Tag Archives: gratitude

Time travel

Monday

It’s a travel day, and I’m at the airport by 5:30 a.m., on the airplane before 7. The plane is half-empty, which never seems to happen these days, and it’s glorious. There’s nobody next to me and I sprawl. Glorious.

I take the awkward “on the plane but no laptops” time to read a Simon Brett book – one of his newer ones, Guilt at the Garage, in which the 79-year-old male author’s heroines are mid-50s women. Neither Carole nor Jude are as attractive and fun as Charles Paris – the alcoholic, womanizing, often out of work actor who made Brett famous in the 1980s – but they’re fairly real. The Paris books are maybe politically incorrect now, as is Brett’s Mrs. Pargeter series (in which he writes a late 60s/early 70s heroine, and I don’t think he does this particularly well, but the series has other redeeming features, so I’ve devoured it all anyway). But as stories, as novels – they’re better. This makes me sad, because as a writer who’s occasionally achy in my bones and who sees the spectre of old age creep ever closer – and the possibility of that breakthrough novel creep ever farther – I don’t like evidence that suggests we reach our peak in our 30s or 40s.

Still. Brett is still writing. As am I.

Turbulence is nil so I open up my laptop 35,000 feet above the ground. Ever stop and think how crazy that is? Here, in this crazy time, in this crazy moment, I am in a metal tube above the clouds, hurtling around the globe at 850 km per hour, and while I’m doing this – I’m pulling out my laptop and working. 

I have a couple of workshops to facilitate on my whirlwind trip, and speaking notes for a big event to finalize before the end of day. I’m working on them while sitting in a pretty comfortable seat (thank you, Porter Airlines, please don’t go out of business), flight attendants intermittently bringing me coffee and cookies.

I feel so lucky.

The previous Friday

I’m, I suppose, a seasoned traveller. I’ve spent my childhood on planes. I pack light and I pack quickly. For my Monday morning flight, I pack as soon as I finish Friday’s laundry.

I want to treat myself to a work-free flight, so I start the day aiming to finish all the things before I log off for the day. But I hit my usual afternoon wall of brain fog. I know I have two hours, less, of work left. But it’s two hours of how I function in the morning or early afternoon, not the way I function in the late afternoon or evening. I can finish my work today. But it will mean working until 8 p.m. Maybe 9.

I log off, walk the dog, get Ender a sewing machine, feed the progeny, dress up, go dance with the Hot Dyke Party at the High Performance Rodeo.

I will work on the plane on Monday. I’m so, so lucky.

Earlier that month

It’s not a good day. Focus is hard and loving people is hard. Remembering people exist is hard. My work feels meaningless, the cats shed too much, there’s nothing good to eat in the house, I want a cookie, you’re not here, I want to cry, I can’t write.

Well. I can always write. I can’t write well.

I pull out a notebook and I write badly.

I switch to the laptop and I write some more. Maybe a little less badly. Hard to tell.

Ok, that part, that was actually ok. More like that.

Deep breath. One more scene? No. I’m tapped. I haven’t hit the wall yet but I see it. Today, I can’t deal with the impact.

There’s still nothing good to eat in the house and I still want a cookie. I eat some uninspired leftovers for an undefined mid-afternoon meal and promise to take myself out for dessert in the evening.

Maybe that Thursday, or the one before

She’s also a Simon Brett fan, and she also thinks Charles Paris is the best character Brett has created, although she also likes the de-cluttering series and its heroine, Ellen Curtis. I don’t – Brett tackles mental health issues in that one, and while he does so sensitively enough, I suppose, he doesn’t do it well. It’s all so contrived. And he may well be writing from the heart and from personal experience, I don’t know. I’m reading from the heart and painful personal experience too. It doesn’t ring true.

That’s the challenge of all writing: Can I dip into my darkness and make it real for you?

It’s pretty easy to do with joy. Joy, ecstasy – we can connect on those with almost anyone.

Grief, pain, horror?

We all think we suffer alone, our suffering is unique.

And even though it isn’t, that’s the way it feels. Always.

Sunday afternoon

I pick you up from the airport, and you’re my cookie and my dessert, and the wave of happiness that hits me almost drowns me, I can’t breathe.

(See? Everyone can relate to that. You can celebrate with me. Grieving together, that’s much harder.)

We stop at my house to check on Ender, who is on his third day to becoming a master sewer. I’m astounded by the progress he’s made since we got him the sewing machine on Friday. He’s made, like, pants. Also a toque. But pants! Three pairs – the last one is, he decides, wearable.

Children are astounding.

I look at this human who came out of me – seriously, how weird is this, I grew that thing, I literally made him inside my body and now there he is, coming up on 6 foot 2 and making pants on a sewing machine, how is that possible, how is that real, how is that life?

I feel so lucky.

I hold you tight.

Tomorrow and the day after

I have meetings, workshops, dinners, a full agenda. I’m 3500 kilometres from home and 4200 kilometres away from Flora – this always matters, from Calgary I can be in Vancouver within two hours if I need to be, from Toronto, it’s a harder, longer trip.

I anchor on the page every morning. Good morning and good night texts. Do you have a few minutes to talk? Maybe.

I try to remember that I’m so lucky. I’m here and you’re there and we can still talk. And I’ll be back soon.

In the evenings, after dinner, I curl up on the hotel room bed and pull out the laptop.

I write.

I’m so tired.

xoxo

“Jane”

I’m so lucky.

Rumour has it, spring is coming

i

It’s not depression, I say. It’s February.

You: Baby, it’s March.

Jane: Look outside. It’s February.

The sun is back, though, and the weather forecast promises above weather zero again, so the prognosis looks good. I will probably make it to another spring.

But I’ve got to tell. you, kittens, the amount of energy I expend November through February to make sure I see March is excessive.

Perhaps that’s why I want to be in bed 12 hours a day.

It’s March.

So they say.

I expect I’ll make it.

ii

I’ve actually done ok this winter. Really. Two weeks in Mexico in November saw me through a crappy December. January and February were brutal but I made arrangements. I freebased Vitamin D. I went to the theatre, twice. I danced (twice!). I RSVP’ed to events and usually showed up. I took my sons places and I fed them decent suppers. I even went out for a 1:1 lunch with a friend once, and a walk another time.

I’ve had worse winters.

My best winter ever, though, was the one I spent in Cuba. And I had sun.

It’s true.

I’m basically a plant.

iii

It’s March, you insist, but I still need help ensuring I’ll be here tomorrow. Plans help. I make a list of road trips, activities. I buy plane tickets.

I ponder moving. Maybe next winter, I need a place with bigger windows, better heating.

Somewhere closer to the equator.

It doesn’t feel like March, not yet.

iv

Exercises to remind you life is worth living:

Make a list of all the people who love you (yes, you’re on it).

Make a list of all the things you’re grateful for. Coffee. Books. Butterflies. Cats — when they’re not in heat. Keerist. Why have I not spayed this cat yet?

Don’t read the news. Do’t think about P@lestine, the Sudan, the Congo. Don’t think about what a pathetic First World Loser you are.

Go out for a fancy coffee instead. But not Starbucks.

Go for a walk.

Do not hit the person who suggested you go for a walk. But also, fuck you, I walk to and from work every day, I walk the dog two or three or more times a day, just because you’re so pathetic and inactive a walk seems revolutionary doesn’t mean it’s a cure all, fuck the fuck off with your stupid go for a walk advice, seriously, it’s just a walk, did we not prove over the pandemic that walking around the block is actually NOT all that we need to be happy?

Don’t say that. Choose kindness. Remember, people mean well. Smile a fake smile for two minutes, then take yourself for a solo sheesha date.

Go to John Fluevog and wind show for shoes. Don’t buy any, though, because all the spare cash (what’s that?) in your budget is going to the heating and electricity bill and to bolstering grocery store profits.

Make a list of all the people who love you again.

Turn it into a list of all the people who would come to your funeral.

Plan your funeral.

Make it really good, a combination murder mystery-escape room-dead disco-wake-no one gets out alive kinda thing.

Stop spiralling. Now.

Eat some carbs. Or ice cream.

There’s a new flavour of soft serve — Matcha! — at Luke’s. Go try it.

Oh — carbs with ice cream. Do it.

Try to remember why you stopped drinking and don’t go to buy a bottle of wine.

Go dancing.

Ok, that helped, a little.

Make a list of all the people you haven’t seen lately.

Screenshot

Text one of them.

Make plans.

Don’t cancel them.

Make a list of the people you want to invite to your next birthday.

Tell your cat she’s beautiful.

Buy a new houseplant.

Don’t feel too bad if you kill it within two weeks. Everything dies, everything passes.

This too shall pass, this mood. You know it will.

Have you eaten some carbs?

Ice cream?

v

It’s March. The calendar says it’s March.

We made it, baby, 100%, it’s March.

So they say.

You: It’s March. I promise.

I almost believe it.

I think we made it.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS We made it. We totally made it. It’s March.

Pandemic Diary: Celebrating Canada Day with gratitude, and pain

 

 

i

You are, perhaps, curious as to how my decision to make fewer decisions and to just execute is going. Remain curious—curiosity is what keeps us young. I have, as of yet, nothing to report. One major decision made, but not executed. And the rest of life—not miraculously changed. Still. I am getting out of bed in the morning even though I don’t want to.

Today is Canada Day, and national holidays for immigrants and children of immigrants are a time not so much of patriotism but of reflection and gratitude. I am very grateful that my family landed here when I was ten. I am grateful for the closed border to the United States (sorry, American friends) and free public health care. I am grateful for Flora’s medication, Sean’s dental benefits. Cinder’s job.

Ender’s love.

All the self-help books are right, you know. Gratitude helps. “I am grateful” is a powerful phrase.

I am grateful.

I am an adult Third Culture kid with a twist, which means I was born in one country, spent my formative childhood years in another (three others, actually) and then finally landed in the True North (which I keep on leaving, because, Third Culture kids do that). I am grateful for all of those experiences. They make change and uncertainty the norm.

They normalize that nothing is forever.

Nothing is forever.

Everything passes.

But we celebrate permanence, not transience. You know what I mean? On this July 1, we celebrate 153 years of the apparent permanence of the Canadian Confederation, not its fragility.

Not what it replaced.

ii

I am grateful I am here.

But when I look at the history that brought me here, feeling gratitude gets harder. Am I supposed to be grateful for the 50 years of the Soviet-Communist oppression of my natal land that made my parents’ immigration a survival imperative? The germs-and-gun genocide that effectively cleared the Americas for the first waves of colonizers who established the nation that offered us sanctuary?

When I practice meditation and yoga nidra, I practice a form of intention setting called sankalpa. It’s a fancy Sanskrit name for affirmation—manifestation—intention. (Don’t mock me. You smoke week, she binges on Netflix, I future-plan while breathing in the moment. We all have different coping mechanisms.)

In the yoga nidra practice, before you set the intention, you are supposed to feel nothing but gratitude for all the things that brought you to this moment, this place.

That… instruction has always been a stumbling block for me. And it’s th ekey reason I stopped the practice in 2019. Grateful for my child’s suffering? Grateful for this pain? Fuck you, Buddha and Krishna, and don’t you dare say a word, Jesus, this is why I am an atheist.

Breathe.

I am grateful I am here.

I am grateful I am alive.

I am grateful my daughter is alive.

I am grateful we survived the various really shitty things that life threw at us. In 2020, 2019, earlier.

But grateful for the shitty things? You can take that fatalistic ideology and shove it up your left nostril. Then plug it.

iii

So on this Canada Day—I am grateful I am here.

But I acknowledge that I am here in large part because of terrible historical injustices, driven by foul ideologies.

I am aware of the suffering these have caused. Continue to cause.

I guess I am grateful that I live in a time when we are, as a nation, as a people, becoming aware of the injustice of this suffering, and the need to address it.

Pro-actively, passionately.

At a time when global events (pandemic!) and personal stresses (don’t ask, but you’ve got them too, right?) make it difficult to get out of bed.

I am grateful for this painful awareness.

Happy Canada Day.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS Enjoy this gorgeous rendition of O Canada by Calgary choir Rev 52:

And then–because the world needs more Canada:

Grateful.

But also–committed to change.

“You are amazing”—you are partly right

The nurses tells me, “You guys are amazing.” It’s 9, 10 am in the morning and we’ve been in the hospital for almost 12 hours—we will be there another 48 before being transferred to another hospital. I have just lived through the hardest night of my life. I do not feel amazing. I feel like something the cat dragged in, chewed up, swallowed, then puked up, and stomped on.

Compliments in crisis are hard to take. You don’t really have the capacity respond to them with a simple, “Thank you.” Also, I think, they invite self-reflection at a time when you can’t really afford it, because it goes from “Fuck, yeah, I’m amazing!” to “No. No, I’m not. How did I let things get this bad, how did I not recognize the symptoms, why did I not act earlier?” in microseconds.

“I sure as fuck don’t feel amazing,” I tell the nurse and she tries to reassure me how amazing indeed I am, by comparing me, favourably, with the scores of un-amazing parents she’s seen. I understand those parents completely. I stand with them, not apart from them. I too am a mess, helpless, indignant, in denial, frustrated, angry, so angry.

Apparently, I just hide it better.

My mom tells me I’m amazing too, all the time, and I finally tell her she needs to fucking stop. I tell you the same thing, and you’re hurt. You’re trying to reflect something good and beautiful at me, you’re trying—you say to me—to acknowledge what I’m doing and going through. My courage, my commitment, bla bla bla, stop talking, for the love of God, stop talking now. I get your intention, but you make me feel like you are acknowledging a lie, encouraging a facade, and preventing me from telling you how hard things are, how unhappy I am.

I am not, by the way, unhappy today. This is a happy moment—me, coffee, notebook, pen. The sun is shining—yesterday was a good day—today, I might start on our 2018 taxes, the process interrupted in March—I’m going to make a list of new publishers to query for that book—this is a happy moment and nothing that happens later will take this moment away from me.

Him: Meditation or marijuana?

Jane: Neither. I’m writing. Do you understand?

I’ve been trying to figure out, for months now, what the right thing to say to someone who’s suffering is. And I think Thich Nhat Hahn nailed it:

 “I know you’re suffering, and I’m here for you.”

Nothing more—we really can’t hear anything else.

I have many good friends and when things were at their worst and Flora was in the hospital, I got a lot of “What can I do to help?” “Anything you need, just ask” texts. So I can tell you all this—the next time a friend of yours is in crisis, do this: bring them soup, make up a care package of chocolate, break into their house and do the dishes and clean the bathroom, hire a maid, drop off non-perishable groceries. If you are making an offer that requires making a decision, make it very, very specific: “I will come by your house on Tuesday at 4 pm to take Ender to the zoo, so you can go to the hospital for the night.” “I am going to Superstore on Sunday, and I’ll pick up groceries for you. Don’t worry about a list—I know what you need.” (Non-perishables, frozen prepared meals, and snacks. People in crisis do not make salads, roasted vegetables, or risotto. Finding a can opener is hard enough.)

Asking, “What can I do to help?” turns me into your project manager. And, in crisis, I cannot do that. Project management requires high executive skills. People in crisis have a hard time showering.

Him: Ungrateful much?

Jane: Ah, good point. Why do you want to help me, exactly? Because you want to alleviate my suffering—or because you want me to feel grateful to you? Or because you want to feel good that you’re the sort of person who helps? Motivation matters, and my crisis is not a feel-good opportunity for you. My deep gratitude practice notwithstanding, if you want to help me because you want me to feel grateful, you can take your help and shove it up your ass without the aid of lube.

By the way, Ender and I celebrated the end of his easy illness by spending $800 at Costco on all the things, so don’t buy me groceries. We never have to go shopping again.

Cinder: You do know how much I eat, right?

Jane: Hush. Let me enjoy, for a few more days, the illusion that I’ve just taken down a mammoth, and the village has more than enough meat to see it through the winter. I mean, summer.

Cinder: You’re so weird.

Speaking of weird—Thich Nhat Hahn (yes, he’s weird—I expect to be that woo-woo and spiritual, you have to be—it just isn’t normal to be that compassionate and loving and insightful), he says, when you tell me, “You’re amazing,” what I should say is, “You’re partly right.” And he’s a wise egg, so I’m going to try that. Shall we practice?

You: You’re amazing.

Jane: You’re partly right. Mostly, I’m a fucking mess but I’m doing my best. Most of the time. Sometimes, I just lie there and wish this was the sort of crisis one could call the fire department for. Do you remember, during the flood, all those firefighters? Yum. That’s what I need now. Not a team of six—I won’t be greedy. Three will do. And they will say, “Are you all right? Do you need anything heavy moved? Do you need a taxpayer-funded, first-respondents-in-uniform, gorgeous-humans-who-work-out-all-the-time-in-uniform hug?”

You: You’re so weird.

Jane: You’re partly right. I’m also very normal. And, amazing.

xoxo

Jane

The summer was… SULTRY (Week 25: Gratitude And Collapse)

This week was too full and intense to be documented; in any event, it mostly belongs to the other Jane. But here is an homage to my heroines:

Thank you, my darlings.

“Jane”

2018

The year started with a Monday; so does every week (Week 1: Transitions and Intentions)

Easier than you think, harder than I expected: a week in eleven stanzas (Week 2: Goodness and Selfishness)

A moody story (Week 3: Ebb and Flow)

Do it full out (Week 4: Passions and Outcomes)

The Buddha was a psychopath and other heresies (Week 5: No Cohesion)

A good week (Week 6: Execute, Regroup)

Killing it (Week 7: Exhaustion and Adrenaline)

Tired, petty, tired, unimportant (Week 8: Disappointment and Perseverance)

Professionals do it like this: [insert key scene here] (Week 9: Battle, Fatigue, Reward)

Reading Nabokov, crying, whining, regrouping (Week 10: Tears and Dreams)

Shake the Disease (Week 11: Sickness and Health… well, mostly sickness)

Cremation, not embalming, but I think I might live after all (Week 12: Angst and Gratitude)

Let’s pretend it all does have meaning (Week 13: Convalescence and Rebirth)

The cage is will, the lock is discipline (Week 14: Up and Down)

My negotiated self thinks you don’t exist–wanna make something of it? (Week 15: Priorities and Opportunity)

An introvert’s submission + radical prioritization in action, also pouting (Week 16: Ruthless and Weepy)

It’s about a radical, sustainable rhythm (Week 17: Sprinting and Napping)

It was a pickle juice waterfall but no bread was really harmed in the process (Week 18: Happy and Sad)

You probably shouldn’t call your teacher bad names, but sometimes, your mother must (Week 19: Excitement and Exhaustion)

Tell me I’m beautiful and feed me cherries (Week 20: Excitement and Exhaustion II)

A very short post about miracles, censorship, change: Week 21 (Transitions and Celebrations)

Time flies, and so does butter (Week 22: Remembering and forgetting)

I love you, I want you, I need you, I can’t find you (Week 23: Work and Rest)

You don’t understand—you can’t treat my father’s daughter this way (Week 24: Fathers and Daughters)

—->>>POSTCARDS FROM CUBA

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Time, Magic Lessons, Hitchhiking & Silence: an only slightly annoying meditation

For… um, I’m sorry, I never asked your name. Travel safe.

I.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. How about yours?

How do you feel about me throwing that cliche at you? Are you embracing it joyously—are you filled with the desire to use PicMonkey or equivalent to turn it into an Insta-Graphic and send it into social media memeland?

Or do you want to throw a handful of mud at my smug face and tell me to go fuck myself and my empty platitudes?

II.

My kitchen sink is, miraculously, empty this morning. Flora put all the dishes away before she went to bed, and, as Cinder is 600 kilometres away, he did not spend the night eating and filling it up again. I stand in front of the empty sink in the morning and fill up with gratitude… and then immense sadness.

As I make the coffee I’m no longer really drinking, I cry and miss my son.

III.

(My face, by the way, is not smug.)

IV.

I drive 500 miles and 500 more to Kelowna most years since my Marie and her brood moved out there. I didn’t go last year, and we suffered. I mean, Marie and mine’s connection. There is only so much you can do by text, Facebook, the occasional phone call. Real relationships require real life, real time, person-to-person investment. Snotting on each other’s flesh and blood shoulders, not just cyber ones.

So this year, I drive Cinder and his friend to Kelowna, to visit their forever friends, and mine, over four days I wrench from a too-heavy schedule. I leave Calgary a few hours after attending a “can’t-miss-it-you-are-so-important-to-me” event; I come back a few hours before an important (yes, it really is) community planning meeting.

In-between, Marie and I squeeze in urgent together time. Precious but also exhausting: we do not have time on this visit for leisurely conversations that meander and unfold. We have very little time for each other, really: we are mostly ferrying six manic boys (and their bikes) around.

It’s all right, we tell each other.

It’s their time more than it is ours.

Our time will come… when?

V.

I am having an uncomfortable relationship with time right now. It feels like my most precious and most finite resource. I feel I don’t have enough of it—I hate feeling that way. After all, time is… time is time. We actually have all the time in the world, right? Sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year…

Where the fuck have the last 365 days gone? Actually, the first half of them, I can account for rationally. The last half? These last six months?

I feel I have blinked and they have disappeared.

VI.

My time in Kelowna is both too short and too long. Too short, because, Marie, soul sister conversations, beauty, beaches—and the world’s best Value Village—I swear, people, the Kelowna Value Village is a fucking treasure trove. (Would that I had more time to explore it this time: I do find a pair of gorgeous yet practical and virtually unworn shoes.)

Too long, because… so much to do so much to do so much to do.

I hate it. I hate that feeling. That feeling of time slipping through my fingers, of the pace of my days moving too fast, of never feeling on top of things, of never feeling done… or allowed to rest.

I hate it.

I watch the boys plan their days and all the things they want to do on this trip with a total disregard for the reality, the tyranny of time.

I love it.

I envy them.

I watch them with love—and envy—and maybe, I think, maybe I learn something.

VII.

I leave Cinder behind in Kelowna and I leave Marie’s house early in the morning on a Sunday for the near-eight hour drive back home.

I am…

(Don’t throw the mud pie at my face.)

I am aware that today is the first day of the rest of my life. As they all are.

And that I can think I don’t have time, I don’t have time, I don’t have time… or I can have all the time in the world.

I plug my phone into the AUX port and start playing Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast.

She’s going to be my companion and the background to my silent meditations on this precious solo trip home.

Eight hours. Alone.

If you’re a parent, if you live amidst a web of obligations—no matter how willingly entered into—you know how precious each of those eight hours is.

VIII.

I pull over to pick up the hitchhiker just outside Revelstoke. It’s 10 a.m., and I feel the bone-tiredness and fuzzy-headedness that comes not so much from not enough sleep but not enough good sleep.

He’s in his 50s—maybe 40s. He has the weathered-withered look of a person who works outside, who works with his body. Also, the withered-weathered look of a person who’s suffered.

All his worldly possessions in a backpack about the same size as the backpack I took with me to Kelowna.

It’s sweltering hot already, and there is no shade where he is standing. I see car after car whiz by and I actually whiz by too… I want to be alone. With Liz Gilbert (who’s already annoying me, but I am learning things in-between), and with my thoughts and meditations. With myself.

I look in the rear view mirror, and I see his shoulders slump, and I think—fuck it. I can make one human being’s life easier today.

And I don’t actually have to make mine harder.

He runs to the truck. And looks startled when he opens the door. It’s interesting: I hear the thought as sharply as if he had spoken it, “Lady, you should not be picking up hitchhikers.”

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Calgary,” he says.

I nod.

“I have a request,” I tell him. “I’m happy to give you a ride all the way to Calgary. But I don’t want to talk. About anything. Not where you’re from or where you’re going or the weather. Nothing. I’m going to be listening to these podcasts the whole ride and thinking and occasionally murmuring to myself. From you, I would like silence.”

“Works for me,” he says.

And we go.

IX.

Ferrying six teenage boys around Kelowna, from beach to park to waterfall to beach, one becomes hyper-aware how precious silence is. Ditto–living with three children, in a community full of children, in which gangs of seven-year-old boys alternate places with gangs of preteen-oh-no-they’re-teenagers-now! girls in my living room.

Their noise—especially when happy—is precious too.

But silence—fuck, silence is a gift from god.

The hitchhiker does not say a word for five hours.

Our ride is a prayer.

X.

Elizabeth Gilbert and her guests share a lot of insightful things in Magic Lessons. Although—did I tell you, I find Liz annoying? It’s because she’s… so fucking perky.

I guess that’s why I didn’t like Eat Pray Love, either.

I’m not perky.

But every once in a while, despite being annoyed by Gilbert’s perkiness, I do… perk up.

It’s a nice feeling.

interruptions

(this, by the way, is the point in the composition at which I was thrown off by life. Ender was hungry. Flora needed a hug. A bookstore owner pinged me in a panic, and I had to run to the print shop and then the post office. In-between there was also lunch, four attempts to set up interviews, and a phone call from the dentist. But, there was also a nap and meditation (interrupted by the phone call from the dentist). Still. With all of that, I am having a hard time picking up the thread. Platitudes. Time. Silence. Perky.

Busy.

Time

Today is the first day… Yes. Right there.)

XI.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

On Sunday, I shared five silent hours of my life with a stranger.

Grateful.

I came home to joy and hugs… and then was promptly abandoned by the children who “We missed you so much, Mommy!” but who wanted, in the moment, to be with their friends more.

I took the opportunity to fold into Sean’s arms, and he took the opportunity to take me down to the bedroom and take off my clothes.

Ender knocked on the bedroom door about three seconds post climax.

“What do you need, dude?”

“I need to hug Mommy!”

Grateful.

Also… you know. Other things.

I am not sure my mountain meditation to the soundtrack of Elizabeth Gilbert and the silence of my traveling companion solved anything for me. Or gave me clarity. Penetrating insight.

But I wasn’t really looking for that, anyway.

I was looking for… time.

And time… I got.

All the time in the world.

xoxo

“Jane”

POSTCARDS FROM CUBA: we will survive (audio + post of my FAVE story)

For Cathy, in celebration of our much less dangerous road trip.

Today’s (audio)post is brought to you by Empowerment Personal Training, aka Damir Mulalic. I hobbled into his gym four years ago, on two canes and all the painkillers and placebos (un)known to science, and said, “If you give me back my mobility, I will find a way to work through the pain.” And, well. There be no pain anymore, I can do things with my body I barely dreamt of when I was an indestructible 18 year old, and I got these carved arms and back in the process. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Damir.

I asked Damir & Empowerment PT to sponsor this post because it is also about gratitude… for being alive. Listen:

…and read:

*

The cab driver is 75, and the car is a Soviet piece of shit from 1975 never meant to last the 40 years that it’s been trolling Havana’s streets.

Cinder: “I don’t think it’s going to make it.”

I’m not sure we’re going to live, but we’re in the cab and it’s moving—well, coasting down the hill—the driver doesn’t turn on the engine under we’re about to plateau—when he does, there is a sputter and then a deafening rumble…

Flora: “Is it supposed to make that noise?”

Jane: “Don’t think about it.”

14-CabofDeath1

The car—a Lada—doesn’t seem to be able to go faster than 40 km/hour—or maybe the driver can’t see farther out than 40 km/hour, he seems to be leaning forward and peering through the windshield way too intently. Its slow speed is, initially, somehow reassuring. If its brakes don’t work—and frankly, judging by the interior, the noise of the engine and… there it is, that’s the squeak of old, worn-out brakes, the brakes probably don’t work—most of the time we’re going slowly enough that I could probably brake Flinstone style.

Cinder: “And if we rear-end anything, we probably won’t cause too much damage.”

Flora: “But the car will completely fall apart. Into tiny little pieces.”

Cinder: “It’s already in tiny little pieces. See that voodoo doll hanging from the rearview mirror? That’s what’s holding this car together.”

Flora: “At least there’s a rearview mirror. Have you noticed there’s only one side mirror?”

Jane: “At least it’s on the driver’s side.”

Ender: “If something rear-ends us, we will all die.”

Jane: “Don’t think about that. Think ‘We will survive’ thoughts.”

Cinder: “I hope you know, Mom, if we die in a horrific car crash in Cuba, Daddy will never forgive you.”

Jane: “Don’t think about that. Think ‘We will survive’ thoughts.”

14-CabofDeath6

It’s really not that bad.

Until we go through the tunnel under the Havana harbor… and out onto the freeway where everyone else is allowed to go 80 km / hour and those that can are zipping along at 100… and we’re still going at 40.

And taking up two lanes, because our driver can’t seem to see the center line.

Flora: “This is definitely the most dangerous thing we have done in Cuba so far.”

Um… yeah. Probably.

Worst thing: when I was negotiating on price… I negotiated for the return trip too. We’re going from Havana to the Playas del Estes, and that’s 20 km away from Havana proper and 10 more from our digs, and I don’t know if there are buses, or how easy it is to find a taxi, so I thought I was being prudent. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

That’s fine. I will bail. I’ll give him an extra $5 CUC—thanks for your trouble, we’ll find a different way back—and oh-my-fucking-god… no, it’s good, it’s all good, we’re fine.

Jane: “So I’m thinking we won’t take this cab back.”

Cinder: “Ya’ think? I think it will be a miracle if this cab makes it there.”

We finally wind off the highway—thank every god I don’t believe in—and onto the sleepy road along the playas.

Flora: “I don’t know, Mom. This town is dead. I haven’t seen a single other car. Maybe it’s good to have a ride back confirmed.”

Flora’s my anti-risk taker. But what’s a bigger risk? No ride back, or this ride back?

We’re driving along the 9 km stretch of beaches— such beautiful names—Tarará, El Mégano, Santa María del Mar, Boca Ciega..  I wanted to go to Megano or Santa Maria, which are supposed to be the best stretches of beach for swimming—he misses both turn-offs—goes to the end of the road. “It’s very beautiful and tranquil here,” he assures me.

14-CabofDeath5

Cinder: “Let’s just get the hell out of this car!”

As I’m trying to figure out how to not go back to Havana in the Soviet piece of shit that I know plans to kill us before it finally dies itself—I can see the intention in its beady, evil little lamp lights—the ancient driver unloads my children and our beach bag.

“I will wait for you right here,” he says. And my heart sinks. Of course he will. Gasoline in Cuba is at a whopping $1CUC a liter—that’s $1.40 Canadian, and not even when oil was touching $150 a barrel were we paying that much for it in Alberta—and this beast burns… let’s just say, fuel efficient it’s not. Driving me back means he’s making money; driving back empty means he’s paying for gas.

Fuck.

And he’s old. And kind. And clearly, not well off at all, or…

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Cinder: “What’s going on, Mom?”

Jane: “The driver’s going to wait for us.”

Flora: “Good. Because otherwise we’d probably have to walk home, and it would take forever.”

Cinder: “But we would definitely be alive at the end of it.”

Jane: “Think ‘We will survive thoughts.’ In the meantime… enjoy the beach.”

The beach is beautiful, except for all the fat, old, ugly white men with breathtakingly gorgeous young black-and-brown Cuban boys, which couplings make me meditate too much on prostitution—and on the prostitution-like undercoat of much of the tourist experience—and finally have me plunge myself into the warm, turquoise water with a stiff admonition to my brain to shut the fuck up and just swim.

14-CabofDeathPlaya

As, four hours later, we trudge back, exhausted and a little sun-burned, to where we left car and driver, I have several hopes:

Hope 1: He got tired of waiting and left. The beach is not abandoned—I have seen plenty of other tourists, seen signs leading to hotels and restaurants, and I will find another set of wheels.

Hope 2: The car will not start. We will have no choice but to seek another set of wheels.

Hope 3: He’s had a heart attack and died, and I will have to call an ambulance and we can probably get a ride to Havana with the corpse.

14-CabofDeath4

Fuck.

There he is.

“Good day?” he asks. I nod, resigned. Que sera, sera. We will live, right?

Maybe the car won’t start.

It starts. The cab driver turns it around. Sleepy town. Highway. Center lane. Shoulder.

Cinder: “At least it’s never into on-coming traffic.”

At least there’s that.

I start to think… this would be a good time to start believing in God. All the gods. And make deals with them. “Please let me get back to Havana alive…” No, wait, I need to be more specific—if there’s anything I’ve learned from the world’s mythologies is that wish-granting deities are all nasty bastards and will look for the loophole in any wish. “Please let all of us, here in this car, get back to our home alive, unharmed and happy.”

The car starts to sputter and make noises that sound vaguely familiar… slow down even more…

Shoulder. An intentional stop.

The gods work in mysterious ways. We are out of gas.

14-CabofDeath3

Unfortunately, our driver is prepared for this eventuality—the gas gauge in the Lada stopped working a long time ago. He goes to the trunk for a canister.

Fortunately, it’s empty.

Unfortunately, there’s a gas station across the highway. He trudges across the four lines of traffic.

I ponder making a run for it. Turn my head.

Flora and Ender are curled into each other, deep asleep.

14-CabofDeath8

All right then.

Think, ‘We will survive’ thoughts.

I think ‘We will survive’ thoughts ardently, passionately, religiously as we rejoin the traffic (sparse, thank you, gods) on the highway. I continue to think them as we maneuver through the tunnel, and all the way along the Malecon, during every torturous left turn and oh-so-slowly made right merge. I pray so intensely and intently I barely notice when we pull up at our destination… and the car sputters, splutters, and stops.

Jane: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

To the driver, to the gods?

To anyone who will receive the gratitude.

The driver’s son—or, as I am affectionately thinking of him, the bastard who convinced me to put my children in this cab of death—is waiting for his father and the car anxiously.

“Hey, my baby made it!” he says joyfully, but also with some surprise.

It’s ok. I won’t be angry.

We are alive.

Unharmed.

Happy.

I pay them.

Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you.

Cinder: “Let’s never, ever, take that cab again.”

There’s a spluttering noise.

Flora: “I don’t think that will be an issue.”

I turn my head. Father and son are both in the car—son in the driver’ seat now. Keys in ignition, foot—I imagine—on pedal.

Grrr-grrr-grrrr-grrr-grrr.

Grr-grrr-grrr-grrr.

Grrr.

G…

Thank. You.

*

LANDED here for the first time? Let me catch you up:

Series 1 of Postcards from Cuba is now fully live. Check out the annotated table of contents for a tour, or, if you prefer, hop over to the chronological table of contents.

And if you like what you read/hear/see, please consider expressing your delight by making a contribution:

PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!

You: Why?

Jane: Because you’ve always wanted to be a patron of the arts, and you know that artists can’t pay for groceries with exposure.

You: How much?

Jane: Buy me a cup of coffee, a Cuba Libre, or a Cuban cigar.

You: That’s all?

Jane: My avarice is happy to match your affluence. But I get $1 in royalties for each copy my other self sells of a traditionally published book. It is impossible to disappoint me.

If you would like to make a contribution, but have PayPal issues (I get it), please email me at nothingbythebook at gmail.com, and we’ll work something out.

Thank you!

“Jane”

NothingByTheBook.com / Tweet tweet @NothingBTBook / Instagram NothingByTheBook

14-CabDeath Banner

 

A conversation, a reading assignment, a writing exercise, and a re-run #2

A conversation:

Cinder [precariously balanced on you-don’t-want-to-know-what]: “Everything’s within reach. You just have to figure out how to reach it without getting killed.”

December 26, 2010

A reading assignment that will change your life:

Ella Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must:

Should is how other people want us to live our lives. It’s all of the expectations that others layer upon us.

…

Must is different. Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self. It’s that which calls to us most deeply. It’s our convictions, our passions, our deepest held urges and desires — unavoidable, undeniable, and inexplicable. Unlike Should, Must doesn’t accept compromises.

 

A writing exercise to do instead of saying “but I have nothing to write about”:

Write about why you have nothing to write about. Write for 10 minutes. Then another 10. Then another 10.

There. You’ve written for half an hour. Well done, sweetums.

 

An explanation:

This is the second week of my 12-week unplugged AWOL (don’t tell my clients… um or too many of my friends 😉 ). No phones, no wifi… also, no winter! I’m going to be documenting things old school via journals and postcards (if you want a postcard from… well, that place where I’m hiding… email your snail mail address to nothingbythebook@gmail.com).

The blog’s on auto-pilot with a conversation from the archives, a reading recommendation, a writing assignment (cause I can’t nag any of you in person), and unsolicited advice… er, that is, a re-run post of the kind I don’t write very often anymore.

Enjoy.

 

A re-run:

Moving from guilt to gratitude

(first published February 24, 2014)

I am sick, so sick, achy, feverish, exhausted, so-tired-I-don’t-think-I’ll-even-make-it-to-the-bathroom-even-to’-I-really-need-to-puke-tired…

(Digression-justification: I am obscenely healthy. I hardly ever get sick. And so, when I do, I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. Your husband’s man-flu, for which you mock him mercilessly? Forget it. I’m worse.)

I’m so sick, so-tired-barely-conscious, my rational-disciplined self is incapacitated, and the rest of me chooses this moment of physical vulnerability to assault me emotionally and mentally with… GUILT.

I feel guilty… oh, where do I begin? I feel guilty that I’m sick. That I’m not working-billing. Working-family-raising. That I didn’t get up with the kids. Actually I don’t even know where they are. Are they awake? Are they home? Are they alive?

I feel guilty that I’m too sick-exhausted-I-think-I’m-dying to really care…

I  need to get myself to the bathroom—but I can’t move, I can’t move—and the door opens and my beloved comes in with a puke bucket.

As I retch—I’m pretty sure this isn’t just the flu or the latest reiteration of whatever gastro-intestinal bug is floating around, it’s the plague and tomorrow I will be dead—he tells me he’s cancelled my appointments for the day and his, and the kids are fine, and is there anything else I need? Ginger tea?

I moan something incomprehensible and don’t hear his response. I’m too busy feeling guilty. Not just guilty that he’s taking care of me and the kids. No, that wouldn’t be self-flagellating enough: I’m guilty over our entire lifestyle. Guilty that our work allows my husband to be there for me and the kids on a day like this. We’re so stupid-lucky, elitist-privileged, bubble-wrapped.

So guilty.

I even start to feel guilty about this: if he had a shoot or a client commitment today that couldn’t be rescheduled—there are a dozen people he could call on to help. And they would be there for me, for us. In a heart beat.

As I start to inch my way across the bed to get away from the smell of the barf bucket, I realize that I’m  feeling fully and acutely guilty over being supported, connected. Loved.

That’s when my rational-disciplined self, however close to death it feels, snaps. Can’t take it anymore. And wallops its whiney-guilty counterpart upside the head.

“What’d you do that for? I’m sick! I’m dying! And I feel so GUILTY because…”

SLAP!

My rational-discipline self plays hard ball when roused. IT is on the brink of either slapping the rest of me again or, worse, delivering the mother of all lectures on…

…the door creaks open. “Ginger tea?” my beloved says. And… I am flooded with gratitude.

Gratitude for the tea. For the love that brings it. For the support behind it. For my entire life and everyone in it.

Why is guilt so much easier to indulge in than gratitude is to feel and practice?

I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s because guilt is selfish and self-focused… while gratitude requires humility and awareness of our interdependence, our vulnerability.

I drink my ginger tea. Puke it up almost immediately… then drift off into a feverish-restless sleep-coma-no-not-death.

But I slip into unconsciousness bubble-wrapped in gratitude.

xoxo
“Jane”

P.S. A. Deathbed experiences make me sappy. Sorry. How do they affect you? B. Clearly, I lived. Thank you for asking. But just barely… I’m pretty sure it was the plague. C. For the last few weeks, Cinder, Flora, Ender and I have been constructing a “Things That Went Right” wall. It’s a simple, fun project inspired by Martin Seligman’s gratitude journal exercise in Flourish: every day, each of us thinks of and writes down three things that went right that day. Three good things. Three exciting things. Or three ordinary things. The week of my plague, “I didn’t puke” was THE good thing each of the kids flagged. It’s all about perspective, right?

What Went Right

P.P.S. Tirzah Duncan aka The Inkcaster wrote a marvellous post about her freeing and beautiful take on beauty last week, and I’d love for you to read it: Beauty is far from skin deep.

For those of you deep in the toddler trenches, pop over to Stephanie Sprenger at Mommy Is For Real for a refresher on the concept of disequilibrium… and a tongue-in-cheek (or is it?) proposition of the massing of transitionin-disequibiriumiated (fine, it’s not a word, but you know exactly what I mean…) toddlers in a toddler “Red Tent.”

Looking for me? I’ve revamped the for-stalkers-and-bloggers-and-no-I’m-a-real-sane-fan! section: Find “Jane”

Mosaic II

NBTB-mosaic ii

I.

What happens today is that I’m spending some time thinking about one year ago, but no time at all thinking about one year from now, which, on the whole, is an improvement.

And I’m not thinking about one year ago that much. Just a little. And mostly, the memory is accentuating my gratitude for today. Which is as it should be, right?

One year ago, I was 365 days poorer.

II.

“Moooom! Look! I made a giant poop in the toilet! I made you a birthday POOP!”

“Oh, sweetheart! I! Am! So! Happy!”

…and if your five-year-old had undergone a more-than-two-year-long toilet training regression, you too would think this is the best birthday present ever.

III.

Twenty years ago, I turned 21 at an R.E.M. concert.

IV.

In this precise moment, I’m listening to Leonard Cohen (but not crying) because instead of sitting in the bathtub in the dark, I’m sitting on my balcony in the sunshine, drinking Awake! tea and feeling mildly guilty—but not really—about all the work I didn’t do today. But fuck it, it’s my birthday and +22 and sunny and so, no. Instead, I roast hot dogs with my kids over a firepit for lunch while wearing my new dress (thank you, baby, your taste is immaculate) and I listen to that song again (oh, yes) and my fingers are covered with all the new shades of pastels I now have to play with and I don’t look in the laundry room once.

But I do the dishes and clean the kitchen. Because. Adult.

Leonard Cohen is telling me it’s closing time and to lift my glass to the awful truth which you can’t revealed to the Ears of Youth, and I laugh. There’s a note in my in-box from an editor, asking me if I’d like to spin a column about the rates (high) of depression among Millennials in the workplace.

Meh. Today, only give me cheery things.

xoxo

“Jane”

Moving from guilt to gratitude

I am sick, so sick, achy, feverish, exhausted, so-tired-I-don’t-think-I’ll-even-make-it-to-the-bathroom-even-to’-I-really-need-to-puke-tired…

(Digression-justification: I am obscenely healthy. I hardly ever get sick. And so, when I do, I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. Your husband’s man-flu, for which you mock him mercilessly? Forget it. I’m worse.)

I’m so sick, so-tired-barely-conscious, my rational-disciplined self is incapacitated, and the rest of me chooses this moment of physical vulnerability to assault me emotionally and mentally with… GUILT.

I feel guilty… oh, where do I begin? I feel guilty that I’m sick. That I’m not working-billing. Working-family-raising. That I didn’t get up with the kids. Actually I don’t even know where they are. Are they awake? Are they home? Are they alive?

I feel guilty that I’m too sick-exhausted-I-think-I’m-dying to really care…

I  need to get myself to the bathroom—but I can’t move, I can’t move—and the door opens and my beloved comes in with a puke bucket.

As I retch—I’m pretty sure this isn’t just the flu or the latest reiteration of whatever gastro-intestinal bug is floating around, it’s the plague and tomorrow I will be dead—he tells me he’s cancelled my appointments for the day and his, and the kids are fine, and is there anything else I need? Ginger tea?

I moan something incomprehensible and don’t hear his response. I’m too busy feeling guilty. Not just guilty that he’s taking care of me and the kids. No, that wouldn’t be self-flagellating enough: I’m guilty over our entire lifestyle. Guilty that our work allows my husband to be there for me and the kids on a day like this. We’re so stupid-lucky, elitist-privileged, bubble-wrapped.

So guilty.

I even start to feel guilty about this: if he had a shoot or a client commitment today that couldn’t be rescheduled—there are a dozen people he could call on to help. And they would be there for me, for us. In a heart beat.

As I start to inch my way across the bed to get away from the smell of the barf bucket, I realize that I’m  feeling fully and acutely guilty over being supported, connected. Loved.

That’s when my rational-disciplined self, however close to death it feels, snaps. Can’t take it anymore. And wallops its whiney-guilty counterpart upside the head.

“What’d you do that for? I’m sick! I’m dying! And I feel so GUILTY because…”

SLAP!

My rational-discipline self plays hard ball when roused. IT is on the brink of either slapping the rest of me again or, worse, delivering the mother of all lectures on…

…the door creaks open. “Ginger tea?” my beloved says. And… I am flooded with gratitude.

Gratitude for the tea. For the love that brings it. For the support behind it. For my entire life and everyone in it.

Why is guilt so much easier to indulge in than gratitude is to feel and practice?

I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s because guilt is selfish and self-focused… while gratitude requires humility and awareness of our interdependence, our vulnerability.

I drink my ginger tea. Puke it up almost immediately… then drift off into a feverish-restless sleep-coma-no-not-death.

But I slip into unconsciousness bubble-wrapped in gratitude.

xoxo
“Jane”

P.S. A. Deathbed experiences make me sappy. Sorry. How do they affect you? B. Clearly, I lived. Thank you for asking. But just barely… I’m pretty sure it was the plague. C. For the last few weeks, Cinder, Flora, Ender and I have been constructing a “Things That Went Right” wall. It’s a simple, fun project inspired by Martin Seligman’s gratitude journal exercise in Flourish: every day, each of us thinks of and writes down three things that went right that day. Three good things. Three exciting things. Or three ordinary things. The week of my plague, “I didn’t puke” was THE good thing each of the kids flagged. It’s all about perspective, right?

What Went Right

P.P.S. Tirzah Duncan aka The Inkcaster wrote a marvellous post about her freeing and beautiful take on beauty last week, and I’d love for you to read it: Beauty is far from skin deep.

For those of you deep in the toddler trenches, pop over to Stephanie Sprenger at Mommy Is For Real for a refresher on the concept of disequilibrium… and a tongue-in-cheek (or is it?) proposition of the massing of transitionin-disequibiriumiated (fine, it’s not a word, but you know exactly what I mean…) toddlers in a toddler “Red Tent.”

Looking for me? I’ve revamped the for-stalkers-and-bloggers-and-no-I’m-a-real-sane-fan! section: Find “Jane”