Let's be honest:

slipping...falling...taking a tumble...unless you're a toddler (even then, I suppose) it can be quite serious. Sometimes there are big consequences. Statistically, it's foreboding. 

The photo tells the story, doesn't it? One might say, gravity called and I took the call on my knees. I've answered this call before—I remember my elbow took weeks to heal, but this time? Only my dignity took the plunge. 

Again, not to negate the seriousness of falling, but there's a very human moment after a fall, isn't there? That embarrassment? It's humility. And it certainly seemed to me like I had instantly developed warp-speed in uprighting myself and then scanning the neighbourhood to see who may have witnessed this grounding moment. A vehicle drove by, I nodded sheepishly. Nevertheless, thankful to be without pain, I had to laugh at my awkward self and the photo evidence: it's clear I was swept off my feet, but sigh, without the romance. I've devised a name for this moment: humortification. 😆

Dear friends, be safe out there and may your "down-to-earth" moments be low-impact. 

Lessons in Time Travel & More

During my morning hike yesterday, I suddenly remembered another September walk along a bluff of trees in my childhood school playground... shuffling along with Marci and my other Grade 1 classmates, led by my first teacher. 

We collected leaves. She instructed us to gather different colours, shapes, and sizes, to listen as our rubber boots crunched over them. Next, we sat in a circle along the trees with our treasures in our laps, and oh-so-beautiful Mrs. Pochipinski smiled, then invited us to smell our autumn leaves.

This morning's episodic memory experience has me wondering. What prompted this memory? Why was it so sudden and so vivid? Science teaches that our senses are linked to the brain's limbic system and those neural pathways are responsible for memory, thus our senses can trigger time-travel, especially smell as it connects more directly to the limbic system. 

Yet, while walking this morning, I don't recall any particular smell. Perhaps today's falling leaves unconsciously evoked that same smell from Grade 1? Or was it the same time in the morning, the sunlight and colours just so? Or a combination of all? 

I'd like to think there's only one answer to my questions: Mrs. Pochipinski. 

It's clear to me my grade 1 teacher designed an engaging lesson about the human nervous system, one that employed ALL our senses. Revisiting it felt like happiness. But, did Mrs. Pochipinski—hired and entrusted to lovingly exercise and build our brains—intend for this to happen? A first-year teacher, did she intentionally aim to not only engage us in the novelty of Fall's beauty, but also fast-track our new sensory knowledge into long-term memory? And wouldn't it be fantastic if she knew that someday, somewhere, she'd also be responsible for a little morning hike time-travel moment? Yes, yes, and I'd like to think also yes. For my low-key obsession with trees, and for my straight up obsession with description, thank you, Mrs. Pochipinksi. 

Dear friends, teachers make magic. Please support the important work they do. 

Just the Right Amount

A sister to M & L, 
and a cousin to I. 

Especially after false labour way back in the first week of August, it's been quite a holding-pattern of a month waiting for our newest (third) granddaughter: 9 lbs and 9 days late! I'm so impressed by my daughter's resolve.  

But she's finally here: another M, her name a nod to my Grandmother and her middle name for my daughter's grandmother. Imagine being so fortunate to be named after two grandmas...that seems to me like just the right amount of grammatude, and I can't wait.   

A Field

Cindy Revell

On impulse, I bought a little painting. The artist is someone I grew up with. We lived across a field from each other. This field. Or so it seems to me. As soon as I saw the painting, I remembered biking along my childhood road looking across the yellow (canola) to her house.

There can be much ado about a field. As poet James Hearst says in Truth, "How the devil do I know if there are rocks in your field? Plow it and find out."

It seems to me that when you leave a place—especially that first place—you carry it with you: the sky, the soil, its rocks (plowed and unplowed), the light, the heavy, the love, and the pain. 

It seems to me that art carries all this too, that interiority, acting as a kind of proxy for the told and untold stories, and ultimately a means to plow a field in one's heart. 

Tree Gazing

As my oldest granddaughter once said, "Happy New Day, Pops." It is indeed. The saskatoons are ripening— my favourite sign of Canadian summer. Happy Canada Day, friends.  

Science says even looking at trees boosts your mental health. What's your favourite tree? Or berry? 

Things one should never outgrow:

Thanks, M. 

unicornory. 

While waiting for her birthday party guests to arrive, my oldest granddaughter enjoyed some spontaneous dancing in the backyard, adorned with her spanky new unicorn rubber boots. 

Scotland's national animal, the Scots love the unicorn for its untamable independence and for being notoriously difficult to capture or conquer. 

That's reason enough to respect this mythical creature, but inspired by my granddaughter I am also learning "unicornory" which I define as the way a 4-year-old reminds me to pay attention to and enjoy life's simple pleasures: sunshine, warmth, music, laughter, sparkles inside your birthday cake, being together, and being alive for this one unconquerable life. 

Playlist

Is your playlist doing its job?

Playlists are personal. I'm hesitant to even write about mine. People get judgy about song choices. Sigh. I could attempt to explain mine: um, maybe eclectic? Catchy? Genre-bending? Silly? Vapid? Rebellious? Deep? Sad? Yes, all of those. Imagine everything from Joni Mitchell to the Muppets, from Dance to Dolly Parton. Insert shrug emoji here.

My main criteria? An emotional reaction (typically mirth or melancholy).  Bonus criteria? Goosebumps. 

We all know goosebumps: the body releases adrenalin, muscles involuntarily contract and force body hair to stand upright, indentations patterned across the skin. Science says this occurs due to cold, or a reaction to stimuli (fear, attraction, sadness, joy...). Whatever the reason, think about it: our bodies are trying to help us survive. And that's what a playlist can do: enliven us when we're struggling. It's a mental health buoy. 

Science (Daniel J. Levitin) says we humans enjoy a special relationship with music. Unlike other stimuli, it triggers multiple effects in both hemispheres all across our brains including language, emotion, memory, even physiological responses like that overwhelming desire to move “to the beat.” It releases the feel good hormones and affects blood pressure, body temperature, even metabolism. But for what purpose? 

Despite my amateur scientist status, I know the answer; obviously, it's preparing us for that inevitable crucial music-related battle we must all face at some point in our lives: the dance off. Amirite?

I jest, kinda. Music is similar to humour. Music changes channels. Introduce a song to whiny toddlers and suddenly they get their happy on. It's more than humour though. Think about how that song at the funeral pushed open the rusty gate in your heart. 

Alerted by adrenalin, music jolts us from simply existing, shocks us more fully into life, both the joys and the pains. Music speaks truth better than we can: it invokes our deeper feelings, the ones we may not even realize. One amazing song can help us problem-solve, feel less alone; it can provide some new or renewed perspective, it can open a vulnerable conversation, it can heal. Music pushes our buttons and, goosebumped, even our skin can’t hide the transformation.   

What song does the job for you? 

Fullness

P 💞 L 

Weeks ago, I intended to write about our January holiday to Mexico, but life interrupted things. 

Travel makes me grateful and reflective but I need time to process all that discovery and restorative-ness. 

This trip we traveled with our daughter, her husband, his parents and our grandchildren. Imagine. 

There are stories to tell about French fries and puffer fish and a margarita stand, but mostly there was precious time to play with our favourite grandtoddlers, 3 year-old M and 1 year-old L. And although there are many impressive photos of the beach and sunsets and an excursion to a tiny island and a burrito bigger than a birthday cake, I keep returning to pictures of my daughter with her children, and this one with her young son. 

It's impossible to accurately describe the feeling of watching your children be parents to their own children: it's joy, it's pride, it's time-travel, it's nostalgia, it's laughter, it's longing, it's...peace...it's a fullness...(it's fleeting and forever) and I wish it for everyone. 

Fingers & Toes Crossed

I, M, & L

My three grandkids were together recently. I is almost 11 months, M is 3 1/2, and L is almost 18 months. 

Like my grandson in this pic, I grew up with cousins, two girls close to my age, one older and one younger. 

Gen X kids, we mostly raised ourselves. It wasn't easy. We knew how to fend for ourselves and how to disappear, but we filled our hiding places with music and candy and pretend and stories but mostly laughter, that sort of laughter that makes breathing sporadic. (You'd understand what was so funny if you watched us perform The Most Beautiful Girl in the World in a freezing cold unfinished basement for an audience of one bored and one bewildered cat.) 

With much to learn and no one safe to ask, we figured life out together, without judgment or shame (at least from each other)—so relieving for a group of offbeat oddballs. Uncertain about ourselves, but relying on each other, our promises were kept: we crossed our hearts and hoped to die. We forgave each other's mistakes, all of them, I hope? Throughout childhood, there were few people I trusted more than those two. 

Inevitably, life led us in different directions. I miss them. I'm grateful for the cushion we constructed between ourselves and the world, and so of course I will foster this bond in I, in M, in L. And perhaps someday, fingers and toes crossed, my cousins and I will spend an entire sunrise to sunset with each other again. And since we no longer have to sneak whiskey shots, perhaps karaoke? 〵(⌒˽⌒)〴

Dear friends, did you grow up with cousins? 

Wordfuse

(adj) foofaraw + awesome = appreciation heaped on what some might deem no big deal, but said deal totally does it for me

My examples?
1. random bagpipes
2. a really good orange
3. my chocolate-chip cookies (small cookies are stupid)
4. children's drawings
5. taking off my socks
6. my own bed
7. grandchildren grins
8. feeling healthy

9. flat caps

10. making up dorky words

That Time

That time it was my granddaughter's third birthday and she and her Pops (me) got to spend the entire day with each other:

1. Before she left for work, her Mom made us morning birthday smoothies. Yum! 
2. Our new 3-year old asked for cereal for breakfast. 
3. We played Velcro catch.
4. Her Dad played the piano and we ate a few (begged-for) left-over Easter bunny treats.
5. Dance Party! The only song she approved was Taylor Swift's Lavender Haze, the Remix and "no pics, POPS, just dancing!" (I got one pic.)
6. Next she chose a movie: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (aptly named, but her Pops still fell asleep for nearly 30 minutes). 
7. We had pancakes with peanut-butter and strawberries for lunch.
8. We opened ONE of her presents (a balancing game I knew she'd love), and when the pieces fell over she laughed and said, "nana nana boo boo" so we named this new game, "Nana Nana Bonk Bonk." We played it 1207 times.
9. (There may have been one little time out that involved her little brother. Oops.)
10. Outside on the deck we blew 1207 bubbles and she tried to catch each one. 

And this was only half the day! To quote Taylor Swift, dear M, "I love you bigger than the whole sky." 

Either way, delish.

Coconut Ginger Scones
Scone pronunciation debate: I say scone 
rhymes with Post Malone, not Elton John.
But who cares? Either way, delish. 

I make scones now. Why? Honestly: baking makes me happy. 

It reminds me of travels to heavenly little bakeries and coffee shops in Edinburgh, Galway, London, Montreal and more. And that bakery smell? C'mon. It connects me to friends who bake, people I admire, creatives I want to emulate. It's mindful; it helps me achieve flow. It shifts my mind from melancholy. It makes me simultaneously smile and feel nervous: in baker form I'd say my inner critic is more Swedish Chef than Gordan Ramsay but who knows who will show up? It's sensory: I know when the dough feels ideal for baking and that dopamine-hit-moment is niiiiiiccce. It's creative and lets me communicate something I was never properly taught how to be (but want to be): a nurturer. It feels great to share baking with others: people damn near melt. Baking spreads love. 

Dear friends, I suggest you make scones. 

Honestly, they're dead easy: especially here in Canada (during Winter). I realized early in my scone-making how important cold butter is to the recipe's success. So, in a nod to my grandparents and this country I love, I freeze my butter outside my back door (no metaphor intended), plus I chill the batter out there too (again, no metaphor). Not in Canada or a weirdo? Just use your freezer. And if not scones, bake whatever salts your butter (metaphor intended). 

Chop 

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter & set outside the back door (or place in the freezer)

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 c granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder

Mix wet ingredients in a small bowl

• 3/4 cup coconut milk (substitute heavy cream or milk, if preferred)
• 1 large egg
• 2 tsp vanilla

Set aside

• 1&1/2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut
• 1 tbsp ground ginger (or equivalent chopped fresh ginger)
• (substitute chocolate chips, berries, nuts, dried fruit, spices, lemon zest, etc.)

Combine ingredients

• add frozen butter to dry ingredients and combine using two forks or your fingers until partially integrated
• drizzle wet ingredients and mix by hand until it comes together (sticky more than shaggy)
• add 1&1/2 cups coconut & ginger (or substitute) and mix; avoid overmixing
• if needed, add more coconut milk or flour to make dough more sticky than shaggy
• press dough into an 8-inch disk and set outside back door to chill (or refrigerate)

To bake

• cut 8 inch dough disc into 8 wedges
• brush with coconut milk & sprinkle on brown sugar
• bake in pre-heated oven at 400 for 20-26 minutes 

Three!

Happy New Year (baby)!

Our third grand baby has arrived! 

I love being Grandpops to 

M (flower girl) & L (baby boy in the carrier)

plus that little one in the stroller 

on the right: welcome baby girl I. 

Let's be honest...

a chai latte is lit: warm, fragrant, spicy...plus it's even more delicious with my toddler granddaughter (she had a lollipop and we "read" the newspaper together). 

Where's your favourite coffee-shop? What's your signature order? And who's your favourite coffee-shop pal? 

Inn't?

My spouse and I tend to travel all over the world then return with photos of trees. (I recommend this practice.) These beauts are in Ireland's Blarney Gardens (which are sublime). 

Ireland is charming and friendly and indefatigable. I recommend its trees, its cliffs, its trails, its music, its dancing, its textiles, its Guinness, its cider, its stew, its fish, its friendly folks..."very good very good it's wicked inn't?"

Let's be honest:

 

everyone deserves an early summer Friday like this! 

Things one should never outgrow:

 

Lego. 

This is my family: me, our son, my spouse, my son-in-law, and my daughter, plus our TWO grandbabies! Our newest grandbaby arrived in May, a brother for M. (Also, their feral cat, August.) To quote the Lego Movie, "everything is awesome." 

Things one should never outgrow:

M.

As we are reminded, it's important to stop and smell the roses, or in the case of my granddaughter, the Dianthus pinks. Note that she has no qualms about being delicate about this. Get right in there, friends, butt in the air as needed. 

Poet Mary Oliver advised in her instructions for living a life to "pay attention, be astonished, tell about it." Exactly. What may have inspired Oliver's poem? The object could have been so many things, but for me right now, it's M. 

Grateful

 

Before our granddaughter was born, I asked my last Grade 9 class for advice on grandparenting. Their suggestions made me emotional and reminded me again how meaningful grandparents can be. As my granddaughter celebrates her first birthday, I wanted to share two of my favourites. I will say that my former students would be proud of me (except for the clothes...but my wife excelled at that one). Today I am grateful for youth, for my daughter and her husband, and for the opportunity to be Grandpops to one special girl. 

Things one should never outgrow:

I own a snowmobile now. WHAT?

For Christmas—I'm still flabbergasted—my wife surprised me with a GD snowmobile! I literally bawled. It's a dream come true.

It's used. It's not fancy. It has duct-tape on the seat. It's the skidoo brand, and yellow, but I forget the number, or whatever? My son explained it all but, shrug, unlike him, I can't seem to store vehicle information in my brain. Anyway, it's perfect. 

This particular dream come true was never expected to happen. Growing up in rural Saskatchewan, we had old "putt-putt" snowmobiles which my Dad mostly obtained through bartering over unpaid mechanics bills. This coupled with 1970s-style adult supervision—aka absolutely none—my childhood obsession was born. (Read here for an example of no supervision whatsoever style snowmobiling.) Later, my Dad gave my young son a miniature snowmobile which kickstarted his obsession, and now he has his own. Sure, we borrowed snowmobiles from family members over the years and made some great memories, yet own one? That seemed like a complete luxury; I could never seem to justify spending the money (or even have the cash). Admittedly, my vibe is 100% cheap bastard. (My wife's vibe is 100% not.)

Bitterly cold in Alberta this December/January, my son and I finally spent last Saturday zipping along the local river up and down the trails and hills and through the thick spruce trees and swamps. (Insert contented sigh here.) Afterwards, my son and I were talking. 

I asked him, "What does snowmobiling feel like for you?"

"Freedom. Happiness. How would you describe it?"

I had not stopped smiling the entire trip; I thought back to the constant elevation changes, squeezing through narrow tree-lined trails, getting stuck on the side of a hill that felt like about 110 degrees (my son knew what to do), admiring my son's intentional launch stunts, and likewise all my unintentional launches...I replied,

"In the best possible way, it feels like being a ball gently tossed back and forth, but you're not just the ball, you're also the person tossing." 

We laughed, both recognizing the delightful chaos. And although my description was a bit silly, I later checked my iPhone's health app; despite little walking during our trip, my app indicated I had climbed 34 floors.

Friends, I wish for you all a dream come true (and a snowmobile ride here and there), plus, most importantly, a son or daughter or anyone really who loves what you love.