AGING GRACEFULLY

Meryl does Maggie

2012-01-16T08:43:00.000-08:00

The film “The Iron Lady” is surely one of Meryl Streep’s greatest acting achievements. Her interpretation of Margaret Thatcher at the height of her power is nothing short of brilliant; her depiction of the ailing, elderly, demented Maggie, sublime.

Some critics have a different view of the film. It has been expressed by some, including Mrs. Thatcher’s children that the release of this film while the lady is still alive is insensitive, and that portraying her dementia so graphically, is intrusive. I beg to differ.

Whether you liked her politics or not, Margaret Thatcher was a public figure by her own volition and as such she remains a person of interest. She is, therefore, fair game for writers and movie makers, the same way Princess Diana was and still is. That Mrs. Thatcher’s power has diminished as she has aged and become confused, is as much a part of her story as were her years as Prime Minister.

That point aside, a high caliber film like this could do much to get us sensitized to the plight of people who grow old and then suffer the indignity of losing their memory. It doesn’t seem to come naturally to us as a society. Dementia, and Alzheimer's in particular, seem to have become the leprosy of our generation. Yet our population is aging quickly now and many of us will personally know the despair of losing some cognitive abilities or the plight of watching a loved one go through that. Should we not stop treating the elderly as though they are invisible or already dead? Should we not applaud a film that tackles the subject head-on and with great sensitivity?

The film does an excellent job of representing how those with dementia experience their losses. We cannot know, of course, if Mrs. Thatcher really sees and hears her late husband speak to her as the movie depicts, but we surely can imagine how grief over the loss of her spouse might make her faded memories come to life, perhaps as a coping mechanism to dull her crippling emotional pain. Who, watching that very human process unfold in the film could find that offensive other than someone uncomfortable with their own process of aging?

Of course, not everyone is as lucky as Mrs. T. who lives in a large house with staff to look after her. Most elders have to fend for themselves and when they are no longer capable, they are placed in institutions where they are reduced to living in a place they do not recognize and which holds no memories for them. The medical world uses a term to explain the mental decline of severely demented elders: they refer to it as social death, as opposed to biological death. People with full-blown dementia are often deemed to be of no further use, and are, therefore, considered to be socially dead. This is perhaps what Ms. Streep portrayed best in the film; she made an elderly woman who happened to be Margaret Thatcher, seem very human and even endearing in her present frailty.

The Iron Lady is not a film about Margaret Thatcher so much as it is about the discomfort and anguish of watching an elderly woman fade away.

Christmas Memories

2011-12-23T10:29:00.000-08:00

My childhood memories of Christmas do not centre on religion, presents or family meals. What has remained in my memory all these years is the feeling of magic, which is part of the innocence children experience when they are young and which we sadly lose when we discover that the holiday is a man-made event.

When I was a little girl, growing up in a German household, Christmas was a time of many secrets. Although I did not know it at the time, money was scarce in our household and gifts were kept small, although my mother was always very generous. In the lead-up to the big day, there was never any sign of wrapping paper, nobody ever talked about lists or having to go shopping. The only pre-Christmas excitement came from opening a window a day on my Advent calendar throughout December. Everything else just appeared as if by magic, making the possibility of angels and Santa Claus and elves seem very real.

The biggest secrecy of all was around the decorating of the Christmas tree. It was always done on Christmas Eve, behind closed doors by the grown-ups. Kids were absolutely forbidden to watch or participate. To ensure that there would be no peeking, the curtains were drawn and the door to the living room was tightly shut. All my cousin and I could do, was listen to the rustling and murmurings coming through the keyhole as we waited impatiently to see the end result.

Once it was dark, all the lights in the house were turned off and the door was slowly opened. The sight of our tree all decorated and lit up with real candles, never failed to excite us. It was, in many ways, more splendid than the gifts underneath the tree. Adding to the sense of wonder was the smell of singed pine needles, which our grandparents would snip off as they walked around the tree, bucket of water and scissors always at the ready.

Eventually, after the gifts had been distributed, the candles on the tree would be extinguished, one by one, and the lights turned back on. We would get cookies and chocolates while the adults drank mulled wine and sang German Christmas carols.

Although we have, for the most part, kept to our old traditions, there were a couple of years when hubby and I took the kids to celebrate Christmas in Florida. Near the villa where we stayed was a pool where all the visiting kids congregated to play. It was there that our then five-year old son heard one kid declare loudly to all the others that there was no such thing as Santa. Shattered, our son turned to his older sister and said: “it’s not true, is it, there really IS a Santa!” To which our daughter, truthfully replied that, no, the kid was telling the truth, there was no such thing. Our son’s disbelief was heartbreaking to witness and I remember having to console him for the rest of the afternoon.

This year we had two little children visiting on the day hubby and I trimmed our tree. He and I were snarling at each other because the last strand of lights wouldn’t light up and I wanted that taken care of before the girls arrived. I quickly sent hubby to the hardware store around the corner before it closed to get another strand. He came back with outdoor lights. He went back. He returned with indoor lights this time only the strand was too short. Back he went again. This time he returned with some sort of weird contraption; a net with light bulbs that was meant for an outdoor bush. We should have been laughing but we were both seething by then. He finally got it right just as the store was closing. It was then that I found the spare bulbs that would have salvaged the original strand of lights, at the bottom of the box holding all the decorations….

We hurriedly put the basic decorations up, leaving the rest for the little girls who arrived shortly thereafter. They are six and four respectively so they still believe in magic and their faces, so full of wonder and awe, were the best Christmas present hubby and I could have asked for. They giggled and chatted about Father Christmas as they added some decorations wherever they could reach. I found it in my heart to not try and make the tree perfect after they had left, preferring to savour their pleasure every time I see two balls of the same colour hanging side by side, which in my childhood home would have been 'verboten.'

May you experience simplicity and see the joy of innocence on the faces of those you love this holiday season.

November Snow

2011-11-23T17:51:00.001-08:00

I woke up to a white world this morning. The first snow fall is always magical and takes me back to my childhood when winter was just a pile of days and weeks in which to skate and toboggan and make snow angels, instead of being the interminably long period of time it is now. The concept of time changes drastically as you age.

When you are young you never believe that you will grow old. It is something that will happen to other people, not you.

As you grow up you begin to accept that you likely will grow old but later, much, much later. Certainly not now, in the prime of your life! You will be active! You will be positive! Aging can be delayed, postponed, put off for decades!

In your middle years you can no longer hide some of the signs that start to creep into your daily life; a bad back, crow’s feet, having to wear reading glasses. For women, the big one is grey hair, which is like a neon sign, seemingly telling the world that you are no longer in your prime. Some say that gray hair makes you invisible.

Your kids grow up, your friends start to have ailments, some of them serious. Your parents begin to need extra help with certain chores and the mirror offers you proof on a more regular basis that you are aging. The hope, at this point, is that you’ve acquired a bit of wisdom along the way, and a life philosophy to guide you, otherwise this stage can be positively frightening.

And then you arrive at what I call the invisible timeline. Once crossed, and that happens when you least expect it, you cannot ever go back. From that demarcation point onwards, you see everything in a different light. You may feel youthful but your youth is behind you. You may be healthy but illness is no longer an abstract. You may look great for your age but energy levels have changed. At best, that knowledge is a very sobering nanosecond, one in which you look in the mirror and see whatever is your truth; you will never become a brain surgeon , never again fit into a size 8, never recapture wasted moments….and yes, those really are your jowls looking back at you.

Mercifully, once this sobering act is over you are free to live your life as you see fit. Mother Nature (or is Father Time??) help you settle into your new mindset, one in which you clear a lot of mental debris in order to make room for new priorities. It’s a long process, hopefully one that will take many years to complete. With all that clutter gone from your mind, you are free to enjoy small pleasures without guilt.

The snow is still coming down but I am nice and warm sitting in my living room. I think I will read my magazine, the one with Tony Bennett on the cover. At 85, he has just recorded a new album…

A State of Mind

2011-10-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

It has certainly been a year of transition in our household. The latest twist, one that came out of left field, is that hubby has retired. A better explanation would be that he has sold his shares of the company at a time when he is still healthy enough to enjoy other activities. In an unplanned, two week period, my husband has gone from being a full-time entrepreneur, to a man of leisure.
With our adult children long gone from the nest we have often been in deep discussions about how ‘retirement’ would look for us when we got there. I had hoped that 2012 would be the year so was a little startled a few weeks ago when hubby announced the moment to leave the company had arrived. With the economy being what it is these days we knew that such an opportunity might not come again for many years, so we jumped at the chance, knowing we would work out the details as we went.

My husband has always loved what he does and he always approached work with a very positive, can-do attitude. Tenacity is his middle name. But many months of battling overseas, combined with a genuine longing to slow down and ‘smell the roses’ as they say, had worn him down and made this past year very stressful for him. You get to a point in life where you simply don’t want to live like that anymore.

These days, the word retirement brings to mind something completely different from how it was for the previous generation. It is no longer about getting a gold watch after 30 or 40 years of being loyal to one company. Retirement today brings many choices to the table and ends up being a time of great transition which might include everything from travel, going back to school, learning a new language, doing part-time work, consulting, mentoring, volunteering, exploring artistic mediums, to sports, or possibly all of the above. . With good health, longevity and the all-important good financial planning, a retiree today can hopefully enjoy these things for some 20 or even 30 years.

All those things require a sort of re-aligning of priorities and a financial plan to back it all up. Do we downsize or stay put? Should we entertain the idea of having a second home, either, a country house, a beach condo or a shack in the woods? Is this when we buy ourselves a motorcycle and take off across the continent? Or will we offer our time to work in Africa with AIDS orphans for a year?
The biggest and most immediate change, or so people tell me, will be to our daily routines. Hubby will apparently now want to ‘do’ stuff with me all the time and will, therefore, cut into my time. Luckily, we have always traveled well together and we have equally always been very respectful of one another’s space which speaks volumes now that we really need those qualities. No doubt he will continue to cycle and train for his marathons, leaving me to pick the films we will see or the art galleries and museums that are of interest. We balance each other well and that may make this whole retirement business very enjoyable.

One thing is for sure. Retirement is no longer a destination, it’s become a state of mind, and that means a constant measuring with adjustments as you go.

Remembering

2011-09-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

I will address the question of the day, especially as I have actually been asked more than once this week: Where were you on 9/11?

I was in Vancouver, about to film two back-to-back episodes for a series on women and their financial situations. The crew and I had just finished a three day shoot in a beautiful place called Christina Lake up in the mountains and had then driven down to Vancouver along some of Canada’s most scenic routes. I remember how grateful I felt to see such wondrous sights and to travel with such a great group of hard-working, dedicated people. We had, by then, logged many miles together, having crossed Canada from coast to coast in search of our stories, which we often found in small, out of the way communities that required sleeping in crappy motels and eating bad food. So we were excited to finally be in a big city where we were booked into a decent hotel and where we knew we would all be able to satisfy our craving for good, fresh food.

Filming days are traditionally very long so we always had a hearty breakfast. On September 11th I headed down to the hotel coffee shop around 7:00 a.m. With the time difference, the life-altering events on the east coast were already well under way. Our director of photography was already at the table and I noticed right away that he looked ashen. What’s wrong? I asked. He pointed to the tv above the counter, unable to speak.

My first reaction upon seeing a plane flying into a skyscraper was that this was some kind of joke. Like millions of people all over the world, my brain would not compute what my eyes were seeing. My stomach lurched as I realized it was not a joke. I took what I was looking at to be a terrible accident. I sat down and my colleague said a very bad swearword in French.

Other crew members started to trickle in. Nobody in the restaurant spoke above a whisper. We were still trying to get our heads around it all when the tv showed images of the tower being hit. Our collective numbness was suddenly replaced by fear for our loved ones. We started to think about people we knew who lived in New York and we all reached for our phones. I called my husband.

He reassured me that our children were safe, that he had already been in contact with their schools and that he himself was heading home to be with them. He sounded as incredulous as I felt. I was due to fly home the next day but it was already becoming clear that air space was being emptied and that all airports were shutting down.

Next, I called my Executive Producer who had family in New York. They were, mercifully, accounted for and safe. Going home the next day was going to be out of the question. He suggested that we just stay where we were and sit tight until things became clearer.

So my shell-shocked crew and I decided that we would go ahead with the work at hand. We proceeded to the house of our next subject which was high up in North Vancouver with an incredible view of the harbor. It was a brilliantly sunny fall day. I wondered how something so awful could be happening on such a nice day but then we focused on the task at hand. We needed to be doing something normal and familiar.

I remember nothing about the actual interview. I do remember, very clearly, that we all stayed very close and very quiet. That evening we huddled in our director’s room. We stopped watching the news and turned on a movie instead, just to get a reprieve from those awful images. We kept calling home to report that all flights had been cancelled and that we were stuck. We had philosophical discussions about the Middle East, about Palestine, about Islam, and the folly of our times. We did not yet know who was to blame for the attack.

Three days later Vancouver airport slowly came back to life and we headed there with the hope of getting home. I will never forget the sight of all those airplanes as we approached. Vancouver had been one of the first airports to receive American planes ordered to land; the tarmac looked like a giant parking lot.

Inside the terminal, the lineups were long but the chaos was organized. Airline employees were making the rounds and handing out bottled water to waiting passengers. Although we all wanted to get home, we also dreaded getting into an airplane and the mood was thus very somber. The thought of the thousands of victims made me tearful. I was not the only one to shed a quiet tear and it seemed normal to pat the back of a stranger.

In the end, my crew flew out on one plane while I ended up on another. I thus had a few hours on my own to contemplate the greatest tragedy of my lifetime, one that would forever change the way any of us travel. There can be no doubt that we are all more afraid of flying since that day and terribly irritated by the inconvenience of the ongoing security measures that are now imposed on us. The horror and absurdity of 9/11 filled every one of us with collective anger and grief and I wanted more than anything, that day flying home, to be with my children, even as I understood that nothing I could say or do would erase the dreadful images that were played relentlessly, over and over.

I think every generation has catastrophic moments that turn the tide of history. Those who witnessed the liberation of death camps after World War II, for instance were surely also marred by the images before them. The mass graves of thousands of Cambodians, the slaughter of innocent people anywhere, Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq; even violent death by natural disasters like tsunamis or earthquakes, all are terrible events which the media brings into our homes over and over and over again .

I won’t be glued to my tv this weekend, watching images that are already imprinted in my mind. Instead, I will send positive thoughts to the families who suffered losses and hope that time has helped them heal.

HOME AGAIN

2011-08-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

After three months of living abroad I now wrestle daily with being happy to be home and at the same time also missing some of what I have left behind. It isn’t that one place is better than another, far from it. It’s more about how each place makes me feel.

At home everything is comfortable, familiar, predictable and safe. These are all good things and I value them for what they are; the culmination of years of hard work and the trappings of a very blessed life. Above all else, being home gives me access to my children and that is a gift I never can take for granted for it is a given that our off-spring are ours for only a short period of time and that they will eventually make their own way towards where they need to be, which is not necessarily going to be by our side.

Being away from home for an extended period, as opposed to going on a two week vacation, whether to Ireland or anywhere else, immediately offers a different dimension to life. You are thrown a little off-balance every day by new experiences, whether negative or positive, and you always have to check what your reaction to any given situation is. It’s a bit like constantly taking your own pulse and thus getting to know a part of yourself that doesn’t often come out in familiar territory; the excited you, the scared you, the euphoric you, the curious you...

It is through this process of questioning and finding answers that the shedding of old ideas and the embracing of new growth, comes from. This automatically means you feel more alive, living more on the edge, with all senses coming into focus a little sharper. I discovered, through this process, that I have a bit of a nomadic wanderer in me and that living in another culture and climate, far from all that I hold dear, actually suits my temperament and my restless nature. The experience made me more interesting to myself because I gained a new dimension.

I am back home now and happily so. Yet I am not quite ready to lose that part of me that I found in Dublin. I genuinely rejoice at once again having access to family and friends, and of course, those silly little things I missed, like a shower that doesn’t dribble, a clothes dryer that actually dries clothes, the warm colours of our walls, cotton bedsheets and the peaceful view beyond our window, just to name a few. But I confess that at the end of the day, lying in our comfortable bed waiting to fall asleep, a part of me pines for what was in the tiny, noisy flat above the friendly Lemon Jelly restaurant. It's where I discovered that there is more to me than I remembered.

As the saying goes....wherever you go, there you are.

Summer in Dublin

2011-07-28T00:32:00.000-07:00

It is a sunny18 degrees here under bright blue skies and anyone who can sit outside drinking a pint of Guinness or a coffee, is doing so. Summer has descended on Dublin at last and the euphoria of being able to shed rain jackets, scarves and closed shoes, is shared even by me.

In the first week of July, street planters, which had mostly been disappointingly empty since my arrival, suddenly were filled to bursting with colourful floral arrangements. I never saw anyone working on them so must assume that those same leprechauns who handle street sanitation were responsible. Every main street and restaurant is suddenly bedecked in an abundance of flowers.

As though on cue, tourists are arriving here as fast as Ryan Air can fly them in. They bring much needed money and a vibrancy that is palpable as one walks along Dublin streets, especially at night when young people from all over the world take over the bars and pubs. Many is the night that hubby and I have been woken from a deep sleep by happily intoxicated people below our bedroom window shouting or singing lusty songs in various languages. Living centrally has its disadvantages.

My favourite pedestrian shopping area, Henry Street, which is near our flat, is filled not only with the usual local shoppers, it now also has mimes, buskers, and students being paid to hold signs that tell tourists where they can go for a cheap lunch, a quick Tarot reading, a haircut. Mothers with prams mingle with street vendors peddling cherries and grapes, while elderly men try to get spare change for tap dancing on a piece of plywood or singing an Irish song. Shopping was never so entertaining.

In the three months I have been here I have gone from being a tourist myself, to feeling native. Just the other day I was asked by a French couple if I knew the way to O’Connell Street. I was pleased as punch to be taken for a Dubliner. On another occasion, I overheard three girls query a route among one another so I went over and showed them on a map the best route to take. I am paying forward the kindness that was shown to me when I first arrived.

On the other side of the Liffey, in Temple Bar and beyond, young smokers mill in doorways, music spilling onto the streets from establishments that advertise live entertainment and a set menu. The Early Bird Special is popular here, especially with North Americans who are used to dining before dark. The cycle of 24 hours is very different here; it doesn’t get dark much before 10:30 which makes for a long day. Hubby and I have taken many walks along the river at dusk when the lights begin to be reflected in the water and the bridges are lit up. Pure magic and it’s for free!

My time here is almost done but I will leave Dublin on a high, a mental summer festival that will be remembered till the end of my days. There have been so many highlights and so many genuinely wonderful moments that I will need months to sort through all my memories. As a writer, I can now confirm that this city makes a great impact on those of us who need to express themselves with words.

Discovering Dublin

2011-06-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

It’s rare to hear any horns honking here. Dublin traffic flows as though choreographed, with the utmost respect shown to pedestrians, many of whom, like me, are tourists. We are reminded at every street corner to ‘look right’ or ‘look left’, words that are actually painted onto the pavement.

Even if there is a red light directing you to wait, you are expected to cross the street if there is no car coming. You look like an idiot if you stand there and wait as nobody else does that! If the light is red and there are cars heading your way when you reach a corner, you have to hit the button that just about every crossing is equipped with. The light will change to green within seconds, emanating a bird-like sound to help the vision impaired. No talk of jay walking here, no fear of being mown down or given the finger by an irate motorist like back home!

A further civility exists when you ask a Dubliner for directions. Well, now dear, let me see. Ah, you see that church over there? Well, you want to be making a right turn when you get to it! I’ve actually had a man give me directions and then walk with me all the way to my destination, just to make sure I got there. How nice is that? He was a barrister, as it turns out, on his way back to the office after a morning in court. I tried to dissuade him, especially as it was a rainy day, but he would not hear of it. When we got to the right street he just walked off without another word!

It’s true that when it comes to directions, things can get a little complicated, due to the fact that street names are not always posted, and if they are, they more than likely will have changed in the last block. For example, Suffolk Street becomes Nassau Street which becomes Leinster Street South and then changes to Clare Street, which in turn becomes Merrion Square North! So you could be on the right street all along but not know it if you were a block away. I no longer look at street signs, I simply use buildings and bridges as my guide.

I have seen very few dogs here, which is good because they don’t seem to have a poop and scoop policy. They are also very lax about littering. I have observed elegantly dressed women in suits and high heels, flick their cigarette butts onto the street like seasoned truckers. All street corners look like giant ashtrays. I have also seen people throw food wrappers into the river while crossing the footbridges when in fact there are many bins throughout the city.

Although there is litter, there are armies of people (leprechauns?) who come out in the night to clean so that every morning is a fresh start. It's a radical idea but perhaps, in an economy where the unemployment rate is at an all-time high, littering is a way of keeping people working.

Not only is unemployment high, there are also many homeless people. They are young and they are old, men as well as women. In the neighborhood where I live there is an elderly lady who regularly makes the rounds of the many restaurant terraces, begging for change, crossing the bridge back and forth with her walker.

Travel opens your eyes to so many things, some delightful, some frightful.

Dublin Days

2011-05-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

My first weeks in Dublin have been a series of grins and groans as I slowly get accustomed to these new and unfamiliar surroundings. I have juggled with loneliness and homesickness but have also felt great surges of joy as I discover things that fill my soul with new energy.

I am now better acquainted with the area and the building where hubby and I are staying, a corporate apartment that costs a very pretty penny, as it's in a wonderfully central location, but which is essentially a small, five-story walk-up.

Not even when we were first married did we ever live in such close confinement! The thought of spending a summer here was, at first, quite daunting, but I have to admit that the bed is very comfortable, the towels are big and fluffy, there is plenty of hot water and climbing stairs daily is a great cardio workout! Besides, I have to confess that I have already grown very fond of the clang- clang the tramways make when they stops at the bottom of our street and anyway, I did not come here for home comforts.

Even though I still don’t know where most things are, I am aware of having been transported to a place that is unique and which offers me many different experiences. That is what makes an adventure; you must get lost every day but never feel lost. You must never look for anything in particular, you just walk and absorb sounds and images as you go and let them impact your thoughts without restraint.

Never have I had such unstructured days. At first it made me feel somewhat rudderless to have nothing in front of me but time and space, but now I find it liberating to walk out of a building in an unfamiliar city and just see where my instincts take me. That is how I managed to take a photo of Queen Elizabeth waving from her car, found a wonderful woman from the Ivory Coast who sews in a tiny shop above an Internet café, discovered a magical Victorian tea room at the back end of an old department store. Who knows what discovery I might make tomorrow!

My ears are slowly adjusting to the musical way the Irish speak. I am getting used to crossing the streets that have traffic coming from the ‘wrong’ side. I have figured out the money system. I now know that I must always wear layers, even on the sunniest of days and that it isn’t worth getting my umbrella out when it begins to rain because it’s really only a fast-moving cloud spitting a little. I am aware that at the end of the day, when my head is crammed full of new impressions and my feet hurt from miles of walking, that I have collected another fine batch of memories for a time in the future when I will no longer want to have this kind of adventure. I suppose you could say that I am living my days to the fullest and that it's not always easy but at least I won't have regrets later on when I look back. At my age, that's important.

Summer Adventure

2011-04-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

As I look around me at the cherished circle of friends I have gathered over the years, I see that little cracks are forming. An illness here, major surgery there. It has begun, the process of time eroding our collective health and vitality. We shall all fall eventually, of course, but for now it is still a crapshoot with none of us knowing what the future holds.

It is much too sobering to live this way, waiting to see what will befall us next, so the only option is to live in the moment and truly savour what each day brings. While I have followed this philosophy for years, and am thus pretty open to new experiences, I was completely unprepared for the unexpected surprise that came my way recently; an invitation to spend the coming summer in Dublin with my husband.

I have been wanting to see Ireland ever since my girlfriend took me to see the film "Ryan's Daughter" many moons ago. The movie had a visual impact that four decades have not dimmed in my mind. I am so excited at the prospect of actually being able to see that craggy coastline and those deep green fields for myself in a matter of weeks, that I am starting to pinch myself. My stomach jumps in happy anticipation when I think of all the things that await us.

As excited as I am about my upcoming adventure, I also have a heavy heart about leaving behind my family and friends. Because I know that time and space alter things and that even if everyone is still standing when I return, we will all have changed because of new experiences and things will therefore never again be as they are now. Therein lies the ambivalence; you can't stay too comfortable if you want to experience a full life but in order to have adventures that will add colour and spice to your life, you have to get out of your daily routine and embrace new challenges. Life really is a series of hellos and good-byes and treasuring the memories one creates in between.

While musing over this remarkable opportunity, I happened to come across the following quote by Mark Twain who said: "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Dublin, here I come!

International Women's Day

2011-03-09T05:11:00.000-08:00

I had dinner with a close friend yesterday, International Women's Day. While looking at old photos and chatting over a glass of wine, I thought about all the women who are out there fighting; for human rights, to be heard, to create change, and this very much includes the women I try to help through Kiva, a micro-lending organization which reminds us that "women perform 66% of the world's work, produce 50% of the food, but continue to earn just 10% of the income while only owning 1% of property."

As my friend served up organic chicken and roasted vegetables, I asked her....if you could have dinner with any woman you admire, past or present, who would it be?

She thought about it and after a lively discussion came up with Eleanor Roosevelt, (she was ahead of her time) Jane Jacobs, (she made things happen) Katherine Hepburn, (a total original) Queen Victoria (she changed the world) Flora MacDonald (quietly worked on improving social programs even after retiring from politics) and Carol Burnett (she is one funny woman).

On my side, I would also have invited Eleanor Roosevelt but since she was already spoken for I moved on to Golda Meir, (a true pioneer) Audrey Hepburn, (classy, talented, aged beautifully and did good work for the UN till the end of her life) Anita Roddick, (founder of The Body Shop and one of the first to understand the connection between business and social/environmental responsibility) Zanaib Salbi (founder of Women for Women International, an organization that has, to date raised over 24 million dollars in aid to help women in war-torn countries rebuild their lives) and Dorothy Sayers, the English writer and poet who apparently said: "A woman in advancing old age is unstoppable by any earthly force." You have to love someone who can say something like that and believe it!

As an after-thought, my friend added Rachel Carson, the environmentalist and author of Silent Spring while I wondered why we had mostly chosen women who are no longer with us instead of more iconic contemporaries like Oprah. Media saturation may have something to do with that.

There are so many brilliant women out there, doing so many interesting things as they go about their often difficult lives, that our little dinner game was almost silly. But in discussing some of the women who had influenced our thinking along the way, we were paying tribute to many more in our own way. In the end, that is what we must hope for; that we are given the opportunity to do work that is meaningful, that we do it to the best of our ability, and that we inspire others as we go. But what we have to strive for, all of us, is that women everywhere are treated respectfully and given an equal chance at anything they choose to do. And not just on International Women's Day.

Of Dreams and Nightmares

2011-02-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

Back in October 2004 I was shocked like everyone else in my town to read about the senseless murder of a young woman named Kelly-Anne Drummond. By all accounts, she had been an out-going, vibrant girl, an accomplished athlete who had just completed her degree in Communications and who had recently worked as a production assistant on her first film shoot.

My reaction to her senseless death was very much coloured by the fact that my own daughter has a birthday in October which we were about to celebrate. I often thought about Kelly-Anne's mother and what she was going through. By what stroke of luck or fate did I get to keep my daughter, while she had so tragically lost hers? It consumed my mind for quite awhile and I followed the story right up until Kelly-Anne's boyfriend was convicted of her murder and sent to prison two years later.

At around the same time as Kelly-Anne died, I was writing a book (Silent Women) which deals with the subject of abuse and how easy it is for people to lose themselves when they get enmeshed in an unhealthy relationship. Abuse comes in so many forms....verbal, sexual, emotional, physical...and it can be delivered so subtly that the victim, at first, doesn't even realize what is happening. Abuse can happen to anyone, at any age.

While I continued to work on my book, I was approached by a friend and colleague who asked me to help her with a film she had just finished directing. She had shot it but the storyline wasn't working for her and she needed to give her images new meaning in order to salvage the footage she already had. The film was entitled "Dreams and Mirrors".

The film depicts the emotional landscape of a young girl who is trying to come to terms with her past and the relationship she had with her late father. The breath-takingly beautiful images evoked strong emotions and were a natural outlet, given what I was writing in my book, to further explore the topic of women who choose to be silent about their inner pain. What cannot come out, goes deep within, and in the case of Sara, the character in the film, the end result is a sequence of dreams that eventually lead her to make an important decision. To quote from the narration: "The women always walk without speaking, knowing that silence is expected of them, that all shame must be borne without ever making a sound. This might have been my own fate had I not heard the wave of eloquent anguish coming from these silenced voices, showing me that pain is the force that either keeps you down or makes you rise."

"Dreams and Mirrors" is finally going to be screened this weekend after years of hard work and a tenacious belief in the message from all who were involved in the project. One crew member will not be able to attend the screening. I never knew until yesterday that the production assistant on this film, was Kelly-Anne Drummond.

I dedicate what I wrote for "Dreams and Mirrors" to her memory.

2011

2011-01-01T12:14:00.000-08:00

Too much champagne, not enough sleep.

But we made a good start to the New Year, hubby and I, and that’s all I had wished for as we clinked glasses and made our toasts.

Along with mundane thoughts and a tiny headache this morning comes a yearning to reinvent myself. This is nothing new as I get like this every so often, a throw-back to earlier years when it seemed a good idea to always keep moving.

They say that at the end of your life, what you regret the most is what you haven’t done. So reinventing myself while I still have time is simply a way to get back on track with what I want my life to be, by shedding what I no longer want, re-assessing what I actually need, prioritizing, and then taking concrete steps to attain those new goals. I know from experience that sometimes that process leads to chaos and sometimes it leads to peace of mind. I’ve had the pleasure of both and can attest to the fact that introspection and inner-growth can come from either one. Change is always good, even if, especially if, at first it causes pain and discomfort.

As I step into this New Year, I feel that familiar inner pull tugging at my spirit once more. There is a strong sense of urgency this time, a reminder that I no longer have oodles of time ahead of me. I look around at family and friends, some of whom are tackling huge life issues, and I am convinced that the old poster over my bed when I was a teen, held a truth we can only fully appreciate now that we’re older; today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Let’s not waste a moment.

Feeling Grinchy

2010-12-20T14:22:00.000-08:00

Last winter, while waiting for a delivery, I offered to give the store directions to my house. They politely declined by saying: "that's ok, our drivers have GPS." Duh.

They say you start to get old when you have trouble adapting to new technology so I guess I have arrived because I find myself commenting more and more on how things used to be. I used to give people verbal directions to my house all the time but now refrain from doing so for fear of sounding....well, like an old person.

Here's another example of how things have changed: I always looked forward to writing Christmas cards around this time of year and would always send out between 40 and 50 to friends and relatives all over the world. As a result, we always received tons of cards back which provided a holiday tradition that goes back to the first year we were married; when the tree comes down we read all the cards out loud, one by one and share a memory or anecdote about the sender. With family living far away, this was always a bitter-sweet moment of connection, replaced now by the immediate gratification of social networking.

With twitter and facebook, skype and the convenience (not to mention the monitary savings) of e-cards, our old traditions are starting to change drastically. As a result we have received a mere seven cards so far this year. I probably should only admit to five, since one was from our newspaper delivery man and another from our dog's vet! I fully expect to receive Jacquie Lawson e-cards even from them next year.

And the anticipation of going Christmas shopping? Gone the way of the Dodo bird. Walking through stores to get ideas, checking and comparing with other stores, perhaps finding the ideal book for a person, getting them what you think they want, used to be fun and even exhilerating. Of course, you come home exhausted and somewhat cranky after a few hours of that, but it's all worth it if you find the right gifts. "Oh, you still do that?" asked a friend recently. "I do all my shopping on-line."

I concede that it may be more convenient to browse on the Internet but surely it's not nearly as much fun as shopping the old-fashioned way. I know that makes me sound ancient but there you are. I still like to anticipate what I might see in a real store and I like to touch and feel and check out the colours and I love the satisfaction of suddenly finding that perfect something that I know is really wanted by the person on my list and then bringing it home like a secret treasure. Although there, too, the influence of technology is vast. Remember when a nice holiday photo in a frame made a lovely gift? Now you can give grandma 200 photos in an electronic frame she can watch over and over like a bad sitcom. Should I give a book or simply download ten onto a Kindle/Kobi? Does anyone even remember how much pleasure we used to get from giving or receiving a simple sweater or scarf? Not many do.

I think this is the last Christmas where old traditions that my husband and I have built up over nearly three decades of marriage will prevail. Next year I will try to be more in tune with the times. I will send out e-cards, give Kiva gift cards to everyone and then serve a free range turkey with bio rice ad organically grown vegetables. But I will secretly treasure the way things used to be.

Happy holidays to everyone and may you put 2011 to good use!

A Very Personal Choice

2010-11-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

Like most people, I have very ambivalent feelings on the topic of euthanasia. I have watched as people suffered needlessly and wished privately that I might have done something merciful to put them out of their misery. On the other hand, my experiences have also taught me that quality of life cannot be measured arbitrarily across the board by any one person since everyone has their own criteria as to what constitutes quality.
So it was with great anticipation that I recently attended a lecture on the topic of euthanasia given by a well-known author and ethicist, a staunch opponent of euthanasia. Fair enough. I went with an open mind and I found what she had to say riveting and thought-provoking. I was disappointed, however, at her inflexible attitude during the Q and A that followed. What I had hoped for was dialogue. What I got instead, was dogma.
All good and fine for someone who is healthy to take an anti-euthanasia stand. But for an elder who might be tired of a long and lonely existence, someone who knows he or she is ill beyond repair and is suffering both physically and emotionally, it might seem like an answer to their prayers.
One of the problems, or so said the lady giving the lecture, is our collective inability to have meaningful "death talks" on a regular basis as we used to do when we were more religious. With religion seemingly no longer playing pivotal roles in our lives, we have lost both the venues and the traditions that made our impending demise a normal part of living. Death has thus become a very frightening topic.
As well, we have a habit of hiding our frail elderly in hospitals and institutions rather than keeping them at home as previous generations did, further restricting our daily contact with those in our circle preparing to make their exit. It does not bode well for any of us that we continue to encourage staying youthful at all costs over....pardon me for the obvious....aging gracefully and thereby accepting our eventual demise and even preparing for it.
Personally, I believe very strongly that I have the right to choose the manner of my own exit. Though I am not saying that I would want, necessarily, to be euthanized, and by that I mean having a doctor administer a lethal dose of something, I would like to think that in the case of great and prolonged suffering, it might be an alternative offered to me.
As I write this, a woman in my neighbourhood is making sure her very old, blind, incontinent and arthritic dog is getting one last hug before being put to sleep. She took her faithful companion to the country over the weekend so he could have one last sniff in the woods, lie in the sun and listen to the lake water lapping on the shore while she gently stroked him.
While I appreciate that one cannot compare a person to a pet, I think there are instances where animals get shown more mercy than people.

A Rural Approach

2010-10-27T18:36:00.000-07:00

Having worked with the elderly for many years, I am always interested in how other countries and cultures look after their seniors.

In small-town France, where I have just spent two weeks visiting family, there is a very clear understanding; getting older means just forging ahead while changes come about on their own and making as little fuss about those changes, as possible.

Case in point: my 83-year old mother-law, quite creaky now and slower than I've ever seen her, still lives independently in a five bedroom house. She has no intention of going anywhere else and doesn't see why she should. It takes her a little longer to get things done. She falls asleep more often during the day. No big deal, she is functioning at a level she can manage and deriving enormous pleasure from her days.

Her 90-year old neighbour, a woman who is legally blind and who now needs help deciphering her mail, also remains alone in her family home. She can be seen, early every Tuesday morning, trotting out to bring the garbage to the curb for pick-up. Both women still shop for their own food and depend on one another for moral support. "Ah, ma pauvre" is a lament often heard, a sentiment which is meant to express sympathy but not pity for all the things about life you can't change. Aging is seen as a normal process and there is no special focus placed on the specifics until an illness comes along which permanently alters the course of someone's life.

So why is it seemingly much less complicated to grow old in rural France than in Canada?

For one thing, they have much more forgiving winter weather than we do. No slipping and sliding on icy sidewalks and the worst of their winter is usually done by February, when the daffodils start to bloom. Another reason might be that people are very open to taking homeotpathic remedies for their common ailments with less debilitating side effects. Finally, there is less interest in how one looks than here, where we are constantly bombarded with ads for products that will make us look younger. I'm not saying the French, don't use lotions and potions like the rest of us. I'm saying that in the small town where my family lives, women seem to have a healthy dose of acceptance about their appearance and their age and they keep on contributing to their family life in whatever way they can which in turn gives them a sense of still being useful.

On the last day of our visit, my mother-in-law was hobbling around in her cluttered and inefficient old kitchen. She was making a tiramisu for a friend down the road who had just come out of hospital. It took an entire morning to make it and most of the afternoon to deliver, but by the time she was in her chair having a little nap my husband and I could see how she and her elderly neighbours are still a vibrant part of their community.

Bedtime 101

2010-09-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that an important childrearing tool has gone out the window since I was a young mother. I sound archaic even to myself for mentioning it but I have noticed that young parents today take their kids everywhere they go and that they are all tired. It's as though there is no such thing as a set bedtime anymore. Kids, even toddlers, get to go out, to restaurants, movies, even private cocktail parties. They stay up late, get overly-tired and fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, often after exhibiting inappropriate behaviour, rather than when their parents tell them to. It makes everyone involved cranky.
I understand that the dynamics of a working couple have changed the way kids are brought up. When are you going to have quality time with your kids if not after hours? And I can also totally appreciate how tempting it is to bring your little darling along when socializing. But past a certain age, a sleep deprived child who comes to believe that the world has no limitations is not a pleasant thing for the rest of us.
Anyone who knew me as a child will tell you that I used to create mayhem on a daily basis. My poor cousin, my main partner in crime back then, was often in trouble thanks to me. Not only did I get us into countless scrapes, I would embelish scenarios which just sort of popped into my head as I went along, often leaving him to clean up our messes because I was already on the next adventure. But our mayehm had a schedule.
Like most kids of that era, we had basic rules to obey which included, among other things, not leaving our garden without permission. This was in the days when, outside of school hours, children were expected to entertain themselves and to go and play outside right after breakfast with orders to stay out until they were called in for lunch. Except for bathroom breaks it was best if you did not show your face before being called or you were likely to be given a mundane task to perform, like having to set the table or peeling potatoes. Barring bad weather we much preferred being banished to the garden.
What our hours of freedom taught us was invaluable. We learned how to fend for ourselves, how to problem-solve, and how to let our imaginations run wild. We learned to rely on ourselves and on one another, thus becoming capable later on of facing the world with a healthy dose of self-confidence.
We also absorbed quickly that certain punishments were not worth the crime, thus showing us concretely that all acts have a consequence and that we are all responsible for any action we choose to take, even at the age of six.
Whatever adventure the day held, when we came in to clean up for supper, we knew that playtime was officially over until the morning. No amount of wheedling would alter that. During dinner we were expected to practice the table manners that were constantly being drummed into us. We could not get up, run around, or leave the table without first asking to be excused. It was also expected that we would help clear the table after the meal was over. If we hurried with the chores we could catch a program or get time to read. Bedtime was absolutely not negotiable and the longer we dawdled the less time we had for the fun stuff.
I wasn't quite as strict when raising my own kids and our Canadian winters meant that I could not just open up the back door and let them run out to play, though I have to say that on sunny days I did just that and they turned out fine. But I was a stickler about not being disturbed past a certain time in the evening, especially when we had company. Bedtime wasn't any more negotiable at our house than it had been for me as a kid because I always felt that if I didn't get some "me" time and some "couples" time, I would go mad. I needed to recharge my batteries, connect with my husband and the outside world. What was that famous quote....if Mamma ain't happy, nobody's happy? That was certainly the unspoken rule when I was a young mother.
Parenting, like anything else worth doing well, requires guidelines, parameters, hard work, dedication, routines and a loving but firm hand that cannot be twisted with wheedling, pleading or bribery. I honestly don't know how couples today survive without those all-important daily moments of peace and quiet. I'm beginning to think that often they don't.

Be Kind: Shed!

2010-09-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

For many months now, I have been watching friends who live in another city, struggle with all the elements that come into play when an aging parent develops dementia. The parent in question is his widowed mother, who lives in my home town, a good six hour drive for where our friends live and work.
Because doctors, banks, notaries and social service agencies are mostly closed on weekends, my friends often had to take time off work to come here on a Friday or Monday so they could move forward with the daunting task of getting his mother into a safe environment, something which requires a written mandate and which my friend's mother had not provided.
Our friends had first begun to notice a change in thought and speech patterns when talking to mum on the phone last year. A subsequent visit to find out why her electricity had suddenly been cut off (the bill had not been paid in many months) showed a tremendous change in her handwriting, her signature in particular. Moreover, the fridge was empty, the house was in total disarray and there were holes in their conversations because mum could no longer remember certain things.
The earliest doctor's appointment they could get was weeks away. In the meantime, bills had to be paid, money had to be transferred, groceries had to be brought in. The people next door were helpful to a point, mowing the lawn and buying milk, but one can hardly ask even a well-meaning neighbour to take on the intimate activities of daily living; showering, nail clipping, changes of underwear, laundry.
While waiting for the doctor to confirm their worst fears, our friends took time off work whenever they could and also drove here weekend after weekend to try and keep things going. They soon discovered that the fridge full of groceries was not a good solution because mum no longer knew what to do with food. Frozen, ready-to-heat meals were ordered instead. The trouble with that system was that mum didn't always want to open the door to the 'strangers' who delivered it. Same for the woman who was hired to clean. She never knew from one week to the next if she would be allowed in to perform her job.
After the initial doctor's appointment it was established that a geriatric assessment would be needed. Another appointment, another long wait. In the meantime, my friends continued to go back and forth between their city and mine, always trying to stay one step ahead of mum's needs. Even before the assessment could be made, it was clear that she was in jeopardy being left alone. Constant worry about falls and fires kept my friends awake on many a night.
It's now a year later and my friend's mother has finally been placed in a facility that has a floor for people with dementia. She is not exactly happy but at least she's out of harm's way and gets three meals a day. She will settle to her new routine soon enough. But for my relieved friends, already emotionally exhausted, the real work had just begun.
Mum's house, now empty, was filled to the rafters with a lifetime worth of stuff. Old furniture with ring marks and faded upholstery fabric. Rooms reeking of cat urine and stale cigarette smoke. Closets crammed with never-worn clothes and drawers filled with items in desperate need of laundering. Linens in tatters. Chipped china, hidden silverware, paper, paper, and more paper, puzzle pieces, cigarette butts, mismatched shoes, old dentures, buttons, old nail files, brooches, faded photographs.  Just when they thought one room was more or less 'done' they discovered that the garage was still full and that there was a trunk full of more papers in the basement. A huge task to tackle on weekends after they have dealt with all the issues in their own lives. They did their very best but in the end had to pay someone to cart it all away.
Clearly, a big favour we can do our children is not  burden them with our left-overs. You may love that stained tea cosy aunt Maude gave you all those years ago but your son or daughter will likely throw it in the garbage the minute your back is turned. So get real. Leave a legal mandate or a least, written instructions and then shed stuff as you go. How many raincoats does one person need? How many magazines can you read at one time? If a mug has lost its handle, don't use it to hold old leaky pens, throw it out!! If a puzzle is missing a piece, no point in keeping the box with all the other pieces, is there?
Keep what you absolutely need to be happy and comfortable, of course. Give no-longer used treasures to those who will appreciate them and then have a garage sale every year for the stuff we all accummulate in our lifetime. Whatever doesn't sell should be donated or thrown out. Left to rot in an empty house, stuff  morphes into costly junk.

One Breath At A Time

2010-07-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

We sat in a doctor's office, my family and I, awaiting a diagnosis we had dreaded for over three months. We sat there in a windowless, colourless room, facing a brisk but kindly doctor who was so polished it was clear he had done this many times before. We held our collective breath as he began to tell us what we didn't want to hear. Even when you have time to prepare, you are never quite ready.
With one hand I reached for my husband, with the other I pinched myself as hard as I could so as to not give in to my mounting panic. I needed to focus and stay calm. When the verdict finally came I looked at the person it was being delivered to, sitting tall, composed and brave, and my heart broke into a thousand pieces. I could not breathe.
Getting life-altering news is akin to drowning. I feel I can make such a statement because I almost lost my life in a lake when I was little. I can still remember that feeling of utter shock when I took two steps forward in the shallow water where I had been playing and suddenly felt the ground beneath me fall away. The mind spins in disbelief, the toes try to stretch towards a bottom that is no longer there as water simultaneously washes over your head, blurring your vision and muffling sounds. Something like electricty surges through your entire body. A split second and everything familiar no longer is.
In shock, you come up for air, try to find the horizon. Every ounce of energy is directed towards keeping your head above water and gulping for breaths of air. You notice the most mundane things; floating seaweed, a cloud. Even decades later, these images remain hauntingly sharp.
All of this flashed through my mind as the doctor spelled out possible treatment options and scientific data meant to encourage us. Lifelines.
Stunned, we all heard only what our personal filters would allow and the good doctor seemed to understand this. He kept things simple and encouraged a summer of rest and adjustment even as he offered us his expertise.
In the days and nights that followed, staying very close for mutual support, we began to look beyond the immediate, towards the horizon, as it were, and lo and behold, we saw that we are surrounded by people standing on the shore with outstretched arms. Our friends and family, many of whom have actually waded in to help us, are giving us the greatest gift there is; love and support in whatever form they can give it. Thanks to them we are able to breathe again.
We are not going to drown after all, but we will have to learn to swim, all of us, in this unchartered deep water that until last week, looked deceivingly like a picturesque shallow lake.

The Gift of Goodbye

2010-06-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

Saying a final good-bye can be so agonizingly painful and yet, done correctly, can be so rewarding at the same time. Laying someone to rest is a way of paying tribute to someone you cared about but it is also a way of taking bearings on your own life.
I have attended three such farewells in the last month, each one very different, each with a unique gift to offer. The first was for a woman of 95, who by all accounts had grown tired of life and had simply stopped eating. Already thin and frail the last few years of her life, it did not take long for her to succumb.
Once a tireless volunteer where I used to work, she was a tiny woman who even in below zero weather or blinding snowstorms came to work on time and always with a smile on her face. I felt grateful, upon hearing of her death, that I had taken opportunities while she was alive to tell her how much I had appreciated her.
The service for her was held on a sunny spring morning, in the little chapel she had attended every Sunday for most of her life. It was packed to overflowing with family members, restless babies, church elders and people like myself, who had appreciated her and the tireless work she had done for her community.
I viewed the photos placed near the front by the urn containing her ashes and marvelled at the fact that she had not changed in spite of her great age; she had the same recognizable smile at the end of her life as when she was young. We subsequently learned, first from a nephew who delivered the eulogy and later from people in the church, invited as we were by the Minister to share any anecdote about her we could think of, that, in spite of never having married or having had children, she had experienced a rewarding life. Not in terms of amassed wealth but certainly in the accumulation of many good deeds which had served her community so well, a wonderful, humbling thing to witness as we sang hymn after hymn in her honour. I pray that I can have a long and useful life.
Two weeks later I was in Toronto at a Jewish cemetery to witness the unveiling of a tombstone. I had never observed such a ceremony before and this particular one was for a friend of my mother's who had been very kind to me when I was young.
We arrived a little early, my mother and I, and we used the time to find the grave and to look around, taking stock of where my mother's late friend had been laid to rest last year. Her grave was next to her husband who had predeceased her, just off a narrow path and not far from a lychen-covered bench. We sat there while we waited for the family and the rabbi to arrive. The only sounds were birds chirping and the occasional insect buzzing around. It felt very peaceful sitting there. As my mother reminisced about her friend and their relationship, which spanned over five decades, I remembered how kind this lady had been to me when I was young and how unappreciative I had been of that gift at the time. I am grateful that I had the chance, before she died, to tell her this in person and to make amends by corresponding with her daily while she was ill. It was the least I could do. When the rabbi stood by her grave and sang a prayer in the sunlight, I found myself hoping that I am learning to be as gracious and forgiving as she was towards me on her final visit, just two months before she died. When her son read a prayer in Hebrew and laid the first stone on top of his mother's grave, I squeezed the one I held in my hand, as though it were a good-bye hug. When it was my turn to place the stone on the grave, I prayed for her eternal peace.
Not a week later, my husband and I found ourselves in the Catholic church of a small Québec town, at the memorial service for a man who had died at a very young age, 61, after a brief battle with cancer. His eulogy was given by his 25-year old son, a very composed young man only a year older than ours, who did a wonderful job of explaining his father's life philosophy; he had lived largely, excessively, joyfully, until the very end.
When Ave Maria was sung by someone in the congregation who had a golden voice, the tears were hard to hold back. A haunting Jacques Brel song ripped at the heart. "My Way" by Frank Sinatra, was the perfect choice for a man who left his small hometown behind to make his way in the wider world. The lonely bagpipe that played "Amazing Grace" as a special request by the widow, was so painful to listen to that I felt a physical ache. I had not known this man well and yet I felt as bereft as if I had. It was an honour to witness the obvious love of his family, especially his son who surely did him proud that day.
In moments of grief, we are all deeply connected by the knowledge that our time here must count for something.

Finding Your Inner Babe

2010-04-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

In the overall scheme of things, the annual bathing suit hunt is pretty low on the priority to-do list. But a brief holiday, planned to celebrate my sister's upcoming birthday, is quickly coming up and my old brown and green bathing suit from last year has gotten pilly and the colours are fading.

Thanks to thin models in magazine ads and the impossible standards set by Hollywood we have come to believe that everyone should have a goddess-like body until the day we die. Heck, even Susan Lucci, aged 60 plus, has recently been photographed walking along a beach wearing a bikini, long hair cascading down her lean back, looking fabulous.

Well, I am no Susan Lucci.

I am, instead, what my husband, prone to romanticizing things, likes to call 'his little quail'. I myself would describe my image as being that of a pleasantly plump mother of two, and I would add, a woman in desperate need of a holiday after a winter of work, a serious family medical crisis and a full kitchen reno. So a plan has been hatched for all the 'girls' of the family to get away for a week of sun, a bit of shopping, and a lot of celebrating. We all have much to be grateful for.

I therefore set out last weekend on a grey and rainy day to my favourite department store. I got there early to avoid the crowds. The only saleslady at that time was manning the cash so had no time to help me wade through the many choices in front of me. I dove in.

To begin with, there are many, many different brands, all offering different options, tightly wedged together in one little space. As I walked around I saw bathing suits with skirts, bathing suits with beaded jewlery, bathing suits with matching cover-ups, bathing suits on sale, bathing suits for those who've had mastectomies, tops and bottoms for people who love to mix and match, bikinis, tankinis and the plain two-piece which seems to have fallen somewhat out of favour. Black, white, floral, geometric, animal print.

Then you have all the different sizes. Regular sizes, (w)ide for the broader woman, L for the long torso, D for the larger cup size....bust enhancing, tummy tucking, hip minimizers...and those that give "the illusion of a long leg."

My biggest problem was trying to get samples off the tightly packed racks which meant doing battle with annoying plastic hangers, some of which then spilled their contents onto the floor and which I would then have to bend down to retrieve and re-hang while balancing the suits I had already selected to try on while also hanging on to my purse, umbrella and raincoat! Would a coat check on every department store floor really be such a difficult service to offer shoppers?

Hot and already somewhat frustrated, I walked up and down the narrow aisles, selecting one bathing suit from every group in my size until I could carry no more. I headed towards the changing rooms but of course, there was a chain indicating it was not in use.
"No, you have to go to the other side," said the cashier, pointing to the far side of the store. By this time I was actually breaking into a light sweat and wondering why I hadn't just ordered something from my Land's End catalogue.

Once in a cabin I lined up my suits according to preference and began the process of trying them on in my sweaty state, under harsh lighting, so flattering to the middle-aged body, without removing my underwear.
Like a robot I tried on suit after suit, concluding each time that it was either too long, too short, exposed too much flesh, the straps were too tight, too much cleavage, not enough cleavage, uncofortable, how long have I had THAT vein there, too plain, too fancy, possibly, maybe, and what was I thinking??

I poked my head out of the cabin door and asked the lady in charge of the dressing rooms if I could have said bathing suit in a larger size. She said she would check. Seeing as she had to cross the length of the Gobi desert to get to the other side, it took a very long time for her to come back, alas, empty-handed. The lull at least allowed me to review my choices, none of which excited me, while cooling down.

Discouraged, I got dressed, gathered my coat, umbrella and purse and went back to the far side of the store where I went around one last time. There, in a far corner, my eye suddenly caught sight of a lovely turquoise and blue one- piece floral number with a slightly gathered bodice. Just looking at those vibrant colours lifted my spirits and made me see myself, not white and flabby after a long Canadian winter, but tanned and lying by a swimming pool, a Diana Gabaldon novel in one hand, a cool drink in the other.

I didn't even try it on. I just knew I had found my inner Susan Lucci.

What Is Happiness?

2010-04-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

None of us are spared sorrow. It comes to all of us, especially if we love. Sometimes it's difficult to remember happy times when sorrow strikes. A reminder has fallen across my desk in the form of an anonymous note I once found and have kept for years in a box that once belonged to my great grandmother, a woman who likely never had time to worry about how she was feeling. The wisdom in the note is that happiness is fleeting and a balance must be kept between what we strive for and what we have in front of us at this very moment, good or bad.

"What is happiness?
The facing of reality.
The reality of life includes trying to achieve a closeness with someone you love, acceepting the sorrow if closeness ends, accepting the pleasure if closeness lasts.
Knowing you are in for both pleasure and sorrow, you try not to exult too highly or despair too deeply.
Reality is sometimes joyous but always inescapable. And to live in reality is less painful, more pleasurable in the long run, than to live in the fantasy of eternal happiness."

Happiness might only be a fleeting moment, but if savoured and truly appreciated, it lasts beyond the immediate and gets you through whatever your reality happens to be.

It's All Relaltive

2010-03-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

Other than a mildly unpleasant disagreement between the contractor and the electrician over building codes, our kitchen reno is going quite well, thank you. With the ceramic tile laid, we are now ready to take delivery of the cabinets. Unfortunately, we just found out that they won't be ready for another ten days!
This would normally be upsetting news to us but in light of what has been happening in Haiti and more recently in Chile, we see it as a mere hiccup. I think about all those poor people out there as my husband and I camp out in the safety and relative comfort of our own home and I am so very moved by their plight. We may not have a kitchen for the moment but we do have a roof over our heads and for that we are most grateful. Lives change on a dime.
I can certainly attest to the fact that being without a kitchen, without a sink, without a stove, is terribly inconvenient. I can only imagine what it must be like not to have anything left other than the clothes on your back. It has been a challenge to serve meals and to clean up afterwards by taking the dishes to the bathtub and I am reminded by the recent tragedies that many, many people all over the world live like this day in and day out.
When I try to imagine what it must be like for those people out there, reduced to sleeping in parks or by the rubble of their destroyed homes, desperately dipping containers into swimming pools and puddles for lack of access to potable water, I feel humbled.
I am thinking a lot about my paternal grandmother these days as I attempt to work around our reno. For as long as I can remember she and my grandfather, post war immigrants with very limited means, lived in a three room cold-water flat. The bathroom and kitchen were in the same room with only a thin curtain for a bit of privacy. I remember that my grandparents kept a piece of plywood over the old claw tub when it wasn't being used for bathing, as a makeshift counter. My grandmother would have to stoop uncomfortably over it whenever she had to peel potatoes or carrots yet she never complained because to her, those three depressing little rooms were palatial. Once you have lost everything you own, either through war or a natural disaster, anything you can acquire afterwards, even a dingy three-room flat, seems like a great and luxurious gift.
My thoughts, as we await delivery of our kitchen cabinets, are about the many who have no kitchens at all.

How To Spice Up February

2010-02-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

It's around this time of the year that I start to get antsy about winter. The snow outside is dirty, days are longer but still cold, friends are either nursing colds or away on holidays and likely a good six more weeks of this lies ahead. Time to liven things up.
No, I don't mean a vacation. We have opted to renovate our kitchen instead of escaping south. Two years ago we renovated our bathrooms, an experience not to ever be forgotten. The less said about that project, the better. I still cringe whenever I remember the look on hubby's face when our newly-tiled shower wall popped after only a couple of uses. We swore then that we would never again use an independent contractor, not even one recommended by friends. Since then, we have learned a thing or two by watching Mike Holmes, the 'make it right' guy, so we now feel we're as ready as we will ever be to tackle one last mega project. February seems like a good time to turn our lives upside down and yes, we've checked all three references.
To prepare for next week when the demolition starts, we are trying to empty the freezer. Who knew we had three whole pork loins in there?! I also have thirteen very shrivelled and rotten bananas for the cake I never get around to making and two containers with ice cream that is more cyrstals than cream. Shall I ditch them or shall I hang on to the optimism that makes me believe that I will make a banana cake soon? After more than twenty years of always having black fruit in the freezer I would have to give up the idea that I am still a nurturing (baking!) mother, ready to provide comfort for all sorts of ailments with a slice of delicious cake. The kids are long gone and neither my husband nor I want/need the extra pounds so why do I still cling to these frozen bananas??!
I will also have to empty out the cupboard where we put all those things that don't have a natural home of their own. Like the rubber bands that are wrapped around the newspaper every morning, or the plastic clips from loaves of bread that my husband can't seem to help but place in the right hand corner of the cutlery drawer. Ditto the collection of chop sticks and the wine corks. Mind you, the latter may soon be a collector's item.
There are so many things in our kitchen that never get used anymore, from sushi rolling mats to cookie cutters. We have a different view of how to spend time in the kitchen now than we did back when we were raising our kids. Back then the kitchen was the hub of the house, a place from where I ran the entire family operation while supervising homework, folding laundry and dispensing advice while also preparing dinner. Nowadays, I am more likely to be sitting at the counter writing on my laptop while hubby quickly tosses up a stir-fry.
So next week end, in preparation for what is likely going to be our last big reno job, I will throw out all the remnants of my former role as an active mother and embrace, instead, the idea that this new kitchen will be an oasis just for my husband and I. The kids know they can come for a meal any time. Maybe I should hang on to a couple of bananas just in case I need to quickly bake them a cake.

Calling All Receptionists

2010-01-20T04:12:00.000-08:00

Where is it written that a medical receptionist cannot, under any circumstances, be friendly, helpful and approachable? It seems to me that every receptionist I meet lately is cross with the world and determined to make my day even harder than it already is. Whatever happened to becoming a receptionist because you're a 'people person'?
Case in point: the other day, the kind of icy January day that most of us would like to just skip, I found myself towing an 85-year old with a bad back and buckling legs, to a medical clinic. The clinic is located at a busy intersection where an elderly person taking the time to slowly and carefully unfold herself out of a car, is apparently cause for getting honked at. Same to you, buddy!!
From the car to the front door of the building was slow going because of the icy sidewalks. We managed to reach the three steps leading to the first set of heavy glass doors and then discovered that there are five more steps to climb followed by another heavy door, but no ramp or automatic door opener to make entry easier. Healthy people rushed by as we shuffled slowly down a long corridor leading to....a third heavy glass door!
Once inside the clinic we were greeted by a huge sign saying WAIT YOUR TURN and a receptionist who looked as though she might bark if anyone spoke to her. My heart sank at the sight. She eventually deigned to look up at us and mechanically take the information necessary to open a file. This was perhaps done efficiently, but without any warmth or compassion. Her interest in the person she was processing, was zero.
We were eventually sent by a doctor to have a CAT scan in another part of the building. The receptionist there was somewhat more pleasant. She actually greeted us as we entered her department but her smile soon turned sour when told that she had inverted the name of my unwell lady on her file folder. "Well what is her correct name?" she demanded of me, shooting daggers over her half moon glasses. When I repeated that the name was inverted she slammed the folder on the desk and said something that rhymes with fit. Thus I was made to understand that she was displeased at having to print out a new name label. Whatever happened to giving service with a smile, walking an extra mile for an elderly person, or just plain caring about doing your job to the best of your ability?
Back upstairs to the first receptionist so we could get the scan results from the waiting doctor. The morning receptionist had by then been replaced by another. Again, no smile, no greeting, not even a direct gaze into my eyes. Just a bad perm with an attitude to match. "I will call you when I am ready for you," she said to the person in front of us who had dared approach her desk rather than wait by the sign. After hours of waiting and being patient I would have enjoyed a friendly face. Luckily, the doctor peered out from behind the receptionist and waved us in so I was able to skip the whole explanation of who we were and why we were there. The guy in front of us wasn't as lucky. When I last looked, he was still standing at attention, hoping for a miracle.
This is no way to treat elderly people. With reduced mobility it is often very difficult for them to travel from point A to point B. A friendly face at the end of such gargantuan efforts makes a huge difference to their morale. They are often nervous about the possible outcome of medical intervention. A caring smile would go such a long way to easing such anxiety.

Holiday Blessings

2009-12-24T12:29:00.000-08:00

Being of German origins, my family and I like to follow the old tradtions and celebrate Christmas on the eve of the 24th. I stayed up late yesterday wrapping the last of the gifts, polishing the silver and ensuring that everything would be ready by today. It is now nearly four o'clock. The tree is up, the table is set and delicous food smells are wafting out of the kitchen. Time to take a moment to be with myself and reflect. I have, therefore, poured a glass of wine, made a toast with peanut butter and taken that unlikely combination to the living room to just sit still and listen to the things inside my head and heart.
I am grateful for so many things, not the least of which is my family's continued good health, especially that of my 80-something mother. I am grateful for my husband who, although exhausted after a particularly hard year at work, never complains and always smiles lovingly when I ask something of him. Truly an angel among us, even if he does shrink things when he attempts to do laundry. I am especially grateful, more so with every passing year, for loyal friends both old and new who enrich my existence beyond measure as we face life's hurdles together.
And this year I am savouring another blessing, which is that feuding families can be reunited, even after three decades.
Sipping my wine I give myself a virtual pat on the shoulder because I was instrumental in the reunion of my own family. It likely never would have happened if I had not swallowed my pride and sent out an invitation which was accepted and thus started the ball rolling back in September.
How many families are not talking to one another at this very moment because of petty differences, because of false pride or because of pure stubborness?
Fundamentally, we all want the same thing. To be respected, to have our voice heard, our feelings validated. We can't change history or create world peace but we can ensure that our families practices a little goodwill.
That is my holiday wish today as I munch the last of my toast. That everyone makes an effort to begin the process of making sure their families are in the best working order possible. It just takes one gesture to open your heart. And if there are left-over bad feelings, I pray they can be put aside just long enough for goodwill to make forgiveness possible.
Merry Christmas.

No, Thanks! 2

2009-12-20T10:07:00.000-08:00

The beauty of a blog is that it can create dialogue on issues not normally discussed among people who don't usually connect.
A few days after my latest entry I attended an all-female luncheon and the topic of my blog came up. Aging gracefully is a subject women of a certain age grapple with every time they look in the mirror so I was not at all surprised that we landed with a thud on my last blog entry. I was, however, taken aback by the general reaction to it. Nobody commented on the story about the doctor peddling Botox but everyone present wanted a say on plastic surgery. One woman in our group took me to task (in a very nice way) mentioning that she had had to have plastic surgery a few years ago after having melanoma. Another confessed that she has had varicose veins surgically removed after seeing a photo of herself in a bathing suit. Blue had never been her best colour, she joked. One talked of having had all her teeth veneered, so natural looking, by the way, that nobody would ever had guessed had she not told us. Only one woman in that entire group stated flat-out that she would not alter any part of herself, including bleaching her teeth, partly on principle but aslo out of fear and cost concerns.
It fascinated and humbled me that I was completely outnumbered and that nobody was particularly outraged at the way the medical spa I had written about, operated.
A week later, at yet another all female pre-Christmas luncheon, one friend, making an entrance after arriving late and sporting a still slightly swollen face, announced without the slightest hesitation that she had just had her eyes and chin "done". Everyone was very impressed with the results and I had to admit that, in spite of her swelling, she looked fresher and more vibrant than when I had last seen her. More to the point, she felt mentally rejuvinated by looking younger and I cannot deny that this is a huge bonus in our exhausting, fast-paced world.
As I said in my previous entry, who among us doesn't want to look younger or stop time temporarily? And yes, I get that plastic surgery is a wonderful thing after an illness, burns or a disfiguring accident. In the case of the friend who was still recovering, it was clearly important for her mental well-being to look her very best.
I do realize that it is very difficult for some women in certain fields, especially if they work exclusively with younger people, to not feel excluded by their age. Whether we admit it or not, a bias against aging people is alive and well in our society.
But that is precisely my point. How do we rectify that? Is it by giving in or by standing tough? What message are we, the older generation, sending to our sons and daughters if we don't accept our limitations? That we are sorry to be aging? That it's not a big deal to alter the ravages of time artificially? That's it ok not to own who we are at any given time? That the history you have acquired on your face through the act of being alive....does not count when pitted against the norms dictated by the fashion and cosmetics industries?
Don't get me wrong. I am as vain as the next person and I grapple with these issues also. But my personal choice so far has been to compromise rather than give in because I believe that as a mother I must teach my children not to be afraid of aging. I believe it is my duty to set a good example so that they do not grow up to be afraid of what nature will ultimately do to all of us. It's a losing battle. With or without me, the comsmetics industry, which I support every time I buy a moisturizer, will win out. Perhaps by the time my daughter is my age, removing wrinkles with a laser will have become as routine and painless and cost effective as teeth bleaching is today. My future grandkids will look at old photos of me and say....grandma, why do you look so old?? If I'm still around, maybe I will have the courage to say...because I am!

No Thanks!

2009-12-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

"Tell me everything that's wrong with your face," said the doctor handing me a mirror.
"Isn't that what you're supposed to do?" I replied.
I had accepted an invitation to attend an information session at a newly opened medical spa with the hidden agenda of looking into doing a documentary film on why it's so hard in our society to age naturally. Thinking I would see lots of women my age at this event, I was shocked to discover that more than half of my fellow attendees were women in their thirties, seemingly healthy and in the prime of their lives. Fascinated, I watched and listened as a very expensively dressed and taut-faced woman told us stories about people who had ‘transformed’ their lives by getting rid of wrinkles, extra tummy fat, acne scars, spider veins, etc. With many ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots enlarged on a screen in front of us, we were taken from one extreme to the other by this gorgeous woman who confessed that she had been in the cosmetics industry for a very long time and so had access to ‘inside’ secrets which she would share with us if we signed up for a free skin analysis with her business partner, a doctor who then joined her on the podium.
The first thing that struck me about the doctor was that he did not look like one. Living in a country that has Universal health care, I am not used to doctors being fashion plates. A labcoat or an old sweater with elbow patches instills more confidence in me than skin tight pants, a satin shirt and pointy boots.
The nattily dressed doctor brought a woman with him to the front and proceeded to tell us that all the wrinkles we could see on her face would disappear in front of our very eyes because she had agreed to a few Botox injections in our presence. My fellow attendees were all agog. The good doctor encouraged us to come around the chair where his hand-picked patient was sitting, very relaxed and smiling. She volunteered that she had never done this before but wanted to try it because she was “not happy to see so many lines “ whenever she saw herself in photos. I could relate somewhat, and even the thirty year-olds who did not yet have lines, were nodding their heads in understanding.
The doctor injected his star patient several times around the eyes and in the forehead after wiping the chosen areas with alcohol. Each time the needle went in he assured us that his patient was only feeling a slight burning but no real discomfort and the truth is that she did not wince or squirm at any time. Each vial, the doctor informed us, was reasonably priced (note he did not actually state the price!) and so this was a very affordable option for anyone “who wanted to improve her looks.”
There were now lots of questions from the audience, ranging from the cost of these injections to how much down time more invasive procedures took. The skin analysis, however, was a pre-requisite to obtain all further information and for that you had to sign up for an actual appointment with the doctor.
And that is how I found myself back in the very posh medical spa the next morning holding the doctor’s mirror up to my face. Unbeknownst to him, I had done a little background search on him before coming and had discovered that he was not a plastic surgeon, was not even a dermatologist. He was a general practitioner and the reviews he had been given by some former patients were not stellar. He had no experience or specific knowledge to give anyone a skin analysis.
"Are you a plastic surgeon?" I asked him.
"No," came the reply. "I am an emergency room doctor so if anything ever went wrong I would know exactly what to do."
"Do you have emergencies often?" I pressed.
Irritated, he gave me a stiff smile. "You have a lot of sun damage," he said, conveniently changing the subject.
"I would suggest...."
Truthfully, who among us does not want to turn the clock back now and then? I confess to having considered Botox, to even having thought about a little lift here and there. But my compromise has always been not to do anthing invasive.
As I loooked into the mirror the doctor continued to list all the work I would need done on my face if I wanted to look instantly younger. I would lose the way my face crinkles when I laugh. I would lose the furrow just above my nose. I would have plumper lips and some fat injected below my eyes. What I saw, when I looked at myself, was my life reflected back, traceable through those little lines. Summers at the beach with the kids, sleepless nights when they were sick, the ups and downs of parenting, the joy of a deep love, the unexpected heartaches of loss and disappointments, the triumph of battles won.
Who are you once you make your entire history disappear?

Some Leopards Need to Change Their Spots

2009-10-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

There are people out there who should not be allowed to open their mouths. Ever.
Like the hairdresser I once overheard say to an elderly woman who had arrived for her appointment pushing a walker: "I'm not running a hospital you know, this is a business."
Or the taxi driver who shouted "You shoulda calledl Medi-Transport!" before speeding off when a gentleman in a wheelchair had flagged him down.
There but for the grace of God, go anyone of us.
Recently, on a shopping expedition with a close friend, a woman who shows exemplary courage in her daily struggle to live a normal life, we encountered an insensitivity so acute it made our jaws drop.
It had been decided that we would give a particular store that we have been boycotting for years, one final chance to redeem itself. The reason for our long boycott was that we've both had bad experiences there. My friend was made to feel unwelcome years ago when she tried to exchange an item while my beef goes back to the time just after my son was born. Sleep deprived and with what felt like a very lumpy body, I had decided I needed a pick-me-up on that long ago January morning. I should have just gone to the corner and bought a coffee but instead, I had been drawn to that dress shop.
The owner had wasted no time in showing me her newest arrivals. I had tried on a few but, although she had sworn that I looked wonderful in all of them, I had resisted. As a last resort, she had brought me a pink knit mini dress with long sleeves and a cowl neck. With a conspiratorial whisper about soon losing my post baby weight, at which time I would want something this sexy in my closet...she had left me to struggle into the tight, pink number.
I remember having looked into the mirror and thinking that I looked like a sausage without its casing. I had begun to chuckle. But as I had stepped out of the dressing room, ready to share the joke with anyone who might have wanted to laugh with me, I had been met by the store's owner plus her assistant, both of whom had seriously declared with a dramatic intake of breath that I looked like a million bucks. "Stunning," was the word I remember coming out of their lying mouths.
Incredulous, I had taken another look in the mirror, sucking in my gut in the process. Maybe they were right, I had thought. Maybe I'm too tired to see myself in a kindly light. "Are you sure?" I had asked. "Oh, absolutely!" had been the reply.
It is not the boutique owner's fault that my self-confidence was so low that day that I fell for her lies and paid good money for this ridiculous dress. But to this day I blame her for having taken advantage of my hormonally charged, sleep deprived vulnerable mind-set. It was my sister, bless her, who after taking one look at me in the new dress had quietly said: "You must never be seen in that."
These kind of experiences do not turn women into loyal customers. On the contrary. While we're at it, a store that declares it has a 'no refund' policy is also dimly viewed by those of us who do not have perfect size 4 bodies. But I digress.
When my friend declared last week, that she needed an outfit for an upcoming event, I knew she would want to avoid crowds and the hassle of going downtown. Scanning potential stores in my head that had parking and easy access, I realized with chagrin that the boutique in question would actually be a good option. My friend reluctantly agreed.
We went early Saturday morning and were greeted by a blonde with very red lips whose icy demeanour almost made us turn around and leave again. She looked down at my friend's cane and back up at her face. "What can I do for you?" she asked with a hint of a sneer. I was tempted to say that we were looking for organic carrots. Instead I informed her that we were looking for an outfit. Duh.
Blondie began to rummage systematically through her racks and pulled out jackets, skirts, pants; each time murmuring "this is lovely/beautiful/perfect." My friend who struggles with a weak left side but has a wicked sense of humour, said that she would like something that wouldn't make her look like a sausage.
The owner of the store arrived while we were making some choices. She was dressed from top to toe in leopard spots. Yes, even the shoes. She walked right up to my friend whom she clearly recognized and loudly said: "Oh my goodness, what happened to you??"
Without missing a beat my friend replied: "Oh, I have MS."
"Well, yeah, we're all a mess but what HAPPENED to you?"
Incredulous, I stepped forward and said: "Excuse me, my friend has multiple sclerosis" hoping this would shut her up. But no, she looked down at my friend's feet and declared: "Oh, I thought you had twisted your ankle or something."
As I said, my friend has a good sense of humour. Like the trooper that she is, she shrugged it off and went to the dressing room to start the process of removing her leg brace so she could try things on. The owner's old trick of standing outside the dressing rooms and exclaiming with rapture every time my friend stepped out to see herself in the large mirror, is obviously still being practiced. "Doesn't she look FABULOUS?" Leopard would say to Blondie whenver my friend pulled back the curtain. "Fabulous," would come the automatic reply.
We just rolled our eyes and smiled. After trying on many outfits I finally steered my friend towards a knit pair of pants that draped very nicely and a matching jacket that, unlike some of the other things she had tried on, actually flattered her body shape and would be relatively easy to get on and off. It is of good quality and will likely last her for many years. Blondie seemed miffed that we weren't taking the entire collection of items she had brought us. When I last looked she was putting things back on the rack with disdain on her face.
Clearly not happy to leave well enough alone, Leopard decided to go for one more round of foot in mouth as we were leaving the store. "My father's friend has MS too," she said. "She's 85 now and is in a wheelchair. But she still gets to the mall once a week with adapted transport." Perhaps she meant well but it was hardly an appropriate good-bye. "Thank you and please come again," would have been so much better.
We wondered, as we sipped our coffee afterwards, how this lady has managed to stay in business all these years. Having a good quality line of clothing obviously helps. But in the current economic climate I'm not sure that's enough. As we boomers start to adjust to our changing needs we will most certainly give our client loyalty to those who make us feel welcome, give us good service and fair value for our money. A little sensitivity that might allow for dignity in the face of adversity, for who among us will be spared, would certainly go a long way towards winning us over.
In the meantime, the boycott is back on.

Birthday Tribute

2009-10-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

Today would have been my aunt's 89th birthday. She passed away last spring after years of suffering from dementia. As sad as I was at her passing, I was relieved to know that her tremendous ordeal had come to and end and so I did not grieve, per se, I rejoiced instead in having had her in my life.
As a child I was full of admiration for my pretty and petite aunt. I, too, wanted to grow up to become what I considered to be a glamorous, happily married, fun mother. Always perfectly coiffed and well dressed, my aunt exuded a joie de vivre other members of my immediate family seemed to lack. She would speak her mind, hold her ground in an argument and shrug her shoulders with good humour when she lost a round. That would change over time as depression, disappointments and regrets began to cloud her horizon. But as a young woman, my aunt was simply fabulous with a laugh that always made me feel good.
She had a very quick step that I would recognize instantly whenever she came down the walkway to our house. Usually in heels (for a little bit of height) and often in a suit or form-fitting slacks, my aunt was every bit as glamorous as the movie stars of her era that she so admired. Even when she was housecleaning or doing laundry, which in those days was an all-day affair of wringing and twisting, hanging and stretching, it was done with style, a turban on her head to keep the hairdo fresh and a huge apron to protect her clothes.
My aunt was quite adept in the kitchen, the one place where I think she felt she had supreme power. She and only she, could create those mouth-watering meals that my uncle, who bellowed for his food the moment he stepped through the door every evening, would eat with gusto while she watched and listened to how good or miserable his day had been. She would spend hours sifting through magazines to find new recipes, adding her own interpretations, making them uniquely hers, and, strangely enough, eating very little herself.
She was also an incredible seamstress, making many of her own clothes and turning old skirts or fabric remnants into little dresses for me.
As a young girl she had apparently wanted to become a window dresser, fashion always having been a huge interest, but world events and subsequent immigration put a damper on her dreams. In order to help her family she had to settle for sewing for a living instead. She was good enough that she might have made a career out of her talent but women in those days, the early 1950's, married and then stayed home to raise their family. In my aunt's case, she was expected to stay home and raise my cousin as much as she was expected to serve a warm meal when my uncle got home. She accepted those expectations and somehow, in carrying them out to the best of her ability year in and year out, she stopped having any expectations of her own.
Around the time I was a teen she and my uncle moved to the country. Never having learned to drive, my aunt spent the next decade in a beautiful but very isolated spot where I think what was left of her self-confidence eroded away completely. She was reduced to making marmelade and talking to her dogs during long days of waiting for my uncle to return from work and my cousin from school.Television and magazines, books and occasional visits filled the void but never completely. She and I once went to town to see a film sometime in the late 1960's and I remember that she was as giddy as a schoolgirl to be out and about. We went to see "Prudence and The Pill" with Deborah Kerr and David Niven, a film about confusion and mayhem in a British household that appealed greatly to her sense of humour. I can still see her little nose wrinkling whenever she laughed as she enthusiastically recounted the plot of the film to my uncle.
The last time I saw my aunt she still had splendidly coiffed hair and a brooch on her lapel. She seemed shorter and was walking with a cane. Her once-sprightly step was unsure and her eye make-up was smudged. She was pessimistic about everything, from the weather to her health, and she had no real understanding of the world beyond her immediate neighbourhood. We ate a terrible meal in an equally terrible restaurant but I knew I would likely not see her again and so I focused on her rather than on the food. My heart was full of love for this woman who had played such a pivotal role in my life; someone who had opened her home to me on countless occasions and offered me shelter when I needed it.
Now that she is gone, I can see, in hindsight, that my aunt inadvertantly taught me a valuable lesson. Which is that if you don't evolve with the times, if you don't expand your horizons, if you simply stay in your groove without questioning, you will have no inner resources to draw on when bad times come. Her subsequent illness and her descent into dementia were hellish for her and her depression, crippling. She was a victim of her time, my aunt, and her own worst enemy, for she never believed she mattered enough to initiate any kind of change. Taking a step into the unknown was just too scary for her. I know that letting time slip by out of fear of change, should never have been her only option. For so many from that era, it was.
Luckily for me, we live in easier times. On what would have been her birthday, I declare that every time I reach for a higher goal, I do it for her as much as for myself.

Unexpected Gift

2009-09-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

The benchmark of a good vacation is not being in a hurry to come home. I had an excellent holiday yet I couldn't wait to get back so that I could write about it. My mind works that way; something good or exciting happens and all I want to do is sit down in front of my computer to string words together.
The vacation itself was very simple this year. My husband and I rented a beach house through an agency we found on the Internet. We then drove for two days through breathtaking scenery, our car fully loaded, dog included, to get to this remote part of the country.

On the second day of the drive we ran into what was left of Hurricane Danny. Torrential rains for 500 kilometers of unfamiliar roads, often just two lane highways. But we kept a good pace and reached our cottage by the sea just before nightfall. No small feat, that, as it was at the end of an unpaved road, down a rutted driveway, far from the nearest town. The house, however, was clean and cozy and spacious enough to comfortably hold us and our invited guests for the next two weeks. For we had decided, my husband and I, that it was time to reach out to family we don't often see. In his case, he invited his youngest sister and her husband to come join us from France. On my part, I had extended an invitation to a male cousin I had not seen in over 30 years, and to his wife whom I had never met but was curious about.
My sister-in-law and brother-in-law were the first to arrive. Their excitement at being in a part of North America they had never seen before, was gratifying, their simple small-town views, humbling. It took us several days to catch up on extended family news. This we did while walking on some of the finest beaches imaginable or over simple meals lovingly prepared. We laughed a lot as we compared notes about our very different life-styles. Whenever irritations cropped up, as they are wont to do when you throw many people together in close quarters, we simply reminded ourselves that no family is perfect and that we were lucky to have this opportunity of being together. And of course, the local wine was very soothing!
Then my cousin and his wife arrived for the long weekend. I had been outside waiting for them and my excitement at the thought of re-connecting was a rather startling revelation. We had, after all, not spoken to one another in three decades. But last year, when my aunt and uncle, his parents, passed away within weeks of one another, I had written him a note and he had responded. This year I took it up a notch by inviting him and his wife to join us for part of this family holiday.
My cousin and I were inseparable as kids until I was nine and he ten. That's when my family and I emigrated here. Up to then he was the one person who knew all my secretes, who shared all my schemes and plans and got into trouble alongside of me when we got caught, which was quite often. Our contact, after my departure, was limited to two or three short visits, each marred by on-going family squabbles and the fact that we were no longer traveling on the same road. The dynamics between us had changed through no fault of our own.
I next saw my cousin when he unexpectedly came to my adopted city as a university student. We were both in our early twenties by then. He was a handsome young man with long curly hair, dark eyes and an impish grin while I was an insecure control freak who knew nothing about how to nurture a relationship. Not surprisingly, the connection between us was rather wobbly. We had very different views with different goals, and little tolerance for our mistakes or vulnerabilities. In hindsight, I would have to say that we were youthfully self-centred at the time and only had space in our thinking process for our own survival. I think we even had a fight, or at least a major difference of opinion, but I would be hard-pressed to remember what it was about.
Fast forward to daily life, marriage, child-rearing, school and work; his took him all over the globe, mine kept me closer to home. We would hear snippets about one another through our mothers but we never made the effort to get together. An invisible line had been drawn and neither one of us cared to be the first to cross it.
But when his car turned into the driveway of our rented cottage a few weeks ago, all of that fell away and my heart leapt with unbridled joy. Our embrace instantly healed a thousand wounds as I experienced the magic of unconditional love surging through my entire being. Yes, he has lost most of his gorgeous hair and my waist is thicker, but in our hearts we were once again two kids trying not to get into trouble. Except that now we know without a doubt that we will be forever linked by our roots and our understanding of the intimate language common history has given us. Love really does transcend time and space and old hurts.
What followed were delicious days of more beach walking, more meals shared with the comforting babble of different languages around the table. As an added bonus, my cousins's wife is an absolute sweetie, a unique character who delights with a natural, unaffected manner that I instantly loved. As my sister-in-law so eloquently said when she and her husband were getting ready to head back to France: "This vacation has been such an unexpected gift." Yes, it has, for all of us.
We still have much catching up to do, my cousin and I. We could not possibly have bridged 30 years over only one long weekend. But we made a good start. Now we are trading photos and remembering long-forgotten anecdotes. We are learning about one another's children. We try not to think in terms of could-have/should-have because that would be a waste of our energy. Better to spend it on what is and what can still be.

The Last Rite

2009-08-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Last Rite, a documentary film I produced and worked on for over a year, is finally finished. It will air on OMNI TV, Canada's multi-cultural network, this fall. The project is one I am particularly proud of because it's on a topic I hope will lead viewers to ask themselves the all-important questions on death and dying, a subject most of us would rather postpone for another day.
The concept for the film came about as so many things do, over a discussion on life while drinking a glass of wine with a friend in Toronto. This friend had just done me a huge favour and I wanted to thank her by taking her out for a meal. What I realized almost immediately when we got to the restaurant was that she was depressed or grieving (her father had passed away a few months prior) or both, and it shocked me to see her so different from the vivacious lady I knew her to be.
Over mussles and french fries we continued our philosophical discussion, covering everything from children (mine are grown, hers are barely of school age) to our lifestyles, work and future goals. Towards the end of the meal she opened up about her father's death and how difficult it had been for her to repress her true grief, which by all accounts would have been messy given her passionate, demonstrative Italian nature, as opposed to the more sedate kind of grieving she felt was required of her and which seems to be the North American norm.
This led to a tearful but in-depth discussion about the different cultural traditions there are and how important that last send-off is to the living who are mourning and feeling bereft. Being very familiar with loss both on a personal level as well as through my work with the elderly, I was comfortable discussing the topic of death with my friend and providing her with the neutrality she needed to express her true feelings. Her biggest beef about her father's funeral, she confessed, was that she felt she had been rushed through it at a time when she was numb and unable to come up with an alternative option. Was it like that for everyone and what other venues might she have explored?
It's true that funerals of a by-gone era were more hands-on and therefore more personal. You easily identified mourners by the black clothes they wore, you often would know who the funeral cortege driving down the street was for and would stop on the sidewalk to pay silent respects to that fallen member of your community. You would bring food to surviving spouses, you would offer a few words of comfort, often wiping your own tears in the process without any shame. This, of course, was the era when elderly people were mostly kept at home and the process of dying happened in a back bedroom with family members taking turns sitting by the sick bed, not in the sterile environment of a hospital or institution. We remembered simpler times with a bit of nostalgia as we sipped our glass of merlot.
"Why don't you turn your experience into a film?" I asked her towards the end of the evening, knowing that her healing would start with the process of writing it all down.
It took months to get the proposal written and picked up by a network but it was worth the wait. The ensuing one hour documentary is visually exquisite, thoughtfully written and edited with both modern precision and old-fashioned sensitivity. I owe the entire team a huge debt of gratitude but more than that, I feel honoured to have worked with a group of such talented people who understood from the get-go that this was a personal journey, not just for my friend but, as it turned out, for all of us.
From the amazing Director of Photography to the talented composer who created the haunting refrain of The Last Rite, from the editor who gave up many of her evenings and weekends and the Italian translator who helped us get that second version of the film done in the nick of time, I am grateful for the contributions of everyone.
The topic, death, is one we all need to get comfortable with and seeking an answer to the question, what is the key to experiencing a so-called good death , should not be constantly postponed.

How Memories Are Made

2009-08-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

The little girl holds her grandmother's hand tightly. They cross the street but it is so wide they only make it to the meridian in the middle. Cars rush by, horns honk and people run across zig zagging between moving cars. The grandmother seems confused by all the noise. She looks around as though lost and cannot focus. The little girl begins to feel frightened. She doesn't know the way home. But she begins to recognize some of the landmarks and takes stock, just in case. There is the red church across the street and the tree that stands on the corner is one she has seen before. Looking around some more, she sees the curve in the street where the bus stops. She waits for her grandmother to cross the other half of the road with her and then she starts to pull her towards that bus stop. The grandmother is licking her lips now, gazing intently into the distance as though trying to see something beyond the horizon. The little girl chirps up that once they are on the bus they just have to remember where to get off. The grandmother clutches her purse tightly with her right arm. It is a brown purse with beige stitching and a metal clasp in the middle. The little girl will never forget that purse, not even when she is a grown woman and her poor old grandmother has become a memory. They stand near the curb watching cars zip by them. Eventually the little girl sees the bus in the distance and she tells the grandmother that she should take out her money so they can pay. There are other people waiting in line now and the bus is coming nearer. The grandmother opens her purse and takes out her wallet. She has to let go of the girl's hand to do this. So afraid is the little one of losing sight of her that she grabs a fistful of her elder's skirt in her sweaty little hand. The bus approaches, stripped gears making a horrible noise, belching black smoke behind it. The little girl and her grandmother board last after everyone else in order for the girl to stay close to the driver so that she can ask him to stop if she recognizes their street. Someone rises and offers his seat to the grandmother and smiles at the girl. The door finally closes and the driver makes the bus shudder forward, back into the traffic, back where they had come from, the little girl still clutching her grandmother's skirt.

Never Too Old

2009-07-20T11:32:00.001-07:00

Leona is a spry 72-year old who was widowed 18 months ago. When he became ill, she promised Stan, her husband of almost fifty years, that she would not wallow in self-pity after he was gone, that she would, instead, use whatever time she has left to enjoy herself and learn new things. Childless, and with many friends already gone she wasn't sure what that would entail but she gave her word so that he would not worry about her.
"I was so full of panic the first few weeks after the funeral that I could not move off the couch. I didn't even know how much money was in the bank because Stan had always shielded me from what he considered mundane matters which included our finances."
But Leona was determined to make Stan proud. So she slowly went from the couch to the kitchen and then from the kitchen to the patio until she eventually made it all the way to the sidewalk. It took all her courage just to step out of the house.
Her first outing as a widow was to her local library. "I didn't even want a book, I just wanted a safe place where I could sit and watch people." It was there in the entrance that she saw a flyer advertising computer courses for beginners. "It was time to play catch up," she told me with a chuckle, "so I did something very uncharachteristic."
Still reeling from her loss, she enrolled in the course without even asking what it would cost. "It forced me to get out of the house once a week, no matter how lousy I felt, and it ensured that at least on that one day I would have to interact with other people."
Two weeks into the program Leona realized that in spite of the pain of her loss, she was enjoying what she was learning and that she was among other adult people who did not judge her.
"I really loved discovering all the things a computer can do", she mused, "and that opened up a whole new world for me."
Armed with her computer competency certificate some ten weeks later, Leona enrolled in a more advanced course, and a third one after that. She bought herself a computer and although she needed help to set it up, she soon became adept at handling it. She learned how to make her own greeting cards (do you know how expensive store-bought ones are???) and how to pay her bills online. "Stan would have been so impressed by that!" she declared proudly. She was also able to keep track of her expenses, check her bank balance as well as her investments which alleviated her anxiety considerably. "I realized I was never really in charge of my own life before."
Of course, she also learned to send e-mails to those of her friends who have computers. Most of them are in Israel and it has made it easier to stay connected with people she likely will never see again. "At my age, travelling is not that appealing anymore. But I like staying in touch, especially with Stan's sister who is working on the family geneology chart." The project has prompted both women to have a daily exchange of e-mails they look forward to, filled as they are with memories and anecdotes about Stan and 'the good old days'. Learning about new technology has been very therapeutic for both grieving women, bringing them close at a time when they needed each other but could not physically bridge the miles between them. "The best part about all this," said Leona "is that the computer has allowed Stan to remain an active part of my life."

Moving Paradox

2009-07-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

They say that moving is one of the most stressful things one can experience. I have moved 28 times during my life. Not always willingly but nevertheless always with curiosity and what I would call an open mind. As a result, I have come to understand that a house, even one that you love while you’re in it, is nothing more than bricks and mortar plus the history you put into it, the latter which you get to take with you when you leave, in the form of memories.
Once outgrown, a house can become a millstone around your neck. Endless repairs, more space than you need, rooms to clean and keep orderly even if nobody uses them, money spent that could otherwise help you have a better quality of life. In any case, that is my philosophy and luckily for me, also my husband’s. Over the years we have loved the houses we have inhabited (six of them in 25 years of marriage) and we have made sure (or been lucky enough) to always sell high and buy low, rather than falling in love with a property and paying dearly for that emotional attachment. This policy has served us well.
I also admit freely that I love having a fresh decorating canvas every few years because I get bored easily and enjoy changing colour schemes, placement of furniture, etc. As I get older I am also aware of the need to shed as we go so as not to burden my children later on with stuff that likely is only meaningful to me. With every passing year I feel the urge to travel lighter.
So it has been a challenge for me to understand why my 82-year-old mother-in-law insists on staying in a house she outgrew long ago. I get that she is attached to the place where she arrived as a bride in 1946. Over time, she and my late father-in-law made the old house better and more habitable and also turned the land behind it into a beautiful garden, which has given her great pleasure right up until two years ago when serious health issues arose. Her three children were born and brought up in that house. Her mother and husband died there. She knows no other place so intimately and I can appreciate that her collection of memories are a comfort in her twilight years.
But there are also bad memories in the house, sad days and months that took their toll on the entire family. The old place is drafty, full of plumbing and electricals that are no longer to code, cracked walls, tired paint and an old-fashioned kitchen that is so inefficient it saps the strength of even the strongest among us when we visit. Last winter, in order to economize, my mother-in-law dispensed with all but the most basic heating and spent her days reading and snoozing in front of the fireplace. No doubt she will try to do the same this year.
Because her arthritic knees are now stiff and painful which makes going up and down the stairs very difficult and because she has slowed down and lives alone, my husband and I decided to propose installing a ground floor bathroom so that she could live in comfort on the main floor. In order to access the existing pipes, we thought it might be a good idea to gut the afore-mentioned old kitchen and turn that space into a bedroom with an ensuite bathroom while creating a new kitchen in what is currently a storage area full of broken flower pots, old garden furniture and the general memorabilia of a long life.
On paper this plan looked great and so we confidently unveiled it to my mother-in-law on a recent visit. She was horrified. At first she worried about the expense we would incur on her behalf but then, after several sleepless nights she also let slip that she didn’t want dust and turmoil in her home. We know only too well that you can’t make home renovations of this magnitude without those two elements so we reluctantly had to give in and abandon our plan.
What about selling the house and moving into a nice apartment? Absolutely out of the question! The friends and neighbours she relies on would be dearly missed. Ok….how about hiring someone to live in and help with the basics? The only option my mother-in-law wants is the one that allows her to stay where she is and keep to her regular routine without disturbing anyone unduly. She wants to remain independent, which is something we DO understand. “And when I can’t function anymore”, she said the other day when I phoned her, “I will move into a Home.”
In theory that sounds very reasonable. Who among us doesn’t want to live independently until the very last moment and only give in to institutional living when no other option will do? But reality is not always aligned with text-book theories. The inefficient kitchen means nutritious meals are not getting cooked as often. We, her children, who live far away don’t want to think of her subsisting on tea and toast. The need to painfully climb up the stairs to both go to bed and have the use of a full bathroom means more wear and tear on the problematic knees. A slight trip and fall is all it would take to land her on the floor in a house that only she inhabits.
The bathroom itself is an accident waiting to happen. It is a sunken bathroom that requires going down two tiled steps to get into it. There is a tub, a deep one which even with a seat in it, is difficult to climb into. The lighting is poor and there is only one grab bar.
This scenario plays itself out daily in many families. We know we are not alone in wanting to see an elderly parent safe and sound. Not only do we want to help, we want to respect the parameters our elders require to keep their independence and dignity. So we are starting to accept that renovations are not the solution. Neither is bringing in a stranger or placing the dear lady into a modern apartment. The answer to the question is that there is no right or wrong action to take. There is only the possibility of a compromise. So the chair lift has been ordered for the stairs and the emergency lifeline, which connects to the local hospital, is now around her neck.
Moving is just not for everyone.

Last Sunrise

2009-06-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

A tribute, to a man I hardly knew but who haunts my thoughts now that he’s gone. A. was a neighbor, an unassuming man of German origins who kept mostly to himself. But he was nice and friendly and on those occasions when we would meet up, either in the communal parking lot we all share, on the street or at our home owner association meeting, he was always polite and pleasant. He had lovely green eyes and always wore his thinning hair stylishly short. I always thought that his slightly gruff demeanour hid a gentle soul. I get up early, often before 6 a.m. in order to walk my dog. That is actually my favourite time of day because nobody is about at that hour and the dog and I then have the park across the street to ourselves. It’s a time for the dog to sniff and do his thing, while I get to gather my thoughts for the day while enjoying nature at its best. The flowers are in full bloom, the trees are full of greenery and the birds are out in full force. We often watch the ducks along the canal and if we stand still long enough we sometimes get lucky and get to see a heron gliding to a graceful stop. And oh, the sunrises I have experienced standing at the edge of the water! Last Friday, as we were returning from our little morning walk, I suddenly saw A. He was on a bike, looking tanned and fit, every inch the poster boy for early retirement that he was. He was heading north while I was turning south and since my dog is not fond of cyclists I kept on going. But we made brief eye contact and we smiled, each surprised, I think, to have bumped into the other so early in the day. On Saturday A. suddenly collapsed in his garden even as the help his wife had already called for arrived. He was pronounced dead before the ambulance reached the hospital. Just like that, no more bike rides, no more sun rises. The entire neighbourhood has gone into shock. We who are of a certain age, not quite ready to retire but thinking about slowing down in a couple of years, with kids who are grown and even married, with parents, if we are lucky enough to still have them, who need more of our support than before, recognize, though are perhaps not ready to acknowledge, a new vulnerability based on the ticking of an invisible clock. We are the boomer generation, still busy, still active, keeping fit through sports, still feeling invincible. We are terribly saddened to have lost someone in our midst even as we are selfishly grateful for the gift of another day. A.'s passing is a little reminder that we are not quite as invincible as we'd like to think.