Laundry Room Encounter

The neighbour I thought might be trying to avoid me tracked me down in the laundry room today to get my apartment number and explain why she had not yet returned the money I loaned her two weeks ago.  ”You didn’t do laundry last weekend,” she said. “I came to the laundry room every hour on the hour and you weren’t here.”  It’s true. I had been lazy and skipped a week.

“It’s humiliating, …” she had said as we’d walked across to the convenience store to use the ATM so I could spot her $10 till payday. “…to be living paycheque to paycheque,” she finished.

“I was there once,” I assured her, remembering periods during my twenties when I supplemented my minimum-wage income by availing myself of the food bank to feed myself and the homeless fellow who occasionally slept on my back porch.

Then she told me about how her 18-year-old daughter had begged her for some money to go out with a friend. “I don’t have any,” she’d told her.

“What about that $20?” the girl had nagged, seeing a bill tacked up on the bulletin board in their kitchen.

“That’s not mine,” my neighbour had repeatedly told the girl, until finally giving in.  I’ve had teenage friends. I know how they can be.

I told my neighbour not to sweat it, there was no rush.

While I tossed two weeks’ worth of dirty clothes into the washing machines, we chatted.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Every day above ground is a good day,” I said.

We talked about our respective outlooks on life. She said that being positive is difficult when you’ve had a rough life. It’s clear to me from looking at her face that she has had it rough.

I told her about some of the habits I’ve been trying to cultivate over the past couple of decades in order to change my attitude and outlook.

“Are you spiritual?” she asked me.

“Deeply,” I said.

Windsor Realty Broker Uses Clooney’s Face

Small potatoes, sure, but still … do you suppose Rick Rose at Real Choice Realty got Mr. Clooney’s permission before using his likeness to promote his services?

At Wyandotte and Lauzon in Windsor, ON, facing the Tim's drive-thru

Fleeting Wonderland

At 7:07 I padded barefoot into the kitchen to put the kettle on before drawing a bath. I had overslept.

The fact that I could not see the lighthouse caught my attention. Fog.  A dense fog bank was shrouding the marina.

Very shortly my whole building was swallowed up inside the cloud. I could have stood on my balcony nude and nobody would have known.

As I was pulling out of the parking garage, it occurred to me: with these cold temperatures, the fog might have frozen onto the surface of things. Just as I thought it, my eyes beheld it: every tree, bush, and blade of grass was coated in rime.

Nobody had a camera.

As I drove away from the marina and toward downtown, I saw that it was only the quarter mile or so around my building that was effected by this phenomenon.  How I wish it had stretched for miles!!! I would have run inside the building to find a student… any student… and pulled her outside to see the magic fairy dust caking every branch, twig and leaf in sight.

One Down, Eight to Go

After a warming trend that lasted almost a week, this area received a huge dump of snow Sunday night. I awoke on Monday morning, a public holiday in three Canadian provinces called Family Day, to find the world once again blanketed in white. Deeply blanketed.

At some point, Sylvain let me know that he had seen little kitty paw tracks in the snow on his driveway.  Perhaps that wasn’t Ginger he had seen run over on a nearby busy street the other day, we thought. Maybe it was a coincidence that the very skittish stray we’ve taken to calling Ginger disappeared for an uncharacteristically long string of days around the same time.

Just in case Ginger had come back during the snow storm, I went over to Sylvain’s house yesterday evening to make sure the kitty shelter wasn’t snowed under. If there was a cat in there, we didn’t want it to suffocate!

The cat house was indeed buried in snow with only a little breathing space left at the top of the doorway. I cleared a path from the shelter to the deck where Ma used to feed him. I cleared another little bit toward the line of cedar trees that flank the shelter. Then I peeked inside to see if that old yellow tom was in there nestled in the straw.  He wasn’t.

This morning, though, he was back!  He enjoyed the warmth of the shelter for most of the day, emerging to accept a meal and fresh water.

Is this why they say every cat has nine lives?

Thank you for all your thoughts of Light and Love for this sweet old bedraggled tom cat.

after lunch

The Gift of a Good Storm

The lighthouse across the street is obliterated by a thick curtain of white.  I’ll have to wear ear plugs tonight to muffle the sound of the snow plow’s metal shield scraping across the asphalt as it clears the circular drive every two hours.

I love a good storm because I can work a whole crossword puzzle or brew a cup of tea and read four chapters in a book…

all without feeling that there’s something else I should be doing.

Sitting Around Watching the Plants Grow

On my way home from work Friday, I was jonesin’ for some retail therapy. I stopped at ShopEco and came out with a sweet little bamboo utensil set in a travel pouch made from recycled water bottles.

Blood Services keeps calling me. Their blood stores are low due to the crazy weather (donors cancel a lot during blizzards and such). After a 6-month deferral, I agreed to try again, though I told them I probably wouldn’t pass the iron test.  Sure enough, my iron stores are down again–even though I’ve gone back to eating meat. I stopped at the pharmacy to buy ferrous gluconate pills.

The sun shone* today, so I walked down to the marina to look for interesting ducks among the divers. There are lots of mergansers now. There were a couple dozen swans, too.  The immature bald eagles on Peche Island continue to put on daily shows. Sometimes two of them seem to be playing a game in the air. Maybe they are practicing their aerial hunting skills with each other.  In a parked car behind me, a man was talking to his young son: “Look at that wingspan! There are three more, see them?”

After the blood bank, grocery store and car wash, I settled in to read a few more chapters in Scattered Minds.  Sylvain came over for a little while. We had sandwiches and raw veggies for supper.

The slow cooker is on. You know it’s going to be good when the recipe calls for a can of ginger ale, tabasco sauce and bourbon.

Last night the moon was a fat orange disk suspended low over the lake.  Sylvain and I got out the scope and his binoculars, passing them back and forth. Tonight he brought his camera over to capture it, but this evening’s show wasn’t the same.

Question: assuming you ever say it, when you say the word “shone,” does it rhyme with “bone” or “Don” or “Dawn?”

Mirror, Mirror

Sunday night is when my ACIM group meets here.  As our facilitator has said more than once, The Course is not for the faint of heart. We try to take a brutally honest look at our egos, for one.

Mine made an appearance late Sunday that I did not even know about. After our hour and a half of reading and discussion, the group left. Did they leave a bit earlier and more briskly than expected, or did I just imagine that?

Once we were alone, Sylvain sat me down to tell me something important. “Your ego is not going to like it,” he warned me.  I wanted to know. I took a deep breath.

He proceeded to tell me that something I did/said had hurt somebody’s feelings pretty badly.

My initial reaction is exactly what you would expect from someone with a huge (read fragile) ego.  I said, “I am not perfect. If someone is upset with me, I can live with that.”  And, “how someone reacts to my ego is her responsibility.”

Wow, eh?  Yeah, ouch.

As Sylvain was getting ready to leave, he noticed that I was absentmindedly washing cups when he had just asked for his coat and I had nodded but then not reached into the closet for it.

“What’s wrong?” He asked me.

I realized then that I was upset, but the upset was still unconscious, was just barely starting to bubble to the surface in the form of nervous and distracted fussing about.

“Whatever I say right away is not my real response,” I said. “The real response will come later,” I said.

Once Sylvain left, I allowed myself to replay the event of the evening in my mind’s eye. I saw myself being rough with another’s feelings just because my ego wanted what it wanted when it wanted it. Whereas the Kelly who did that had not looked over at the wounded person to see how she was nor made eye contact, Kelly the observer took a peek in her direction.

It hurt.  I realized I had behaved badly and owed my friends apologies. What I want more than anything is to create a safe space in which we can all open up and be vulnerable.  Yet right here in my own home, I had shut someone down while they were doing just that.

A feeling welled up inside me. A nasty one.  This is the feeling I run from. This is the feeling I will do anything to escape.  This is the feeling that once upon a time could send me to the liquor store in the middle of the night. I hate this feeling.  It’s the feeling of knowing that you have hurt someone else and need to say, “I’m sorry.”

I don’t do “sorry.”  I never have done it. I’m not an “I’m sorry” kind of gal.

Can you believe it? That’s how damaged I am.  All my life, whenever I’ve done something hurtful toward another…accidentally or impulsively… I have resolved it in one of a number of ways, none of them easy to admit to here on this public forum.

1) remained in denial about my transgression

2) let the friendship die…who needed them anyway?

3) ignore it, pretend it never happened, hope the other person forgives/forgets in time

As my group facilitator keeps saying, “Once you know this stuff, you can’t un-know it. Your ego can’t get away with the same crap anymore. The gig is up.”

I knew I couldn’t take any of the same old routes as before.  Sylvain had even been concerned enough to ask if I had booze in the house.  Yes, I said. There’s vodka in the freezer.

“Why?” He asked.

“Because alcohol has a higher freezing point… ” I began.

“No, not why is it in the freezer, why do you have any in the house?”

“Oh, remember, you gave me some for that pie crust experiment?”

“Right.  Are you okay?”

“Oh, heavens. I’m not going to drink the vodka.  This is an opportunity. This is material for practice. I have to sit with this feeling.”

I sat with the feeling and I cried a bit. It was too late to call my friend and deliver the inevitable apology; that would have to wait till tomorrow.  After sitting for a while with the nasty feeling in my chest and stomach, I brushed my teeth and went into the bedroom.  There, beside the bed, was the current issue of the Shambhala Sun opened to this article by Pema Chodron. In it she recounts the story of a time when she was stuck for several days at a retreat with someone who would not speak to her, who was holding a grudge against her for something that had happened between them in the past. Nothing Pema did or said could bring this person around.  Pema was so troubled by this that she was unable to sleep that night and so she went to the meditation hall and sat on the cushion all night. She just sat with that awful feeling until dawn.  She had a breakthrough, but that’s another story.

The next night, last night, I called my friend to apologize. First, though, I had to dig down until I found my tender heart. Since I am someone who doesn’t apologize, who has absolutely no experience or practice in apologizing and feels completely awkward trying to do it and would rather be doing anything else on earth but that… I knew I could not dial the phone until I was really there, all of me.  It couldn’t be one of those, “Hey, sorry about that” apologies.  It had to be really felt.  You know, there is a big difference between, “Oh yeah, hey, sorry!” and “I am sorry to have hurt you.”

I got her answering machine and left a message.

I called another group member and apologized to her. We spoke briefly on the phone, then today she emailed me these words:

This is such a wonderful path we have embarked on for this year and I hope you can join with me in agreeing that it took no time at all for you to realize your ego was doing something that’s just not working for you any more. We will all have such breakthroughs this year ….  Let’s agree to celebrate these breakthroughs and reaffirm our commitment to see it through to the end.  To see what kind of folks we can be without all this other ‘stuff’.’

All the best to you and wonderful Sylvain, our companions on this journey.  C, J and I are off tomorrow to corral our egos for 10 days and watch the nonsense present itself to our awareness.  I imagine there will be some tears and anger and relief but in the end I hope I come out of it a kinder, gentler ego , I only hope I can be as quick as you were in seeing through it!  Love S

This morning my eyes fell on the daily meditation for February 15th, which included these words:

Not one of us feels loving every minute. Even when we have been student of the Course for a long time, we are prone to behavior that embarrasses us at times. Why can’t we change, once and for all? Actually, we can. That’s the path we are on. We simply haven’t arrived at the destination yet. In the meantime, we can take every chance we get to change our thoughts of attack to thoughts of love or forgiveness.

How blessed I am to have the three treasures.

Being the Sibling, Part Two

Why am I blogging about this?

I see versions of this same struggle for healing in many people around me.  I see how tired Sylvain sometimes gets because his parents rely so heavily on him for small and large decisions, for rides, for help with paperwork, for organizing finances, for managing the household, for hiring and administering help.  It would be so easy to say, “It’s not fair” and become resentful, and sometimes he does… we do.

But over the past year, we have both come so far in our understanding of and compassion for other family members, it’s amazing to me.  We help each other in this.  We talk. We sit and reflect on the fact that every family member is not equal, so how can we expect each one to bear an equal share of the things that need doing?

• We are each different in our life situations. Before I was working full time, I spent more time at Sylvain’s house helping out when a PSW couldn’t be there. Once I got a job, I was only able to come around on the weekends.
• We are each different in our ability to handle stress. A family member who has solid mental and emotional health has more to give emotionally than one who has not developed good strategies for dealing with stress or depression or turmoil.
• A family member who is dealing with his or her own crisis, such as lay-off from a job, issues within his or her own nuclear family, putting himself/herself through school, etc. will not be as available as one whose own life is peaceful and stable and without its own stressors.
• We are each different in our physical capacities. Sylvain cannot, from a wheelchair, mop the floor or rake the leaves. One family member doesn’t have a good sense of balance, so we do not ask this person to change light bulbs.
• We are each different in our intellectual capacity. Sylvain is blessed with smarts, common sense, education and worldly experience, all of which makes him a good candidate for handling certain management-level tasks for the family.

We know these things intellectually, don’t we? Yet over and over we stamp our feet, gasp and groan when the turnip doesn’t give blood.

Sylvain and I remind each other that people are who they are. I may have dreamed of having a brother who would protect me from bullies and teach me how to build a tree house.  Instead I got a brother whom I taught that you should never dial a toll number then give your credit card number to claim a prize. This is how it is. No amount of fuming or grumbling is going to change that.  I have to let go of my unrealistic expectations and flow with what is, not try to cling to what might have been.

Some of our biggest and most tenacious frustrations can arise from witnessing family members’ emotional incapacities or stuntedness. One of my best friends was raised by a narcissist for a mother. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine trying to tell your own mother about how your day went only to find she is incapable (INCAPABLE) of ever hearing you? She is only capable of hearing what you say in relation to how it affects her. How painful must that be for a child… to see a warm body in front of you and think ‘that must be my mother…it looks like a mother and it gave birth to me…’ But it’s not. Inside that skin there is no mother, there is only a self-centred child incapable of any of the nurturing children require to grown into healthy adults with solid self-esteem.

The one thing we keep bringing back to the centre of our focus, our practice, our work with ego is this: when looking at what we do, what we are willing and able to do, we are not to compare our lot with that of another family member.

If you catch yourself saying or thinking, “It’s not fair…,” this is a clear sign that you are doing something you don’t want to be doing. So don’t do it. Do what you want to do. Do what gives you joy.  Then there will be no part of you that looks at what another family member contributes and says that such-and-such is or isn’t fair.

When it comes to things domestic and familial, I am a dyed-in-the-wool communist: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” What could be more loving–UNCONDITIONALLY loving–than that?

Being the Sibling, Part One

I heard it in school when I was a kid, and I heard it again from my parents: All men (and women) are created equal.

But we’re not, are we? Not when it comes to things like IQ, emotional intelligence, mental health, resilience, capacity for introspection and growth.

When I try to think back to 1965, to my little brother’s birth to remember any emotions I may have felt at the time, I can remember only two: curiosity and jealousy.

When Mom would take me along to visit Mikey in the hospital, I was curious about the big white bandage encasing his head and the little tube running from the back of his hand to a plastic bag of clear liquid hanging from a tall pole.  He sat wide-eyed in a little tyke-sized wheelchair and did not cry or complain about being poked and prodded and stuck with needles. I suppose it was all he had ever known.

At home, I remember watching my brother pull himself across the carpeted floor using the strength of his arms alone while his legs dragged behind. When I asked, “Mommy, why can’t Mikey stand up?” she told me he was born with a boo boo on his back.

Mom tells me I had always been a low-maintenance child, an unnaturally good child. Where other babies put found items in their mouths, I would always bring things to the nearest adult. I was the type of child–you’ve probably known one or two of them–who anticipates the needs of the adults around her.

You would hope that big sister (me) would have been helpful and caring toward the new baby, but I wasn’t. One scene from my early childhood is still scorched into my memory like a brand. My brother is being discharged from Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. His gurney is festooned with balloons and all around him are stuffed animals–gifts from all the friends and colleagues of my parents who visited during his stay. Mind you, this memory may not even be real. I may have the hospital wrong, the origin of the toys wrong.  What’s important is the feeling.

The feeling was: Why does he get all those beautiful toys when I will not allow myself to ask adults for anything? Before my brother’s birth, I had been the centre of my parents’ world. The tectonic plates of my world were shifting. I also had the feeling that the mountain of plush toys was wasted on him. I wondered if he would appreciate them the way I could if they were given to me, or take proper care of them.

No, I wasn’t helpful with the new baby; I was mean.  Very mean.  Though I don’t remember doing it, my mother tells me that when my brother was lying on his back in the middle of the room (usually bandaged or encased in casts from multiple surgeries) sucking on his pacifier, I would circle him the way sharks circle their prey before striking. Closer and closer I would approach until I snatched the pacifier (pop!) from his little mouth and ran off with it, leaving him to cry.

My brother was not supposed to live past the age of four, according to the doctors. They encouraged my parents to put him in an institution, where he would die from one of the complications of scoliosis or hydrocephalus. My parents literally had to beg the doctor to put in a shunt. “We’re taking this baby home,” they told the physicians.  It is very possible that the cluster of learning disabilities my brother has were caused in those days before the shunt was put in to relieve the pressure on his brain. Or maybe that damage had already been done in utero.  I don’t know.  All I do know is that it wasn’t until Mike was a teenager that mom (a single parent since my father’s death in 1969) had him rigorously tested. She was very involved in the Spina Bifida Association and in local support groups where she became friends with other mothers of children with SB.

After the testing, my mom explained the ramifications of the results with me. She and I both came to understand that it did not make sense for us to get angry and frustrated with him for all those things about him that drove us insane, like:

• his poor short-term memory
• his inability to manage money
• his difficulty connecting cause and effect
• his lack of common sense

My whole world and how I viewed and treated my brother changed radically the day I said to myself, “He can’t help it. He isn’t doing _______ (fill in the blank) just to drive you mad.”

In addition to having an IQ profile with drastic differences between the peaks and valleys, Mike is near-sighted in one eye while far-sighted in the other. With his eyes not working together in normal stereo fashion as your eyes and my eyes do, he cannot perceive depth.  I begrudgingly admitted to myself that when my brother sets a glass of milk down on a pencil and does not realize it is precarious, I should not yell at him.

I am not sure how old I was when I stopped hating my brother. The road to healing for both of us has been long, complex and twisted. We’ve both been in therapy at points of our lives.  We’ve had long talks during which I admitted my feelings of jealousy and resentment. I have told him how sorry I am for torturing him, verbally abusing him and basically doing a real number on his already fragile self-esteem.

For a while he and I maintained a relationship in which we understood intellectually which complexes we triggered in each other, but we still had a lot of trouble being friends.

My moving to another country helped us come to appreciate each other more, but when he visited me in my new home up north, the visits were often tumultuous ones with plenty of tears and sometimes screaming. We had a lot to work out.  I remember putting him back on a plane at the end of one visit during which we said to one another, “I love you, of course I love you. But I don’t like you very much.”

I don’t know when the shift came, but I knew something had healed in me when my mother broached with me the subject of her will.  She wanted to know, in all honesty, how I would feel if what she left us–assuming she predeceased us both–was not divided perfectly 50/50.

My brother and I are not the same, I told her. I have always been okay and will always be okay. I know how to land jobs, I know how to take care of myself. My brother, on the other hand, has always fought so hard for the smallest victories. It took him a good 15 years or so, but he earned a masters degree. Because of a constellation of learning disabilities that affect everything from penmanship to common sense, social skills to eye-hand coordination, he has trouble finding a job in which he can excel and thrive. He has the best work ethic of anyone I’ve ever met. He is never late to work and never fails to show up, even if it means getting up at 4:30 a.m. because of how much longer it takes him to dress and bathe and navigate the public transit system in a wheelchair.  He meekly endures being berated by impatient supervisors who do not understand his challenges; he internalizing a lot of his anger.

My mother wanted to know how I would feel if she left Mike enough to set up a trust so that he would never have to be homeless.  That might mean leaving me less, she said.  I knew I had healed when I was able to assure her that it was fine with me, absolutely fine.

Why have I chosen to blog about this now? Good question. I’ll answer this on a future post.

Tom,…

Tom,
(responding to the comment you left on my post entitled Tears, below)

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my post. You gave me lots to think about over the last two days.

You’re right, it’s not easy. I agree 100% with you that we find misogyny everywhere. I find misogynists even in my dreams, which led me recently to realize that I have misogynist parts of myself. Wasn’t that sobering!!!

It is a very big challenge, you’re right also, to have compassion for the ethnic cleansers, (the bigots, the child abusers, …). I found a passage in ACIM that helps me a lot when I am struggling with this: “I would see you as my friend, that I may remember you are part of me and come to know myself.” (workbook 68, which I blogged about here)

I sometimes have trouble with people who say that their righteous anger helps give them the energy to be an activist or engaged Buddhist. One friend who says this is very active in helping people who are addicted, those living on the streets, etc. I admire her work in the world. At the same time, I believe with all my heart that until each of us starts with number one, there will always be social problems to try to tackle and solve. In that sense all the activism in the world sometimes seems to me to be no more than a band-aid.  The image that comes to my mind is that of the arcade game where you use a mallet to try to whack a gopher on the head as he emerges from his hole. He always pops out another hole. You can never eliminate him.

We have to heal from the inside out, each of us taking responsibility for our own hearts, our own prejudices, our own blind spots, our own projections.

Kelly

It Doesn’t Have to be Five Things

• I never thought I would like anything hot, but I really like the new dark chocolate with chili.  If you go to Taloola Cafe, you can have the Mexicano hot chocolate with cayenne and a cinnamon stick.
• Today an ancient copy of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish arrived in the mail from Amazon Marketplace. The edition is old enough to be the same one I had when I was four years old, only there are no crayon scribblings on the pages of this one.
• I have the hiccups. For some reason that makes me feel like a child.
• There’s a woman whose path crosses mine every morning as she is walking for exercise. “As long as we are going to run into each other every morning, I may as well know your name,” I said to her yesterday. Today we greeted each other by name. I like that.

Almost Famous?!

• Yikes! This blog has been named on a list of the top ten Windsor blogs. If this little bloggy tribe becomes widely read, I will have to stop writing about work. And family. And… everything.  Anonymity is good.
• I found this fascinating.
• From now until the end of March I will be working all day five days a week AND three evenings a week. So if you don’t hear from me as much, you’ll know why.
• The day after I did not sail off the bridge or into the oncoming lane of traffic, Danish Blue and peppery mission fig spread on a cracker tasted even more delicious than usual.
• With wind chill factored in, tomorrow is supposed to be EVEN COLDER than today. I am so grateful that one afternoon three years ago I splurged on expensive ragg wool socks. I may even have to break out the balaclava.

My New Favourite Blog

I barely had time to fall in love with his writing before he announced he was stopping.

He makes me want to write more. He makes me wish I could loosen up that much, be that spontaneous and free, the tender heart that exposed.

Leo, I wish you would stay.

Every Day Gets a Little Better

During Pa’s first week in the long-term care facility, we had a few mis-communications with nurses and other staff members. We were doing our best to walk that thin line between good vigilance over Pa’s treatment and becoming a thorn in the side of staff members, whom we did not want to alienate.  We are acutely aware that we need these people on our side. We do not want them hating us or rolling their eyes every time they see us coming. We do not want to garner a reputation as the unreasonable family, the picky family, the family that is always getting staff in trouble with their superiors.

One thing we do that I absolutely recommend to anyone with a loved one in a LTC facility is to make unannounced visits at all times of the day. Ensure the pattern of your visits is not predictable. You know how sometimes when people know the auditor is coming, they will clean up their act for that visit? They know they can relax the day after the auditor leaves, eh? Don’t be that predictable. Make surprise visits at odd times two days in a row, or three.

The staff at Pa’s facility are well aware by now that they can never predict when one of us will pop in. I have been known to go up there as early as 5:45 a.m. to sit quietly in the corner of his dark room while he sleeps just to ensure he is getting his 6 a.m. pill on time.

Secondly, we keep good notes.  The private PSWs have a log where they document everything they do with Pa and everything they observe. I also have a journal in Word where I note who said what, dates times and witnesses.  If we ever in the future have to complain about something being a long-standing pattern, I will be able to produce the meticulous documentation.

The first week was a bit rocky. There were some errors, some unacceptable comments and unfortunate actions during that first week which had to be nipped in the bud, as much as we do not like having to go up the chain of command.

Sylvain and I had many talks about picking our battles. What will we let slide and where will we take a stand?  We know the staff is made up of human beings. We know that the staff to resident ratio is 3 to 33, a working condition I do not envy. We know that the nurse and PSWs can’t be everywhere at once, and that there will be times when Pa rings to be helped in the bathroom and the PSWs are just not able to respond as quickly as one would hope, depending on whether there is a crisis somewhere else on the unit.

After much deliberation, we decided to take a “wait and see” attitude toward many things, but a very proactive approach to the timing of his medications. This is simply because of the nature of Parkinson Disease. You can’t cure PD, but you can stay as physically and mentally active as possible to slow the progression, and you can manage symptoms to some degree with medication. The timing of delivery, however, is crucial and is something that Pa’s specialist (two hours away) has worked out over a period of years in close partnership with the Pa and the family.

I am very happy to report that for every single thing that we considered important enough to take up the chain of command, we eventually found someone who said to us, “That is absolutely not acceptable. Thank you for telling me about that.”  That was very comforting.  Also, we immediately noticed results of our complaining.  The entire team is earning our trust, and we feel better and better about not being there around the clock.

Until yesterday, there was only one staff member who didn’t seem to “get it,” who didn’t seem to have bought into the importance of certain aspects of Pa’s care.  She had a very “know it all,” slightly condescending attitude, which left me not knowing how to respond.   Whenever this person was on duty, we worried and felt we had to be there watching over things. She was one of the ones we’d had to report to a supervisor early on, so she may have taken a dislike to us.

Then yesterday, because of my popping in at a very unexpected hour and sticking around a while, I was witness to something she should not have done. I was not on site when I, while chatting with Sylvain, realized what I had witnessed. We called Pa’s room, spoke to Ma, and asked her to confirm that it had happened.

For a short while, my ego got the best of me. I wanted to rush back there and demand to speak to her supervisor.  Sylvain managed to talk some sense into me. “We aren’t going in there until our egos are in check,” he said.  We took some deep breaths together, then went back to ask Ma what she had learned. The staff member had given Ma a reason for her action that seemed plausible on the surface and was corroborated by another staff member. Following Sylvain’s lead, I left again without confronting anyone.  We had decided to take the “let her stew a while in her own juices” approach.

Last night I did some serious praying about this. This morning I sat on the mat meditating for a while and asking Spirit to guide me. Knowing the same person was on shift again today, I was torn between going up there to see if she would try to pull the same stunt again or staying away to show trust.  Finally I decided to go, but not to do any confronting. Just witness. Just enjoy Pa’s company at breakfast, which is something I like to do anyway.  I rose from the cushion feeling right about this choice.

Miracle of miracles, she was a different person.  The know-it-all tone was gone, in its place a tone of respect. She even sought and deferred to my judgment on something. I witnessed her being extremely courteous and respectful with all the residents. There was not a shred of condescension in any utterance.

My prayer was answered. Instead of an escalating adversarial relationship, we have been granted an opportunity to start the relationship afresh, on the right foot.

Not So Cocky Anymore

Last year when Sylvain put his van in a ditch on a snowy day, I was absolutely certain (at first) that he had been going too fast for the conditions.  He eventually convinced me that he had not been.

I’m afraid I can be a rather bad backseat driver. Unless Sylvain wants to hear from me, he knows he had better leave a safe space between himself and the vehicle ahead of us, always signal his turns, etc.   As for when I’m behind the wheel, I have three gears: granny, granny and granny.  I never exceed the speed limit and I go under the limit when driving conditions are less than ideal.  There are probably a few people who take The Drive (two lanes, no way to pass) every morning at the same time I do who dread getting stuck behind the little black VW City Golf.

Today Sylvain and I spent a great deal of time out shopping for the last two really necessary items for Pa’s room: a table and a floor lamp.  The selection process proved more difficult than he anticipated, and when we found something, it wasn’t cash and carry; the store has to order us one.

By supper time, Sylvain was getting grumpy. At one point, while we were discussing his meltdown, he said, “…and I don’t like driving in this stuff.” I said, “I’m not scared of this stuff.”  I offered to chauffeur his mom to and from the nursing home as often as needed.

Later we decided to meet back at my place. My car was still parked at the nursing home because I’d gone up there ahead of the rest of the family this morning.  So Sylvain let me out of his van; I got all the snow brushed off the car, the ice scraped off the windshield and windows, and started home.

I was crossing a bridge when I felt the car start to fishtail. I don’t know what started it. I don’t remember a curve there and I didn’t think I was going fast enough for that to happen.  I very quickly realized what was happening to my car was more than a little shimmy at the rear. The back-end of my car was continuing to slide.  So I tried to remember what I’ve been taught about regaining control of a car when that happens. I thought I was supposed to turn the steering wheel in the direction that the rear is going. I did that, but it didn’t stop the car from spinning, spinning all the way around 360 degrees. Well, I must have overcompensated when I turned into the spin, because the next thing I knew, the car was doing 360 in the other direction!  While all this was happening, there were (Alhamdulillah) no other cars around me. Then I saw a big truck and another car behind it approaching in the oncoming lane.  By some miracle (and the help of my very hard-working guardian angels) I did not slide into the other lane.  It finally occurred to me to apply the brakes, and that did bring the car to a halt just shy of the guard rail.  My stationary car was then perpendicular to the lane.  I backed it up and got going again before cars approaching from behind me in my lane caught up to me.

The strange thing is that during this whole car ballet, I never panicked and never felt a rush of adrenaline. It was more like watching something in a dream… calmly and with detachment. I did act ignorantly, though, since I have not refreshed my knowledge of dealing with hydroplaning in a long time and had forgotten the exact steps. For one, do not turn too violently or severely into the fishtail.

Another way to keep from spinning out is just to stay home, which is my plan for tomorrow.

Slow Down for Everything

I don a long-sleeved undershirt, turtleneck, hoodie and field coat, sling the spotting scope over my shoulder and make my way around the snow banks to cross the street to the marina.  The Bald Eagles are putting on an aerial show. “Spectacular,” says a man as he passes me going the other way.

Way out on the ice there is something new today…past the Common Mergansers, Red Heads, Canvasbacks, other divers and gulls. It’s Tundra Swans.

When my fingers are too numb, even with gloves, to feel the focus dial of the scope anymore, I head back.

Inside my warm apartment, I step out of my shoes and place them on the boot mat, then use an old cotton rag to clean up the grey puddles of melted snow.

One day I’ll be dead. One day I won’t be able to do any of these things…kick off hiking boots or mop up melted snow from a shiny tile floor.  So I do it slowly, with loving attention.

Yeah, It’s a Blizzard. And?

• And I don’t have to go to work tomorrow if I deem travel unsafe. That’s what my boss said.
• And I have lots of food in the house. (That is a blessing I do not take for granted, not for one minute.)
• And I have Camino dark chocolate cocoa in the cupboard.
• And when I got home from work there was a sticker on my mailbox indicating there is a package for me in the staff room. I’ll bet it’s from Amazon and it’s TWO NEW BOOKS! What could be better than two new books during a blizzard? I ordered…

Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice

Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

I do hope the yellow cat is okay in his little shelter. Tomorrow I may have to dig him out.