Help from Matilda in the Yard

This week I have had the delight of have my five year old granddaughter, Matilda, with me while I work in the yard clearing away away about 25 years of pine and spruce needles covering a bed of about five inches of wood chips. The trees were cut down and the roots ground earlier this spring, leaving me with a massive clean up job.

Tilda has been just tootling around, helping here and there, collecting pine cones, bits of interesting twigs and several nice rocks. At one point she came to me with a stick and said “Nana what is this water on the stick?” I replied that it was sap, which is basically the trees blood, and continued on with my work. Next thing I knew she had a hospital set up for the sticks. It was in a sheltered corner of the porch and had an assortment of bark, landscaping fabric, tiles… whatever she could imagine into a part of her stick hospital. She found some plastic and wrapped it around the sticks as band aides, and asked for some tape. Soon she had several patients in care, receiving various treatments. “This one just needs rest, Nana.” She collected quite a few sticks, and at one point declared with frustration “I just can’t look after all these sticks!”

Having Tilda with me in the yard is always an adventure with fairy gardens, a hospital, laps around the yard, picnics on the deck with our parkas on, and beautiful rock collections. We pull on the roots together and feed the birds. What could be more wonderful than being able to share such enthusiasm for anything and everything.

Workout

Throughout my life I have been loath to exercise on machines; in rooms filled with sweaty people in contorted positions trying to get rid of fat, build muscle, or improve endurance. My days were filled with exercises of a different sort – the kind that just happened as you were trying to get things done. Carrying kids and groceries, up and down stairs with laundry, at home to tuck kids in bed, or to see students or teachers at work. Hikes down long halls with kids in tow. Cleaning, moving furniture, playing, weeding gardens, shovelling…. There was an endless demand for the expense of energy; and stretching – sometimes I felt stretched so thin it seemed I would break! 

But at 64 I have finally realised that that is no longer my life. Yes, I still do a lot of physical activities but that has been cut back considerably. I now understand that in order to stay fit for the next 30 years, I may have to actually “WORK OUT”. It has taken me several years, perhaps a decade, to get my head wrapped around this, but I think I finally got it!

A change of attitude makes all the difference. Yesterday I went to the gym, and this is what I saw. The City of Edmonton has done an incredible job of creating beautiful recreational facilities. At 9 in the morning, the Terwillegar Rec Center was pretty busy, and they didn’t look like a bunch of sweaty people doing useless motions to me. It looked like a new culture or an aeronautics program. OK, let me explain. The space was bright, open and well lit; like a dome building in the early sci-fi movies. There were lots of strange looking machines. Some people were watching movies as they worked away on them. Others were engaged in small classes to keep them moving, students were being toured through the building, and older people worked on their balance. There was weight lifting, swimming, youth playing basketball, mothers with strollers jogging in the gym, Tai Chi, and some skipping.  Child care was available, and were friendly spaces where you could meet with someone for coffee. 

This is a new age, not just for me because I am 64 and need to work out, but because of a general cultural shift, a change in daily movement, due to a change in environment. There is a need for aeronautics training for the average person to feel healthy and whole. I loved exercising with these people, who like me are working on improving their health. 

Written October 2, 2018

For Family Day

Following the Thanksgiving dinner, it is our family’s tradition to take a few moments to each express our gratitude for something in our life. We all have so much to be grateful for, so many opportunities, so much abundance – compared to most of the world we live lives of luxury. This year the main theme was family; Arthur started the conversation by saying that he is grateful for family, in fact, he said it is the only thing he is grateful for. In their turn, along with other gratitudes, everyone added their gratitude for family. 

Throughout the years my family has changed in so many ways. First there were two of us, then one by one we added those wonderful characters…. the children. Then the husband/father left (another story). The children went out to find their own way, knowing that they were welcome to come home at any time.  Before I knew it they were bringing home boyfriends or girlfriends, who in some cases became a part of the family, and then sometimes they left, not unloved and sometimes still in our thoughts. And then they started getting married, and getting dogs. I also found a new person to love and care for.

Family has nothing to do with time or distance. It is loosely started when two people decided to “be together”, but it doesn’t have anything to do with marriage bonds; and it isn’t all about blood relationships. It seems to me that family is those people brought into the “fold” by its members. It is an intimacy that exists due to a decision to accept each other as we are and to support each other to be who we want to be.

I am so grateful for my family as I find it on this day, Richard, Arthur and Kaldi,  Jeana and Jason with Carols and Chloe, Gordon and Sakurako with Kureha, and Laura and Wally with Matilda and Grant. They are each amazing people with incredible abilities, dreams and hopes.  Each has his or her own quirks, buttons, issues, attitudes, or flashing points; but of the 7.5 billion people in the world, this is my family, and I love each one of them in their own way. We have common stories to share, and as we each plow through our years we bring new insights back to our family.  Each has brought me such joy. They have at times each been the source of anxiety and deep soul searching. They have enriched my life, helped me grow, made me cry and had me rolling in laughter. Family is unconditional love.

Written October 1, 2018 (with additions of new family members)

Seeing someone elses life – September 30, 2012

It has been a very strange week, and my small universe constantly serves me lessons, or rather reveals small matters that seem profound. Like when I was cleaning up the unit at Inglewood, which was left in a sordid state. I found what appeared to be a piece of hash – mixed in with everything else left on the floor: the long black hair, the beer bottles, broken jewelry, past due bills and speeding tickets. Well, it looked like a large chunk of hash (from what I can remember from those days long ago), but on second thought, perhaps it was cat poop.

 Sorting though someone else’s garbage is a strange thing. This woman actually had some lovely jewelry, a college certificate, a depression glass candy dish, a Christmas reindeer candle holder. Oh yes, and there was a statement of earnings – $48,000.00. Not bad;  it revealed that the amount that a person earns is not necessarily an indication of how she might live. It was those personal family pictures that I just couldn’t throw in the recycling: baby pictures, pictures of family standing in a line with big smiles, obviously celebrating some success, a faded photo of some long buried person who must have had interesting stories, now lost. I stacked them neatly in a pile wondering if she would return for them. What could have happened to this lady that she would just throw her past onto the floor and walk away. It seemed sad…. but my job was just to get the unit cleaned so that it could be rented to the next person, who also has his own things that I may some day be sorting through… I hope not. I would rather be raking my own leaves.

A tiny bit of adversity – April 16, 2011

Laura and I recently planted some tomatoes, green peppers,watermelons and assortment of flowers.  They are sprouting nicely in a variety of little pots on a table in our south facing living room.    We had to move the dog over a bit, as his usual spot is on the back of the couch in front of the window in that exact same spot.  We made sure he still has a place to perch on so that he can watch the world go by and bark fiercely to protect Laura and I from any dangers.  We harvested some fertile soil from our worm compost in the laundry room, and because of that we also have a few unknown plants that seem to have sprouted from something that was in the compost.  We love surprises.

In the warm moist habitat we have provided, some of the tomatoes have grown a bit spindly – too tall and thin.  When my brother Wallace stopped by on his way home from Calgary he told me to put a fan on them so that they would feel they have to grow thicker, and so might develop stronger stalks.  So we put the fan on. Tthe sun shines and the wind blows and those tomatoes are coming along just fine; they are taking advantage of the tiny bit of adversity we have given them so that they can be stronger.  How cool is that.