When you look into the eyes of an Alzheimer sufferer, what do you see?
When that victim is your mother, what do you read into her expression? Do you occasionally see the "Mom" from your childhood? Do you see the lost old lady looking for help? Or, do you see the sweet young thing your father married 55 years ago and wonder "did I really every know my mother?"
I see them all every time I visit Mom. Yes, a lot of it is painful, but there is also a whole side of her that, as a parent, her child never saw; and now it's out there. And even as someone who cares deeply about her, a part of me is thankful for these unwitting insights.
The visiting time is long…competing with that amazing flap on her walker or the way the circular floor drains in the nursing home spiral down the hall, or a mis-placed slipper on the desk at the nursing station are all challenges that life does not well prepare you to deal with…so a half an hour seems like half a day.
I want to scream "I'm here, Mom, deal with me!": Yet, I know she won't; I know she can't.
My mother is now eight years into a diagnosis that has an average survival rate of seven. Never a large woman, she has shrunk to a size I never could have imagined. It is a terrible thing to look into the faces of a room full of elderly women hoping you might recognize the one who gave birth to you, and fearing you might not. But that's the fear that grips me with every visit.
On some levels, we have become much closer over the past few years. There is no longer any artifice on my part, she made it quite clear several years ago that artifice is one of the first things that is lost to this disease.
Instead, there is an honesty and warmth to our relationship that hasn't existed for close to fifty years. And that, if anything might be just the compensation I seek.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Shutting down the old girl
Perhaps the most melancholy ritual of November is shutting down the old girl on Pretty Mary Lake.
The old girl is a late 19th century, five bedroom farmhouse in which our family has spent much of three generations of summers. Lest you get the wrong idea, this was not built as the county seat of some member of the landed gentry of centuries past. It was built by a farmer and forester as the best he could afford; the house is narrow, and the rooms are small. There is no insulation and the plaster in places is being supported largely by layers of wallpaper and paint. No central heating; though our little Irish wood stove, "Reggie", manages to keep the kitchen warm well into the fall and, given a couple days, will take the chill off the rest of the house.
It does, however sit on an acre-plus of lawn in the midst of a forest, and has a screened verandah that stretches across three of its faces. It features several hundred feet of lake frontage as its longest boundary. It is natural and wild, has stands of pine so large that two men cannot touch hands while hugging them and marshy sink holes so deep that generations of children have been warned off with stories of tractors disappearing into their depths.
However, one shouldn't be taken in by the interpretive signage at nearby Kejimkujik National Park, which talks about local farms being built on the fertile south side of moraines formed by advancing glaciers. Ours was built on the south side of a moraine that passes quickly through shale flour into swamp.
Every November, when evening temperatures begin to dip below zero, the plumbing must be drained, screen doors--and there are four--replaced with plank storm doors, all paint, boxed and canned goods packed into the car, the refrigerator emptied, dahlias dug and any other remnants of a wanton summer cleared away.
If the weather is nice around mid-month, shut-down can become the occasion for one last spell of rural idyll. Twenty acres of forest, marsh and lake shore to be checked, a city dog who revels in the freedom of the country and around every turn of every path the reminder of past wonderful times.
If schedules come together, a friend or family member might join me for part of the visit, especially if the weather forecast is promising--though two out of the last four years we have managed to get caught in unpredicted early fall snowstorms, so most tend to be a bit wary about accompanying me.
While I work away at tidying the yard, neighbours pull in--or merely wave as they speed by on the dirt road out front--and I catch up on all the news since the last time I was around. I read final copies of the Bridgewater Bulletin and Liverpool Advance, have pleasant chats with Suzie at the local corner store and stop by the hardware store and gas station just to demonstrate that we are still around and still part of the local economy.
But as each hour passes, I get closer to that final act of draining the plumbing, locking the door and driving away. I write in the journal we have kept for almost 40 years, read about the joy of opening the place up each past spring and the melancholy of closing it down each fall.
Finally, I walk through the house, checking the windows and lights. As I pull the kitchen door shut and firmly click the padlock, I might catch sight of one last lone bat picking off insects unfortunate enough to have been awakened by the warm afternoon sun or evidence of a bear having visited the apple trees overnight. I smile and sigh, get in my car and drive away.
The old girl is a late 19th century, five bedroom farmhouse in which our family has spent much of three generations of summers. Lest you get the wrong idea, this was not built as the county seat of some member of the landed gentry of centuries past. It was built by a farmer and forester as the best he could afford; the house is narrow, and the rooms are small. There is no insulation and the plaster in places is being supported largely by layers of wallpaper and paint. No central heating; though our little Irish wood stove, "Reggie", manages to keep the kitchen warm well into the fall and, given a couple days, will take the chill off the rest of the house.
It does, however sit on an acre-plus of lawn in the midst of a forest, and has a screened verandah that stretches across three of its faces. It features several hundred feet of lake frontage as its longest boundary. It is natural and wild, has stands of pine so large that two men cannot touch hands while hugging them and marshy sink holes so deep that generations of children have been warned off with stories of tractors disappearing into their depths.
However, one shouldn't be taken in by the interpretive signage at nearby Kejimkujik National Park, which talks about local farms being built on the fertile south side of moraines formed by advancing glaciers. Ours was built on the south side of a moraine that passes quickly through shale flour into swamp.
Every November, when evening temperatures begin to dip below zero, the plumbing must be drained, screen doors--and there are four--replaced with plank storm doors, all paint, boxed and canned goods packed into the car, the refrigerator emptied, dahlias dug and any other remnants of a wanton summer cleared away.
If the weather is nice around mid-month, shut-down can become the occasion for one last spell of rural idyll. Twenty acres of forest, marsh and lake shore to be checked, a city dog who revels in the freedom of the country and around every turn of every path the reminder of past wonderful times.
If schedules come together, a friend or family member might join me for part of the visit, especially if the weather forecast is promising--though two out of the last four years we have managed to get caught in unpredicted early fall snowstorms, so most tend to be a bit wary about accompanying me.
While I work away at tidying the yard, neighbours pull in--or merely wave as they speed by on the dirt road out front--and I catch up on all the news since the last time I was around. I read final copies of the Bridgewater Bulletin and Liverpool Advance, have pleasant chats with Suzie at the local corner store and stop by the hardware store and gas station just to demonstrate that we are still around and still part of the local economy.
But as each hour passes, I get closer to that final act of draining the plumbing, locking the door and driving away. I write in the journal we have kept for almost 40 years, read about the joy of opening the place up each past spring and the melancholy of closing it down each fall.
Finally, I walk through the house, checking the windows and lights. As I pull the kitchen door shut and firmly click the padlock, I might catch sight of one last lone bat picking off insects unfortunate enough to have been awakened by the warm afternoon sun or evidence of a bear having visited the apple trees overnight. I smile and sigh, get in my car and drive away.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
When H1N1 crashes your retirement party
I left the office building in which I had spent the best part of 32 years of my life Friday. I reached the parking lot and bent double, wracked in a coughing spasm that re-awakened my bruised ribs from a fall three weeks earlier; straining to breathe, the sweat rushing to my face, the bile rising in my throat, the tears springing unwillingly to my eyes.
Not an emotional response...although I was prepared for one...but a physical admission that I was sick; that despite my willingness to give it one more try, one last day, my body was telling me what my brain already knew. Elvis truly had left the building.
My body, or at least my unconscious, seemed to intuit this a day earlier. Thursday I awoke feeling that my oft-abused lungs had been filled with Jello overnight. Okay, a loose cough but still juicy. By the time I made it out of the shower, it was obvious that the couch was as far as I would journey that day. I just had no energy. And I needed some energy to drag myself in for the final luncheon, the congratulations, the best wishes, the hugs the following day.
So Friday, I went off to my last day in the mines, trying not to cough on any co-workers and quietly blaming the person in the office next to me for sharing her cold. And I largely carried it off..."no, no, it's not H1N1, merely so-and-so's cold..."
Friday evening, family and friends ganged up on me.
"Your eyes are red and puffy. Your skin is hot to the touch. You appear muddled. You're not well, are you?"
No, it didn't take a flu clinic to tell me (what are friends for?) that on this day of all days on which I wanted to be in top form--to be at my best--I ended up feeling as sick as I had in a decade.
The mental health experts say there are a very few things that stress you more than these few life events--the birth of a child, getting married, the death of a child or partner, or retiring from a long career. What my conscious brain had rejected, my unconscious brain had proven with symbolism and physicality that could not be ignored. Damn brain! It had robbed me of my ability to sail smoothly through a final stressful situation; to laugh off, one last time, the pressures in the face of which I had made a career of remaining unflappable.
Gee, I know this to be true...because the boss, even calling me "friend", told my co-workers this in his speech. And yet, all the while, that finely honed social conscience that had so carefully guided my every action through three decades, was screaming "Are you nuts? Are you exposing those who you love and admire, who carry forward your life's work, to the much-hyped and much-dreaded swine flu?"
In retrospect, the answer--to my shame--appears to be "yes". So with my thank you cards will go an apology. Too late, perhaps, but it just proves I was more human than I, or my boss and co-workers were prepared to admit.
Not the send-off we had planned, but I am content to live with this little irony that convoluted my last day at work, and accept it as one more proof that it was time to go.
Not an emotional response...although I was prepared for one...but a physical admission that I was sick; that despite my willingness to give it one more try, one last day, my body was telling me what my brain already knew. Elvis truly had left the building.
My body, or at least my unconscious, seemed to intuit this a day earlier. Thursday I awoke feeling that my oft-abused lungs had been filled with Jello overnight. Okay, a loose cough but still juicy. By the time I made it out of the shower, it was obvious that the couch was as far as I would journey that day. I just had no energy. And I needed some energy to drag myself in for the final luncheon, the congratulations, the best wishes, the hugs the following day.
So Friday, I went off to my last day in the mines, trying not to cough on any co-workers and quietly blaming the person in the office next to me for sharing her cold. And I largely carried it off..."no, no, it's not H1N1, merely so-and-so's cold..."
Friday evening, family and friends ganged up on me.
"Your eyes are red and puffy. Your skin is hot to the touch. You appear muddled. You're not well, are you?"
No, it didn't take a flu clinic to tell me (what are friends for?) that on this day of all days on which I wanted to be in top form--to be at my best--I ended up feeling as sick as I had in a decade.
The mental health experts say there are a very few things that stress you more than these few life events--the birth of a child, getting married, the death of a child or partner, or retiring from a long career. What my conscious brain had rejected, my unconscious brain had proven with symbolism and physicality that could not be ignored. Damn brain! It had robbed me of my ability to sail smoothly through a final stressful situation; to laugh off, one last time, the pressures in the face of which I had made a career of remaining unflappable.
Gee, I know this to be true...because the boss, even calling me "friend", told my co-workers this in his speech. And yet, all the while, that finely honed social conscience that had so carefully guided my every action through three decades, was screaming "Are you nuts? Are you exposing those who you love and admire, who carry forward your life's work, to the much-hyped and much-dreaded swine flu?"
In retrospect, the answer--to my shame--appears to be "yes". So with my thank you cards will go an apology. Too late, perhaps, but it just proves I was more human than I, or my boss and co-workers were prepared to admit.
Not the send-off we had planned, but I am content to live with this little irony that convoluted my last day at work, and accept it as one more proof that it was time to go.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
New rules for old New York
I waited too long to go back to New York City.
The last occasion I had to spend any time there was 11 years ago, when New Yorkers seemed determined to confirm their reputation as brash, uncivil, narrowly focussed individuals in too much of a hurray to even concern themselves with the most ordinary of courtesies toward their fellow humans. It was "get out of my way or get run over".
Then came 9/11 and I really didn't have the desire to return. Perhaps it was the very same trauma that kept me away that should have led me back years ago.
This past weekend, I again found myself walking the streets of Manhattan and it was as if I had landed in a completely different city. People on the street were taking the time to stop and chat, saying "excuse me" while jostling through crowds and asking "how's it going?" to complete strangers.
We got caught in a thunderstorm in Times Square one evening. Each time the showers let up, whole groups of complete strangers would make the dash from one protective awning or doorway to the next, and the attitude quickly became festive as we shared laughter, umbrellas and advice. There developed a sense of community like none I had ever witnessed in the Big Apple and, to my surprise, I suddenly found myself feeling at home.
A stranger took the time to tell us about her arrival in the city as a Salvadorian refugee some decades earlier. She wanted to know if we were enjoying our trip, what landmarks we had visited, what we still hoped to see and experience, and offered all sorts of advice on what shouldn't be missed.
And she wasn't the exception--she was the new rule. Transit workers cheerfully explained how to negotiate the subway system. Store clerks took the time to converse about fashion, food and family. My traveling companion struck up a conversation with Tom from Hartford, who wanted to tell us about all the fantastic rock concerts he had attended over four decades. Even taxi drivers, despite their well-deserved reputation as the gruffest of New Yorkers, wanted to talk, seemingly desiring to make as many human connections as they could during each shift.
It is this new lightness that will stay with me as New York's most lasting impression, and I--like millions of others who are drawn to the art, architecture and culture of this centre of western society--will savour the memories of the friendliness of its people for many years to come.
And it won't be another decade before I return.
The last occasion I had to spend any time there was 11 years ago, when New Yorkers seemed determined to confirm their reputation as brash, uncivil, narrowly focussed individuals in too much of a hurray to even concern themselves with the most ordinary of courtesies toward their fellow humans. It was "get out of my way or get run over".
Then came 9/11 and I really didn't have the desire to return. Perhaps it was the very same trauma that kept me away that should have led me back years ago.
This past weekend, I again found myself walking the streets of Manhattan and it was as if I had landed in a completely different city. People on the street were taking the time to stop and chat, saying "excuse me" while jostling through crowds and asking "how's it going?" to complete strangers.
We got caught in a thunderstorm in Times Square one evening. Each time the showers let up, whole groups of complete strangers would make the dash from one protective awning or doorway to the next, and the attitude quickly became festive as we shared laughter, umbrellas and advice. There developed a sense of community like none I had ever witnessed in the Big Apple and, to my surprise, I suddenly found myself feeling at home.
A stranger took the time to tell us about her arrival in the city as a Salvadorian refugee some decades earlier. She wanted to know if we were enjoying our trip, what landmarks we had visited, what we still hoped to see and experience, and offered all sorts of advice on what shouldn't be missed.
And she wasn't the exception--she was the new rule. Transit workers cheerfully explained how to negotiate the subway system. Store clerks took the time to converse about fashion, food and family. My traveling companion struck up a conversation with Tom from Hartford, who wanted to tell us about all the fantastic rock concerts he had attended over four decades. Even taxi drivers, despite their well-deserved reputation as the gruffest of New Yorkers, wanted to talk, seemingly desiring to make as many human connections as they could during each shift.
It is this new lightness that will stay with me as New York's most lasting impression, and I--like millions of others who are drawn to the art, architecture and culture of this centre of western society--will savour the memories of the friendliness of its people for many years to come.
And it won't be another decade before I return.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Old Steam Ginny
The old guy who has worked in communications for too long got pulled up short today.
Less than five minutes after alerting a select group of organizational leaders that an important contract announcement was coming, it was Twitter-alert heaven. Twitter followers suddenly knew more than we did. The media was calling while the news release was still being hammered out. Along with the giddiness of a major announcement, there was suddenly an overwhelming sense of trying to make the old steam ginny turn over one more time.
But the question is, when an organization believes there are certain interest groups who should get their information directly from the source without external mediation, how does it cope with the immediate transparency of a new information disemination model that practices from the opposite view?
Well, the simple answer is that it does or it fails.
Finding a balance between the expectations of the elite--whoever they might be and for whatever reason--and the realities of digital citizenry's real-time participation presents huge challenges to our traditional view of information...well, call it what it is...control.
So, does this mean the end of privilege? Does it mean lowering the expectations of those who rightfully believe they should be accorded certain information because they are "in the know" or perhaps even properly have rights as primary clients? Is this a good, bad, or unimportant consideration?
If the media is truly the message, then perhaps we need to rethink how we, as organizations, plan and execute those communications we consider to be important. Maybe we need to get over ourselves and redefine what is truly important. Perhaps we need to change not just the way we operate but the very expectations of those for whom we operate.
Otherwise, we will spend the remainder of our lives stoking an aging but one-time efficient firebox that in today's reality only belches air-polluting black clouds into what might otherwise be pristine air.
Less than five minutes after alerting a select group of organizational leaders that an important contract announcement was coming, it was Twitter-alert heaven. Twitter followers suddenly knew more than we did. The media was calling while the news release was still being hammered out. Along with the giddiness of a major announcement, there was suddenly an overwhelming sense of trying to make the old steam ginny turn over one more time.
But the question is, when an organization believes there are certain interest groups who should get their information directly from the source without external mediation, how does it cope with the immediate transparency of a new information disemination model that practices from the opposite view?
Well, the simple answer is that it does or it fails.
Finding a balance between the expectations of the elite--whoever they might be and for whatever reason--and the realities of digital citizenry's real-time participation presents huge challenges to our traditional view of information...well, call it what it is...control.
So, does this mean the end of privilege? Does it mean lowering the expectations of those who rightfully believe they should be accorded certain information because they are "in the know" or perhaps even properly have rights as primary clients? Is this a good, bad, or unimportant consideration?
If the media is truly the message, then perhaps we need to rethink how we, as organizations, plan and execute those communications we consider to be important. Maybe we need to get over ourselves and redefine what is truly important. Perhaps we need to change not just the way we operate but the very expectations of those for whom we operate.
Otherwise, we will spend the remainder of our lives stoking an aging but one-time efficient firebox that in today's reality only belches air-polluting black clouds into what might otherwise be pristine air.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Soaring like an eagle
I took flight on Monday. I spread my arms and soared in slow motion; laughing all the way to the ground at the sudden joy of being freed from gravity. It was an immediate and strangely welcoming escape from earthly bounds, but gravity won in the end and exacted its usual price.
Let me explain. Between April and November, I spend as much time as possible at our 120-year-old farm house near Kejimkujik National Park. My father-in-law mapped a two-hour radius around Halifax back in the early seventies and he and his partner spent several years searching for the perfect get-away.
What they found was a 20-acre piece of woodland with a long stretch of lakefront on Pretty Mary Lake, complete with an aging farmhouse surrounded on two sides by a long verandah. Over the years he, and eventually we, upgraded the wiring and installed plumbing, new roofing and worked away at shoring up crumbling foundation sills. There is no insulation and only a kitchen wood stove, so when the freeze sets in we mournfully shut it up for the winter, cross our fingers and walk away for four months.
Two years ago, the contractor who was re-shingling the main roof advised us that he had forbidden his workers from standing on the verandah roof--it was too rotten to be safe. We did what country folk do…we called our neighbour.
Our neighbour was eight years old when he met my father-in-law. His own young parents had given him up as an infant and he had been taken in by the widow down the road. RJ, who had three daughters, immediately took him under his wing, and Dave has been the country cousin ever since. He is also one of the most meticulous carpenters we have ever met.
A few years ago, at the height of fears about West Nile Disease, I spent two weekends screening in the old verandah. It turned out to be the most popular space in the house. The only problem was that it was a screened space of about 12 metres long by just over a metre wide. A contract was struck two years ago, and Dave took on the destruction of the old verandah and the building of the new, including a three by 12 metre screened room.
Life moves at its own pace in the country. A year later and the structure--unroofed--was mostly complete. By July 1 weekend, the roof was on and then everything stalled. Being the old guy with time, I began the task of cladding the posts and headers, painting the trim and tightening up the screening. It was this that took me two metres up a step ladder Monday morning, and this that saw me do a perfect swan dive when the ladder collapsed.
You read about life flashing before your eyes at these moments. I instinctively knew there was nothing in that brief time period that would prevent a perfect belly-flop to the ground. Still, part of my mind slowed my perception of time enough that I actually enjoyed the freed feeling that enveloped me.
The landing, however, was directly across the ladder but, as the nice ER doctor told me, luck was on my side…I missed the rib bones and merely bruised the cartilage around my heart. A largely immobilized left arm and a significant--although largely unavoidable--fear of coughing, sneezing or hiccuping for the next couple weeks will be the price exacted for the day I soared like an eagle.
Let me explain. Between April and November, I spend as much time as possible at our 120-year-old farm house near Kejimkujik National Park. My father-in-law mapped a two-hour radius around Halifax back in the early seventies and he and his partner spent several years searching for the perfect get-away.
What they found was a 20-acre piece of woodland with a long stretch of lakefront on Pretty Mary Lake, complete with an aging farmhouse surrounded on two sides by a long verandah. Over the years he, and eventually we, upgraded the wiring and installed plumbing, new roofing and worked away at shoring up crumbling foundation sills. There is no insulation and only a kitchen wood stove, so when the freeze sets in we mournfully shut it up for the winter, cross our fingers and walk away for four months.
Two years ago, the contractor who was re-shingling the main roof advised us that he had forbidden his workers from standing on the verandah roof--it was too rotten to be safe. We did what country folk do…we called our neighbour.
Our neighbour was eight years old when he met my father-in-law. His own young parents had given him up as an infant and he had been taken in by the widow down the road. RJ, who had three daughters, immediately took him under his wing, and Dave has been the country cousin ever since. He is also one of the most meticulous carpenters we have ever met.
A few years ago, at the height of fears about West Nile Disease, I spent two weekends screening in the old verandah. It turned out to be the most popular space in the house. The only problem was that it was a screened space of about 12 metres long by just over a metre wide. A contract was struck two years ago, and Dave took on the destruction of the old verandah and the building of the new, including a three by 12 metre screened room.
Life moves at its own pace in the country. A year later and the structure--unroofed--was mostly complete. By July 1 weekend, the roof was on and then everything stalled. Being the old guy with time, I began the task of cladding the posts and headers, painting the trim and tightening up the screening. It was this that took me two metres up a step ladder Monday morning, and this that saw me do a perfect swan dive when the ladder collapsed.
You read about life flashing before your eyes at these moments. I instinctively knew there was nothing in that brief time period that would prevent a perfect belly-flop to the ground. Still, part of my mind slowed my perception of time enough that I actually enjoyed the freed feeling that enveloped me.
The landing, however, was directly across the ladder but, as the nice ER doctor told me, luck was on my side…I missed the rib bones and merely bruised the cartilage around my heart. A largely immobilized left arm and a significant--although largely unavoidable--fear of coughing, sneezing or hiccuping for the next couple weeks will be the price exacted for the day I soared like an eagle.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Back in Montréal
After 20 years, I am back in Montréal...and it feels good.
Despite the awful idea that my colleagues are currently grooving to some pretty mediocre 1980s disco; despite not enough time to explore, to absorb all that this wonderful city has to offer...it still fits. It still feels good.
The daughter of a colleague was beaten within an inch of her life just blocks away from where I am staying only a couple years ago. Yet, on the corner of Sherbrooke and Aylmer, the vibe still feels safe to me, a gawky skinny kid in an old guy's body who cannot help trusting everyone unless proven wrong. And the knowledge that I might be wrong and it could cost me dearly only adds to the spice as I saunter along with a short Cuban cigar (a dangerous past-time in itself) clenched between my teeth late in the evening.
The linguistic tensions that felt so urgent two decades ago are largely gone. Perhaps it's part of a post-modern "reality" that makes our Trudeau-era politicians seem so out of touch with my children's lives and experience. Or, more likely (to my mind), it was a mid-twentieth century construct to keep the votes coming. Today, the languages I hear on the street--equal amounts of Creole, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French and English (to name the few I recognize) are just remnants of who each of us was; not who we can or will be. And this city oozes with possibilities; just screams the potential of the future.
I met an eighty-something year old in the elevator tonight. He was holding pamphlets published by school boards from across Canada in his hands. He asked "are you attending this conference?"
"The one with education communicators from across the country?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied. "I'm a literacy volunteer from the US, in a neighbourhood with close to 70 percent adult illiteracy...this stuff is wonderful." It was an accidental encounter that perhaps will make a bigger difference to some unknown person's life than a whole career of intentional acts.
If you believe in accidents rather than the old-fashioned idea of destiny, it was a life-affirming encounter.
Personally, I think too much evil has been done in the name of destiny. I believe our children have it right when they live each day as if there was just now, as if each minute was only a gift that should not be wasted.
And Montréal, despite the recent brutal economic conditions, despite whatever harsh realities, still emits a joie de vivre that is there for anyone who has the time to stop, take it in and breathe deeply. Old guy, breathe as deeply as you as you can.
Despite the awful idea that my colleagues are currently grooving to some pretty mediocre 1980s disco; despite not enough time to explore, to absorb all that this wonderful city has to offer...it still fits. It still feels good.
The daughter of a colleague was beaten within an inch of her life just blocks away from where I am staying only a couple years ago. Yet, on the corner of Sherbrooke and Aylmer, the vibe still feels safe to me, a gawky skinny kid in an old guy's body who cannot help trusting everyone unless proven wrong. And the knowledge that I might be wrong and it could cost me dearly only adds to the spice as I saunter along with a short Cuban cigar (a dangerous past-time in itself) clenched between my teeth late in the evening.
The linguistic tensions that felt so urgent two decades ago are largely gone. Perhaps it's part of a post-modern "reality" that makes our Trudeau-era politicians seem so out of touch with my children's lives and experience. Or, more likely (to my mind), it was a mid-twentieth century construct to keep the votes coming. Today, the languages I hear on the street--equal amounts of Creole, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French and English (to name the few I recognize) are just remnants of who each of us was; not who we can or will be. And this city oozes with possibilities; just screams the potential of the future.
I met an eighty-something year old in the elevator tonight. He was holding pamphlets published by school boards from across Canada in his hands. He asked "are you attending this conference?"
"The one with education communicators from across the country?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied. "I'm a literacy volunteer from the US, in a neighbourhood with close to 70 percent adult illiteracy...this stuff is wonderful." It was an accidental encounter that perhaps will make a bigger difference to some unknown person's life than a whole career of intentional acts.
If you believe in accidents rather than the old-fashioned idea of destiny, it was a life-affirming encounter.
Personally, I think too much evil has been done in the name of destiny. I believe our children have it right when they live each day as if there was just now, as if each minute was only a gift that should not be wasted.
And Montréal, despite the recent brutal economic conditions, despite whatever harsh realities, still emits a joie de vivre that is there for anyone who has the time to stop, take it in and breathe deeply. Old guy, breathe as deeply as you as you can.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Essence of Life
Having spent the past 35 years putting words in other people's mouths, it's finally time to find my own voice. Not that I haven't been able to compensate for the sublimation of this voice by inserting the occasional self-fulfilling approach, method or viewpoint into the words of an "official spokesperson" in absence of an offered corporate message track.
I've been lucky; working for non-profits, the goals to which I almost universally subscribe at a very deep personal level. This seems, by and large, to have brought me a great deal of satisfaction despite the frustrations of keeping my mouth shut, especially when the bad angel on my shoulder occasionally fumed with rage.
But here I sit, still alive at an age that I once believed to be so far in the future that I would most likely never reach it...having obviously expired from the rigours of the journey.
But the rigours of the journey seem to be what keeps the mind fresh, the spirit buoyant. And so, walking away from the fray of labour negotiations, dismissing the now supreme political regime I once helped build, somehow feels right. Freeing my consciousness (and conscience)...my words...from the (often self-built) shackles seems wonderfully liberating.
And where will it take me? No idea, but I'm hoping to have some fun. So stay with me, friend (if I might be so bold). Challenge me, support me and take me with a grain of salt. Engage me, because that is the essence of life.
I've been lucky; working for non-profits, the goals to which I almost universally subscribe at a very deep personal level. This seems, by and large, to have brought me a great deal of satisfaction despite the frustrations of keeping my mouth shut, especially when the bad angel on my shoulder occasionally fumed with rage.
But here I sit, still alive at an age that I once believed to be so far in the future that I would most likely never reach it...having obviously expired from the rigours of the journey.
But the rigours of the journey seem to be what keeps the mind fresh, the spirit buoyant. And so, walking away from the fray of labour negotiations, dismissing the now supreme political regime I once helped build, somehow feels right. Freeing my consciousness (and conscience)...my words...from the (often self-built) shackles seems wonderfully liberating.
And where will it take me? No idea, but I'm hoping to have some fun. So stay with me, friend (if I might be so bold). Challenge me, support me and take me with a grain of salt. Engage me, because that is the essence of life.
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