for all those women

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013 ~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Two years ago on this day I was feeding my mother breakfast. I was sitting beside her bed tearing toast into bite size pieces and wondering how it was possible for anyone to chew so long on a miniscule bit of scrambled egg. Watching as she reached for her coffee or juice, her fingers shaking and the whole thing taking so long I just wanted to grab the cup, hand it to her… but I resisted. Reaching for her own drink was one of the few things she could still do.

I remember that the radio was on and they were talking about it being International Women’s Day. I expected my head to fill with thoughts of strength and achievement in this celebration of voices, past and present, loud and clear against the best efforts of those who’d prefer they remain silent. Suffragettes. Women who climbed various mountains to change the world.

But on this morning, two years ago, I found myself considering a different aspect of womankind—I thought about all those women everywhere who are caring for women, and how that’s often the way it goes… how the women so often outlive their men and how it’s the daughters, sisters, granddaughters, nieces, friends, that you see in the hallways of nursing homes, arriving with fresh nighties or flowers, a case of Ensure, a toilet frame… visiting, care-giving, and then I thought how it’s my mother’s hand I recall on my five-year old, eight year old, fourteen year old forehead when I had a fever, bringing me something for an upset tummy, a sore throat—my mother’s hand that comes to mind whenever I smell Vicks VapoRub. I remember my dad’s part in things too, how he’d thunder in at the end of the day and I’d hear his voice, anxious, asking how The Little One was, then a few minutes later appearing at my door trying to look casual, smiling, telling me I’d be up and at ’em soon. He’d cough, say Okay, get some sleep now! then escape to kitchen for a smoke—god bless him and all that, but it’s my mother that slept on the floor beside me one year when I was so young I can’t remember why.

And so there in my mother’s room on International Women’s Day two years ago, instead of thinking about a century or more of feminists who paved the road so that we could all walk more easily, I was thinking about the time I saw my mother-in-law leave the hairdresser with a friend. Both of them in silver perms, frail, careful of every step, helping each other to the car, and how I knew that to have intervened, to have offered my arm, would have taken away what they still needed to know they could give each other.

I thought of the woman who came to the nursing home every day and on Wednesdays took her mother’s laundry home in a basket to wash and hang on the line, even in winter, for the fresh smell.

And as I helped my ninety year-old mother with her breakfast and waited as it took forever in the washroom and got her back to bed, I glanced occasionally at a picture by the window where she no longer sat because even sitting took too much out of her. The picture is of her and my dad in the alps, at the top of a mountain they’d just hiked. They’re all smiles and twenty-something gorgeous against an endless sky.

Both my mum and my mother-in-law have since died. I don’t know about the woman with the fresh laundry.

I want to celebrate strength on International Women’s Day but I find myself celebrating love instead.

Then again, maybe they’re one and the same.

today’s colour

February 28, 2013 ~ carin ~ 10 Comments

what it is

February 22, 2013February 24, 2013 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

My faith is not a formal dress

but rags and stones and feathers,

shells hidden in its hem

—best worn with sky-lighted cape

and bird voice chapeau.

life, in three parts

February 15, 2013July 10, 2019 ~ carin ~ 18 Comments

PART 1— The last day.

The vet’s been called. And now I’m painting.

Hard decisions have been made. Our little tortoiseshell girl who was on the edge six weeks ago, then rallied like no one could believe — returning to almost her perfect nineteen year old self — has come to another edge. But this time she’s leaning over it so far there’s no coming back.

The vet is due at 5 p.m. and all day I flip-flop between wanting it to be 5 p.m. and 1994. I move between tending to her on the couch and milling about the kitchen where I can see her, where I’m preparing to paint cupboards that don’t especially need painting.

And I wonder why about the cupboards until I receive an email from a friend with a link to a quilting blog and I think how odd… I don’t quilt. I used to sew but the friend doesn’t know that. It’s a puzzle, this gift of a quilting link, and yet it reminds me of one of the last times I actually enjoyed sewing — years ago, when we had three cats. When the first of those three died, in the days right after, I sewed like crazy. Hideous things no one needed. Carrier bags and pillow cases in cabbage rose and bright pink patchwork.

And then it occurs to me that when the second of those cats died I dug over a new garden bed where a new garden bed was not required.

I simply needed to dig.

The majority of the painting will happen later. For now I just need to set the stage, to make a mess that must be dealt with, ensuring I’ll have an activity when I can’t think of what I’m supposed to do in the absence of a face I love.

The tins of paint, the taped cupboards, will be a blessing then.

PART 2— THE FIRST DAY

It was summer, 1994. We were having dinner. A loud mewling, a wail through an open window. I went out to see what it was and found a young tortoiseshell cat crouched at the base of the cedar hedge. Our two indoor cats were watching. I wanted to assure them no strangers would be tolerated. I chased the tortoiseshell away. I returned to the dinner table. The wailing resumed. Back outside, I chased the cat again and again but each time it turned and followed me. Finally, with conviction and some seriously stern language, I picked the little bugger up and carried it out of the yard.

It purred in my arms.

I called the Humane Society.

Luckily, there were no lost cats fitting her description.

We named her Cuddles.

PART 3— ALL THAT BEAUTIFUL BIT IN THE MIDDLE…

dove half full

February 1, 2013February 1, 2013 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A dove sits on a fence and someone says how bored it must be—what does it do all day, poor empty-headed thing…

Depends how you look at it, I say.

One dove’s boredom may very well be another’s peace—the oh-so-necessary space and time to think.

squirrelyard bully

January 28, 2013February 1, 2013 ~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Oh sure. He looks sweet enough.

But he’s a little red dictator.

Screaming and chuntering at anything that even thinks of interrupting his meal.

And he prefers to eat alone, thankyouverymuch.

See that blur of black in the background?

That’s a much bigger fella waiting his turn.
Sometimes there’s a queue.

Everybody knows the rules.

The [seriously more dignified] greys and blacks hide out in the spruce, watching, waiting, drumming their impatient little claws, not daring to grab a morsel because that only means being chased unceremoniously into the next yard by a little twirp. And who has the energy for all that running on an empty stomach?

Plus it’s embarrassing.

The smart ones don’t even bother showing up until His Twirpness has burped and moved on.

Moral of the story: it’s not as easy as one might think, being squirrely.

this

December 14, 2012December 17, 2012 ~ carin ~ 14 Comments

I keep trying to stuff my meditation into a time slot. On a zen tuffet. While decked out in pristine white yoga-wear.

I don’t even own yoga-wear.

No wonder it’s been so difficult.

Then this morning, as a nineteen year-old cat stretched on the rug and I in my bathrobe rubbed her tummy while Gregorian monks chanted on the stereo and a beeswax candle flickered on the mantle and the darkness outside was so dark I couldn’t even see the BBQ… I thought: this is meditation.

And so is making soup. Or spaghetti sauce. Curry. Anything with much chopping and stirring.

Even toast. There’s an art to it… it’s about the butter and jam ratio, honey if you’ve got it. It’s about thinking where that honey came from.

Changing the sheets, smelling that fresh-off-the-line smell in your bedroom [or fresh from anywhere smell is good too]. That crisp feeling when you get in under them. With a book. Early enough so you don’t fall asleep in five minutes. This is meditation.

Walking. With a letter to mail, or just to get a paper, a few lemons. Around the block. With a dog or alone. There’s ways of doing it like a chore, but what’s the point in that?

Walking through an art gallery.

Stopping.

Staring just a moment longer than usual at a painting, a squirrel, a plane passing by.

Cleaning. Chucking out the bits that no longer serve a purpose.

Conversation. Snow shovelling, weeding, sketching, collecting beach glass. Doing a crossword. Drinking tea, really drinking it, tasting it; doing nothing else for a moment but drinking tea… [I wouldn’t know, but this may also work with coffee]

Writing a letter, with a pen. Or a crayon.

Breathing. Just that, done well… this is meditation.

Looking up.

Paying attention.

Eyes open, or closed.

“The more I read, the more I meditate, and the more knowledge I acquire, the more I am enabled to affirm that I know nothing.” – Voltaire

◊

this isn’t about trains

November 30, 2012November 30, 2012 ~ carin ~ 8 Comments

I have a history with train tracks. Used to walk along them to school eating bunches of dark purple grapes from a nearby vineyard. This was before the invention of Canadian wine, when Ontario grapes were only useful for jelly, juice, or Baby Duck.

I think of this whenever I walk the path beside the tracks not far from my house—I remember the boys who played chicken with oncoming trains, and a ditch of tall grasses where older kids would hide and smoke at recess. The Brew Hole it was called. Maybe they drank beer too. I wouldn’t know. I was happy enough eating stolen grapes.

I also think of hoboes [different from tramps; hoboes work] and Arlo Guthrie. I imagine a kind of romance about riding the rails, leaning up against a bale of hay, watching the world swish by through an open door.

But tonight there’s no train. Just a few kids playing soccer in the field on the far side, near the school. Their voices so clear, laughter cutting through the evening chill. They’re not even playing a game, just kicking the ball around, making the most of the weather, keeping warm.

This is just before sunset. A brilliance of mango-ey light falls across the neighbourhood, over rooftops, making windows look almost liquid. I try to capture it but it never looks right; it’s like trying to photograph fairies.

The path beside the tracks eventually connects to the street where a woman about my age is strolling with her elderly mum. The mum uses a walker and goes slow and the daughter, hands in pockets, walks slightly ahead. I hear snippets of conversation: something something term deposits. It’s partly English and partly another language and only when I get close enough do I realize it’s German. The mother is asking questions about money and the daughter is short-tempered in her answers. The mother changes the subject. The daughter remains miffed. I feel for them both, but want to tell them: this time you have together… don’t waste it.

A man puts snow tires on his car while two boys ride different sized tricycles on the sidewalk around him.

And a few houses along two girls, maybe eleven or twelve, are drawing in chalk on their driveway. They wave as I pass and smile and they’re the ones who say hello first. It occurs to me how rare this is, the smiling and waving and speaking. Children have had so much of that warned out of them. But these girls—bless their brave souls—are fearless!

I loop around through the park, head homeward, and then I hear it.

The train.

If I hurry I might be able to make it back to the path and catch at least some of it but just as I get there the last car speeds by on the other side of the trees and then—silence. All those imaginary hoboes heading off to who knows where, who knows what kind of adventure, what sights await through that open door.

The sky has gone from orange and crimson to a yellow silvery blue.

The rooftops and windows look solid again.

I find a penny on the sidewalk, new and very shiny.

I toss it over my shoulder.

♦◊♦

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-coloured lenses which paint the world their own hue and each shows only what lies in its own focus.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

here there be deers

November 12, 2012November 12, 2012 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure I heard deer rustling in the shrubbery at the creek this morning. I went early, drawn by the sky and maybe surprised them.

I know they’re there. I’ve seen hoof prints in winter and people occasionally report seeing them on lawns.

Always seems a bit strange—that something as beautiful as deer can be found in urban settings. Unsettling really. A reminder we’ve encroached on their space.

They come for the water, follow the creek from north of here where, despite best efforts of developers, it’s still pretty woodsy.

I saw them only once. Two winters ago a pair of white-tailed beauties leapt across the path where I walked and then into a copse of spruce.

I like how so much goes on here regardless of us. Coyotes, fox, rabbits, stray cats, wild apple trees. They all know what to do, they manage. Until they don’t.