In honour of Mother’s Day, here are some of the many, many lessons I’ve learned from my beautiful mother:
1. Try to look your best when you go out in public. Now grant it I don’t follow through with this one ALL of the time especially Saturday mornings after a long week at work when sweat pants, a tee-shirt and a ponytail suffice.
I’ve decided to go on a diet. No more preconceived notions for me. Their consumption usually results in an upset stomach, dizzying disappointment or embarrassing episodes of melodramatic behaviour.
Case in point:
every time I walked down the hall to the staircase in my condo, I would pass a door and have a dog growl and bark at me from the other side. It was a frantic, territorial bark that always and EVERY single time, caused my heart to leap into my throat. I usually heard a male voice shout “Freddy! Quiet!”. One day, as I was just about to open the staircase door into the hallway I heard the ringing of a bell collar and the sound of paws running down the hall. I had the door opened before my mind could interpret what the noise was then I heard “Freddy!” I froze in my spot, fists clenched, eyes shut in fearful anticipation of being attacked. Sure enough it was Freddy that came charging down the hall right at me OFF HIS LEASH. Barking frantically he barreled into me….
…. And licked my toes.
Freddy was a friendly, albeit yappy, dachshund.
I find that this happens a lot in life. I dread an event, a meeting for work, an appointment at the bank, a dental procedure, an interview but when the time comes everything turns out just fine, usually nondescript, sometimes even enjoyable.
The imagination’s ability to take the future and morph it into something negative that it would never in a thousand years become.
Sometimes the opposite happens. Where I have the greatest of expectations and I’m horribly disappointed. A movie has been raved about. Friends have seen it a multitude of times. I finally have an evening free to view it for myself and…
…..
meh.
Or I have the expectation that a person will be something or someone they’re not. It is unfair of me to put that expectation on another person, but I do so because, well, that’s who I am. I’ve learned that the only way notions come remotely close to being correct is due only to history and repetitive behavior. If I perceive someone as cruel it’s only because they’ve acted cruel over, and over and over again. If I perceive someone as kind it’s because they’ve been kind over and over and over again.
I’m going to try not to build something up or break something down until I’m in the midst of the circumstance and evaluate. And then, only afterwards, will I formulate a notion if the situation warrants one
because
sometimes we may think there is a big, black, ferocious, Baskerville-esque hound behind the door and we fret and worry, when in fact it’s just a friendly little dog.
I went over to my friend Chriss’s house today. She has two big dogs. One is a regal Golden Retriever with soulful eyes, the other a perky, curly Golden Doodle. The Golden Retriever laid at my feet. It felt comforting and familiar to be “watched over”.
I want a pet.
I know better though, I’ve just begun to trust myself with houseplants. I have the idiot proof kind. They droop, I pour water on them, they perk up.
It’s probably a good thing I don’t have children.
Anyway, we had all sorts of pets when I was growing up. One summer that is particularly memorable is the summer our dog Lady had puppies. Booyon and Benji. Mom said she didn’t see us for the entire summer because we were always outside playing with the puppies. We only came into the house during the day to pee.
My sisters and I LOVED those puppies. We’d run around the yard pulling what was once the pea green “sick “ blanket and the puppies would chase it. They’d run and tumble and were plainly and simply adorable.
We’d stick them in our doll carriages and I once even tried to fit Booyon into the Barbie Beach Mobile. They’d comply without complaint.
We’d wrap them in blankets and pretend they were babies. They’d run around our feet and bite and pull on our pant legs. Only once did we discipline those puppies, and that was only due to my carelessness. I regrettably left Barbie and Ken outside when I came in for supper. At one point I glanced out the dining room window, fork suspended in the air between the plate and my mouth, and watched Benji run by with Ken’s legs stiffly protruding out of his mouth. I dropped the fork and rescued Ken, but not before his plastic head had been punctured by pointy puppy teeth.
Along with the puppies we also had cats. One old mother cat, dutifully called “Mother Cat”, reliably proffered a litter of kittens every summer for us to play with. Dad would reach his arm into a hole in stack of straw bales and magically pull out a kitten for each of us to hold and cuddle. When Mother Cat started meowing Dad would then gently return each kitten back into its cradle of straw.
We had a number of cats on the farm. After Mother Cat came Beatrice and Vern. Beatrice was a dainty pretty grey cat who would catch mice and proudly leave them on the front door step. Oftentimes she’d catch a mouse, find Dad working in the yard, and deliver the mouse to him to snack on if need be. Vern, on the other hand, wasn’t right in the head. He was white with grey spots and a little grey “Hitler ‘stash”. And was as BIG and fat. For some reason he always ran into the rubber boots stacked neatly in the garage. He’d also always fall off window ledges for no apparent reason.
Dogs and cats and at one point during my childhood we even tried keeping fish. Mom and Dad bought an electric fish tank and two fish and placed the whole contraption outside my bedroom door. It all seemed interesting and exotic until I realized the noise the filter and pump system made a noise that seemed twice as loud at night than during the day. That was the year I learned to sleep with my pillow over my head and did so until my little cousin came over for a visit, turned up the tank temperature, and literally fried the fish. Needless to say no tears were shed.
We never did replace them.
After writing this I realize that I don’t necessarily want a pet per se. What I DO I want is the go back during those summers when these animals were a part of childhood innocence. A time of sunburn, skinned knees, dirty fingernails and the undivided and unconditional attention of another living entity. A time when there was no list of things to do other than to wake up, down a glass of milk, and go out in the sunshine to play with the puppies.
Sometimes I fall into a deep dark “leave me alone” hermit hole.
Where all I want to do is curl up
in the softness of my bed
And be.
Alone and away from the requisites of the day.
It would be quiet
and calm
and headache free
And I could aimlessly roam in my imagination
Like I did when I was a child
Where I’d make up stories And save the day.
But saving the day is more difficult
Outside of the hermit hole,
Where subjective interpretations and misperceptions
Make the truth murky
And processing the goings on of the day is exhausting business
And often result in mistaken conclusions
Making me want to escape and cushion
Myself in quilt-y quietness
When you’ve got bangs like a boy, and you’re a girl, the world can be a cruel place.
When I was little my mother liked my hair short. VERY short. Once she even tried to give us uber-tight Toni perms so that the short cut could be curled
and we’d sport little afros.
Thankfully she only got to the littlest sister before changing course.
One fine weekday afternoon, whilst I was stretching on my tippy toes to smell the lilacs in my grandmother’s front yard, the garbage man on duty that day cheerily greeted me with a
“hello little boy”.
I was mortified. Could it be the plain white pull over polo shirt I was wearing? Or the purple plaid bell bottom pants?
No.
It was obvious it was because of my haircut. Similar to a bowl cut but sheered over the ears. The bangs perfectly straight (following a strategically placed piece of scotch tape). For years I thought the neighbour lady my mother took us to for haircuts was a professional hairdresser that we’d visit after hours. Turns out this wasn’t so.
She was just the neighbour lady.
Most of the time she did a pretty good job.
Except for some serious bang trimming that would push me into that androgynous grey area in which some small children float around for a year or two before puberty arrives in one big greasy, pimply “SURPRISE”.
Since then I’ve learned to rock short bangs. Or I’d like to think so even though they often reek with kewpieness. Or I’ve learned to wait a week until they seem to grow into adulthood.
One of these days I’ll tell you about the “stack perm” I sported in eighth grade!
I wish I had the disposition of a warrior.
Outside my third story window, right across the street, I face a rugby field. Over the years, I can observe practices and matches, two forces battling over a ball. If the windows are open I can hear the cheers and calls and grunts. Usually practices don’t end until the sun begins to set and players meander off the field patting each other on the back.
Even though the sun has been out the last couple of days and it truly has felt that spring is upon us, today was a chilly, soggy day. A day where flannels and a hot toddy were in order. But no, not for the warriors across the street. They were out in full force, in their orange and yellow jerseys, running and hitting and bracing the chill. And, on the other side of town, a high school football team made up of valiant girls played its first game…in the muck and sleet. I admire this enthusiasm and fortitude.
My mind does not identify with the desire to participate in rugged contact sports in miserable weather. Some days I wish it did. Some days I wish I could growl at the elements and knock heads
and be a warrior laughing in the face of misery.
But instead I bury myself in a bubble bath and listen to sonorous silence which really does help in the processing of my day,
but doesn’t seem nearly as audacious.
For someone with claustrophobic tendencies, I spend a majority of my time burrowing. I think it has something to do with how I was raised and the need to keep warm.
For the first decade of my life my family and I lived in the same farmhouse my father was raised. We slept upstairs that was heated only by the rising of the heat from the floor below. There were several frigid winter nights when mom would make sure we went to bed with socks and pile the blankets and quilts and “panenas” ( I’m totally guessemating the spelling on this one, my mom used to call comforters “pa-nen-as”. It must be Ukrainian for duvet) on top of us. We felt like the pea in the “Princess and the Pea”. And don’t even try to use the washroom once you’re pinned underneath. You held your bladder until the morning then made a mad dash for the toilet stopping to stand on one of the few heat registers on the main floor of the house, night-gown billowing and from the warm, welcoming air. Two little girls could fit comfortably on one heat register back then.
The year I left home to attend university mom made sure we were well prepared for the bitter winter walks to campus. She bought all the material for a long double-layered Inuit style parka complete with fur-lined hood. Mine was a beautiful cream colour with a periwinkle blue outer shell. When I wore it I felt as though I was zipped tightly in a snug sleeping bag opened only at the bottom enabling mobility. With the hood up I had no peripheral vision. I had to be careful crossing the street, turning twisting my body ninety degree to the left, then ninety degrees to the right, so I would not become a hood ornament.
Years later, when I traveled to Scotland and experienced a cold so cold that can only be described as epic, I discovered other ways of burrowing. During a mid February night, living in a building with no central heating, you learn to layer. I’d fall asleep only when I had donned a pair of leotards, socks, flannel pajama bottoms, a turtleneck and a sweatshirt. And only then, the first and only hot water bottle I’d ever purchase, and I would hunker down underneath a goose down duvet.
Now, for purely psychological reasons,I sleep most successfully with no less than six pillows nested around me. Pulling my duvet and treasured quilt up and over my neck and shoulders. Most nights I plug one ear bud of my iPod in and listen to podcasts about history or literature or politics. Becoming enclosed in my own little safe cell.
I think sometimes humans have the need to cocoon themselves in something warm and soft and safe. A place where we feel protected, be it from an environmental cold or a psychological chill. To feel somewhat removed from the elements of the day in order to regroup, reenergize, regenerate and ultimately emerge ready to face whatever the day throws at us.
What are you burrowing habits? Do they involve a case of beer, a bag of nachos and a football game on a big screen television? Or maybe an appointment in a dimly lit room smelling of lavender and camomile where someone massages sore aching muscles? Perhaps an evening in a dark theater watching an adventure unravel in front of you, your only responsibility to feed popcorn into your mouth. Whatever the way, I hope the day brings you an opportunity to hide yourself if even for an hour.
A little old couple sits across the table from one another.
The coffee shop is crowded and noisy: a frenetic storm of people frantic to purchase their morning caffeine.
But the two have created their own little oasis where
no newspaper,
no cell phone,
no other person seems to exist.
And quietly they sit.
Looking at their hands gently cradling their mugs or licking a finger and picking up the remaining crumbs of a cinnamon bun that has recently been eaten.
They are comfortable in their shared silence.
She is drinking coffee; he has splurged on a hot chocolate complete with whipped cream.
Suddenly
the little old man says something his wife looks up and into his eyes.
Furrowing her brow she notices how smudgy his eyeglasses are
and
delicately takes them off his face to clean them with the napkin that she had placed on her lap.
When she finishes she returns the glasses to the bridge of her husband’s nose …
and they are even more smudged from the icing from that morning’s cinnamon bun.
But he doesn’t seem to notice
and reaches across the table to cover her hand in his.
I live across the hall from a recording artist.
It’s true. I do.
“Agnes” plays the electric organ with great passion and intensity for hours every day.
When I first moved in she politely knocked on my door and in her raspy smokers voice told me,
“I practice the organ in the afternoon and evenings. Please let me know if it’s too loud or if I am disturbing you.”
Then she smiled at me, pulled her toque tightly over her ears and wandered down the hall to go grocery shopping.
I have an image of her playing away, cigarette dangling from her lips, an overflowing ashtray to her left, eyes closed, lost in some Oktoberfest-ish memory.
I don’t hear her playing from the inside of my condo. Maybe if I did I wouldn’t like the music as much (I’m not the biggest polka fan)
but
when I come home from a long day at work I hear her music as soon as I step off the elevator and her peppy Polka two step forces me to change my draggy slow shuffle to a sprite and springy pace.
Agnes is so good she has several recordings of her work. Or so she tells me. I believe her because I’ve never heard her make a mistake.
One of these days I will ask to purchase one of her CDs. But in the meantime I’ll enjoy the free concert across the hall.
I hope I have a passion as strong as her when I get to be her age.
I hope to have a charming eccentricity that makes my neighbours take note of who I am and what I am capable of doing. “The musician from across the hall,” instead of “the old lady with a thousand cats.”
“Bed is the poor man’s opera” Italian proverb
I have a confession to make.
I haven’t made my bed in two days.
Now I know for most this doesn’t seem like such a big deal. But I tell you, for me it’s HUGE. It’s a gargantuan rebellion on my part.
When I was a kid, my mother had me believe making up the bed you slept in was the biggest of household tasks. I remember it as the first “chore” my mother taught me. How to straighten the bottom sheet, tuck in the sides, and create that little crease beneath the pillow with the bedspread. An unmade bed created a messy room. You made your bed and the entire room was transformed.
As incentive, Mom would promise the sisters and I that she would bestow upon the owner of the neatest bed the honour of having a stuffed black poodle stand at attention beside it.
Which was a big deal.
We children were easily motivated. We didn’t need chocolate to fulfill a task, or an electronic device or even an extra hour of television. No, it only took the potential proximity of a ratty stuffed dog.
We were odd children.
Anyway, in our old farmhouse there were cubbyholes; storage places upstairs in an attic-ish area. In these cubbyholes were the most wonderful of treasures: a train set, wooden “build – a –blocks” that would create log cabins and the stuffed poodle. The poodle was at least two feet tall. Black fur with glass eyes and filled with sawdust. We knew this because the mice had nibbled a few holes in its carcass it would leave a little trail of wooden crumbs whenever it was moved.
I think someone a long time ago had won it for my mother at the county fair.
So every morning I’d make my bed and take pride in the neatness it created in the hopes of having the poodle as my own for the day.
And I have pretty much made my bed every morning since.
Until this month. This month is when my condo is getting new flooring and new paint and I can’t “put” things back where they belong. So I’ve decided to go with the flow and just let things lie. My flip-flops haphazardly dropped by the door. Computer and phone and iPod charging chords scattered about.
And the bed.
There’s a poetic chaos about it all. My bedroom looks somewhat bohemian. But I’m sure as soon as the renovations are completed the “newness” of the place will serve as a stuffed black poodle in itself and I will be inspired to make my bed once again.
But until then I’ll revel in the charming poetic chaos it seems to be creating .
