Something to Shay

Dude

Photo credit – Alejandro Tocornal – @tocornal92

Besides WTH I am not sure how exactly to sum up 2020. This year has been intense, and I don’t think it is done with us yet. I’ve been looking for the optimism I usually ride into a new year on, but it seems a little elusive right now. The term “ankle busters” is a term surfers use to describe waves too small to ride. That seems appropriate for the wave carrying me into 2021. I’m also all about a good metaphor, speaking of leg problems, and so it’s like we’re only half way through rehabbing from a serious injury and while we know we’ll walk again; we’ve still got months of serious physio ahead of us. I’m kind of looking at the vaccine like a really hot physiotherapist. It’s something to look forward to every day that will help us as we make incremental progress to the recovery we’re hoping for. And so, while I’m underwhelmed with expectation for the hoped-for miracle of 1201 a.m. January 1st, I did come across something today that caused me to give a little grace to 2020 and the drag it might have on the new year. It’s a quote by Mitch Albom that says, “There is everything you know and everything that happens. When the two do not line up, you make a choice”. There has never been a period of time when everything I know has been so out of sync with everything that is happening. Some of you are probably too young to remember when a teacher could slap you upside your head if you weren’t paying attention. 2020 was that teacher. Once it had our attention and we could sense the disturbance and disorientation between what we knew and what was currently happening, all of us had to make some choices. What we chose probably determined how we’re feeling today. I would be interested to know the choices you made. These are some of mine:

I chose not to make sourdough bread, fight over toilet paper or buy a Peloton. (In retrospect, based on precovid jeans, I should have bought the Peloton).

Brene Brown says, “You either walk inside your story and own it or your stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness”. For the first time in my adult life, I have had the opportunity and the solitude to let a lot of stuff I’ve never processed rise to the surface and have it’s say. I’m still working that out but I’m choosing to own my story and to give up the hustle. I’m beginning to know that worthiness is never for anyone else to assign.

I chose to pay attention and to listen to the silence and the noise and assess my feelings and judgements through the lens of my integrity and character instead of my knee jerk reactions. It’s interesting when you get clear about your whys and your why nots.

This year has been enlightening to say the least, and I chose to lean in, look for and learn from the people in the margins. Truthfully, those are always the people I am drawn to but, I realized that I don’t always notice the ways in which I participate in the systems that have advantaged me and oppressed others. I come to that table with humility and openness and a determination to do better.

In this very conspiratorial year, I chose to fact check the hell out of everything. There was no social distancing in the cheap seats and the snark and hate was abundant for everyone who didn’t think like you. I chose to not fight about politics, especially on social media. (Some days this was difficult and required shutting the laptop and walking away).

I chose gratitude. For everyone putting themselves at risk to provide for our needs, for the victories over covid within my family, for health, for continued employment, for books and podcasts that made me happy, uncomfortable and more informed, for my home, for the weather, for new houses, new marriages, new babies, but most of all for the technology that kept me connected to the people I love. The idea that I could sit down and have a meal with my family and then only do dishes for one?! What?! That I could still be there on Christmas morning even though I couldn’t actually be there? That my daughters and I could chat face to face (actually more like ceiling to ceiling, but whatever) while we each cleaned our houses? That I could watch my grandgirls dance and still see their faces and hear their voices – it has kept me alive, this laptop and cell phone, and I am so grateful.

I would be a liar though, if I didn’t admit to the days I chose to sit in the sadness of missing everyone, self medicating with ice cream. (which brings us back to the Peloton)

I chose vulnerability when I started this blog and it has been a gift of self-discovery. I also chose to learn some new things like playing the ukulele and kayaking and relearning how to ride a bike which is just like, well, riding a bike.

After initially fighting with God, I chose faith. But when I did, I had to lay down the anxiety and despair over who, some say, was in and who was out and really trust the God I know that says everyone that wants in, is in. And I had to decide that sometimes people who lead get it wrong, but imperfection is all God has to work with so he makes do. And then just like you secretly refold the towels your husband/kids fold, God fixes what we screw up in his name and eventually he makes it perfect.

I chose prayer for those who are suffering and bowed by grief. It seems inadequate until I remember who is on the other end of that prayer. And I hope, when we feel nudged to be Heaven’s hands on earth, that we choose to step into that prompting with love. There is so much need right now.

As often as possible, I chose laughter. I chose hope. I chose to be happy in this, what next, kind of year.

And today, New Year’s Eve 2020, I choose to not be mad about the ankle busters not quite sending me into 2021 the way I would like. Because, although I would choose the beach every day, all day, I haven’t yet learned to surf, and soon, better waves will roll on in.

Happy New Year.

Hold Fast

Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. 1Thessalonians 5:21

A few years ago I became aware of the concept of choosing a word at the beginning of a year, something that would guide and represent your intentions as you began living 365 new days. I take this task very seriously and give it a great deal of thought. I struggled in December 2019 to find the word I would ride into 2020. I tried a few on and changed my mind several times as I tried to anticipate what 2020 would bring. It was to be the year I would retire and the possibilities of adventure and new beginnings were preeminent in my mind. FREE seemed appropriate. Also, IMAGINE. Maybe even BOSS. And then I fell in love with a quote written by author Sarah Bessey, from her book, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith. “May we be the ones who hold the doors open for others, who hold hands, who hold faces, who hold secrets for one another, who hold space for the pain and the brilliance, who hold the light and the salt, the complexity and the simplicity, the silence and the storm, the ones who hold our opinions loosely and yet love ferociously.” I knew with certainty that my word for the coming year needed to be “hold”.

Almost immediately, I could feel a rebellion well up in me. Hold?!!! Seriously?!!! This was to be my year of possibilities, finally free of the 9-5 theft of my day. Hold?!!!! C’mon! But the universe had spoken. I read the quote again and again and while it resonated with all my best angels, it didn’t speak to the escapades I hoped to embark upon with my newfound freedom. I laugh now. 2020 has indeed been the perfect year for such a word. If I understood then, what I know now, I would have warned everybody. Travel in February! Visit your Grandparents! Eat, drink and be merry! GET OUT NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!

This year has turned out completely different from what I expected. It has been a solitary, contemplative year of discovery I could not have predicted. There have been grand canyons all right and unexpected vistas, but everything I had planned to do has been put on hold. I have not spent lazy afternoons holding grandbabies. I haven’t stowed any luggage in the hold of a traveling ship. Most days, I have just held steady. But honestly, often, I’ve also been holding onto joy. Because within the uncertainty I feel a divine drumbeat and I feel holy instruction in it’s rhythm. Rest, rumble, reckoning, redemption. First we rested and we’ve been rumbling and reckoning ever since. It’s been unexpected, this upheaval. I don’t want to say “unprecedented” because it’s become the unofficial word of 2020 and it’s played out. Also it’s also only partly true. It means, “without previous instance, never before known or experienced”. So, isn’t every year unprecedented? And for that matter, every day? Perhaps what made 2020 so shattering is we had become complacent – uncritical in our thinking and expectant of ease. This year is just the Universe’s way of gripping us by the shoulders and shaking us to find out what we’re going to hold onto. At the end of the day, none of this is new. Sickness, struggle, social unrest and wars over power have been a part of civilization since Adam. This cycle plays out in history and in scripture over and over again. Rest, rumble, reckon, redeem. Right now we need a vaccine to relieve and redeem us. Science has stepped forward and saved us from disease and pandemics throughout time. I am grateful for that and anxious for it to happen in our time. But throughout this year of rumbling and reckoning I have felt a deeper need that a vaccine cannot provide. A Balm of Gilead not provided by science. Over the course of the year I have been reckoning with the words of the poem by Washington Gladden that says, “…...When the anchors that faith had cast, Are dragging in the gale, I am quietly holding fast, To the things that cannot fail”… I have been drawn more than ever to those things.

As the leaves fall, and Advent draws near, I am preparing in watchful wakefulness for a season of peace and good will to all, and for the spirit of Christmas to take hold. I am ready for the rumble and the reckoning to still, and for the quiet of a holy night to descend. I am praying that the tension and rage of this year will seep away and I’m holding space for something more fortifying to take its place. There is a desperate need for goodness and generosity to hold sway. I am praying for exhausted mamas and faithful dads for whom luck has not held up, and for whom a season of busyness and giving is strained by lack and uncertainty. I am hoping for solace for those that have given up or been unable to hold out under the strain. I am mindful of the grief and loss of so many and like to imagine the doors of heaven being held open by the One who waits for them and welcomes them home. I am praying for relief but also for the strength to hold on, in case relief is months away. I am holding vigil over fragile hope. I am praying for a unity that holds us all together. I’m holding out for open armed joy, full throated singing and optimism not tinged with fear. I’m lighting candles and looking for stars. Already and still, I am holding a place in my heart for a centuries old gift that, if received, can change the world. I am listening for the rhythm of a little drummer boy and the urging of his pa rum pum pum pum, to have faith, to hold on.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices / For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn…(Oh Holy Night – Placide Cappeau)

The Next Booth

photo credit Karsten Winegeart @kearsten116

There is something restorative about spending time with the people who knew you way back when. It feels bolstering in a deeply foundational way and is a little like when you are driving around lost and all of a sudden you’re on a familiar road. You have that sense of, oh, I know where I am now. I can find my way back home from here.

I met up with some friends from high school today – women I graduated with 43 years ago and who I haven’t seen in a little over a year. It was a beautiful fall day and the gorgeous scenery added to the anticipated pleasure of arriving in a warm familiar place. We were meeting for lunch in the town we grew up in, and as I drove there I thought back over the passage of years and mused about the collective wisdom we had gained, both intentional and in spite of ourselves. We are friends that don’t meet up in every season, sometimes missing all four seasons consecutively for a few years, until life slows down and the stars align and we find a restaurant that can accommodate a five hour lunch where we still only scratch the surface of who and where we are now.

Within our conversations is a lot of laughter and easy acceptance because these are not people who are still sizing you up. You don’t need to hustle for your spot. Long ago we gave each other a seat at our table, and no matter how long it’s been, there is always a chair for us there. We know each other’s history, so whether a story starts in the middle, or with what happened yesterday, we know the road and the signposts that led to whatever chapter you start at. We champion each other and offer humour and understanding because even though our journeys have been different, joy and pain, love and loss, victories and mistakes, are familiar to each of us. We marvel at our 15-18 year old selves and the plans we had. We were ten feet tall and bulletproof like all kids that age, but I thank God for the boldness and audacity we possessed then, and I’m grateful that our parents’ attempts to squash it, failed. It is the very thing that has sustained us through choices that led to happiness and to heartache. It has helped us navigate marriage, parenthood, divorce, inlaws, illness, careers, coworkers, grief, loss and parents with Alzheimer’s disease. Between us we have been through many of life’s challenges and we have the receipts.

We settle in and cover the, Oh, I didn’t know that, and the, oh me too! and the, I always wish I could haves and the, did you ever…? We update each other on our kids and grandkids and resurrect the stories that led to private jokes that have survived the years. We make no attempts at keeping up with, or competing with anybody. We like and forgive ourselves more fully now than ever. We have reached that lovely stage written about in the poem, Comes the Dawn attributed to both Veronica Shoffstall and author Jorge Luis Borges, “…And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child and you learn to build all your roads on today…” In this late season of life, scorched and singed by life’s flames, we accept our charred bits but realize we’re more like perfectly toasted marshmallows – touched by fire so that you see the effects on the outside, but the inside is so much better than before. These friends are a treasure to me. I look at their faces and see the youthful beauty made more beautiful by all we have shared, learned, loved and overcome.

If we’re lucky, we have siblings or cousins who hold our stories and share our history. If we’re really lucky, we have a few friends who do so too. They are the friends who became friends for a reason, a season and a lifetime.

Near the end of our lunch we happened to notice two women about our mother’s ages at the booth opposite us, all white hair and cardigans and earnest conversation. My friend laughed and said, that will be us the next time we get together…only there is one of us missing. We all laughed, but it’s a sobering thought. I wondered if anyone was missing and whose story was with them there in that booth, safe, valued and mourned by those who are left. We can make new friends but we can’t replace the ones who knew what the house we grew up in looked like, and who remember how scary your dad could be, and how fun grad night was, and were the ones with you when you went to Peter Frampton and Elton John concerts, and who knew how beautifully your mom played the piano. We need to hold those ones close.

It might be next month or three years from now when we manage to meet in that next booth. We might have given up the hair dye by then and just let our hair go white, and we might match our cardigan to our orthotic runners. But in that booth will always be an affirmation of who you were, the embracing of who you’ve been, and true delight in the story you’re still telling.

Prisms of Life

Thanksgiving weekend 2020. I am grateful for the ways that this unusual year has beamed light into my life. Grateful for the ways it has illuminated the path out of dark places and for the ways it has challenged and compelled me to grow. I’m grateful for the rest it has provided, for the deep exhalation of breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. I am grateful for the dusty corners it has exposed and for the opportunity to both banish some long held nonsense that has been hiding there, and to polish some precious things set aside and neglected. I am grateful for the ways it has burst through complacency and routine and forced us to reimagine how to love and hold onto one another. I am grateful for the dispersion of light through prisms of kindness, duty, faith and family ties. I am grateful for foundations that have held firm and have been a beacon through uncertainty and loss. I am also grateful for the jagged glare reflecting off of pursuits no longer worthy of further effort. I have been filled with gratitude for shared warmth and rays of hope when I was afraid. I will always be grateful for anything that sparks laughter and joy. I am grateful that at some point in every day, all over the world, the light shines on all of us, affirming us with its intensity and inviting us to experiment with a new day. I am grateful for it’s glorious predictability and for it’s omniscient source.

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. Ecclesiastes 11:7

Justice and High Flung Hopes

Photo Credit – Ksenia Makagonova – @dearseymour

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died yesterday. This feels devastating to me. She was dignified, feisty and graciously ferocious in her lifelong pursuit of equality for all. She was a tiny human who left a giant legacy. We have absorbed so much loss this year. Everything is different and changing and it feels like every step is risky because the ground keeps shifting. Things you could once count on are vaporous. It’s not even the lifestyle changes of Covid because those changes, while traumatic, feel more temporary. Temporary, at least, for those of us who have not lost a loved one. I feel like there are deeper changes that are causing fear for me. I feel aching grief for disappearing civility and decency, for the willingness to sacrifice humanity for expediency, the rampant disregard of common sense and the overall absence of principles and integrity in positions of power. Perhaps none of this is new but only recently revealed in ways that leave me feeling shaken and raw. And so to lose people like RBG and John Lewis, icons who stood on their principles with quiet dignity and integrity, who fought for the underdog with an unwavering vision of righteous fairness, it seems too much. Too much in a world driven by greed, power grabbers and sycophants who shop their integrity around for the highest bid. I went to bed last night feeling bereft, like the world had lost a stronghold and a champion. This morning I am thinking of that story of the man walking the beach, who questioned a young man picking up starfish and throwing them back into the ocean asking him if he thought he could possibly make a difference when there were miles of beach and thousands of starfish. That story comes to mind because it is in my nature to feel deeply the seemingly hopelessness of the task but to also feel a responsibility to do something, no matter the odds. The quote, “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion,” also rings in my ears. So I will continue to pick up respect and decency, truth telling and fairness, optimism and laughter, a little bit of righteous fury, justice and humanity, kindness and grace, and I will fling them with all my might into the ocean of my brothers and sisters hoping to make a difference to someone. In the light of the morning I know there are many others with sandy feet tossing starfish and fighting for hope. Perhaps the ripples we create in our attempts will meet and swell into a current for good.

Happy/Enough

Photo credit – Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji@planeteelevene

Are we missing it? In this rainy province, where we spend so much time eagerly anticipating the sun burning off clouds and rain to show how beautiful it is here, are we seeing it? With all this fear and dread and conversation of what the school year will bring, with the risk to FOOTBALL SEASON, an election looming large and seeming so important, even to us Canadians, with bills and job uncertainty pressing on us, it’s easy to see why we might be. We’re already wondering if any of this year can be salvaged and thinking about what happens to Thanksgiving and Christmas in these crazy times. Surely Santa is in that vulnerable age category and what the heck happens then?!

With this much going on, it’s easy to get caught up and I’m as guilty as anyone. And so with the beginning of a new month I’m committing to paying attention. This August is not going to pass me by and worry is not going to steal my summer joy. I might recommit to writing in my Gratitude Journal for the millionth time. I’m always committed to gratitude, but maybe putting the words on paper will bring about a heightened awareness of all that’s really good right now. (I usually give up on writing it all down because when I focus, I’m really good at gratitude. I start with my comfortable bed and pillows, the roof over my head, the fact that when I open my eyes I can see, I can walk to my kitchen, there is water in the tap, there is food in the fridge, my kids and grandkids are healthy, I have a job that pays the bills and all that is even before I get to the smell of the lavender on the sundeck, the blessings of faith, the texture of homemade bread, the sun in the sky, the mountains and the ocean, the freedoms we have in this country, my friendships……well, you get the idea. Writer’s cramp for sure). There is much to be happy about if we get clear about what it looks like to us.

I think one of the great thieves of joy is living beyond the moment or living in our worry about the future. It happens if we’re thinking of happiness as something out there that we’re working towards or something that happens when x, y and zed are worked out. Some elusive thing other people have found but is still hiding from us, so we’re looking and working for it the way we would for our dream job or soul mate. We spend a lot of time frustrated because we start to feel somehow undeserving or deprived of something that so many other people get to experience. (Cue the social media posts of everyone watching the fireworks while you work the night shift.) We get so focused on the sky everyone else is staring at that we maybe miss the kindness of a coworker, or the opportunity our job gives us to help someone or even just the fact that we’re employed and can look after our bills and families.

It’s easy to miss the beauty right outside the window if you think that everything worth seeing is around the next corner.

Along with that, another of the great heists of joy is our expectations. We tend to have expectations that our life will be like a Sunday drive that ends up at the ice cream shop when the reality is that ,most of the time, it’s like an obstacle course with snakes and bats. So if we show up in a dress and heels and have never worked out in our life, it’s going to SUCK. And if we are expecting our Rocky Road in a cone instead of beneath our wheels it’s going to feel jarring and disappointing.

But what if you show up expecting a challenging obstacle course? Maybe even looking forward to it. Then the snakes and the bats are still a concern but you’re fit, you’ve trained and you’re quite possibly competitive enough to be excited to prove you’ve got what it takes to conquer the course. It’s a mindset few of us have, at least consistently. And I’m not trying to say that life should always be a grind or that we shouldn’t expect to experience a little joy. Only that it might look different than what you think, and therefore not recognizable at first if you’re looking for what everyone else tells you it looks like. It might require some effort or adaptability. For instance, I know a number of kids who graduated this year. And they did not get the grad that the graduates of 2019 got. Or that the graduates of the last umpteen years have gotten. And it seemed like such a ripoff at first. No Prom, no ceremony, no fuss and palaver to commemorate and usher them into the next phase of their life. They were sad and we were sad for them. They already had the dresses and visions of what the experience would look and feel like. There was cancellation after cancellation. And it seemed like that was the way it was going to be except that parents, kids and educators said no damn way. They determined that grad was going to happen for these kids despite all the obstacles and they found innovative ways to create events to honor this right of passage. Ways that will go down in history books and will be talked about by other generations as they describe how they rose above the circumstances and created unique memories that the grads of 2020 won’t soon forget. It might not have been the way it’s always been done, but who says the way it’s always been done is the best or only way to do it. In fact, sometimes, doing things the way they always have been done becomes lazy and uninspired. And so creating something new isn’t a sorry substitute – it’s forging a new path that requires us to not be complacent and pedestrian. Life can make us dig deep and we can see that as difficult and negative or, we can enjoy the new muscles it requires us to develop and stand in the mirror and flex.

We need to stop buying the happiness bill of goods the world keeps selling us and the supposed fact that it can be delivered within 24 hours with no shipping and handling. It’s the surest way to be disappointed. If you think that happiness equals ease and that ease is your right, then things will always seem hard and a year like 2020 will rock you to your core. I heard a quote tonight by SHSU Baseball Coach Matt Deggs that made me laugh. He said, “There are two types of people in the world – those who are humble, and those who are about to be humbled”. And there is a similar quote by Woody Allen that says, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”. I am convinced that in January many of us submitted our blueprints to the heavens.

I really do believe that happiness is a choice and that it is tied securely to gratitude. That it isn’t dependent on a particular set of circumstances, that it isn’t promised and it is not attached to an easy life. It’s as simple as realizing that we’ve been given another August. The sun will shine, the ocean will sparkle, the mountains will look as spectacular as they always do when the clouds get out of the way. We’ll rise from our beds and possibly run an obstacle course while trying to keep the bats out of our hair. Or maybe we’ll go for a Sunday drive and end up at la Casa Gelato with 238 flavors to choose from. Children will run through the sprinkler, we might bake some bread and learn some new ways of doing things. Maybe we’ll change careers. We’ll build some new muscles, pick some flowers from the garden and look up at the full moon. We’ll see the people around our table and listen to them laugh and be grateful for their health and all the ways they buttress our life. We’ll sit in that glow and watch the sunset until it’s dark and cooling off and we will notice that we have fully lived another day.

Inside our ordinary house is a soft pillow and a fresh new journal page that will bear witness that it is enough.

Drifting

2020 has been extraordinarily extra. Weather weirdness, murder hornets, racial unrest, a virus that just keeps on keeping on, political nonsense, plenty of solitude or too much forced togetherness. It’s been a huge learning curve while we navigate a very un normal, normal. We’ve had rough and calm seas, unpredictable winds, and every day determines the toll.

Today, I’m missing my family and momentarily feeling caged by these walls that, on regular days, feel like the sun on my face. I’m missing small bodies that rest against you with trust and faith. I want to watch those babies sleep, and pull kicked off blankets up to cover them, as if by doing so I could keep them forever warm and close. I’m missing the laughter of shared jokes and the joy of setting a table full of eagerly anticipated food that is a gift of love and carbohydrates. I want to gaze at the faces of my people and hear and see the familiarity of interactions built on time and shared history. I want to hear the men tease each other and watch them barbeque great mounds of delicious smelling meat, and play sports with their kids. I want to watch the children find a welcoming lap to sit on or an aunty to fill a plate for them. I want to see bigger cousins holding dripping watermelon for the little ones to bite and see them pushing them on the baby swings. I’m missing all that ties us together and I want to spend the day in the sun surrounded by our ever evolving story.

Somedays technology suffices, but today, it feels incredibly weak in the face of all it cannot provide and convey.

Dr. Suess wasn’t kidding when he said “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”. It never occurred to me that I was taking those moments for granted because I always enjoyed and valued them so much. I also never imagined a moment when they wouldn’t be possible, even for a time. I know “this too shall pass” and that this year has much to teach us. But, today the lesson seems harder than it has in weeks past. There is a baby I haven’t met yet and a granddaughter who has surpassed me in height in the last 4 months. There are hugs I haven’t had or given, and probably, there is tea waiting to be spilt. There is so much of the day to day we have missed. Our families shape us, trouble us and lift us. They are that familiar place we long for when we, or they, have been gone too long. Despite the futility of the wish, the silence in this house today says it’s time for everyone to come back home. The heaviness I feel must be due to the uncertainty of when that might be possible.

And so, I guess I need to go back to the lessons of my childhood house and find those bootstraps to pull myself up by. There is much to be grateful for, in both the silence and the noise. I am sure there are those who would gladly trade places with me and have a chance to enjoy a little peace and quiet after months of togetherness. If the experiences of Covid were people on a cruise ship, some of us would be betting it all at the casino, some lounging in the pool, others finding comfort at the buffet, some who haven’t left their stateroom, and those who can’t keep their eye off the lifeboat. Sometimes, we’re all of those people on the same day. The only thing for certain is that the landscape keeps changing and at some point, I hope, we will dock someplace where our families, intact, are waiting.

High

Photo by Interactive Sports @interactivesports

One of my dearest goals in life was to be 5’4”. I don’t know how or why I picked that number, only that as a 4’11” girl I knew not to aim too high. 5’4” seemed reachable and normal. Only it turned out that by grade seven I was fully grown….as tall as I would ever be. So, I have heard all the short jokes. Really. And I could laugh at most of them and was not bothered by the nicknames and the laughs at my expense. After a while I was just bothered by the lack of originality. But what did make me angry, was being underestimated over and over throughout my life based on my stature. It made me determined, most of the time, to prove people wrong about me. I would take on things I was “too small to do” and then do them. I have done a lot of tasks fueled by righteous indignation, temper and tears. At best, being short has given me motivation, and at worst, an unnatural hate for track and field – in particular, hurdles.

I did not spend a lot of time with my paternal grandfather. He came to visit for a week or two maybe once a year when I was young. But I remember well what he used to call me. His nickname for me was Big Enough. And when someone would doubt me or say I couldn’t do something because of how little I was, he would say with authority, she is big enough. Just writing that makes me emotional. I think if you have spent any time in life trying to be enough, to be worthy, to be seen as capable, attractive or valuable, then you might relate.

We spend a lot of time in life evaluating and judging people based on their appearance. We assign value and attributes based on height, weight, hair, skin color, long lashes, muscles, smiles, eyes, curves, etc. We decide if a human being is worthy of our time, interest or confidence based on many of those things within the first minutes of encountering someone. Each one of those categories has a subtext and merit, and we seem to accept that in our conditioning at face value. We rarely examine it at all. There is plenty of research and evidence that tells us that tall, attractive people are seen as more capable and will be more successful, popular and well compensated. The beauty industry is very invested in us not examining what they tell us is beautiful. We accept it, consciously or subconsciously, and buy the products to help us achieve it. We also, have our own criteria. So we have all been a victim of those biases and we have victimized others based on them too. We forget that no one can take credit or blame for the body and genes they are born with. We all just do the best we can with what we get.

Hopefully, regardless of our beauty and stature, or lack thereof, we have had people who could see beyond our physical appearance and let us discover our own value and capabilities. Biases can only hold us back if we buy into them. And surely we have known someone who became more beautiful, or allowed us to expose our own beauty, as time revealed our hearts. Someone who taught us that kindness, joyfulness, grace, intelligence, humour, spirituality, grit and soul can change the ordinary into the extraordinary and reveal a loveliness we didn’t see at first. All the rest is packaging that can be set aside as we admire the gifts within. It is something we instinctively know as children, and something we unlearn and relearn over and over again throughout our lives.

What I love about the memory of my Grandpa, is that at the time he gave me that nickname I had not yet become anything or anybody. I was a tiny little girl just barely getting started. I had no awareness of my height, looks or my capabilities or what any of that was going to mean. But he had already decided that I had everything I needed and had nothing to prove. That I was already worthy and already enough for whatever “hurdle” was coming my way. I am sure he didn’t know, and I am not sure even I knew then, that he had given me something rare and precious. Because if he could believe I was big enough then so could I. And so I was.

Reckoning

It feels like the world is on fire. Words feel risky and dangerous right now but that is where I go to sort information, ease anxiety and honour emotions. I am afraid of saying the wrong thing no matter how well intentioned. The rage and grief are almost too much to speak to. This is an old story. A weary story whispered and shouted and imprinted and sobbed and ignored for way too long. A malevolent legacy passed from broken and brutalized backs and hearts to innocents. Imagine how you feel about your children – the overwhelming love and protective instinct you have for them. And then imagine having to warn and train your child, your blameless child, that this grievous weight is theirs to bear because no system, no society, no justice, no ally, has consistently and meaningfully stepped forward to lift it. Because this is more than a police issue. To concentrate all the blame on the police reduces this to a small and tidy conversation. Wouldn’t it be lovely if all of us could just point at the police and remove ourselves from the fire? Give ourselves a pass and not wonder how a little child, who knows no prejudice, grew up to be a person that could kill a man with a knee on his neck and his hand in his pocket, staring straight into a camera and ignoring the pleas for life. What kind of systems created and perpetuated that kind of arrogance and disregard for a human life? Who was looking the other way while that little boy became that kind of a man? And who continued to look away once they knew who he had become? Yes, if only we could just blame the police.

This year, seems like a reckoning born of blindness, complacency, complicity and blatant disregard. It started out benign and quickly metastasized into a revolution of illness, virus, injustice, sadness, poverty, rage, boredom, fear, desperation and death. Events since March have unearthed and exposed all the systems and policies that work, and all the abject failures. It has shown us the faces of bravery and suffering and has pointed clearly at those who have suffered more unjustly and who have had to be braver than the rest. You look away at your peril. Silence and denial and protestations of progress are a privilege we never could afford. 2020 is holding up a gargantuan mirror and forcing us to see that we’re not as pretty as we think we are.

In the poem, Servant of Servants by Robert Frost he says,…“I can see no way out but through”. We could cut and run. We could abdicate. We could leave it to the other guy. We could avert our eyes…again. But that has gone on long enough. Our brothers and sisters, justifiably, no longer have faith in us to do the right thing. For those who have been doing the work, it is a stinging rebuke. Where we are in 2020 should break our hearts. Not because of our own pain but because of the collective, unrelenting, unrelieved pain of those who have borne these burdens over and over, and still.

Brene Brown says, “Our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be brokenhearted”. We will never be the kind of ally we need to be if our hearts are not broken, not just by the knee placed on the life giving artery in George Floyd’s neck, but the knee placed on the justice, political, health care and education systems that deny equality and dignity to communities of color everywhere. Make no mistake. Pointing at systems is like pointing at the police. Systems are made up of people, people who do the right thing and people who don’t. People like us. We work together, live together, vote together and plan futures together. Systems exist because people support them and benefit from them, but, when they don’t benefit everyone we must care enough to examine and dismantle them.

The fact that this video did not surprise people of color should shame us. The fact that it collectively broke our hearts, is a reason for hope. People must now decide if they are brokenhearted enough to be wholehearted in how, and who, they love and fight for. Will a broken heart make us brave and resolute and supportive of only those systems and policies that benefit and protect everyone? Can we be courageous enough to speak up and stand alone with our whole heart when it matters, and when it might be to our detriment? I believe that people have been shocked and mobilized but this is not easy work and it could be a twelve round brawl. It will be work that needs to be sustained, and those with whom we fight cannot bear us getting weary. The last week has people moving into, or returning to encampments from which they may not easily be moved. As we try to sort through the stories of this week, our brain, in order to protect us and help us process information, looks for good guys and bad guys and who is right and who is wrong. It is up to us to remove ourselves from that survival mechanism to allow our heart to have a voice. This is not about protests and riots and looting and fires. It is 400 years of so much more. It is important enough to risk a pandemic to say, enough. A seething, grief stricken volcano has erupted, pulsing with power and rage. Right now the lava is burning its way through the streets with the desperate hope of changing the landscape. The prayer is, that when the heat dissipates, what remains is a rock solid base that can bear the weight of the rebuild. It is up to us now to educate ourselves with information beyond the news cycle, and show up brokenhearted, wholehearted and ready to work.

It’s 2020 and we’re late and unprepared, but it’s way past time.

There’s Going to be a Parade!

It’s almost Mother’s Day and about this time of year I start feeling a little sorry for men. All that simmering female expectation and unspoken hope in the air. A sense of the underlying resentment for past missteps. Hearing snippets of conversation between women…Because they should know. They have eyes and ears for goodness sake. They were there.

And while veiled hints and carefully placed catalogues have their purpose, all the relationship gurus say women should stop expecting men to read their minds. Spell it out. So this is my attempt to explain it.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, and it became obvious that I was to others, there was a weird thing that started to happen. Every mother that I knew (and many perfect strangers) would tell me her story of motherhood from conception to birth. Every gory detail. And the more gory and frightening it was, the more enthusiastic she was to tell it. And I became terrified of this process and the idea of giving birth. I would think to myself, whyyyyy?!! It was bad enough that my specialist had told me that because of how the baby was positioned that she could break my tailbone on the way out. Good grief! Do I need your scary story too? Like, do you really want your skydiving instructor to tell you about the time the chute didn’t open just as you tandem jump from the plane and start your free fall? Geez Louise. But this happens all the time to first time moms. Ask any woman.

It wasn’t until after I gave birth that I understood what was going on. You see, women spend nine months forming a human being inside their body and everybody just acts like it’s no big deal. They say to her, hey, can you get me the salt and she doesn’t say, excuse me – I’m working on a pair of lungs over here – she just keeps forming bronchioles and alveolar ducts and passes the salt. They say to her, why are you so crabby and she doesn’t say, well, osteogenesis is exhausting and this tiny human is sucking up every ounce of energy I’ve got while it forms bones and teeth and grows a liver – she just glares and slams the bathroom door and cries while she eats crackers so she doesn’t throw up for the fifth time that day. People say wow – you’re getting huge and she doesn’t even address the rudeness – she just rubs her belly and eats some more steak and greens because atrioventricular and semilunar valves and neural progenitor cells don’t just grow themselves you know. Ugh.

Eventually she gives birth. And files away in vivid detail her particular and unique version of that story for later. And she stares at the little face in awe and breathes in that fresh from heaven scent and feels the absolute glorious perfection of brand new skin and she whispers, oooohhhmygoodnesss, look at what we made. And her husband/partner smiles proudly and doesn’t even realize she wasn’t talking to him, she was talking to God. She looks at that child, fresh from her body, eyes and ears and toes and beating heart and lungs filling with new breath, and she looks around to ask, are you guys seeing this? Do you see what God and I did here? And for the first few days or months mostly everybody does. Everyone wants to hold your tiny miracle and stare at that face and exclaim over her perfect little nose and lips.

But then, it happens. Ho hum. Gotta go. Oh, really, 8 months old already? My goodness time goes fast. Really cute. Do you like my new haircut?

And just like that people forget what happened. They move on and treat you like you’re ordinary and women have been having babies since time began and you aren’t special…until even you begin to doubt the wonder of it all. You get on with life and raise tiny people which is a blog post for another day and you don’t think about it most of the time. But then a newly pregnant girl crosses your path and it all comes rushing back. You remember what you knew and experienced and lamazed and you start telling your pregnancy/birth battlefield stories too. We become like a bunch of World War II vets sitting around swapping stories with people who know what it was like, or will need to know soon enough. The stretch marks and the stitches and the hemorrhoids and the painful breasts and the 36 hours of back labour and the emergency c-section – these are our shrapnel. We want to remember how thrilling and dangerous it was, the courage it took and the sacrifices, oh my the sacrifices – belly crawling through mud across the battlefield with a baby strapped to you for nine months – just to get that child to safety. Oh, I get it now. They need to know what they’re in for, and what they’re a part of. Because you need to be prepared for that kind of valor and sacrifice and partnership with deity. And then you need to be able to honour and celebrate it for at least one day a year.

And that’s why. That’s why Mother’s Day is epic. That’s why this week seems fraught with minefields. That’s why you’ve been getting the side eye. It’s not surprising you feel the pressure. What is surprising is that for 364 days of the year she allows everyone the audacity to pretend that nothing extraordinary happened here. That creating and forming and expelling a complete person from her body is blase blase. Business as usual.

But not this Sunday.

Mother’s Day is V Day and Remembrance Day and the Fourth of freaking July. She’s going to need a driver for the convertible, a drumline to proceed her and adoring people waving as she goes by if you’re going to get it right this time. She made a human, for crying out loud. Bones and a brain and sinew and muscle, eyes, ears, organs, a beating heart and the potential for greatness. Don’t even get me started on the sleep deprivation that came next.