The Pits and Pieces

  As the year 2022 comes to an end, perhaps we begin to feel we should focus on new intentions and resolutions. Gear up for the year ahead. Make it better than the one before and the one before that. Begin a new beginning. But…. As part of our human nature, we are drawn more towards endings than beginnings. Books with those satisfying last pages, happy-ever-after endings in movies, wanting tasks to be finished, seeing end-results and projects completed. Dishes put away. Laundry done and folded. We crave endings! A cliffhanger at the end of a series upsets us. What? Don’t leave me hanging, give me a proper ending! Beginnings are more ambiguous, a step into the unknown. And we don’t care much for uncertainty. Isn’t that why we plan everything? Create spreadsheets (aren’t spreadsheets great?), checklists, itineraries, five-year plans? Does anyone still do that - create a five-year plan? I think 2020 may have finally put an end to five-year planning. Beginnings can create anxiety a

  I have just finished reading ‘ This one wild and precious life ’ by Sarah Wilson, which I wrote about in my post Connection-Lite a couple of weeks ago. I read it slowly, in bits and pieces, because it is such a thought-provoking book and I expect I will refer to it again in this blog at some point. Wilson is all about buying less and living more (#buylesslivemore). In our western culture of more, more, more, she encourages us to become more conscious consumers and re-use and re-purpose everything. Yes, even those old T-shirts that get grubby under the arms. She lops off the sleeves and makes deep-cut tank tops. In 2023, I aim to be less of a consumer. There, I’ve put my intention out there, to voice it into action and to hold myself accountable. But how? I began to examine all the ways I consume, starting with: how much did I spend on new articles of clothing this year? Wilson says the fashion industry is a huge emitter of carbon emissions, bigger than airline and shipping combin

  These lines from The Salt Path by Raynor Winn stopped me because of how well it was worded, and it echoed the kinds of things I sometimes think about as well. While walking the Southwest  Coast Path in England, Winn observes an old man taking off his clothes and sunbathing in the nude. She writes: “ We hide ourselves so well, exposing our skin in youth when it has nothing to say, but the other skin, with the record of time and event, the truth of life, we rarely show.” Isn’t that the truth?   We all hide ourselves, beneath layers of shiny veneer and cloaks of attitude; beneath masks and tasks of great importance; beneath glib words and pictures of perfect or near-perfect lives. We expose what we want to show to the world. And once we arrive at ‘the truth of life’, after decade upon decade of life events that bruise us and elevate us, crush us and uplift us, scar us and teach us, what do we do? We hide our glory. We conceal who we have become and what we’ve gained along the wa

  When this book (‘ this one wild and precious life ’ by Sarah Wilson) looked up at me from a library shelf this week, I had to take it home. I had quoted this exact line, ‘this one wild and precious life’ by the poet Mary Oliver, in my previous post. When books call out to you, you listen. In a chapter about how we endlessly scroll, all of us texting instead of picking up the phone and speaking, Wilson writes about what makes us disconnected when the illusion is that we are constantly plugged into everything. We use our devices to take the easy route of connecting. She calls this “Connection-lite”. Isn’t that just the perfect word for it? We know exactly what she means. Texting frees us from fully engaging in the moment, from a back-and-forth conversation or looking another person in the eye. Emailing allows us to distance ourselves. We can keep playing the ping-pong of connection because it feels safe, frees us from being vulnerable. Group chats are even safer. We throw out a,

  Last week I attended a free library event on 'Making A Will'. Yes, it is a topic we would rather not think about, but as someone or other once said, “None of us are getting out of this alive.” I didn’t know that this November was “Make a Will” month in Ontario and the Ontario Bar Association was offering free seminars at many libraries across the province. The lawyer told us that a staggering 60% of Canadians do not have a will. There are provisions in the law for people who die intestate (without a will), with a line of succession (spouse, kids, siblings etc.) of who will inherit your assets, assuming you have some. The ideal situation would be to live long enough that you’ve spent most of what you saved for your later years. But who has that kind of crystal ball? This post is not about will-making or definitions or anything like that because I am not a lawyer. I am like most of you: perplexed by legalities, would rather avoid them, yet know that I don’t want to leav

  My brother and his family are in the Gulf, visiting Bahrain (where I grew up), Qatar, Dubai and Oman. He has been sending pictures of old, familiar places in Bahrain which have triggered many memories. How do the places where we grow up shape who we become? What do we take with us when we immigrate to a new home and what do we leave behind? Undoubtedly, growing up as an expat in an Arab country, where we were the outsiders, created a sense of ‘unbelonging’ that ran deep. Yet I had a fairly uncomplicated, happy and sheltered childhood. We were not exposed to the vast array of choices and activities that children in the Western world had, nor were we exposed to the extreme poverty that existed in our parents’ home countries of Pakistan and India. We had everything we needed, unaware that we weren’t really living a middle-class life (well below that), but no less content for it. We had friends and community, church and school, social clubs and picnics, parties and sleepovers. I go

  At my writing group this week, we had a spirited discussion about memoir. One member of the group disliked the term, and was dismissive of the genre, even though what we write are life stories, and indeed memoir. She had been conditioned into thinking that memoir was ‘girlie’ and not worthy literature; that to admit to reading it was to somehow diminish your intelligence and your status as a serious reader and lover of books. Two of us disagreed vehemently. Which then led to further discussion on – who is it exactly who sets these tones and standards? Why are men’s stories deemed more important than women’s stories? Memoirists believe that we all have stories in us, stories that are worth telling. We read memoir to find the universality that links us, the common threads. “Aha,” we may think as we read another’s story, “I’m not the only one who thinks or feels that way.” Back to the woman in my group who is reluctant to admit to reading (or writing) memoir. Let’s call her A.   U

November, one of the least-loved months of the year. Mostly grey, dull, rainy, foggy, a harbinger of things to come. Although this November, there have been some weirdly warm days. What’s to love about November? Perhaps more than at first glance. It’s a month for cocooning, staring out the window, reflecting, from the warmth and comfort of your chair by the fire. It’s the ‘do-nothing’ month before the frantic festivities begin. Maybe not so frantic and not so festive post-2020. If anything, 2020 encouraged us to slow down, be satisfied with less. November has that solemn, dignified feel. Like an elder, stately matriarch: I know who I am and what I bring to the table. It has ‘don’t trivialize me days”, like All Saints and All Souls and Guy Fawkes and Remembrance Day. Solemn days. Autumn’s glory is behind us and the sparkle of the first snowfall still ahead. November is the bridge between the two. November knows it is not well-loved. It is a reminder that the end of the yea

  You know those things that need to be done, and yet you keep putting them off? But they niggle away at you, in the dusty corners of your mind. I checked some of those things off that list recently: -           Get my mammogram done. You probably don’t want to read about that. -           A long overdue eye exam -           Get my fingerprint search done. Yes, you read that right. As part of my job, I periodically need to get my fingerprints taken for a criminal record search. So there – you have assurance that your faithful blogger is a law-abiding citizen. But you knew that already, didn’t you? I may have episodes of crankiness, or rant occasionally at my fellow citizens. But I’m a rule-follower by nature. Occasionally I’ve been known to jay-walk, but that’s the extent of my rule-breaking. At the OPP centre, two lovely officers, one male, the other female, lined me up at the machine to take my prints. The female officer pressed my fingers to the glass over and over, but

I will admit I picked up this memoir based solely on the words “...In Spain” in the title. Having recently returned from Spain, I was eager to read about someone else’s experience in that country. I checked it out of my local library even as I asked myself: What could I possibly find in common with a US ambassador’s wife? How could her experience resonate with mine? The answer: it didn’t. Not in the teeniest, tiniest way. I do not like to give bad book reviews, because I know that writing a book, putting it out there, is tough, vulnerable work. I also do not like giving up on books, although I was tempted many times with this one. But while reading this, it took me down a path of questions, not the least of which being: What on earth was this book doing on the shelves at my local Oakville library? That it was there said it had garnered some attention and readership. Why? Only because she was an ambassador’s wife?  I’ve heard it said that there is almost no market for quiet memoirs. She

  Why do we challenge ourselves and to what lengths will we go to achieve our desired outcomes? Who are we when we step outside our zones of comfort and familiarity? Alerted to the documentary “Aftershock” by a friend who knows my love for mountains, I watched all three episodes in one sitting. The documentary is about the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015, that caused massive avalanches and destruction, with a huge loss of life – 9,000 people. I watched, enthralled, appalled, heart racing, and in awe at the sheer magnificence and power of the mountains. To quote one of the Nepalis, “In Sherpa culture, every mountain signifies God .” They respect mountains as if they were their mothers. Yet, many Westerners treat Everest as some kind of personal achievement, an item to be ticked off a bucket list, a challenge to be wrestled with and overcome. Human relationships with mountains are varied, the reasons for scaling them complex. Everest base camp is crowded, littered with tents of v

It’s October, my very favourite month of the year. How can you not love October with the explosion of colour outside our windows? The trees ablaze with crimsons, oranges, yellows, reds.  I was on a zoom book launch the other day. It was a book about midlife ( Navigating the Messy Middle by Ann Douglas), which I have not yet read (I've ordered it) so I cannot comment on the book. However, the topic, women in midlife, is one that interests me greatly.  The host made a comment on midlife that struck me. She said midlife was more about what there is to be revealed than about what is disappearing. She likened it to trees in the fall when the vibrant colours are revealed. The vibrancy is not something that is suddenly created. It was always there, but the loss of the green now reveals these wonderful hues. That is what midlife is all about, isn’t it?  It is not about bemoaning the loss of green. It is about revealing the layers and depths that have built up over the years. Society tries