Find the Sweetness in That

Today was a holiday in Canada, newly introduced by Parliament: Family Day.  I had spent all day Saturday inside due to weather conditions and all day Sunday inside because it was my laundry and cooking day.  So today when Sylvain asked what I wanted to do, I answered, “my own thing.”  He was happy to do his own thing, too.  Ironically, we ended up at almost the exact same spots in the city, though at different times.

I picked up a chai latte on my way to work. Yes, I went to work on a holiday.  I only put in an hour or two, but feel so much better knowing I’ve cleared out the phone and email messages and have things ready for Tuesday morning.  I didn’t like the idea of coming in on Tuesday to a backlog.

Then I hit the mall to buy Hawsley Workman’s new CD after my dear friend K sent me the lyrics to Oh You Delicate Heart.  As I was waiting to turn left into the parking lot, fat snowflakes were being tossed about in the air, swirling up and down and all around on currents made visible by the snow itself.  The sky to the left was dark under thick cloud cover. On the right the sun was shining so brightly, I looked for a snow bow.

Finally I went to Riverside Marina where I was surprised to find a variety of waterfowl.  I called Sylvain using the cell phone he has persuaded me to start carrying in my purse, asking if he was interested in adding about five life birds to his list.  He had just gotten in from a walk, but grabbed binoculars and field guide and came anyway.

We saw dozens of Common Merganser and just as many Greater Scaup. There were Canvasback and Redhead, Mallard, Canada Goose, and two Mute Swans.  The divers were busy catching fish and the gulls were doing their best to wrest the catches away from the ducks.

As I was going back to my car, I saw a man with his grandson who appeared to be around 9 or 10.  “Would you like to see what they are?” I asked them, holding out the field guide.

“He KNOWS,” the man replied.

“You DO?” I asked the boy.

“Mergansers, scaup, canvasback…” he began to rattle them off, walking past me down the pier.

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Back at the commune, I settled down to read another chapter in Eat, Pray, Love.  I’ve just started the India chapters.  There is so much wisdom in these pages, in the things the author’s guru and Richard from Texas try to tell her about ego and quieting the mind and about giving up all attempts to micromanage the world and everything in it.

I pause occasionally in my reading to feel the effect those teachings are having on me as I read about them.  Angela’s comment on my last post about samsara has followed me all day and has morphed into a mantra all its own: Find the Sweetness in That.

I think about the situation that awaits me at work, the one I’d classified on Friday as an ethical dilemma, the one I couldn’t blog about because not all my coworkers would see it the way I see it.  Not that they know I have  a blog, but still.  I think about that situation and I say to myself, “Find the sweetness in that.”

A calm comes to me.  It’s fine that I don’t know what to do.  I’ll know what to do when the time comes to do it.

Golden light from the setting sun is coming in through the bedroom window.  My hand and the page of the book are half in shadow, half in evening sun.

My mother has her feelings hurt because of something she read on my blog, which gave Sylvain a chance last night to hold me while I let it all out: pain and anger and sadness.

“Find the sweetness in that.”

“What’s wrong?” he sometimes asks me when I am just sitting doing nothing, when I have a melancholy expression as I sit and do nothing.

“You have to remember,” I tell him, “that although I am not depressed, it is still winter. That existential angst is often still there, though very distant… like music playing in a far off room that you can barely hear.  It’s not enough to stop me from functioning.  It’s not enough to take all the joy out of life… but it’s there.  It’s almost always there.”

Find the sweetness in that.