Toronto. The year before that I was in Tybee. For four or five years before that I put all my energies into being on the Landmark Education Wisdom Year End Cruise. I am definitely out of the habit of designing my own piece of this December celebration.

Yet, it clearly is important to me. The day is no longer a religious essential within my spiritual framework, but it holds a sense of mystery just the same – the songs that say we can end war if we want to, the concept of the most vulnerable turning the world on its ear, the call to generousity, hospitality and abundance speak to me deeply.

So what would I put into my Christmas.

- a real tree, one that gives its life, and has scent and requires tending and cleaning up afterward
- a gathering to decorate the tree, and elegant ornaments to do it with
- an accessible celebration and feast on Christmas Day, where I am with parts of my family that never think of inviting me, and where I don’t worry all day about where and when I will get to the bathroom
- a personal assistant for the day that I want to spend the day with
- a feast that is generous, sumptuous and diabetic friendly
- some old fashioned, well performed, Christmas music
- some fun stuff like a Secret Santa present exchange
- a guest or two who would welcome an opportunity for a “real” Christmas

I guess I better get cracking making my Christmas 2011 happen!

December 17, 2010

I made $375 today. Tomorrow I will make $500.

I hope I have made enough to offset the cost of fixing the flat tire I discovered as I set out tonight to shop for Christmas!

As I lay awake this morning before Helen came to get me up I watched in the early dawn light while the crane by the “boxes” inside the railway yard fence drew up its cable. I watched for a few more minutes but it did not move again. The boxes had been rearranged a little overnight and there are new gaps between them. Beyond these alterations, and that the crane is facing the opposite way from yesterday, there is no change in the goings on of the marshalling yard.

I wondered – again – what is going on that must mainly happen at night.

Soon after I got up I counted the construction cranes visible to me from my bedroom window. There are six. Each one is distinct from the others in size, shape and colour.

Nearly always they stand motionless. One in particular has a motion of bobbing like a long-necked bird dropping its beak into a stream for fish. It has stood “beak down” for a few days now, looking very weird indeed. Together, when they stand still all day, they remind me of the dinosaur exhibit at the ROM.

Since I was in a counting mood I counted the different types of rail car visible in the yard. Again six. The large double decker orange/white/yellow passenger car belongs to a train called “Rocky Mountaineer”. (I drove closer mid-morning to read the indistinct words.) The remainder of its cars are black and white. This giant train has been here, motionless, for about a week.

Eighty percent of the cars on or moving through the yard are “Go Train” vehicles. These double decker conveyances are big, but not nearly as tall as the three or four cars of “Rocky”. The seven “Go Train” engine cars that are lined up in a flying wedge formation have not moved for about a week either!

The single story passenger cars of the “Via Rail” seem miniscule in comparison. However, they don’t hang around!

The rest of the train cars are flat beds – part of a freight train. Occasionally one will see the other sorts of freight car, but not today.

It is something of a mystery to me that so much valuable stuff – gigantic construction cranes, passenger cars, each with the capacity of a movie theatre, huge prefab buildings, sleek and fast engines – can sit idle for such long time periods. Certainly we are given to believe that the economy is run as efficiently as possible and that there’s an elaborate plan behind it all. But from the vantage point of my bedroom window I have a very different impression.

Have I stumbled across a train set that has been abandoned while some bored child of a giant takes an afternoon’s nap? Why does this huge child play only at night, or is it his father who secretly moves the blocks, cars and cranes around while his son sleeps?

I can only exercise my imagination – likely I will never know what is behind this great idleness. However, I am very pleased that I am a spectator to it all.

December 12, 2010

It’s really beginning to look a lot like Christmas. (I said that already – yesterday!)

It’s been a long time since I shared my “household” with another person, outside of the ongoing presence of personal assistants. Over years of funny and difficult events I have become relatively good at creating the physical, emotional and social space that my assistants need to feel centred in my home and car. Having a continuous need to maintain a workplace within the intimate spaces of my life is a delicate balancing act, and one that I enjoy ongoingly paying attention to. This endeavour quite literally engages a large piece of my emotional availability and is a fulfilling pleasure for me.

Having a housemate is another thing! I realized in the wee hours of this morning that Peter is on some sort of emotional/spiritual journey right now that requires this space to be nurturing and open in ways that I am not familiar with. In other words the control freak in me is getting triggered.

I was once married and I imagine that I might like this sort of intimacy again. Right now I am getting to see why I’m not in that sort of relationship!

The space that assistants need can be bounded by me in ways that are perceived by everyone as legitimate. My supporters, paid and unpaid, agree with me that the fundamental reason for their presence in my life is to ensure that I can both live and participate in ways that work for me. There are endless negotiations and at the root of them is always this center – my life and my participation. This certainty gives a way to find articulation and direction.

Peter is here only in part as a personal assistant. He is also here as a colleague in the community development work of World Peace through Inclusive Transformation. More fundamentally he is living here!

We end up talking about who owes what for toilet paper and food, how loud is too loud, who’s going to pick up what and when, what he should be wearing, and ongoingly about topics I cannot predict – “Do you want to sell these clothes at a discount and make money?” - at times I cannot predict.

Peter’s Father died recently and, as I wrote about yesterday, Christmas clearly brings us back into the arenas of our Mothers, and these are different arenas indeed! This morning I realized that I have front row seats in his unfolding awareness that he is now living beyond his parents.

I don’t mind – I’m just not “ready” – whatever the hell that means!

I think this is one of those “good for me” moments in my life. What I learn and become in this time and space will serve me well as a person who longs to be intimately available outside of my personal support structures.

I simply need to be clear about what my own emotional, physical and social spaces are and be skilful at negotiating them without force and fear, but in love and trust. It’s the being clear that presents my learning curve.

I will keep you posted!

December 11, 2010

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Peter has been living in my “spare” room since early September. He gets to stay in return for giving me pro bono one shift a week of personal assistance, and for doing some inclusive community development around this housing cooperative, Robert Cooke.

The other day Peter brought home a “Christmas tree” constructed from 111 Coke cans coated in silver paint which has partly worn away, and a string of Christmas lights so old that Peter is having trouble finding replacement bulbs and sockets. This artefact was constructed by his mother – likely 50 years ago or so. Yesterday he brought home a “wreath” made almost entirely from twigs with barely a speck of green.

It’s funny how something can occur that makes one realize that one – I – actually care about something. The Coke can sculpture is a memento and a sort of heirloom for Peter and so even though in my view it doesn’t qualify as something that has a genre, like kitsch or retro, I recognize that it’s going to have a place in my household. But when it showed up, and especially when the round pile of twigs arrived, I realized that if we’re going to decorate around here for Christmas it better look LIKE Christmas to me.

Now, what does Christmas look like – to me! Well – green for starters. Secondly, not like Good Friday where utter bareness makes sense. My intellect “knows” these thoughts are not relative to any fixed reality, but the rest of me feels that Christmas is about new life, regeneration, hope reborn, and that the symbols of this ought to reflect new growth.

So we nailed the twigs to Peter’s bedroom door and I bought a Santa to sit on top of the pile of silvered cans along with some bows and beads to drape and paste so as to soften the severity of the piece. I also placed a small woven red and green decoration on the front door of our place. Now it’s time to do a little cleaning and to dig out the ornaments that have been in storage bins for over two years and give the pad a festive look.

Possibly one of the strongest effects of my Mother’s Alzeimers was that Christmas became an uncertain experience. There was a point when I was in my mid 20’s that I actively resisted celebrating Christmas. But from the time I was 29 until the year that Mom and Dad first moved into a retirement residence, Christmas varied little.

Mother always insisted that all four of her children be with her for this celebration. I imagine that there were a few years when my elder brother Ian was unable to attend because he was somewhere out of the country with the Canadian Armed Services. Otherwise we all showed up and generally speaking our spouses – permanent or temporary – showed up as well.

Mother always had a fabulously decorated tree. On Christmas Day itself she did not relinquish the kitchen to anyone. The meal was invariably rich, festive and abundant.

There were other invariant aspects as well. For example, my mother (and later my siblings) always took care to place me in exactly the spot where I was to remain for the entire occasion. The sole exception to this was when I moved to and from my assigned spot beside Dad at the dinner table.

In later years, we adopted a different pattern for present giving. At my sister, Rosemary’s, encouragement we put a price limit on the presents and reduced the number that were given. Later, but after Mom and Dad were in the retirement home, Christmas was held in one or other of the siblings homes and we used a Secret Santa strategy which was not only less expensive but a whole lot more fun for all of us.

But mother passed away two and a half years ago and suddenly there was no longer a clear sense that we would all gather in the same place. I do not believe that I have been to a family Christmas dinner since that time and I won’t be this year either.

So I find myself attracted to the idea that Peter would want to decorate our apartment with his mother’s Christmas tree even though, and at the very same moment, I am repelled by its tackiness. My own mother would never have let such a thing exist in her space.

For myself, at this time, I am merely reflecting on how intensely I am experiencing a need to do something that counterbalances both my own mother’s rigidity and Peter’s (and his mother’s) different sense of value. December 25th at 20 Garnett Janes Road Apartment 812 will be a very different day indeed!