Fave Reads 2022

Happy Hogmanay. I'll be honest: the last several years, my reading criteria has narrowed. Is it under 250 pages? Did someone I love recommend it? Life is too short to finish an underwhelming book. None of these underwhelmed me for one second. In no order (three are Canadian), I loved these books and these authors made me miss books, again. and I'm grateful for their lessons. 

It will gut you. Like
its comedian-actor-author,
this memoir is painfully
& proudly honest as well
as ferociously funny.
This is grief dialed up
and it will heal people.

In less than 250 pages,
Toews thoughtfully
presents us with a 
group of vulnerable
Mennonite women & one
 man as they dissect the
violence and ideology
that minimizes and
marginalizes them.
In other words, it's a
thoroughly modern
and on-going story.

Come for the truth &
the reconciliation; stay
for these characters' 
resilience, hope, and
humour. 

These Canadian children
and those who love them
will break your heart.
This Canadian novel
should be the 
first read in a social
work degree. 

I saw the film first. 
Cinematography at its
finest. Written in 1967(!)
For readers who love
complex and broken
characters in pain,
and for those forced to live
with their bullies or endure
imagined bullies.  

Chairs

source

I used to write a newspaper column. In late December, an old friend texted a pic of one of my columns; she said it gave her hope for 2022. Although I can't recall when, I remember writing it and hoping it would make a difference to someone, besides me. Post Christmas

It begins with some lines from one of my top three Christmas songs, Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong.

"The lake is frozen over, the trees are white with snow and all around reminders of you are everywhere I go...when silence gets too hard to handle...I daydream and stare." 

If you celebrate it, Christmas and New Years can be like a big bowl of chicken soup. But for some, the warm celebrations are overshadowed by those not present, by those empty, empty chairs at the dining room table. A chair where my Dad once sat. A chair where your Grandfather once enjoyed his coffee with much too much sugar, where your cousin once played his guitar, where your spouse winked at you, where your child giggled, where your sister spread jam on her freshly-baked bread, where your friend lifted a wine glass and said, “Cheers.”  

Many of us are missing someone all the time, but especially during family-time. I wonder about those who feel an even deeper absence though, for those who “daydream and stare,” aching inside for their departed loved ones.     

Whether days or years or decades have passed, a broken heart still aches. Holidays and celebrations may seem like touching a tender bruise. And when the celebrating is over, those chairs may seem especially empty.

If you feel that way, I wish I could do more than just write this for you. It’s a small offering for those who are feeling so deeply blue.  

Please know that you are not alone. Regardless of the scars we have, the weights we carry, we are all invited to approach every day the same way: with hope, if only as much as we can muster. Each sunrise pushing away the darkness is another valuable day no one wants you to waste—especially those you wish still filled the chairs at your table. 

Peanut Butter & Jam

As this pandemic unfolds, I notice curiously random brain behaviour both in dreams—looking into a stranger's eyes, and then the sinking gravity in our locked eyes as we realize we are shaking hands—and awake. Most mental filing cabinets get accessed quickly, but navigating new (and often fraught) problem-solving at work and socially, some odd cabinets seem to pop open during daily tasks. What's in those? It surprises me every time: a memory of a word game we used to play with our kids on road trips (first letter, last letter); a staccato song lyric from the 1980s All for freedom and for pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever, everybody wants to rule the world...and my childhood cat Bigfoot, curled on the couch next to my Dad, and so on. Writing this, I detect a pattern I hadn't noticed earlier. Sigh.

But my most spine-tingly example involved toasting a bagel a few days ago. As an educator who works in multiple schools weekly, I take a bagged lunch, but much lunch fare is contraband. Some schools restrict peanut butter, some nuts in general, one used to restrict fish and eggs. It makes for few easy lunch choices. Thus, I hadn't eaten peanut butter for years. However, with students relegated to their homes, I realized I could take a peanut butter sandwich to work, a momentary woo-hoo. Soon I found some in the back of our pantry; we were together for lunch, once again! Then, to treat myself one evening, I decided I needed a peanut butter and jam bagel. But when I placed the peanut butter knife in the jam, a strong familiar voice popped into my head, "Never put the peanut butter knife in the jam!" My oldest brother LOVED jam but HATED peanut butter so this was a rule growing up. He's been dead since 2013; I hadn't heard his voice for so long. I laughed and then it nearly broke me. But I ate that damn PB&J bagel, determined. Friends, use those voices inside you now, the ones that summon courage.

If only.

I don’t dream enough. Yet, when I do, in my dreams, I’m often on a journey and most times I have a task to do along the way, or an obstacle to overcome. (Thinking about it now, that’s not so different than life when awake, is it?) And the people who populate my dreams are often strangers; I see glimpses of them along the way, somewhat like the people you see and then don’t see on the subway. In my dreams, movement is the norm.

But then, unexpectedly, one of those strangers is suddenly familiar. I’m always caught by surprise and I feel foolish because I should have known all along because that’s when I realize or perhaps recognize the stranger is not a stranger after all: it’s a loved one who’s gone, someone who’s died, someone I’m missing.

Do you have these dreams too? Imagine if we could control our dreams, conjure at will those we long for. If only.

Once I dreamed I was looking out the passenger window of a truck, the window open, the sun shining, green waves of wheat stretching across a field and then I turned to look at the driver. It was my Dad. I hadn’t seen his eyes for years. Once, I stood up from the patio table at a restaurant and saw, at another table, my brother. He nodded and moved his chin in the direction he wanted me to look. Once, I was with someone in an unfamiliar kitchen searching for ice-cream in the freezer. When I found it and closed the door, sitting at the table was my Mom. We smiled at each other. Once, I was nervously walking on a dimly lit sidewalk in the fog when suddenly from across the street stood a friend from long ago. She waved. I waved back. Once, I walked down a gravel road next to a garden with rows of potatoes and gladiolas and then running to meet me was my grandparent’s old dog, Tub.

These sorts of dreams feel heavy and stir emotions but they don’t make me sad because they are gifts. We have very little control in our lives about who comes and who goes and when and why. It’s the same thing with our dreams. We must enjoy who we can when we can in whatever way we can before we can’t. 

Things one should never outgrow:

Happy birthday Donny. Miss ya.

If you're a Canadian, you know about these. And how they are basically their own food group. Or they should be.

My wife loves them. So did my brother.

Change

I remember thinking she was really thin. Pale too. Sickly? There was something else too. And then the cashier asked her for like, $36.74, and when she kindly joked that she wanted to pay with spare change, I suddenly realized who she was: my Mom.

Well, not really my Mom because my mother died last year. Yet this woman was the right age and the right build and the right look. Plus she wore a hat, definitely function over fashion, just like my Mom did. And she wasn’t joking. Despite the four other people in line, she was determined to use all her coins. And so she counted them out: toonies, loonies, quarters, dimes, nickels. Just like my Mom would do sometimes. And it was kind of funny. And also annoying. Especially when she realized she didn’t have enough change so she inquired if she could pay the difference with her debit card. Distracted by this little spectacle, this little gift of something like a memory that seemed to be somehow entirely made for me, my impatience faded and I smiled and positioned myself fully in the moment. I suspect everyone else in that cashier’s line seethed but I was tickled to see her again if only in the form of a stranger.

I know how memory works. Science says this experience is the type of memory triggered by recognition. In other words, something familiar unconsciously triggers recall and when this happens we live in the then and the now, sort of straddling two worlds, a sort of re-imagination rather than a remembering.

I like that. I like that there’s a diary inside us all, a journal we can never quite read the same way twice. And life, like a gust of wind, sometimes opens it quite unexpectedly. And when it opens, it loosens, it undoes, it unfurls, it unwinds, it airs. 

Outside

We all tend to forget that the outside is speaking to us. Its language may be deceptively quiet but those whispers linger.

Most people love trees. I do. Sure, they provide the essential oxygen, offer the shade, provide the resources. It’s all vital to survival. But it’s more than that too. People want neighbourhoods with big established trees. We try to save them. Kids love them. They teach us about change. They are reliable. They are resilient. They are potential. They mark our history. The only piece of my childhood home that I still claim is the tree I planted there when I was ten. When we want to remember someone, we plant a tree. (If I were gone tomorrow, I would hope someone plants a tree for me.)

But there’s something else too.

The poet Rilke wrote, “These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.” That’s the feeling I’m thinking about...that feeling of being surrounded by trees...that space among them, it’s alive.

Japanese culture has a word for this: “shinrin-yoku,” which means “forest bathing.” I’m a firm believer that one fantastic word can impact our thinking like, well, like when a tree falls and then everything looks suddenly different. This is one of those words. Picture yourself inside those places in the forest where the trees seem to lean in as if gazing downward as we pass. We all know that feeling. The air cools, the light changes, the scents swell, and there’s a calm. But why is it so calming? Science says the trees bathe us in chemicals they emit to ward off insects and slow the growth of bacteria. Science says when humans are exposed to these chemicals they lower blood pressure, relieve stress, and boost cancer-fighting white blood cell production. Think about that. Literally, trees heal.

Therefore friends...go outside. Forest bathe. Mend yourself if you can. Find some peace. And then be peaceful with others.

Direction

Basic landscape. Notice the foreground, the middleground, the background. Picture yourself navigating from birth through life to death like walking through a landscape: further away from one and closer to another, all the while perspective shifting. And suddenly you stop, that horizon line still so far away, or so it seems, and wonder, did I go anywhere at all? Did I achieve anything? Am I lost? Will I ever get there?

Yesterday, I attended a funeral for a lovely woman I did not know particularly well. And yet, she made a strong impression. Yesterday her friends cried, her brother gave a funny and poignant eulogy and, I imagine, her elderly parents felt like they were silently drowning. Two months ago they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary with her.

Work colleagues, only periodically did our paths cross. And yet, I noticed she was some of my absolutely favourite things: humble, respectful, witty, encouraging, a good listener. And above all, a dedicated teacher.

The card from her celebration of life reads, "successful is the person who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of children, who leaves the world better than they found it, who has never lacked appreciation for the Earth's beauty, who never fails to look for the best in others or give the best of themselves."

Exactly. Imagine our lives are like landscapes. And wouldn't it be something if we painted these little lives with purpose? So someday, when others really examine them, they could use these landscapes to find their own way, to find direction? Now that's a legacy.

Aim them.

source

What's the very last thing you said yesterday? And to whom? And why? And are you good with that?

Think about the hiccup-cure: "what did you have for supper last night?" Pondering that, oddly, the hiccups disappear. People think actions trump words. Often, they do. But besides magically curing hiccups, words work other wonders too. Remembering them though? It's tough. They have a casual way of escaping, floating away unnoticed. Yet we've all felt them like shrapnel too.  

I know a man who wakes every morning, shuffles into the bathroom, looks into the mirror and without sarcasm, declares, "I get better looking every day!" This man is neither arrogant nor inordinately good-looking. His words are only for his own ears. Well, mostly. One could say he models this for his kids too. And sure, it's his particular brand of Dad-humour, but there's a worthwhile lesson in there too. How many of us could say that our self-talk uses a uplifting tone? Joyful? Even remotely positive? Is your inner voice a cheerleader? A reverse cheerleader? (A drearleader?) This is why I think singing in the car is such a good practice. Car kinda-karaoke drowns out the negative little stowaway bastards inside that cardboard refrigerator box house we built inside ourselves when we were kids. 

Our words matter. They are powerful. And sometimes they mean everything (even move everything). To ourselves and to others. Equally.

I remember the last words I said to my mother...my father...my brother. Others too. Because I often feel compelled to say what I need to say, even when it's awkward, I am thankful for most of those last words. And the very last thing I said last night? Nothing special: "goodnight." At one time, those words were throw-aways, little intent. But usually I mean even those now. People tend to say, "you never know," but the truth is you do know. You do. So be selective. Especially those words given in love and respect and appreciation. And if you want them to stick, aim them. Intentionally. 

“A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.” ~Sharon Biggs Waller

Like trees.

Hollywood, Florida

"We pay for life with death, so shouldn't everything in between be free?" Bill Hicks

Yes. It should. But we all know nothing is free. There's a price to pay for all experiences. Sometimes the cost is steep, whether financial or more personally fraught and despite that, it's often quite worth it too.

My family and I vacationed in Florida this past Spring. Since my children are mostly grown (no one should ever finishing growing, right?), my wife and I agreed that we needed to book what could potentially be our last big family vacation together, just the nutty four of us. You know: celebrate those messy comfortable family dynamics that only the four of us could fully understand along with those inevitable Griswoldian moments (despite my wife's careful planning). And we mostly loved it. Some favourite moments:

1. An air-boat ride through the windy, raw and incomprehensibly vast everglades, with its blooming water lilies and poisonous trees ending with a sprinkling of alligator pee.
2. An evening beach concert with a slightly disturbing yet impressive number of joyful, free-spirited elderly people in varying states of dress and undress.
3. Young Circle Park in downtown Hollywood, Florida, a park dedicated to the arts with the most enormous trees I have ever seen: baobabs. Originating in Africa, each tree, sometimes called "the tree of life," can grow trunks more than 10 meters thick and stand strong for thousands of years.

Months later now, I'm still thinking about those huge trees, so permanent in a world so fleeting in many ways because while we were in Florida, my mother died. My Mom would have loved those trees. But Florida? Nope. Too urban, too crowded, too much traffic. My Mom preferred a simple quiet life. But those trees? She would have loved them.

My mother died about 24 hours after her diagnosis and I am told her characteristically positive attitude was completely intact. Once, a few years ago now, I believed there was a reason for everything. I make no judgment about that belief; I don't perceive that as foolish now. As far as beliefs go it's not a bad way to cope with life's struggles. I just don't believe that anymore. I find my comfort in other beliefs. Like trees. Trees make sense.

"A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible." ~Welsh proverb

Wedding Cup

Makeshift Quaich

I couldn't find a genuine quaich in time for my nephew's wedding. But this cup will do as a nod to our Scottish heritage. Sure, maybe it's a gravy boat (?) but it will hold scotch whiskey and really we aren't that fancy so wouldn't any cup with two handles do?

My interpretation of the quaich is that it symbolizes what marriage is all about: peace, unity, and friendship. And it should be shared and given and enjoyed and offered in big ways (like a wedding) and especially in those littlest everyday ways.

Happy days to Mason & Melissa. Let's drink to your Dad and to all our Scottish family, old and new and not so Scottish too.

Ladders

Last summer I borrowed my brother's ladder. And his gloves. What I used them to do wasn't really important. But he would have liked that I completed the task, a task I truly wish he was still here to do. If he were here he may have nodded and then he would have directed me to another task. My brother was a doer. He was always getting things done without any hesitation, or so it seemed to me.

I'm a thinker but I need to remind myself to be a little more like my brother and get things done. Don't get me wrong: I'm not lazy. I don't often need a push. I just get lost in my head occasionally. As the saying goes, it's impossible to climb a ladder with your hands in your pockets.

Folks, think about this: maybe the memory of someone is like a ladder. Borrow your courage wherever you can. And keep climbing.

Her song, her carol.

It’s fitting that it’s May. Spring was my Mom’s favourite season. She also liked summer, fall and winter (mostly). She also loved hummingbirds and bees and frogs and water and leaves and soil and seeds and garden corn and veggies and books and Bugs Bunny: “what a maroon!” Her name was Carol.

She had a great name didn’t she? As you know, Carol means “song” or “to sing.” If your life were a song, what would it sound like? What would the lyrics be? Would its patterns rhyme or would random rule? (My Mom lived random.) Would people line dance to it or would they head-bang or would they flash mob or would they hold still, listening carefully waiting for what might come next? What images would bloom from those sounds and from those words in listeners’ minds? Would it inspire? Would it warn? Would it question? Would it shock? Would it soothe? Would we laugh? Would we long to hear it again and again?

My Mom’s song would sound like a ball game and a picnic but only after hard work and perseverance and sweat. Her song would sound like corn stalks in a garden tended dutifully. Her song would be the squeak of her countertop every Saturday morning as she kneaded bread dough. (I often woke to that sound.) Her song could be silent too, like an owl, patient and watching but mostly silent like a page turned and another page and another book and another and one more too. It would be loud sometimes too and there would be laughter and yelling at the TV and the occasional swat given to the occasional boy. And it would sound like coffee brewing and more coffee and cigarettes and debate and politics and some stories and some lies too. There would be a dash of ABBA, maybe some Anne Murray and some fiddle and some guitar and an old country song: “King of the Road.”

But mostly, it’s what you wouldn’t hear in her song: no worry, no complaining, no bitterness, no anger, no rushing. Peaceful. Sometimes, so much so that it seemed distant. Nevertheless, in honour of her song, I urge you today: don’t worry. Yes it will rain, it will snow, it will freeze, the sun will shine, bees will sting but rarely all in one day. So enjoy today. Eat cake. Seed the crops. Plant a garden. Watch the news. Cry if you need to but mostly be calm. Why worry so much? Why rush? Just carry on. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Enjoy today. This, I believe, was my Mom’s song, her carol.

Dear Cupid,

My apologies but someone has to say it: you are over-rated. You and your Valentine’s Day commercialism and advertising and sitcom episodes and first-impression rose and your arrows and your chubby cheeks; it’s all too much. And it urges many of us to long for those we don’t yet know and some of us long for those we’ve known and lost. Essentially, you make many of us yearn for what we don’t have. That’s just sad.

No offense. My intent is not to be grumpy nor disgruntled. Or old. Or whatever. And if you’re thinking I just need one of your arrows right between the eyes that won’t work on me because most of the time I’m already in love. It’s just that life has taught me there are so many more interesting ways to define and express love. Despite this though, people still wait for you to shoot at them. Weird. Sometimes it’s almost like if love were the neighbourhood well, I wonder why oh why are so many people dying of thirst? (Drink the water people. Drink it.)

Because truth be told aren’t there definitions and declarations of love all around us every day if we choose to notice and choose to appreciate and choose to act on them in big and small ways? John Burroughs said it so well, “I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.” You see, every day itself is an expression of love. Even Mondays. (Well some of them.) We just have to want it: we must want what we already have. It’s as simple as that and as hard as that too. All those healthy things in your life: want them.

And this is why I think love is much more than chocolates and flowers and grocery store teddy-bears and a cherub with erratic aim. Love is February 15^th. And the 16^th and it’s November 8^th too. Sure love is still sometimes giddy with a crush but mostly it’s just a hand to hold or someone’s soft breathing or a group of people laughing while the potatoes are passed across the table or the tail wagging at the door or getting the kind of grapes you know she prefers or it’s an unexpected text or words of encouragement at work or an unexpected compliment (given or received) or a truly good belly-laugh. It’s guys’ night. It’s girls’ night. It’s play-dates. It’s a high five. And love is especially a new baby girl.

This is why, cherub, we don’t really need you. So grow up and get a real job. And a hobby. And hang with your friends. And eat chocolate chips. And choose to love it all.

2013 Reads

A little late. But who cares? As Dr. Seuss said so eloquently, “How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?"

I can't imagine life with Dr. Seuss, or any of these writers, their books my favourite reads last year (in no particular order). 

Smart. Funny.
Even sorta math-y. 

TELL YOUR STORY
(even when it's heartbreaking).

Made me want to make
a mix tape. And find my
old friends. And it made
me feel again too
(because I stopped
feeling for a while.)

Thanks to Susan Cain
and stories like these,
I'm not so weird
anymore. 

Maybe cancer does
indeed reveal you
more than it changes you?
Whatever the answer, I
still fucking hate it.

Particles

Source

I wrote this last November:

Sometimes I stop for a moment. Pause. And then I notice the way the sun illuminates all the little particles in the air. And they just waft by. Suspended. Yet moving. I wave my arm and those particles scatter. I make them move. I shape their journey. Or I think I do.

There are so many choices we make. With experience, wisdom often makes those choices quicker, easier, somehow more manageable no matter the outcome. And they lead to other choices. And so on. Life is meaningful. And all my proverbial ducks line up mostly the way I want. 

It's pure arrogance.

And then. Bang. Randomness. Something so sickenly random happens. No reason. Something unbelievable. Like an aneurysm. A head-on collision. Cancer. Some other bullshit thing.

And then there's no choice. No way to shift the particles the way I want. The sun still illuminates it all but everything looks different now. Particles wafting. Particles drifting. Shockwaves interfere with everything. And I don't know where things go anymore and I don't know where they come from anymore. All the way up to the stars. 

A year has passed now. I continue to search for perspective but I don't still feel this way. Still is the key word here; the search isn't so turbulent right now. At least not for me. Yet talking with a friend a few days ago, for her it is: particles overwhelming, particles everywhere. I listened to her carefully. I felt her confusion and agreed: it doesn't make sense. At some point in the conversation she pleaded, "What am I supposed to learn from this?"

That's it. That's the question. Right there. We all must keep asking that question. Ask yourself. Ask those you trust. And keep sorting it out. Little by little. Day by day. Friends with friends. Conversation by conversation. Because at least together among those drifting particles illuminated by the sun, both beautiful and infuriating, we will see each other and know that at least there's that: we are not alone in all of this.

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." ~V.S. Law

The Importance of Scars

The picture above my desk:
my older brothers and me.

For a while I forgot about the scar at the corner of my right eye. Time has masked it with laugh lines but noticing it again, the story remains fresh. Pondering it now, I realize time has also changed its meaning. Scars are often secrets but this scar in no way began as a secret. I made sure this scar shouted.

My brothers and I were boarding the bus one September morning during my first weeks of school. My oldest brother's impatience got the better of him and he gave me a push to "help" me up the stairs. I bet I was carrying my lunchkit and maybe that's why I didn't put my hands out to brace myself against the fall? Instead, my face introduced itself to the steps, hence the scar.

I do remember crying, probably more like wailing, standing with my Mom, watching the bus drive away. Equipped early with a propensity for drama, I also remember thinking Is my eye going to fall out? Why isn't my Mom taking me to the hospital?! And why is my brother so mean? And why do they get to go to school considering the fact that I'm the only one who likes to go?!

Despite the hullabaloo, my scar is pretty tiny. And like that saying "when things go wrong, don't go with them," longevity and the loss of my oldest brother has taught me that this tiny scar is actually something huge to me now.

I wonder if my brother ever thought about it again? I wonder if he thought about the time a few years later when I punched him in the nose. I had to stand on a snow pile so I was tall enough. A spontaneous act, I remember feeling shocked that I had actually followed through with that very foolish decision. I don't recall what happened afterwards but I suspect G-rated would not describe it.

Revenge. That was always a problem with my brothers. They were older. They were taller. They were stronger. And worst of all, my heart just wasn't into revenge. Although I was always wary of my brother's negative attention, and I was always quick to tell anyone who would listen that they were meaner than mean, I would forget about my elaborate revenge plots and subplots. Eventually, I realized this may have been what irritated them the most about me. I rarely fought back. Plus, as the classic annoying tattletale, I learned fairly quickly that people would actually listen if I told my sibling war stories in such greatly exaggerated detail that even I couldn't keep a straight face while sharing and thus I turned their torture of me into legends that my cousins Laurel and Jo and I would laugh about until we couldn't breathe.

And thinking about this right now, I realized something: I wonder if this scar made me a writer, if indeed my brothers made me a writer. I needed someone to listen and they wouldn't listen unless I entertained them. That is the bigger thing this tiny scar means to me now. So brother, for this scar, I thank you.

Dear Sir,

You don't know me. We spoke for a few minutes today. Thank you for your help. You seem like a very good man. When I learned that your oldest son was killed earlier this year and we were asked to reach out to you and to provide some support, I knew what I wanted to say....

My oldest brother died of cancer not quite five months ago now. He was 51. Although he grew up, married happily, had three terrific children, even enjoyed three grandchildren, his death still feels like a crime. I can't think of a better word. Like someone broke into my house. An invasion. Still unsolved. I can't fathom how or why this happened to him or me. All I can see is the empty space where part of my life used to be. And what did that criminal steal from me? Peace.

But there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing. I have never felt so useless. And angry. But mostly useless.  Because I can't understand it. Will I ever? Maybe. Maybe not.

There is one thing I know though: he wouldn't want me to be unhappy.

I know this.

I know this for me and for his wife, his children, his family, his friends, all of us who loved him, all of us who stare at that same empty space every day.

It's really the only thing I know.

So Sir, I want to say this to you. I don't claim to know your pain. I have children. I can't imagine. But I wonder...what would your son want?

Things one should outgrow:

the way you thought it would turn out.

There's this overwhelming desire in me today to rent a bobcat and tear up my backyard. Start over. Maybe the front yard too.

I really need a bobcat. Who doesn't? Scrape it all away. See the surface again and see what sort of inspiration comes up with the earthworms. And yes, this is a metaphor, mostly.

I have to figure this out. I have to figure out why I'm so angry one minute and so apathetic the next? And why I can barely write anymore. I know who I am so why do I have to explain it to myself again?

But I'm tired. I'm tired of the earth beneath my feet. It's not solid is it? And that's what I'm really feeling I think: fear.

But I know about insolidity. It's like opening pop that's dropped from the counter-top to the floor. This should not be a big deal. Yet I need to close my eyes before I do everything. I mean, come on, I thought I was generally done with being pathetic. I thought all my experiences and challenges and this resilient skin I've grown would get me from point A to point G since B&C&D&E&F punched me in the throat (maybe once or twice in the balls too). And yet I don't even know why I say it's pathetic. I wouldn't tell any of my friends that this sort of conflict is pathetic. It's human. It is. Isn't it?

It's mental health. I'll just say it. Grief? Is that what it is? Still? But hasn't enough time passed to feel normal again? Haven't there been enough laughs and enough TV shows and milk chocolate and a mountain top in Sicily with my son and enough distractions and enough concentration on work and enough enoughness to get me back to where I was last August before....

Before.

My big brother would not be impressed with this. At all. He was a do-er. All my thinker-type behaviour doesn't get things done. As I said in my brother's eulogy, "All my life I've been trying to match his courage." And that's exactly what I need, I think. I need to muster more courage today. I need to reacquaint myself with this shaky earth beneath my feet again and to get some shit done (as my brother would have said too). Even when I'm scared and angry and tired and aching and grieving.

And that's why, that's why, over the last few days, I keep hearing the words of one of my favourite poems in my head (from Truth by James Hearst): "How the devil do I know if there are rocks in your field? Plow it and find out."

And that, I guess, is what I just did.

And I don't.

I fell the other day. Hard. So hard that I didn't know where I was. Suddenly, oddly, I was lying on the sidewalk in the snow. Like someone had pressed fast forward: one moment walking, the next flat on my left side. I had skipped a scene somehow.

?

So I stood up as quickly as possible and regained my composure. And continued to walk. It felt like a dream. The entire incident probably lasted 20 seconds. Flexed my arm. Continued walking. Flexed it again. Moved my fingers. Flexed my arm. Walked to the grocery store. Talked with a woman I know. Tried to concentrate on what she was saying. I don't remember much of what we talked about. Said a polite goodbye. Flexed my arm. Wiggled my fingers. Began walking home with a bag of popcorn kernels. And then these thoughts:

1. My arm is broken.  
2. I think I've broken my arm.
3. But I can move my fingers.
4. But I can't move my hand up to my chin.
5. Is my arm broken?
6. I'd know if it were broken, wouldn't I?
7. I've seen a broken arm.
8. My arm is not broken.
9. Is my arm broken?
10. Why are my eyes watering?

I've never broken any bones. Despite various opportunities where I perhaps narrowly escaped a broken bone, I've never broken one. Here's why: I always believed my bones were too strong to break. That's odd, isn't it? Why would I think that? Before this experience I had never articulated that before. I had never thought about this thought. It's like I had some pea-brain notion that my particular superpower was unbreakable bones.

So I continued walking. Eyes watering. Wondering if I had finally broken a bone. Feeling old. Feeling tired. Feeling stupid. Feeling scared. Feeling alone.

At home, I examined my arm in the bathroom mirror. It looked fine. So I showed my wife and she noticed the "extra-elbow-bump" I hadn't noticed. Plus the swelling. She wondered if I had broken it too. But I could move my fingers so it wasn't broken right?

Incredulous. That's the word to describe my feelings. And that's what's still bothering me. I don't want to acknowledge this. I don't want to accept weakness where I have always expected and relied on strength. I want my power back.

One of my favourite poems comes to mind:

There Were No Signs 

by Irving Layton

By walking I found out 

Where I was going.

By intensely hating, how to love. 

By loving, whom and what to love.

By grieving, how to laugh from the belly.

Out of infirmity, I have built strength.

Out of untruth, truth.

From hypocrisy, I wove directness.

Almost now I know who I am.

Almost I have the boldness to be that man.

Another step

And I shall be where I started from.

Absolutely one of my all time favourites, this poem has always helped me comprehend the incomprehensible. I realize now that I missed the ending.

I want to feel bold again. More almost bold than this unfamiliar boldlessness. More stable, less shaken.

And I don't.

I know this whole thing should barely even be mentioned in parentheses but it feels like it wasn't supposed to happen, that there was no reason for this. It's like a mistake instead of just something random, like an accident. And even though my arm is not broken, and instead I have this blossoming bruise around my healing elbow, I feel like I'm starting over at something. And I'm not sure what. And I feel tired this time. And somehow scared. And I don't want to start over again.

And now I get it: this is grief. Isn't it?