The Pits and Pieces

  Yes, I’ve been painting again, because I’m at a stage in my life when I can happily ignore chores and the approaching festive season and indulge myself in what I want to do. I wanted to paint, and so I did.  I marvel at how much less ‘guilt’ I feel now when I ignore the ‘shoulds’. And I think yes, it’s partly because of the age and stage of life I’m in, and the realization that I know myself so much better now and can acknowledge that I’ve never been really good at any of the traditional domestic-related tasks and I’m okay with that. It’s not who I am. I’ve worked for many (many!) years, pay my taxes, raised my child, try to be a good citizen, and now I find I want to spend my time writing, creating art, playing, connecting with people who inspire and ignite my curiosity, and ... keep on learning. I’ve signed up for a series of watercolour painting classes next month. One might think – you really should first try and master acrylic painting, but, no, why wait until I ‘mast...

Well, here I am, back from two weeks spent travelling with my daughter in Portugal. I rarely, if ever, return to places I’ve visited before, unless it’s a day or two in a city that I need to fly into or out from. But this time I visited two cities that I’ve been to before: Porto and Lisbon. I was last in Porto in 2015, alone, for a couple of days before starting my Portuguese Camino, and then again at the end of it, before flying home. I was last in Lisbon in 2006 for five nights, exploring the city with my then-boyfriend. Two cities re-visited, one nine years later, one over eighteen years later! What happens when you return to a place, having accumulated more life experience? Are you different? (The answer is yes). Is the place different? My daughter and I have taken three trips together in recent years (since 2019), and we’re similar in that we like to explore together but also like our space. For that reason, we book a place with two bedrooms (the apartment in Lisbon even had...

  Okay, I must get my anger and disappointment out on the page. Who are the people who re-elected Trump? Do they not care that he is a serial rapist, a racist, a misogynist, a felon, a man completely devoid of integrity? None of those things are deal breakers? I do not understand. I do not understand. Will I, ever? Should I try to? Yesterday, I went into Toronto for a medical appointment (nothing major). On the train in, I found myself looking at everyone with suspicion: Are you a Trump supporter? Are you? Are you happy about the US elections outcome? Do you align yourself with him? I have lost my faith in my fellow human beings. After the appointment, I headed over to the Art Gallery of Ontario. There are some days you have to take yourself to look at art. I forgot I was hungry. I looked at art. The classics, the landscapes, the portraits, the still-lifes. And then . . . a marvelous collection of wild colour and beauty – the huge quilted canvases by Pacita Abad, a Philippine-b...

In one of the recent online sessions with Ageless Possibilities , we were asked to ponder the question: “ Who is the person staring back at us from the mirror as the decades roll by?” – Grace Paley . Pondering is my middle name. I live to ponder! I wrote a bit more than what is below, but you get the drift – the mirror lies (unless we choose to look deeper), aging is a bitch, but also – “Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life—it has given me me” – Anne Lamott. Whether we like to admit it or not, aging is a trade-off. I look in the mirror and who do I see? That woman is me. But she couldn’t possibly be the same woman she was at 35, 45, 55. Because so much life has happened since then, and life inevitably changes you, as it should.  The realization there are so many less years ahead of me than behind hits like a punch to the gut. But who wants to think about diminishings and endings, when blossomings and beginnings hold so much more allure? Yet, aging giveth...

This week I shutdown my work laptop for good. Hung up my work hat. Became a ‘ jubilada ’ (I wrote in a previous post about Jubilación , which is the Spanish word for retirement). I look upon this as the In Between, the time when I’ve just exited one phase of life and am about to enter another. I’m on a bridge, crossing from one landscape of life into another. I know, for a short while, I may feel unmoored, unstructured, and as much as we like to think of spontaneity as being cool, the reality is we all need and thrive on some kind of structure to our lives, as any parent of young children knows. I trust I will find my footing, because I always have, and I’ve laid the groundwork. The world wants to label you so that others know in which hole to peg you. But the word ‘retiree’ doesn’t sit well with me. I may have retired from the paid workforce, but I have not retired from life.   Indeed, inside I feel 35, and yet, not the same as when I was 35. Because who remains the same person ...

  I went for one of my frequent walks the other day (not daily, but frequent nonetheless) and decided to not put in my earphones to listen to audio books or podcasts, but instead, just let my mind wander. I used to do this all the time (allow mind wandering while walking) during the early years of COVID (are we talking years now and not months). But in the past year or so, I got into the habit of listening to podcasts while I walked, and then I found audio books. And the rest, as they say, is history. But the other day, I walked like a freak – with nothing plugged into my ears! Imagine. And wow, I realized I missed listening to my own thoughts. I listen to my thoughts all the time, while doing chores etc. But internal thoughts take a different shape when you’re out walking, especially in nature. I don’t know why that is, but it is. I remember walking the Portuguese Camino with nothing except my thoughts for company. That was in 2015, and while I had a smart phone (although no roa...

  September always seems like the true beginning of a new year. I was thinking the other morning about those first days of school, taking a picture of my daughter on her first day of kindergarten, all those mommy butterflies in my tummy. We want so much to protect our children from the world and yet the quandary is, we have to prepare to let go of them, to send them out into that same world where there are no guarantees, no knowledge of what they might encounter. Some of it is just pure luck and happenstance. Then comes the day we send them off to university and there’s another letting go. And again, we don’t know what they might go through, but if they’re lucky, and we’re lucky, they will be okay. So much of being a parent is putting your trust not only in your child, in yourself, but also in others to do the right thing. We count on the integrity of others.   Someone tossed this board to the curb. I’d like to think that, rather than the reason for discarding it being u...

  The other day I met someone, in person, for the first time after knowing her online for about three years. We’d initially met in an online group of writing during the early COVID years, and then, once the course ended, a few of the women branched out and we formed our own small circle, chatting online once a month about all the various topics women talk about. S (who lives in Calgary) was here in Oakville visiting family and friends, and we got together for a meal at a restaurant. I asked the waitress to take our picture and told her we were seeing each other in person for the first time, after meeting online. “And is she as good-looking as you thought she was?” the waitress asked. I thought it was an odd question (we were obviously both good-looking women), but I played along. “Even better,” I said. A few moments later, it struck me: the waitress thought we were a romantic duo on a date! S and I laughed and laughed and then talked some more. When one says, ‘we met online’, peo...

  I’ve been off this first week in August, another small taste of time off as I inch my way to retirement on the horizon. I’m ready for it. I know it. I feel it more with each stretch of days off, that knowledge that I have many interests to fill my days, and yet love leisurely mornings so much. I try to schedule activities/sports/appointments for later in the day so that my mornings can be slow. I prefer writing in the mornings to any other time of day. Although my morning pages, which should be three, are sometimes limited to one page only. But that’s okay. And my blog posts, which were, at one time, once a week, have dwindled to once every two weeks. But that’s okay too, because I seem to be falling into rhythms that match the season. Yesterday I went to the Tennis event held annually at York U when the pros (they alternate the men and women every year between Toronto and Montreal) come to dazzle us with their skill and power and prowess. I love watching tennis on television, ...

  The summer continues. I’ve grown herbs and poppies from seed, which brings me so much joy.   I’ve seen specialists about bones and joints (and I think there’s a plan forward), and I commuted into the office – once, in what, two years? – and it left me exhausted and grateful I don’t have to do that on a regular basis.  my poppies All that hurrying for trains, being jostled and pummeled by commuters’ backpacks. Of course, everyone is carrying a backpack on their commutes, laptops tucked inside, as they alternate work from home days with going into the office. I do not miss those commutes. I much prefer my slower-paced work-from-home days with four day weekends each week. Life, along with writing and painting, has slowed down this summer. But am I languishing? Do you remember when ‘languishing’ was the word for a short period during COVID? Languishing, the opposite of flourishing. We were languishing in our lockdowns. It’s a word that has seemed appropriate lately, with t...

  Remember those essays we had to write in school on how I spent my summer vacation? I wish I’d saved even one of those.  I did not enjoy writing them, and yet, here I am writing this, no one twisting my arm, maybe no one even reading this. I’ve just come off a 12-day stretch of staycation, timed perfectly to coincide with the first week of Wimbledon. If you’ve followed along for a while, you know I love tennis. So I spent a lot of my staycation sprawled on the couch, watching Wimbledon. Did I feel guilty that laundry spilled over in the basket; last week’s clean load still on the bed in the spare room, patiently waiting to be folded and put away; specks on the rug glinting in the sunlight awaiting vacuuming? Not in the least. There might have been a time when being home on days off meant catching up on chores. But no more. With age comes a certain type of freedom, the freedom to indulge oneself, even if that means occasionally adopting the lifestyle of a sloth. I did ge...

  I watched the presidential debate last night, but I could take no more than an hour of it. It was painful to watch - Trump spouting his usual vile lies, Biden looking fragile and confused. I felt bad for the thousands of good American people who must be so disappointed by what occurred, and fearful that there might be those fooled into thinking Biden’s age negates the fact that he is a good person and has good people behind him; that there could be others who might be taken in by Trump’s bombastic bluster. It brings to light (again) how performance can mean everything, regardless of underlying core values, intelligence and decency. Appearing old and frail immediately brings down the heavy hand of judgement and stereotyping: you are no longer ‘with it’; you are out of step with the times; you don’t have anything worth saying or worth listening to or worth contributing. It’s a cruel world, increasingly blind to what goes on beneath the outward show; a world where the ability to t...

  What is it about June that induces a feeling of restlessness? It seems I was in a similar frame of mind two years ago in June when I wrote this post .  Last year, in early June, I was in Scotland, returning home to a late start with my balcony pots of flowers, and ready to settle into familiar routines and comforts. This year, my pots were out on the balcony before the May long weekend, but routines are not what is on my mind. Lately, I’ve been a butterfly, socially and otherwise. I have a high pile of books on my nightstand (six is a lot to be reading simultaneously, even for me) and I flit from one to the other, like a bee in a field of flowers. I seem unable to stick a landing. In my morning journal, I manage only a page or two, sometimes stopping mid-paragraph to stare out the window. What is it about June, the month where the shift to full-on summer and outdoor living beckons. Am I standing on the threshold, a buffet of options in front of me, unable to fathom if I’m ...