I LOOK FORWARD TO THE EVENINGS

I look forward to the evenings. I always have. Maybe it has something to do with the fact of my age. Or maybe it is because my mother told me that I was born “all grown up”. Some people enjoy the awakening of morning, the anticipation and mystery of an unfolding day. Others like the afternoon, the warmth, the vigour, the possibility of a new venture, a siesta or a rendezvous. Not me.

Now, it is not that I am a “night person”. It isn’t that I come alive at night, or that I haunted bars or nightclubs as a young woman. I don’t find darkness a stimulus for creativity or reproductive activities. I actually prefer all such activities in daylight. It has an obverse illicit feel somehow.

Night time is sunsets and bonfires and still water reflecting a full moon at midnight. It is also the portion of day when I would hold each of my children individually, just long enough to read them their bedtime story. They were a vigourous, busy bunch, my three. But by eight o’clock they were ready to cozy down, and if a story meant prolonging bedtime, that was just fine with them. I wonder who enjoyed it more. Grandchildren allow a déjà vu, however fleeting, of those precious moments, when little hands slip into mine, soft cheeks brush against my neck, and tender voices whisper, “read it again”.

And then and now my own bedtime. The ritual of fluffing pillows; laying them just so, to support a reading head; deciding which of the several books on the bedside table to enjoy on this particular night. In summer, lying scantily clad with the breezes blowing in the window; in winter with the heating pad to warm the quadrants of the body, inching the pad downward on ten minute intervals. And when it reaches the ankles and feet, it is time to turn out the lights. He comes to bed, finally, and I role over to hold him and sleep.

TIMERS

I stand in front of the microwave, waiting impatiently for the two minutes required to heat my left-over coffee from yesterday’s brew. I think, “this is two minutes of my life, idly passing by.” I set the laundry dryer to thirty minutes needing the sweater that lies within for a luncheon visit with friends. In the late afternoon, I come home, tired but exhilarated, and climb into the hot tub, set the timer to the maximum twenty minutes and stretch out, relaxing until the buzzer signals that “time is up”. Meanwhile, dinner is in the oven with the timer set to an hour. Yet another hour of my life will have been neatly measured.

These mechanical timers are all useful gadgets in the day-to-day of our privileged, modern existence. But today I am thinking of a different era, when life was lived from dawn to dusk, when the sun or the moon were the timers of our lives. As children, we played until parents signaled “time is up”. We set to a task and did what we could till we were too tired to continue, or the daylight receded. We counted time, by the beginnings and conclusions of tasks, by the planting and harvesting of crops. Nature provided the cues for the passing of time. Even now, this October day, as I watch the leaves changing colour, virtually before my eyes, I think of the timelessness of this event in nature. It occurred before my birth and will cycle on after me.

We are all timers. Our internal clocks go tick-tock, tick-tock, like the metronome on top of the piano. Occasionally I try to turn off the timers, slow down the rhythms of the heart beats, in part to forget how quickly it is all passing by. Moments alone, by a fire, indoors or out, sitting by a lake, on top of a hill, in the garden, reading, thinking, or just imagining a tabula rasa state of being, provide that momentary stay again the intrusion of time.

Wordsworth’s lines from “Daffodils” come to mind:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood
They flash upon my inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

So here I sit, in the midst of all the beauty of my favourite season, and yet my mind is also thrusting ahead to the emergence of spring as time ticks away. It is all a grand illusion, this attempt to “play with time”. But play I must, since, each day becomes more precious than the last. So I harbor my memories jealously, bask in the moment selfishly, and wait patiently for the inevitability of spring.

JOURNAL OF NEW ADVENTURES

When I was in grad school many years ago, the Professor, on the second week of a particular class, was checking attendance. Inevitably, students at the beginning of a new semester would add or drop courses after getting a preliminary overview of assignments and interests.

And so he asked, “Has anyone changed since last week.” Total silence. Clearly no meaningful business occurring here. At which point, being a mature student, and not at all shy in manner, I stood up and said, “Professor Mark, we have all changed since last week, in one way or another.” Pause. And then he smiled, allowing for a few titters from the small gathering.

But isn’t it the truth. We change daily, hourly. As women, we know we can spin from one mood to another depending on the right smile, hug, or brand of chardonnay. Sometimes the changes are not immediately perceptible. We wake up one morning and discover that our children are now adults, we have gray hair, or a new wrinkle, or an extra three pounds. How did that happen?

But when we break from the routines of our days, take holidays, spend time playing with grandchildren, get a massage, discover a new author, we can palpably feel the flow of energy, involvement, metamorphosing thought, word and deed.
Time slips away imperceptively if we let it. And like most women my age, I have alternated between running to keep up with family, career, the occasional crisis, and then living in reflection of so many events that passed too quickly without being fully savoured.

In an effort to stay the rampaging of my life, just a little, and because I am turning 69 this year, and therefore, theoretically, beginning my seventieth decade, I have decided to begin a year of living purposely, of taking more chances, and consciously planning at least one new experience for myself each month. Instead of time charging ahead of me, in spite of me. I am going to take control of my life, to create each day, week, and month of this first year, and ultimately the entire daring decade, with purpose and meaning. In other words, my goal is to explore the world and myself like never before.

I am equally excited about the “plan” and about chronicling the events, twists and turns. Part of my definition of “control” also means putting myself in the way of the unexpected. I will visit new areas of Canada, the USA, Paris, Venice. I will finish my novel. “Do I dare to eat a peach?” Of course I will. And I will not walk crablike backwards. I will greet each morning with a grand “Hello, Gorgeous”, and not let the parade pass me by. If not now, when? How about you? Come share the feast of finessing time with me.

CHARLIE ROSE INTERVIEWS NORA EPHRON

My early morning internet cruise this morning landed me on the lap of Charlie Rose (If only!!). I discovered an interview he did with Nora Ephron, who, next to both of my sisters,is one of the funniest women I know. Here she is in 2006 talking about men and women (her favourite theme), as well as Barack, Blogging, and Aging, delivered with her usual candor and simplicity of style. At one point she talks about Obama's writing and his ability to write a clean, decent sentence.

I thought afterwards about how the wisdom of "clean and decent" applies to so many aspects of ourselves and our lives. The day-to-day may drift, giving a pretence of simplicity, when indeed it is often convoluted, confused, distorted, and in an inevitable process of decay."The time is out of joint..." Reading and Listening to Nora sends me back to the power of humour to relax the jaw muscles, conserve the estrogen, and seek out the lushness of now.

Here is the interview: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/115

HURRAY, VOUVRAY

I was just talking to my sister, Norma, and she told me that she was in the midst of having a “perfect day”.

“Tell me what that looks like,” I asked.

And so she proceeded to explain that she had just been to see the movie,“Julia and Julie”, based on the blog written by Julie Powell, about her year of cooking all the recipes in Julia Child’s famous cookbook, “The Art of French Cooking”. She mentioned that one of the lines of the movie struck a chord. “What do you enjoy?” and the corollary to that, of course, is once you have answered that question, try to do more of it. For Norma, the answer was simple, cooking, crafts, and looking after her “nest” (aka, home and family).

To that end, Norma had just finished the initial stages of the beef bourguignon recipe from Julia's book and placed it in the oven for the requisite 2 hour harmony bake. In the interim she planned to begin a new knitting pattern, having just purchase silk and cotton threads from a local yarn shop. All this while her handyman, Ted, was doing, God knows what, creative maneuverings in the backyard of her "nest". Such productivity on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Well, I had to ponder that query a bit further for myself. And not that I was trying to one-up my darling sister, but I quickly realized that my list is quite long. In fairness, I am sure there are a dozen other items Norma could add to her list. But she was, at least for today, focusing on her top three. Well, thought I, how about if I focus on my top three as well. So I easily came up with the following:

talking to family
drinking wine
writing

With that, I called Norma back to share the good news that I had found a lovely Vouvray in the wine cellar; was in the process of drinking my third sip; and pondering the challenging question from our earlier phone call. Given, that Julie Powell has a bestselling book and soon to be blockbuster movie from a simple blog that she had created over the course of a year of living gastronomically consumed, I figured it was time to get back to my own self-indulgent writing.

So here I sit, savouring the Vouvray, in awe of the power or words to drawn us out of our self-imposed lethargy, and pull us back into the activities that truly give our lives energy and meaning. As I post it, I imagine my friends and family reading my words, as if we were in real time conversing. An almost perfect day for me.

Another of my passions is actually, no kidding, cooking and eating. So with that I will away and promise to return very soon with more, much more, if only for my own sake. The pot is starting to come to a boil again. Oh, by the way, “What do you enjoy?”

SEARCHING FOR PATTERNS

I remember the first time I heard the word “motif”. It was and still is an enchanting word. Unlike “fractals”, which also refers to patterns, “motif” has a sweet gentleness to its power, like a butterfly wing. Fractals are associated with skulking the universe for nefarious collections of meaning. Motifs are repetition with variation, harmonies, rhythms that give cadence and reassurance to our lives. Fractals are scary. Aha, there goes another fractal, carrying with it apocalyptic secrets.

Fractals are those Dickensian caricatures, part animal, part human. Without a past or future, devoid of feeling or sentimentality, they just are. They don’t drive the plot of life, or contribute to the growth and nurturing of the main character. They are the undercurrents of existence lurking in roadside ditches or behind tall trees, under rocks or inside caves.

Motifs flutter and float among the reflective moments of our lives. We see them in the way a grandchild will repeat mannerisms of a distant relative. The Gandhi wisdom of a four year old, who says, “Let’s all try to get along.” The fairies at the bottom of the garden game repeats with each generation. Sometimes the pattern gets disrupted by an unbelieving child. But then an hour with Peter Pan, and the belief is restored.

Perhaps that’s the big difference. Motifs are about imagination and believing that there is meaning and purpose in the recurrence of events. Fractals are those logical, sometimes practical patterns and observations of the world. We dissect to understand fractals; we reflect on the power of motifs.

THE TREES OF MY LIFE

T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock” had measured out his life in “coffee spoons”. It is a sad image of an idle, indolent, wasted life. Most of us would like to think that we could measure out our lives with far more significant markers. Some of these markers might give meaning to our lives, point to key associations of geography, indicate symbolic preferences, something about ourselves and our value systems. As I looked out from my back porch last night at the array of deciduous trees, Manitoba Maple, Poplar, Elm, Peach, Apple, Walnut, Catalpa, Hawthorne just anxious to burst forth their leafy show this spring, I thought of how my life has had many types of markers, perhaps the most vital being trees.

As I child it wasn’t any type of tree in particular, but more the awareness of an abundance of trees when, at the age of seven, we moved from the city to the country. My father loved nature and would take me and my sisters on annual spring excursions into the woods to see the first blooms of white and purple trilliums growing under the maple and poplar bows. In March we would go to a nearby sugar bush and watch the syrup dripping from the taps in the forest of maple trees. We would take our fingers and run them under the sap, licking the sticky syrup, sweet enough even before the boiling process.

As a young bride I moved to Northern Ontario where the triumvirate of Cambrian rocks, spring fed lakes, and large, verdant woodlands, imprinted themselves on my core self. Our home was built on the edge of a Lake and the land was populated by majestic white birch. Even in winter, devoid of leaves, the tall, graceful white columns added a majesty to our surroundings. Their smooth skin was a delight to touch. My children would dare to strip some bark from a tree to make various crafts, miniature canoes, or scribble secret messages on the interior side, to be hidden under rock crevices. Birches are not a hardy tree, and every few years the spring would reveal that yet another had succumbed to old age and the ravages of northern winters. And yet as they thinned themselves, the remaining ones appeared straighter, taller, and more magnificent than ever. I think of them now as anthropomorphised guardians of our lake home for so many years.

Now, in the trimester of my life, the trees that dominate are hawthorne. They thrive both at my home and at the cottage. Their prickly branches intertwine in gnarly, arthritic kinks. A strong wind will clip them of their weaker limbs. But spring encourages bright, white blossoms that camouflage the twisted limbs. Summer is all green and verdant, offering shade and colour. Bright red balls of inedible fruit tease us into fall. And then they drop, and the bare, intertwined limbs seem to clump closer to each other, as if to give reassurance as another winter approaches. They are an ironic tree, appearing vulnerable and yet asserting independence with their needle spines.

By turns, my trees have provided beauty, detachment, meditation, protection, and comfort. And, as I reflect, it seems that each one, that has presided over a period of my life, did so for a reason, and perhaps, in part, as an avatar of myself.