"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

Albert Camus had a great point. Besides the colours of the hardwood trees, September has always felt like a beginning to me rather than an ending. From age five until age 54, with one exception, the end of August meant starting back to school for me . . . elementary, junior high and high school, university . . . and then a career in teaching for over thirty years. New pens and paper, cooler nights for sleeping, a mist over the fields as the sun burned off the dew or frost are all things that make autumn my favorite. 

Don't mistake me here. I love summer days with the warm sun on my face as I work outside in the yard or drive over the highways and byways with the top down on the car. I treasure the evenings when darkness doesn't fall until almost ten, when we can sit on the patio with friends and wine in that most contented peace that summertime gatherings bring. 

Much is new around here. Our son is in a wonderful relationship and his happiness is palpable. His beloved has an adult offspring and two "mediums", as we refer to her 11 and 13 year-olds. Instant family and co-habitation all over the course of three months makes for major change, but it seems to be all positive and this is all I could ever want for him - his happiness. I could not have handpicked a more fitting partner for him, and I confess to loving the role of grandmother to two well-adjusted, intelligent, loving young people. Q is a hockey dad now - isn't that something? Rink runs, tryouts and practices are on his resume now! We look forward to their visits when they get here to our place; everyone was immediately at home after the first stayover. 

If hard work and determination make dreams come true, Q and M and family will be leaving Eastern Passage and moving to the Valley in just a couple of years. They do dream. Their ideal home would be on a small farm in the country with a few animals and crops on which to sustain their family healthily on whole foods and fresh air. Every country road we drive down now finds us looking at real estate signs for just such places! 


















And my wife and I have begun again as we make a forever home for little Isabella, our six-month old black and white rescue kitten as well. She came into our lives just when we needed her most, two weeks after Julie's beloved Maggie, age 23, crossed over. Our sense of loss was so great, especially Julie's. Maggie had been in her life all those years, just one year short of the brief time she had with her own dear mother who died tragically at age 54. Maggie, our dowager empress, "set the clock" for us each day with her routine -  kisses and licks and up at six for breakfast, waiting for Julie all day to come home and feed her at six in the evening, then escorting us to bed and her ten o'clock "bed lunch". She always slept on Julie's pillow, head cradled in a loving hand. The void left by her absence was unbearable. Things were off . . . it was so quiet. Our other three cats and the dogs seemed confused and depressed. 


It's strange how things happen. Some people say there are no coincidences. I'll leave this one to you. 


Saturday of Labour Day weekend found us in Halifax, at the Seaport Farmers' Market in the morning, then to lunch and later at the Halifax Shopping Centre where Julie wanted to go try on some running shoes at Coast Mountain Equipment. In we went, with the intention of looking there and getting on the road home. A few try-ons later, Jules was not satisfied that the shoes in stock were the exact right ones. She asked me if I wanted to go into the mall and just look around, and I replied with a half-hearted "Sure." 


We hadn't taken fifteen steps when we saw them. Kittens.


There was a kiosk there, one that organizations rent for charitable causes and fundraisers. A gaggle of young girls was gathered around while the volunteers let them pet the fluffy little bundles of cat . . . Awwww.

Then, simultaneously, we saw her. An elegant, slim young cat with a triangular head and big ears, as white as fine china with some black markings on her head and sides, and tail! Two perfect beauty spots on her small pink nose. She was in a little red harness on a long lead and she was prancing around as if that were her daily ritual, head up and curious. She walked on her lead into the closest shop (La Senza!) as if to say, "I'm just going to duck in here and pick up a few lacy things . . ." We were smitten.


Conversation with the lead volunteer, Marilyn, revealed that this was ca-r-ma.org, CAt Rescue MAritimes, a trap-neuter-return organization which finds foster homes and then permanent homes if possible for stray, abandoned, and feral cats in NS and NB. For a minimum donation of $100 to help them continue their work, we could be considered for a permanent placement for the beautiful Isabella, who was found with her three siblings in the Burnside Industrial Park. We knew the moment we saw her, touched her, interacted with her, that we loved her. But off we went to "talk about it" anyway. 


There was nothing to talk about beyond whether our other pets accept her. We could only bring her in and try things out, but would they let us breach protocol and take her home that very day? We had told them of our home with its menagerie and our veterinary connections. We could only hope that they would see how much we loved our pet family and allow her to return to the Valley with us. Within the hour, a small cat carrier with Isabella tucked inside was by my feet in the car and she was coming home!


Suffice it to say that our animal family has accepted her into their midst, if not 100% joyfully (Ronnie Moody has some (h)issues), then with benign disregard. Feebee thinks Izzy is her puppy and washes her, chases her and has won her over. Dickens loves her, too. Everyone else just seems to say, "Well, looks like she's staying," and carries on. Julie calls this sleek little package her heart medicine and sure enough, she has helped soothe the ache and fill our moments with chuckles and surprises of the best kind.

And, in many ways, it feels like spring . . .

Summer is an "in the moment" time

It's so easy for me to neglect something like my blog when the days are sunny and my garden, friends, dogs and the road all beckon. Oh, I'm writing bits and parts of stories almost everyday, but nothing seems to compel me to just sit and write until the point where I can allow a piece to go public. Good thing I don't have deadlines, eh? Sure, there are plans -- out of town company coming some weekends, a party here, a music weekend in the cards, family gatherings, but somehow there's a flexibility about all those things in the summer as well . . .

Summertime is when I love to open my eyes to the cool white world that is our bedroom; I love white bedding in the sultry months of July and August. It always feels fresher to slide into white percale sheets and rest my head on an uncreased pillowcase of snowy smoothness.  White embroidered cotton lawn nightgowns of whisper fine weight give slumbers filled with gentle dreams. 


The breeze moves the curtains ever so softly and I turn over once or twice more before actually arising. My Best Beloved is out the door and off to work by 7:15 and the house is silent, with only the soft breathing of the dogs and cats, and happy birdsong outside the window to interrupt my reverie. If I'm very still, I can hear the burbling of the waterfall in our fish ponds as it tumbles down across the mossy granite lintels and swirls into the lower pond where the koi and goldfish swim gracefully in the morning cool.


Coffee tastes so much better on the front veranda with its vista of our lush front garden, and I relish the privacy afforded by the shrubs and vines we planted which conceal our little sitting area from the street. Baskets of begonias and fuchsia cascade from above my head in the shade there, and hosta, dogwood, Japanese maple, mock orange, magnolia, spirea, Arctic Kiwi vine and butterfly bushes share their myriad greens with me. I take a bite of the freshest raisin bread toast and sigh. A bowl of sliced crimson strawberries is warming slightly in the sun on the teak table. We are trying to eat a quart everyday during this season when they are local and at their delectable freshest. 


Summer days just feel timeless, and any work I undertake seems less like effort as the sun beams down and the breezes move the branches of the stately oaks, maples and pines that ring the back yard where we are so fortunate to live, side by side with good neighbours. Even weeding and mowing fill me with a sense of connectedness and care of the earth and of improving the aesthetic, however roughly. Nothing here, you see, is perfectly manicured, pruned and shaped, but rather placed by good luck and hope rather than following any gardening books or manuals to the letter. Bugs and slugs live cheek by jowl with raccoons and birds who will soon ravage the cherry trees for their red bounty, and have already chewed holes in some of Best Beloved's bok choy. The lawn has its share of weeds, but when mowed, it is green and healthy-looking. I can play in my gardens for hours on end and must be reminded to take water breaks and come in for lunch, much as it was, as I remember, playing outside as a child with our mom calling for us. We were pretty hesitant about missing much of our outdoors time for trivial things such as sustenance!


An afternoon nap? Well, that's never amiss either. Other matters can wait while I spread out a quilt under a tree, or curl back up on the rattan loveseat on the veranda with a magazine and pillow. Worries and plans can rest too, I have found. 


Meals are simple, cold and fresh -- meat or fish have an equal footing with all of the fresh July vegetables coming on now -- bunch carrots, new potatoes, sugar snap peas, Swiss chard, spinach and asparagus abound. Salads and light soups, berries and other easy dishes are put together thoughtfully, garnished with herbs from our own patch, and consumed with mindful gratitude for the earth's bounty. Is there anything better than Nova Scotia farms and gardens for summer's culinary delights?

As always, no matter where I am in this wonderful world, my favorite time of day is late afternoon and early evening as the sun is making its way back down toward the horizon, and the shadows lie long in the fields and forests. Summer days last way into the evening hours, and the world is a golden-hued embrace as the blue of the sky deepens and streaks of mauve, orange and pink appear over the western heavens. Nowhere is this better appreciated than along the Bay of Fundy shore from atop the rocks or on the beach, or from a brightly-coloured Adirondack on a cottage deck as the cool of evening chases away the swelter of the thirty degree day. 


Why would anyone rush through any day, let alone a perfect one in summer?

Put it in the trash!

What compels people to leave a trail behind them of refuse, rejected purchases or last-minute mind changes when they shop? Is there no place anymore where someone won't randomly dump his or her Tim Horton's coffee cup, empty or otherwise? I just find it rude and messy, not to mention the height of laziness, whether I am browsing the cereal aisle at Superstore, the lawn implements at Home Hardware, or the toothpaste at the pharmacy, to see the brown-plastic lidded cups abandoned willy nilly instead of being placed into the appropriate receptacle somewhere nearby. Oh sure, now and then you see the odd water bottle or slushie cup, but by far the majority of vessels discarded are from the coffee chain. It's become a daily occurrence.
For years there has occasionally risen a hue and cry about Tim Horton's cups as highway litter in league with fast food containers and wrappers, and someone will write a letter to the editor about something needing to be done to make Tim's a better corporate environmental citizen. Their website says they are trying to improve: "We put anti-litter messages on all of our packaging items, including a "Do Not Litter" message on all of our take-out cups"; "Many Tim Hortons restaurants sponsor local clean up events ad activities in their communities"; "Tim Hortons is one of the few quick service restaurants to offer china mugs, plates and bowls to guests eating in our restaurants. This helps to reduce paper waste being created in the first place" and "All Tim Hortons restaurants sell reusable Tim Mugs with the incentive for purchasing a Tim Mug is that the first coffee is free (coupon included inside the Tim Travel Mug) and each refill gets a 10 cent discount (hot beverage discount applies to any travel mug fill)."

So, it seems that Tim's is doing something to keep the paper cups from appearing as cast off garbage everywhere. So it comes down to the people who find this coffee and other beverages from there so irresistible. Truthfully, the coffee is not very good, in my opinion. I will drink it when there is absolutely nothing else available. To me, it always tastes burned. No amount of doctoring it makes it truly palatable. Sorry, it's me, not you. I can be a coffee snob, preferring expensive free-trade, small batch roasted, fresh-ground beans, but I'd still opt for an Irving Circle-K brew before Tim Horton's.


How hard can it be to walk to a trash bin to throw away your cup? Must you leave it on the shelf with the housewares or sheets at Winners? Don't tell me you put it down and forgot it with the frozen peas. I don't want to see it on the edge of a display of bestsellers at Coles, either. 


Pick up and dispose of those darn cups!!!!

You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just . . .

Since I was very young, I have had an intrinsic understanding of the power of a smile. As babies, we humans react through our tiny eyes' blurry first vision to the eyes and smiles of our adoring parents. Experiments have shown "an infant is able to recognize smile faces, then he or she could know that despite differences in amount of teeth showing, how crinkly the eyes are, or the extent of upturned lips, a smile is still a smile, and it projects happiness (Bornstein & Arterberry, 2003)."

My mom was a smiler. Her face in its resting state had a pleasantness about it, unless maybe she was frowning in concentration over a recipe or a crossword puzzle clue! Otherwise, she smiled and others responded in kind. 

Baby and childhood pictures show that I was not as free with my smile with portrait photographers who did such absurd things to coax a grin -- making quacking noises, waving stuffed toys, whistling -- and more than a few poses in the proofs show me looking quizzically off towards my waiting parent for reassurance. 

I started school smiling. I could not wait to be there, in school, where there were other kids, books, toys and something new everyday. Miss Lovelace, my primary teacher, was a kind young woman who greeted us each day with a smile that I realized years later belied saintly patience with 23 five-year olds, not all of whom relished the kindergarten experience as much as I did. My crayoned artwork showed beatific expressions on kittens, birds and Mr. Sun in the sky as well as on the stick figures I crafted to represent myself and my family and friends.

I smiled as I sang in the music festival, took part in the school plays, and went off to summer camp for two weeks every summer. I used a warm beaming countenance very genuinely for most encounters with everyone unless I was under some threat of danger or too sad or disappointed to produce even a fake one. My grandfather, always singing, serenaded me with "Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella", "Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag (and Smile, Smile, Smile!)" and the First World War song that went:

Smile the while you kiss me sad adieu 
When the clouds roll by I'll come to you. 
Then the skies will seem more blue, 
Down in Lover's Lane, my dearie.

Wedding bells will ring so merrily 
Ev'ry tear will be a memory. 
So wait and pray each night for me 
Till we meet again. . .

and later became the closing theme song of Don Messer's Jubilee

on Saturday nights on CBC.

Then along came the late sixties and the goofy yellow happy face "smiley" that lives on in the form of an internet icon. I had a huge pin-on button that I carried pinned to my enormous handbag like a beacon. One older guy who played in a band, lit up every time he saw me and nicknamed me "Smiley". He probably thought I was constantly high, but that was just my natural demeanour.

For thirty plus years teaching high school I smiled at new class after  class as we got to know each other, tried each other out, coaxed reluctant learners to "just try". Sure, there were times when my smile had to be more subdued in order to convey my seriousness and that I was not going to brook any insurrection, but it was easy to smile more often than not. It was work I did with such love and passion. 

In my final few years of teaching, one of my students with high-functioning autism said something profound to me. Facial expressions can be a hard read for someone with autism, but a smile is taught to be a very concrete indication of pleasure or happiness. "Miss Smith, you are not happy or pleased with me." "Why do you think I'm not, Devin?" "Because your smile is very small today." He was genuinely worried that the degree of smile was the measure of how well he was behaving.

I look around so much more at people's faces than I once did. How many of them go through their own days with serious faces, or worse, ones with near grimaces of worry, pain, disappointment or anger. How has it happened that they seem so consumed, troubled and sad? When was the last time they felt liked smiling? Some might think me an idiot, but if I can catch his eye, I give a big smile. Some avert their gaze. Some immediately look away. But a few, genuinely surprised, smile back. I don't care if I look like a fool, I will never underestimate the power of a smile.

Update

First things first. 


My new medication, eating regime and activity has resulted in very encouraging progress. Since my last post, I have lost 12 pounds and my blood sugar has come down to normal values. I feel energized and well, and would encourage anyone who is struggling with the progression of Type 2 diabetes to ask their family physician if Victoza might be an appropriate option for their care.


Life's too short to feel unwell!

Growing and learning . . .

I have started at least nine blog posts since I last published one. I have kept them all in draft form, tucked away for another day if they suit how I'm feeling at any given moment, but they weren't really what I felt like throwing out here to all and sundry at the time.


To be quite truthful, this has been a month of keen introspection about matters of my personal health. I'm fine. No need to jump to any conclusions at all. People close to me know that I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in early 2003 at age 49 and that I managed, through diet and activity to remain medication free until almost 2005. The threats of blindness, renal failure or amputation are enough to keep even the most avid food lover on a reasonable path of self-care. 


I confess, the unfairness of this disease was most bitterly ironic for me. I simply love breads, cookies, cake, pasta, and all other manner of carb-laden things. If it says caramel, toffee or butterscotch, I must have it. So I snivelled for a few days when I was diagnosed, then looked at the bigger picture. I wasn't a child being diagnosed with Type 1 who would be insulin-dependent all his life. I wasn't being told that I had a terminal illness with treatment that would make me sick while curing me. No. I was a Type 2 diabetic and I could take charge.


I lost 25 pounds and kept it off for a few years. I walked and exercised. My blood sugar numbers stayed in the healthy range and I felt great. When there were temptations of a food nature, I would have the tiniest taste, always asking, if there was choice, "Which one of those things is really worth me having a bit of?" 


Life was smooth and work was not stressful for the next few years, and I occasionally lost sight of the fact that I had diabetes because I continued to feel so well. At home we had gotten rid of junk food entirely, so the options for a snack around here were safe and sane - some raw almonds, fresh fruit or veg, whole grains, etc.


I was on medication, but only a preventative dose in 2007, when my sugars began to creep up marginally. I picked up the exercise some but soon got lazy. I went to the doctor and we revisited my three-month A1C levels, which were rising in tiny increments. "This disease is progressive, Cate. As we age, the same care-taking will not produce the same results and the pancreatic function needs some help." I took the new prescription and re-doubled my efforts to make good choices and move around more. All was well.


In June 2008, I retired after 32 years of teaching and plunged headlong into my new life with my wife, my dog, my gardens, our home renovations and my sugars stayed fine. We travelled, socialized, entertained as before. I was taking care of myself, mentally, physically and spiritually, and doing it on my time schedule - what a heady experience. 


Fast forward to autumn 2010. My weight had crept up seven pounds over the summer, and when the phlebologist came to take my blood in October, I was nervous about my numbers. I was right to be. Nothing drastic had made them jump, but there it was on paper. Up two points. Christmas? It's an emotional time; I gave up control for two weeks and ate a little of everything. January, with steely resolve, I began to eliminate all temptation and get on track, successfully for three months. But suddenly I was having hypoglycemic lows in the daytime where I never had before. Doctor suggested we drop one medication med and look at another. I was not even hungry during our Mexican vacation week, and lost 3 pounds while we were away. Surely, that was going to make things better?


I had blood work on April 9, and my doctor's office called me right away. There had been a major jump in my sugars and triglycerides. No wonder I was feeling so awful, even after a restful and happy holiday. "Cate," said the nurse practitioner, "It is progressing again. You're going to be 58 in August. Your pancreas needs help to do what it did on its own nine years ago." 


I'm a realistic woman. I wanted to know what my options were.


Two weeks later, and I have been trying a newly approved (two years) injectable, non-insulin medication called Victoza. It is working. My sugars are coming down and I am feeling much better. Initially, its side effects were not so pleasant and I was terribly nauseated for five days or so. I am losing weight because my appetite is diminished, but able to have small meals and portions all day long. My energy to walk with the dogs and work in the yard and garden is back. 


I do not feel defeated or as if my body has let me down. With this new, effective drug, I actually feel empowered to live well and healthily each day. I have such a wonderful life with Julie, Quin and the rest of my family. I want to have many more years to see and do the travelling and living each day that keep me so happy. Wish me well, won't you?

Even words take vacations . . .

Hey. I missed you, words. For the past month, I have been wrapped up almost totally in others' printed pages, lovingly savouring each phrase and sentence, digesting the images and sensations delivered by the careful placement of each piece into a passage. As much as I love carefully crafting prose, there is nothing more satisfying than reading and recognizing descriptions and unwinding the narrative from the pens and keyboards of those who also play with and earn their livings from words.


How nice of you to wait for me, words. I didn't have writer's block. My muse did not desert me. Indeed I wrote every day of the week we were in Mexico on holiday, finding much happiness in securing a little spot of shade under a palm tree near the pool and bar with a table at which to scribble away on the lazy mornings when the others went to town or strolled the beach. I more than exercised the depths of my creative self there, so the break as it were has come since returning.


It's not that I have been avoiding you. There are other things to do even when what I'd prefer is to play with you, words. It's a mixture of obligation and regret that have kept me away, for if I can't stay long enough to really let myself create, I might as well be occupied otherwise. It's not procrastination either. With you, at least for now, there are no looming deadlines or sputtering editors demanding rewrites. You are my forgiving, tolerant friends.


Words. I have missed you.

Mindful thinking

What a week it has been in my world, one of false dichotomies, joy and sorrow, birth and death. At times such as these, I am glad I am not a black and white thinker. 


Wednesday I watched in amazement as my lovely Springer Spaniel Feebee gave birth to six tiny puppies. The next day the earth trembled and the movement gave rise to a huge tsunami affecting the north eastern part of Japan and taking countless lives. 


As separate as these events are, in essence they serve to emphasize what we as humans can sometimes forget -- this is life. It is all part of the continuum we find ourselves in from the moment we take our first shivering breath to the instant when our breaths cease. And as miraculous as it was to see these wriggling, sightless creatures emerge from their mother dog, so too was observing the live video from the air above the Sendai airport and the coastline of Miyagi prefecture depicting small aircraft strewn about like model ones and ships banging around and into each other while the wave of furious water demolished homes, cars and roads in its path.


Destruction like that, a miracle? Not in the sense of having a beneficent effect in its wrath, but rather that it was not worse. One can argue that such a seemingly merciless occurrence which has ravaged so many lives can have no positive effect going forward, but that is an example of how humans tend to think in such extremes. Was it horrific to watch and think about the people who were killed by this natural force? Yes. Sad? Unspeakably, yes. Did the world end? No. We humans are resilient; we rebuild and go on.


Life began for six small puppies, much-wanted and from parent dogs whose breeding is such that their offspring will be lovely, even-tempered adults dogs one day. Feebee as a first time mother didn't know what was happening as her contractions got serious and the first puppy was pushed from her body. She yelped and barked with pain, but then as soon as she smelled the wet warmth of this moments old male pup, she began to lick him and clean him with vigor. She nosed him to her side and he blindly squirmed to a nipple, latched on and sucked for all he was worth. I can't describe the surge of feeling I felt for her, the mother and for the five other babies as they eventually made their way into the world. Pride. Love. Compassion. 


Many people routinely engage in such either/or, black and white thinking. They feel boundless optimism when things are going well. They can just as quickly sink into total despair with the first setback. For them, things and people are all good or all bad.


We would do well to move more towards more of the dialectical style of thinking subscribed to by many Asian cultures. In the words of the Buddha himself, " We are what we think, all that arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world."

On giving it to the universe

I am not in control.


It took me many years of pretending that I was to be able to utter those words aloud, an admission that was both terrifying and freeing at the same time. I could not make the world a perfect place, I was powerless to change other people, and I could not slow down time. Accepting this reality made me freeze up at first, then it allowed me to breathe again. How long had I been holding my breath? How long had my racing thoughts and plans kept me from living in the moment? 


I was into my early thirties before I felt safe enough to allow meditation and mindfulness to be the way I lived each day. Anxiety always lurked just below the surface in most of my decisions despite others' reassurances of my capabilities, intelligence and strength. As a daughter, sister, wife, new mother, and full-time teacher, I carried no heavier load then most young women had done for centuries, but I fought daily to keep every ball in the air and make it look easy. I could plan the best dinners, create lesson plans each day to keep my students engaged, serve on the board of directors of the womens' shelter, deal with my then husband's sporadic employment, interact with and love my baby. What was different about my life then? I thought I was in control. I did not allow the thought of failing at any one of these things to enter my mind. Then my father died suddenly at age 55. My marriage began to decay. I needed to start over as a single mom. My inability to orchestrate life manifested itself in severe panic attacks.

Science is able to document this phenomenon very well - anxiety causes the brain to produce too much cortisol which sends the body into evolutionary survival, fight or flight mode. Your heart pounds, the blood leaves the extremities to go to the organs preparing you for battle, your mouth is dry, your breathing accelerated - yes, you're pretty sure you must be dying or losing your mind. It didn't take me too many of those experiences to realize that a) I was trying too hard to be perfect, b) that once I described this, I found out many people experienced panic attacks and that I wasn't crazy, and c) there were ways to avoid feeling that way, both via medications and by changing the way I was over-thinking and fretting about every part of my life.


Enter (or should I say re-enter?) breathing. I had learned to breathe properly many times over - to project my voice on stage when acting, speaking or singing, in pre-natal classes for labour, for relaxing before sleep. Such a simple thing was easy to forget when life seemed to be smothering you.

In all my reading and study of Buddhism were the seeds of what I had been missing as it applied to living better and with less fear, and that was the concept of impermanence. In fact it is one of the three marks of existence in Buddhist philosophy, though not an easy one for the western mind to embrace. Great thinkers from many traditions have written about the continuous state of flux that life holds, in words far more eloquent than I. It simplifies down to this: Nothing lasts forever. Nothing good or bad. Somehow, once I meditated on that belief, everything seemed a lot easier to deal with.  No human being has control over the process of growing old, of not falling sick, of dying, of decay of things that are perishable and of the passing away of that which is liable to pass, including joy and sorrow and every emotion in between.

Sure, I still worry and find myself obsessing over some things, but it is much simpler and less anxiety-provoking to release problematic people, situations and material things than it once was. All of us are continuously becoming. I try to remain mindful and in the moment, and to give it to the universe. It never was mine to control.

A longing . . .

My eyes open and I'm momentarily suspended in an amorphous semi-fog between sleep and consciousness. I blink a few times, letting in the dim light and the shapes in the bedroom -- windows, mirror, lamp on the night table. Turning my head to the left I see the comforting form of my sleeping wife, her head almost hidden by the fluffy down duvet, her small shoulders angled to the bed as she coaxes more slumber from the night. It is not time for her alarm yet.


My tears surprise me for a second or two and then I remember. I was dreaming and now I am awake and I wanted that dream to be real and it isn't and . . . my thoughts run together like watercolours in the rain . . . I sigh so deeply that I am afraid I will wake Julie. Instinctively, I reach for Gabi, stretched full length along my side, and tangle my fingers into the ruff of wavy fur on her elegant neck, as she sighs, too. My dog is real.


What I dreamed is not.


She comes to me often this way, my mother. The situations are so mundane, so everyday, as if her death almost twelve years had not interrupted us. In these dreams the flow of life continues, and we are planning, preparing for something. Sometimes we are travelling together in car, listening to the radio and singing along as we always did, our two blonde heads thrown back, only now I am driving, not her. Sometimes we are arriving at a place so familiar to us both, excited to be here and to see who's waiting for us there. She  always urges me to enter first and when I do, I find that it is not the place as we remembered it; there is neglect and decay. No one we know is there anymore and I go back to her to tell her this, but she has gone, too. I do not search for her.


I look so much like her. In dreams, she is eternally her sixty-ish self, hair done, lipstick on, wearing the shades of coral and camel and chocolate brown that looked so great on her. There is no hint of illness, no sign of the ravages of cancer that would consume her body. She smiles and hugs, smiles and makes tea, smiles and loves me. 


The dreams are not always so sadness-provoking. We have funny adventures that only she and I would ever see the humour in. We play little practical jokes on my brothers and giggle as we watch them fall for them. Sometimes all her grandchildren are babies again, somehow all one year of age - Luke, Quin, Lauren, Duncan, Angus, Peter, Amy . . . even Nolan and Zoe, who came after she was gone - and in her (now my) living room. She and I are on the floor, building block towers with them until they are crawling all over us with squeals of delight and drool. I wake from dreams like this with pure sunshine in my being and a sense that all is well.


As long as she lived my mother let me snuggle into her, from times when I was small and scared, through my teens years when we would share the den couch watching TV, her leaning back on her side with legs extended, me behind her legs, my head on her hip. I did that until I was forty-five years old, cuddled into her warmth. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we just were. I remember her hands and fingers, oval nails and flawless skin as I played my own fingers through hers. 


That's where I was this morning before my eyes opened. And my tears won't stop until they do . . .

I love this place . . .

"Cold enough for ya, Tina?"


The blonde waitress in her forties, not new at her vocation, has heard this a million and three times yet she cheerily replies, "I know! That wind is just bitter! You having coffee tonight, hon?"
She is speaking to the man of the couple who have just shuffled in, the woman larger and bulkier using a cane as she navigates the tight space in the tiny restaurant, her leg bandaged and swollen from diabetic complications she tells the waitress.


Julie points out that the man is wearing wool pants that look to be about a 1940s vintage and I surmise that with long johns underneath they are likely to give as much warmth as some of our modern outdoors fabrics. He removes his cap and the two of them don't even glance at the menu. They know it by heart. It's Saturday night and the special is -- you guessed it -- baked beans, brown bread and fishcakes. She wants that; he wants clams and chips.


We are probably the youngest people in the little place when we arrive, and it was no doubt packed by five o'clock when the seniors seem to prefer dinner. There is a sea of silver hair, mostly couples, enjoying the delicious fare that Vicki's is known for -- deep golden fried fish and hand-cut Yukon Gold french fries. Each little booth and table, well-worn from being scrubbed clean between customers, holds a squirt bottle of Heinz ketchup, salt and pepper, sugar packets, and napkin dispenser and two types of vinegar, white and malt, the latter much favoured by fish 'n chips afficionados.


I catch the cook's eye in the little pass-through window between the kitchen and the eating areas. He's a sandy-haired man in his thirties who with a nod and a grin shows no sign of the weariness  and boredom of many short-order cooks. The other waitress, Sally, shouts "Order up!" so that her voice can be heard above the bubbling oil and sizzling burgers on the grill. I muse, who'd eat a burger in a seafood restaurant? Give me the ocean harvest any day.


We know what we want as well. It's been almost a year since we've been to Vicki's and our mouths are watering for it. We will split the  enormous seafood platter and have some onion rings. We order tea and water and watch and listen to the hum of the Saturday night clientele's voices, catching tidbits of their lives.


"Insurance fella told me, he says, not to set foot on your own roof to shovel snow and ice off. No, sir. You do that and you're as good as throwin' your policy away. If you damage your shingles or hurt yourself, they won't pay! You hire yourself one of them fellas who does it for a livin', he messes up, and you're good to go."


" . . . no, dear, you had pie for lunch. You don't need pie on top of a three piece fish and chips . . ."


"ORDER UP!"


Our food arrives and she brings the extra plate so we can divvy up the delectable platter of haddock, scallops, shrimp, clams, french fries, every morsel hot, crisp and golden. There's tartar sauce and cole slaw made on site and a tangy horseradish cocktail sauce for the shrimp. The onion rings are perfect circles of savoury crunch -- aah! We begin in earnest, but soon find that, even divided, this is a lot of food, and we slow to a halt with bits left. Just room for tea, although we see the servers passing  by with coconut cream and banana chocolate pie. Who honestly eats an entire seafood platter all on their own?


"Yours is on the house," Sally says to a white-haired gent sitting in the booth near us with his wife. He's pleased as punch as she and Tina begin . . . Happy Birthday to youu . . . . then, it happens. Voices from every table in the place chime in and we are all singing to . . . Happy Birthday, dear Bu-ud . . . and a rousing final line from everyone in the whole restaurant.


I just don't think that happens in big cities.

I want a new dress.

"Tell me the truth. Unvarnished, not sugar-coated. Can I wear this?"
That's what I say when what I mean is, "Does it make me look like: a. I have no ass, b. I'm a sphere with two sticks stuck in it for legs, or c. I'm five months pregnant?"


As a woman I want to look good. Not just presentable, good. I don't call it vanity really, but that may be just a rationalization as vanity has not historically been seen as a virtue, right Narcissus? Oh, all right. I take pride in my appearance and come by it honestly. My late mother role-modeled this in her care of herself, and of me as her only daughter. 


Does this mean that I won't be seen in anything but designer labels? Ha. Hardly. The pieces I do have, I didn't pay full price for, that you can depend on! Long have I extolled the virtues of Winners, TJ Maxx and shopping from catalogues and online. In my working days, when it seems I had need of more varied attire, finds from great labels like Ann Taylor, Jones New York and the like could be unearthed on a good rainy day dig at Frenchy's. (Did I tell you about the time I got a perfect London Fog trench and found a glorious pure silk Liberty scarf wadded up in the pocket? Bonus.)
In my closet is a mishmash of all sorts of apparel.


Still, things have to fit. They have to hang properly. And look good.


I am both cursed and blessed in having inherited my mother's body type. And the gene pool goes back several generations I can tell from looking at photographs of my great grandmother Mary Josephine Lawrence. We have large rib cages, full breasts, no actual waistline per se, narrow hips, and not fleshy posteriors. Our arms are average and our legs, slim and shapely, toned and tight.

I am an apple as opposed to a pear who carries her weight more in the hips, behind and thighs.


Ay, there's the rub. Women's clothing, and dresses in particular, seems to be designed in only two ways –– for the hourglass figure, with a defined bust, waist and hips, or for the slender boyish figure with none of the above. Big deal, you say. How often do you wear dresses, Cate? Rarely, but I'd wear them much more if I knew what looked good on me. 


Saleswomen lie, acquaintances are wishy-washy ("Well, maybe without the belt"), and friends don't want to hurt your feelings, but tact can come out sounding a lot like condescension. My wife, God love her, will be truthful, and I love her for it. ("Too poufy. Not long enough. Pulls across your boobs.")


I want a new dress to wear out to dinner when we're in Mexico next month. Anyone want to come shopping?

Say it like you mean it.

You've all seen my bracelet. You know with what pride and commitment I wear it. I love it when someone takes hold of my wrist to admire what they suppose is just a silver bangle and then I tell them to take a closer look. Usually it takes them a few moments as they first squint, then blink, then look at me as if to say does it say what I think it says? Yes, it does.

Fuck cancer.

And this morning, I have yet another person to wear it for. I silently touch the cool metal and say her name in my heart. An ocean away she is having a mastectomy today to remove her left breast and, may it please the universe, every trace of malignancy. Please.

The list of names of family members and friends who have or had cancer keeps growing. Some have remarkable success stories to revel in, but they are too few. And so, I donate in their cherished memories to The Canadian Cancer Society, I participate and fundraise for the CIBC Run for the Cure, I support Movember to raise awareness of prostate cancer, and have my mammogram and check ups faithfully. 

There's a public service announcement airing on TV from a website called www.getscreenednovascotia.ca with a little mocking voice emanating from a tiny, moving dot on the screen saying You can't find me in that sing-songy way that kids sometimes do. This is in an effort to get Nova Scotians to get screened regularly for cancers in the breast, colon, and cervix for which early detection most often means survival. But how many actually do?

So many forms of cancer are just too silent, so that by the time the person is symptomatic and goes to see a doctor, the tumours are already well-established and there are often metastases elsewhere. Ovarian cancer is just such a ‘silent killer’; it took my beloved mother in her sixty-eighth year. And it was only a blood test that showed a slight rise in his PSA level that gave my brother the impetus to get biopsied. Mark had surgery in October just before his fifty-fifth birthday and is, mercifully, cancer-free today.

In 1988, Julie lost her mother at age 54 to bone cancer that had spread from her breast. Her father lived with prostate cancer for over twenty years although he died from other causes. She has shaved her head and held fundraising events at her workplace for the Run for the Cure for several years. 

Cancer makes me so angry. It spares no one. Age doesn’t matter. Babies and children get sick and are put through excruciating treatments in hopes of gaining more years in which to live healthy lives. How do pediatric oncologists do it? I wonder.

Meanwhile, I wear my bracelet every single day. FUCK CANCER.

And I say out loud so many names: Alice. Anne. Louise. Yvonne. Garnie. Lois. Marj. Paul. Marie. Isaac. Amanda. Elias. Kate. Dale. Marion. Sharon. Mark. Kimberley. Ivan. Alexander. Mrs. O’Brien. Millie. Laura. Gwen. Dorothy. Ben. Ena. Jane. . . . and Mary Lynn.

Fuck cancer.

Never fails, does it?

It's Friday, a weekend, or better yet, a holiday. It's as if my immune system says, no way she can get in to see her family doctor now, and emerg will be a nightmare. No triage nurse in his right mind will let her be seen before Massive Head Wound Harry who got beaten over the head with a beer bottle outside The Stone Room Lounge in broad daylight. Better yet, I'm in Halifax at my son's apartment this time.


It's a stealth attack every time. There's no sense of impending doom, mild scratch or tickle. I awake, blink my eyes a few times, and try to swallow. Operative word: try. I cannot produce the necessary motion without a groan and not only does this hurt, it feels like there is no opening in my throat anymore. It's as if the pharyngeal tissues were two loaves of bread dough that have risen and overflowed the pans and now touch! This is not good.


I say to Quin in his sleeping bag in the living room (he always does the gentlemanly thing and gives me his room), "My throat is so swollen." 
"Take a drink, Mom," he says. "Have an Advil, too."


Water helps things a tiny bit and at least encourages the saliva to start up and assist. I'm not dying or anything remotely like that, yet my first thought is to immediately default in my brain past tonsillitis (yes, I still have them at 57), past pharyngitis, laryngitis and other -itises, directly to strep throat. I've only been treated once in my entire life for strep throat, but I could swear, this is exactly how I felt with it.

But it's Friday. I'm driving back to the valley now. How am I going to get it looked at, or get a swab done to be cultured on a weekend?
Feeling defeated before I even try, I drink my Venti Starbucks as I drive and realize that I also have a runny nose, headache and sensitive eyes. Good thing I have sunglasses as the sun on all the snow along the 101 hurts to look at.


I am a terrible patient. I self-diagnose and believe the voice in my head that insists that I must have a streptococcal infection. Then I remember that I might have a refill left from the erythromycin I was prescribed last spring for a sinus infection. I pull into the driveway and am phoning the pharmacy in minutes.

"Yes, Cate; there are two refills on that. Fill it? Great. When will you want to pick it up?"


I go upstairs with some herbal tea and lie down on the bed, two Springer spaniels' soft brown eyes regarding me with sympathy. I'm just nodding off when my brother Mark calls, and I explain my state.


"Don't start that stuff, you don't know what you've got!" 
I love this man, and he is a vet, but I swear I can feel those little strep bacteria multiplying. "Don't self-medicate."


My friend Todd calls later. 
"Call your doctor."
He's American. I explain that at four-thirty on a Friday afternoon, my doctor's office isn't even taking calls. And that I really don't feel sick enough to go sit at outpatients with all the really sick people.


By this time, Julie is home with the meds which I leave in their bag on the counter. I pick at my dinner. She watches me and says, "I don't think you should take anything until you get your throat looked at and swabbed."


So now it's Saturday and I feel like hell, although writing this has kept my mind off how sore my muscles are. And the erythromycin? No, I didn't take it. Probably wouldn't be smart.


I'll make do with ibuprofen, soup and tea. Argh.

Clothes don't make the (wo)man . . .

I opened my eyes following a little power snooze during Dr. Oz today and was startled into laughter by my own attire. Yes, I laughed out loud. Bear in mind that this show airs between one and two on weekday afternoons and that most civilized folk are fully dressed at this hour in clothing they wouldn’t mind being seen in by all and sundry. Now understand that I am a happily retired woman over 55 whose spouse is at work and who occasionally chooses to remain in comfy clothes until Julie returns at 5:45 p.m.

What if someone comes to the door you ask? I hide. Yes, hide. I keep all the doors locked anyway. I pretend not to be here. The dogs will bark obligingly, but I will not come to the door.

Comfy clothes sometimes means not very many clothes. (Fake blush.) Hey! It’s my home, my fortress, my domain. On major cleaning days it makes little sense for me to get up, get dressed, get myself and clothes all dirty, then shower and change. So I do housework in my nightgown. Or less.

Okay, okay. Mostly I do this on the second floor only where there are no windows without shades or curtains. Relax. The cats and dogs don’t care, so why should you? For the first floor tasks, I will don a t-shirt and yoga pants. And sometimes I’ll even coordinate them if I know the UPS man is coming or I’ve called for someone to come fix the front door lever assembly.

Many days, however, when no such interruptions are expected, I grab what’s closest with little or no regard for anything except its warmth and coverage value. And that’s what cracked me up when I opened my eyes from my little nap earlier. I was wearing my grey t-shirt with the screen-printed aqua, red, lime green, coral, black and yellow Travel Tarts in Mexico logo; a pair of fuzzy fleece pj pants in a lovely pea-green and black check with little dogs all over, and my eggplant-hued slippers. As if that were not a sufficiently rude assault on the eyes, I was wrapped in my silky faux-leopard throw. I looked like Frenchy’s had mated with Animal Kingdom.

People who know me well don’t drop by unannounced. They know better. You can try it, but I won’t answer. I’ll be upstairs laughing at my get-up.

How did they manage?

I am sitting here listening to the soft hum of the dryer going downstairs in the laundry room and recalling a conversation with my dear aunt Freda and cousin Lynda on Monday of this week. We've decided how important it is for us to get together more to record the bits of our family history before no one is here to tell how it was in her coming of age days. Sadly, my own mother, the eldest of three girls, died in 1999 at age 67, and the youngest, Lois died in the summer of 2008 at age 72. With them went parts of the story except for what we remembered, sometimes accurately and  sometimes vaguely, depending on how interesting it seemed to the listener.


In my thirties, I was keen to take notes from my grandparents' tales of their own childhoods and teen years, growing up in Hants County from births in 1910, and 1911. Through the years of WWI, the twenties, marriage in 1930 and onward. How happy I am that I wrote down as much as I did. Nothing gives a stronger sense of how historical bias and revisionism happens then trying to piece together the whys and hows of your own family story.


Back to Monday, however.  Over tea and cake with lemon filling, Freda shared with us some notes she had begun writing of her earliest memories of life in Morden, then moving down into the valley to Aylesford when her father went to sea in the merchant navy in 1940. Even before her husband went away on ships, our grandmother as a young wife had to be resourceful and was absolutely insistent, no matter how little they had, that her family be comfortable and presentable. Much emphasis, then, was placed on having clean laundry.

Hauling well water to be heated if there was no indoor pump was normal for her. The washtub and scrub board with homemade lye soap and later Sunlight occupied many of her days, as grandfather's clothes from the sawmill or cranberry bog got very dirty. How hard this must have been on the hands of countless women who toiled and scrubbed their family's laundry clean! Not just shirts and pants, but sheets and quilts and heavy outer clothing. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.


No wonder my aunt's face lit up when she told of the luxury of them owning a machine when they moved down the mountain! I actually remember this behemoth which stood in Nana's kitchen corner, silent and hulking, until laundry day. It was electric with mysterious levers and rollers and on "the day" we were cautioned to keep fingers away and be scarce.

On fine breezy days, baskets of wet things were taken out the back door and hung to flap dry on crisscrossed clotheslines all over the back yard. All I could see sometimes were my grandmother's feet several rows over as she hung piece after piece up with wooden pins. In winter or on rainy days there was an apparatus in the kitchen which could be lowered to hang clothes on, then raised by a pulley-system to dry over the woodstove's heat.

Gaaaah! So much lugging and scrubbing, and wringing, draining, rinsing, wringing. And I haven't even mentioned the ironing.


I count myself so lucky to have been born in the fifties and to have had the true ease of automatic laundry appliances all of my life. Still, there is something so comforting about the smell of clothing dried on a line in fresh valley air that nothing can replace.


Thank you Great-Gram, Nana, and all my foremothers. I don't know how you did it.