Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanagh, Trump, and a hope for ultimate truth

Yesterday I watched most of the televised examination of Dr Christine Blasey Ford and then of Brett Kavanagh. She was so entirely believable that I could not help but think that Kavanagh would have no chance to upset the effect that she had made. However, I didn’t count on the power of the old men’s club. Kavanagh was clearly schooled by Trump’s assertions after watching his interview on Fox news several days ago, that Kavanagh had been too soft, that he ought to be angry and to hit back. Kavanagh did exactly that. Supported by Republican senator Lindsay Graham when he began to flag in his efforts, Kavanagh railed against the Democratic ‘plan’ to destroy him, his reputation, and his family in revenge for his involvement in the Ken Starr investigation into Bill Clinton’s affairs. He roared, and he wept. Look what you are doing to me and my family!

Democratic senators pressed him on his unwillingness to ask for a deeper investigation into the accusations made against him – specifically to have his ‘co-accused’ Mark Judge examined, and/or to request an FBI investigation into the various allegations made against him, to fully clear his name. Because he was obviously beginning to lose it, the Republicans chose to rid themselves of the woman prosecutor who had been engaged to question both him and Dr Ford. Stepping into the breach, Lindsay Graham delivered an impassioned diatribe against the ‘shameful,’ the ‘despicable’ attempts by his Democratic colleagues to destroy this fine man who had served the country for so many years. Graham's energy and that of subsequent Republican senators who took their cue from Graham, put new life into Kavanagh, emboldening him to stand his ground against the calls to say that he would be happy to have a deeper investigation made into the contradictory statements being made by the two ‘witnesses,’ himself and Christine Ford.

Trump was pleased. Kavanagh had taken a page out of his own book – when backed into a corner, come out roaring, make accusations of your own, and change the narrative. The Republican senators went off to confer, announcing soon afterward that they would be putting the issue to a vote in their committee this morning. A victory for them, a victory for Trump. A considerable slap in the face for due process, for decency, for truth, and sadly, for the already entangled politics of our neighbours to the south.

I woke up about 4:30 this morning, troubled by the powerful tide of hope raised by Dr Ford’s courageous and compelling witness, hope almost annihilated in the path of a cabal of men determined to run roughshod over the story and energy of not just that particular woman, but of all the women and indeed of all the men who had supported the telling of her story and who sincerely want a polity based upon decency and the whole truth of the things that even “good people,” hard-working, civic-minded people, can be capable of.

I remember how in the 1960s so much of the hope and enthusiasm engendered by leaders like JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bob Kennedy, and Malcolm X was dashed into cynicism as one by one they were assassinated. That’s how it is: don’t be a sap and think that idealism has a place in one’s life. Just get on with things and carve out your own piece of the pie. Cynicism is an easy place to head for when disappointment looms. But regardless of the final decisions regarding Kavanagh’s elevation to the Supreme Court, this story is not over. Millions were witness to yesterday’s events. Take-aways will be shaped by each person’s already determined views, to be sure. But importantly, that dramatic theatre was played out within the current context of far-greater openness to listen to and honour the experiences of women like Dr Christine Blasey Ford. The Republican senators and Trump may have their way, but the stain of what was enacted in that committee room will not be easily expunged as was the stain of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings. 

Tools for the Art and Science of Living

The summer that I began graduate school I attended a lecture by a person whose name and subject I no longer remember. What I have never forgotten though, is a statement that he made about concepts. He said that these were the tools with which we consider and work through our ideas. I liked this metaphor so much as it gave a concrete basis to the process of achieving understanding. At the time I didn’t reflect on the manner in which the concepts that help to frame the ideas and accepted truths of one era are themselves subject to being replaced by others more in tune with the history and requirements of another. Still it was a thought that brought me to remember an earlier experience of using a particular tool for enlightenment.

During the two-year period of a novitiate, each novice has a special year following the six months of postulancy, called the canonical year. Stipulated by canon law, that is, the law of the church, it is a period dedicated exclusively to the study of theology and to the rules and customs of the religious order which the woman has joined. Secular subjects and books are not allowed. During my postulancy I had been given permission to use textbooks that had been left at the Provincial House by another young sister who had been up-grading her scholastic record. As the Congregation had determined to send its newly professed sisters to university, readying them for the greater demands of the era, I was allowed to try my hand at picking up a couple of the grade 13 courses that I had either not taken or had dropped during that not exactly sparking period of my academic career. Being in the novitiate, away from the anxieties and distractions of “the world,” I lept at this challenge and enjoyed it tremendously. For the following four months along with the usual classes given by the Novice Mistress, Sister Coderre, our “offices,” that is daily chores, the busyness of Tuesday laundry days, prayers, periods of gathering with the other novices, etc., I had times each afternoon and evening (before 9:30 lights out) to focus on my study of Trigonometry, Botany, and Zoology. At the end of June, I went into Kingston to write the departmental exams.

That August after an eight-day silent retreat I became a novice, taking on the religious habit, and beginning my canonical year. Before long I realized that I was experiencing a palpable dissatisfaction with the studies then allowed. Sister Coderre, who had been a mentor to me, had moved on to other duties on the Provincial Council. The Mistress of Novices unfortunately did not have the breadth of learning and assiduity that so marked Sister Coderre. Her instructions seemed to me like dried bread, containing little of satisfying depth. I saw that I needed some intellectual challenge to keep a balance in the life that I was leading and I stumbled upon a solution. When I had left the School of Nursing to join the congregation, I had brought my nursing texts with me. The plan had been for me to return to the three-year program that I left in mid-stream at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston. One of the texts was a book on ethics, and importantly, it had been stamped with an imprimatur – the legitimation of its use by the Church. I asked for permission to study it as a part of my canonical year. No one challenged my desire to take on such a seemingly strange project. I think that it was recognized that this was something that I needed. And so each afternoon and evening during times allotted for reading, I would sit at the desk in my room, making notes and thinking about ethical considerations. Their focus derived from Thomas Aquinas’ reflections on the writings of Aristotle available to him in his 13^th century university and monastery.

I believe that I quite deeply imbibed those readings into my subsequent views and understandings though I can now remember only one issue: Aristotle’s recognition of things modiingfy one’s responsibility in actions. There were five modifiers listed. I remember three of these: force, fear, and ignorance. You have committed an act which is some fashion reprehensible but in judging your responsibility, there are factors that must be examined if one is to determine the extent to which you are at fault. What is articulated as an intellectual exercise is in fact one of humanity, a recognition of the fallibility and weakness of human beings, an understanding that using purely black and white categories to judge people and their actions runs rough-shod over the true nature of human beings and human interactions.

Reading Sarah Bakewell’s ‘How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer’ is taking me back into a consideration of philosophical concepts/tools. It’s pretty clear that in all ages and in all cultures people have wrestled with the same basic questions about what it is to be human and how to live life well. Montaigne and his Renaissance contemporaries had access to the philosophers of antiquity, a privilege lost to most of the West during the centuries following the gradual decline of the Roman Empire. Manuscripts that had been preserved despite centuries of neglect, of catastrophic wars, and of the spread of Christianity – in many ways inimical to “pagan” authors – were available in the Middle Ages to denizens of monasteries and later to the early universities. But by Montaigne’s era these could be accessed by scholarly private gentlemen who could ponder and discuss among themselves the wisdom of the ancients (even as had gentlemen of the Hellenistic and Roman periods). Bakewell focuses on the three pragmatic schools of thought of that era: those that gave guidance in the art and science of thriving, of enjoying life, and of being a good person. During the Christian era guidance in these areas would consist primarily in the following of the commandments and the teaching of the Church. Montaigne and his contemporaries did not distain this approach nor did they set up an opposition between their Christian faith and the teachings of the ancients. But they found in the practices of the ancients, ways that they could refine their own activities and modes of thinking to more precisely deal well with the exigencies of life.

The three schools of thought that they studied and strove to emulate were those of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Scepticism. It seems to me that our own general sense of these approaches bears little resemblance to their origins. Briefly, I would have considered a Stoic a person who accepts all the difficulties that life throws his or her way as simply to be borne without complaint, a person of strength but perhaps with not a great capacity to struggle for happiness; an Epicurean, someone who gives him or herself over to the pleasures of life without restraint; and, a Sceptic, a person who perhaps out of the bitterness of thwarted hopes, maintains a position of opposition to most of the accepted wisdom or practices of his or her culture. Each stereotype obliterates the true nature of these philosophies. In origin all three schools had in common the quest of understanding how to live and die well. For each to live well was to thrive, to experience happiness, and to be a good person, goals difficult to attain without control over one’s emotions. To achieve the needed imperturbability each school developed different approaches and “tricks.” Epicureans lived together like cultists in settings sheltered from the distractions of the ‘world,’ as did monks of the later Christian world. While the monks’ focus was more strongly on their promised life after death, Epicureans sought balance and equanimity in this one. Sceptics remained within public life but approached it with an inner attitude of doubt or of questioning, a stance which enabled them to maintain poise under pressures, less liable to be swept up in transient happenings or emotions. Stoics also remained involved in public life but reserved separate spaces for themselves where reflection and what we might called “grounding” could occur.

Stoics and Epicureans understood that maintaining equilibrium involved both control over one’s emotions and a capacity to live in the present. Because both are difficult, they devised ‘tricks’ to refresh their inner states. For example, pretend to yourself that today will be your last day of life. How would you want to live this day? Who and what are important to you? How would you want to deal with them today? So now, live in that fashion for this day. A couple of hundred years before the Hellenists were discussing these ideas and this way of being, the Buddha had articulated a similar approach. Repelled finally by the extreme ascetic practices of his earlier attempts to achieve ‘enlightenment,’ he began to teach a perhaps physically simpler, but spiritually more taxing path. Live a simple life; live each moment in the present; have compassion for all living beings. Montaigne took from the Hellenists what was of value to him in his study and practice of living a good life. He established what Virginia Wolff called “a room of one’s own,” in a tower of his chateau where he could read and reflect; he considered his own behaviour and that of others from the perspective of learning rather than of judgement, never in his writing giving himself special airs, always being careful to demonstrate a capacity for doubting even his own conclusions; and, he engaged in the daily life of his home and culture in an open-hearted manner.  

In our own era the ideas and practices of the Hellenists that Montaigne valued have filtered to us perhaps more through the influence of Buddhism as it found its way into the 20^th century West: meditation and ‘mindfulness’ are proving to be not just antidotes to the pace of modern life but practices that develop greater self knowledge and self reliance. Moreover, they promote the general health and healing power of the body. The basic questions of life: how did we get here? where are we going after death? is there a meaning to our lives? how ought we to live? These questions are as old as is humanity. Each generation in some fashion struggles with or distracts itself from them, but they remain as backdrop to all human endeavours.

On Being Weird

Recently our book club read Sarah Bakewell’s most excellent “At the Existentialists Café,” a study of the 20^th century development of existentialist thought. Though she traced its roots to phenomenological philosophers, her study focusses mainly on the partnership of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the ways in which they and their contemporaries articulated a substantially new perspective from which to consider life, morality, and action. I enjoyed Bakewell’s writing and interests enough to purchase an earlier book of hers, “How to Live: A Life of Montaigne.”

I had heard of Montaigne but had never examined what he was about. He was just one of those names of influential 16^th century French Renaissance thinkers. Looking into Bakewell’s book, however, I quickly have seen that here is a man who will become one of my all-time heroes, standing in my personal pantheon together with Samuel Pepys, Shunryu Suzuki, and Victor Klemperer. Sometime after a near-fatal accident Montaigne began to write a series of what he coined “essays,” pieces in which he examined his own behaviour and that of others, and most especially, the fluctuations of his own mind, what we now call ‘stream of consciousness.’ He could see that our thoughts and emotions are various and multiple, flowing into areas of certainty and of confusion, of calm and of anxiety, of purpose and of despair. His reflections led him toward a most practical approach to life, one entirely in accord with the current mindfulness movement: live as much as possible in the moment; be aware of but not overthrown by your own emotions and your own ideas or seemingly ‘crazy’ thoughts. Accept them all as a part of being human and know that all humans partake, each in his or her own fashion, of these inner fluctuations. This is what I think of as accepting one’s own manner of being weird.

Some years ago a woman in one of my groups spoke of how she often felt herself to be so different from others around her. The people whom she knew seemed for the most part to “have their shit together,” as she put it. Inwardly she experienced herself as filled with contradictory thoughts and emotions, things which she would never share even with friends out of fear of being perceived as too strange by far. I asked the members of the group to raise their hands if they had ever felt this way. All of us, myself included, put up our hands, acknowledging that we also felt not just ‘odd,’ but downright weird at times. Saying so felt ever-so liberating. It’s become somewhat of a joke in my family to not just admit to, but even to glory in our weirdness. My granddaughter Billie says how much she likes weird. To her it’s almost a badge of honour, a personal distinction.

If we know and are accepting of ourselves as the repositories of contradictions on many levels, even though we manage fairly well to live our day-to-day lives and to handle our responsibilities, it becomes infinitely easier to be understanding and accepting of others whose particular forms of weirdness or otherness differ from our own. In simpler societies individuals who deviated more significantly from the norm were quite often tolerated, even in some cases celebrated for the contributions that their ways of being brought to the society. A case in point: the acceptance of eccentrics is far wider in Britain than here in North America.

I’m just beginning to dip into Bakewell’s reading of Montaigne, but even the introductory chapter has impressed me with his 18^th century example of how to live. My current take-away: accept your own distinct ‘weirdness,’ and that of your friends; rather than fearing it, celebrate the manner in which it reflects the unique being that is you.

Welcoming Our New Canadians

Our refugee family arrived in Toronto from Turkey on Wednesday evening. They were in a state of exhaustion, having been travelling for over 25 hours. Mary Jean (another member of our Annex Support Group which is sponsoring them) and I waited in the arrivals area for a couple of hours while a member of the facilitating organization, Humanity First, assisted them through the immigration process. I received a phone call about 9:30 that the family was cleared and waiting for us near the tall blue clock standard. And there they were: a family of four – parents and two daughters aged twelve and sixteen. We had so little information about them, other than their names and ages, and of course they had none about us, so that our coming together in that moment shared in both a real and physical reality, and, a strangely mysterious combining of people who from that moment began to share an important and on-going relationship of family and of citizenship. It was truly like being part of a birth.

We were all tired but happy and still had lots to do before the family would be settled. I had come to the airport by TTC and MJ had brought her large van. We had not expected that the family would have much baggage in tow but we were oh, so wrong. Sixteen bags filling four of the airport carts stood ready for transportation. Oops, what to do? MJ would take the family. I would get a taxi to transport the luggage and me to my condo on Christie. There we would separate out the pieces that were required for immediate needs, leaving the others in my apartment. But just a moment: another unexpected twist – a childhood friend of the dad and his twelve-year old son had also come to the airport to greet the family. Confusions and missteps ensued but within an hour or so the luggage was piled in my building’s lobby; MJ arrived with the family and with the friends right behind. A new plan: the friends would take the excess baggage to their place and all of us, in the two vans, would proceed to the Neill Wycik residence, the family’s first place of entry. At the residence we checked them in to their four-bed bedroom, one room of a “quad” of five bedrooms, complete with two common bathrooms and a common kitchen. MJ had provided food and drinks for them in the kitchen and had left a rotating fan in their room as air conditioning was not laid on. We left them in their room shortly before midnight sitting about on two of the beds with their friend and Sam, his 12-year old, enjoying just being on the ground, and having a bite to eat before giving in to their inordinate tiredness.

Our family originated in Iran. As Christians, they had experienced increasingly difficult conditions as the country had becoming more militantly Islamic. Five years ago they fled to Turkey and until a few days ago lived in a refugee camp near Ankara. They experienced discrimination in Turkey as well. At school the girls were harassed to such an extent that their parents decided to keep them at home. Because of this, the girls are several grades behind their age cohorts. Saba, the younger girl will be placed in a grade consistent with her age and will be given extra help at her school to bring her up to speed. Sadaf, the 16-year old will be given a day-long battery of tests in early September to assess her skills. She will also be placed in an age-appropriate class and given the help she needs. The girls are somewhat anxious about starting school but were relieved to hear that there are hundreds of children their ages in Toronto going through similar transitions. Both seem bright and ready for new adventures. Sadaf alone in the family, has some working knowledge of English. Happily, their friends, especially Sam, the 12-year old is quite fluent.

Though we had begun our quest to sponsor a family over a year ago, we were assigned one only a couple of months ago. A week before their arrival we were notified of the date. Then began a scramble for housing. We were able to secure a two-bedroom basement apartment in a house close to the Downsview subway station, owned by a couple who themselves are children of immigrants – one Korean and the other Philippian. They accepted the family in the spirit of helping out and giving back. Unfortunately the apartment is not available until September 3^rd. Thus the Neill Wycik arrangement. That will last until August 28 because Ryerson students will then take over the building. We had been looking at a few options to span the intervening six days but their friends plan to keep them at their place. Problem solved.

The morning after the arrival Mark, Linda, Arel and I came to the residence to have a meeting with the family. The wife of a friend of Mark’s, Meeshy, who is also from Iran came along with a couple of Persian friends of hers who are visiting from Germany. The family friends were there as well. With the help of Meeshy’s Farsi, we were able to run through some of the information that they needed: the housing plans, school, ESL classes for the parents, and, the government guidelines with respect to housing and maintenance costs and how they would be facilitated. We asked if they had questions for us or things they wanted to tell us. It was during this exchange that we learned about the reasons they had sought asylum and about their concerns regarding the girls’ education. They asked what organization we belonged to and were very pleased to learn that we were a group of Canadians who had joined together to sponsor their way. Their faces lit up with recognition that we had chosen to bring them to Canada, that we wanted as private citizens to welcome them and to befriend them.

After the meeting Mark, Meeshy, and I took the parents to a close-by bank to help them open an account and get debit cards. The girls were taken off by Sam to walk about the downtown area. When we were finished at the bank, we offered to take them back to the residence but Majid, the dad protested. No, he was clear about where they were and that they would find their way back on their own. The energy and humour in his face as he said this underscored the sense that I had already that these people will in fact find their way into life in Canada.

Tonight Linda is hosting a party at her place for them, the invaluable friends, and the support group. It promises to be fun. Tomorrow morning Kathleen, Bob, and I will go with them and their friends to the Humanity First office for a meeting. Sam will likely be the interpreter. There the government guidelines and expectations for the family will be outlined with respect to learning English, schooling, and gradually getting employment and becoming self-sufficient. Over the next few weeks there will lots of other things to attend to: moving, even getting rid of some of the excess furniture that our group has collected and stored around the GTA; moving the family into their new apartment; getting the kids into school and arranging ESL classes for their parents; and etcetera. I think that we and they have made a good beginning and we look forward to getting to know each other better.

Thank you to all who have contributed in a variety of ways to our bringing the family into our truly wonderful country.

Hello Once Again

Hi. My last letter from the Annex was sent last September. Since then much has happened, as is true for all of us. I’ll summarize some of the things that have gone on in my little corner of the universe. The bigger picture is being writ large in the media.

Most of the winter was devoted to my travels in Puerto Vallarta and in Asia, coming to a close in Los Angeles from where we returned to Puerto Vallarta -- all documented at www.istanbultohongkong.blogspot.com  

I have joined the Academy of Life Long Learning – www.allto.ca for anyone interested. It is a group of primarily retired people who organize and go to seminars focussed on issues or topics that interest them. The seminars are held in two-hour segments every second week during the school year, all given at Knox College on the University of Toronto campus. To join one pays $180 for the year and can take up to four seminars for this princely cost. I have signed up for the following:

 

 1)Reflections on Aging – for which I will do a presentation on the importance of friendship for women’s emotional and physical well-being as they grow older.

 

 2) Literary Biography: bios of Robertson Davis (I’ve been reading it but find it too long and somewhat boring); Arthur Miller – much more interesting; my presentation or rather leadership in a discussion will be focussed on his play A Death of a Salesman which I first read and was deeply impressed by, in my first year of university at Ottawa U; Oscar Wilde; Janet Malcolm’s book about Ted Hughes and Silvia Plath; and my favorite – Hazel Rowley’s Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre. I read that one in conjunction with At the Existentialist’s Café for our recent book club. It was ever-so interesting.

 

 3) Literature: Reading Other Lives: ten works of fiction and non-fiction by wonderful authors who tell a story within a world or culture unlike our own. When I read the list of books proposed, I knew that I had to sign up.

  

4) Contemporary Film: two current films will be decided for all the member to see and be ready to discuss for each class. Sounds like fun as I go to most of the really good films being shown here in Toronto anyway.

During the summer and into the fall some members of the Academy organize walks every Tuesday morning. There is the two-hour walk and the milder one-and-a half hour walk. Both groups meet at the end at a nearby restaurant for lunch. I have been on quite a few of these. Usually about 15-20 people attend, though the Academy itself is about 350 strong (it has been running for 25 years). Many of the same people come on the walks so I have gotten to chat with many of them and find them a really interesting and pleasant bunch with whom to spend time.

At the beginning of October Billie, my now 12-year old granddaughter and I will spend two weeks in Europe. It’s her turn to get about Paris and Italy with Nana, checking out all the best gelato places as well as a few tourist locales. We’ll be sending a blog about our adventures.

One other thing is happening this year: last summer a group of us got together to raise some money to sponsor a refugee family to Canada. We call ourselves the Annex Support Group. While I was away during the winter this terrific bunch put together not just money but also furniture and furnishings for our expected family. We had been responding to the need in particular for safe havens for Syrian families but as families were brought here, we had yet to be assigned. About a month ago we were asked to sponsor instead a family from Iran—one which we believe has been living in a refugee camp for some time. The family consists of the parents and two teen-aged daughters. We have, of course, accepted them, but they have yet to arrive. Our big difficulty at the moment is finding housing for them as rental housing is scarce and expensive here in Toronto. Also, because we don’t have a date for their arrival, we can’t set up anything definite. But we are all excited about meeting with them and beginning our long relationships with the whole family, helping them in the ways that we can to become comfortable, at home, new Canadians.

So that is all my news from what I guess I now need to call the West Annex. All the best. Brenda

Being in Vancouver

 Each of eight or nine times that I have visited Vancouver over the decades I have thought to myself, “Why doesn’t everyone live out here?” Last week was no exception. It truly is one of the most beautiful spots on the earth, perhaps especially in the North Vancouver area where my daughter, Elizabeth and granddaughter, Billie live. They are within a mile of the Lynn Valley headwaters/forest, a place that could be used (and sometimes is) as a backdrop for films of every genre. Elizabeth put me through my paces on my third day there, getting me to climb one of the foothills of a mountain that lurks over her home. It was a stretch but we made it, accompanied by her 11 month “puppy,” Sadie. I use the term “accompanied” loosely, as Sadie more precisely ran both ahead and behind us, seemingly simultaneously. The next day on a less challenging trek she managed to roll her entire person in some disagreeable materials, necessitating a trip to the baths on our way home.

On the second day of my visit Elizabeth and I drove to Anacortes, WA to visit Betty Anne Bone – now Ely, a gal who was the best buddy of my 15-year-old self. Betty Anne’s dad was involved with air transport safety. The family had moved from Edmonton to Ottawa earlier that year and they returned just a year or so later. One lovely summer I spent a great deal of time at BA’s place playing rummy and canasta by the hour. She would take me over to the near-by Westgate Shopping Centre to look at clothes – her interest, not especially mine at the time. She was jolly and lively with her bright blue eyes and shiny black hair. We hadn’t seen each other for over 50 years. So it was a distinctly surreal experience to sit opposite her at a posh restaurant ocean-side in Anacortes, trying to sum up my last decades and hearing about hers, looking into the face of a woman who was at once familiar, and, a total stranger. But we made our way through it and managed to see something both old and new in one another.

On my fourth day I went to Deep Cove, a gorgeous inlet spot in North Vancouver, its turn-off just before one crosses the bridge to Vancouver itself. There I had a visit and lunch with Karl Laskin, a friend that we made while in Puerto Vallarta. Karl is originally from South Africa but has lived in Canada for many decades. He comes to Puerto Vallarta usually for a month each winter, his respite time from the loving care that he and two helpers give to his wife, Beverley who was felled by a debilitating stroke three years ago. Karl is a passionate animal rights advocate, a lover of opera, and so much more. He took me down to the village of Deep Cove set along the waterfront, a place favoured by kayakers because of its beautiful setting and relatively calm waters. We had coffee and cake at his regular hang-out spot, walked around the cove area and briefly into the adjacent forest, before returning to his home for lunch on the deck, and, a walk about his ¾ acre garden. In this garden he grows every imaginable herb, fruit, and flower. He took me around, giving me bits and pieces to sample, challenging me to identify each. It is a magical place.

I saw little of Billie during my visit as she was either at school, after-school program, soccer practice, on her computer, or at her dad's. We did get in a couple of card games though, each winning one. It was special spending time with Elizabeth, both out with the doggie and just hanging around her house or catching a bite to eat. She had lived in Vancouver for about nine years before she came back to Toronto with 1 ½ year old Billie 10 years ago. With years of independent (of the parents primarily) life under her belt and with a baby in tow, she was a decidedly different young woman to deal with than the 20-ish girl who only wanted to go west and be with her good buds who had moved there. All of us had changed and were more open to resolving whatever challenges there had been to easy parent-kid relations. By the time that Billie and she headed back to Vancouver last summer we had carved out a wonderful way of being together. She had completed a four-year degree in psychology and had become an addictions counsellor. She and I had had many fruitful talks about working with people. It was hard to see her go even though it made good sense for her and Billie. She had a job open with the umbrella group who offer SROs – single rooms only – to the hardest to house homeless of Vancouver’s east side. Billie would be able to regularly be with Clayton, her dad, and, Elizabeth could give up her position of a single parent. She and Clayton are good friends and have made the complexities of the situation work for all concerned. I’m proud of her and support her as she goes forward as an always interesting person.

On one walk in the forest I told Elizabeth how conscious I was of how we are more or less moving past one another in life. I was for so long “above” her, in the sense that I was not just older, but I was more financially secure, and, physically and mentally more or less in (as Jean Brodie would say) ‘in my prime.’ Elizabeth will turn 39 (Jack Benny’s perennial age!) next month, whereas I am now seriously entrenched in what I call the ‘middle senior years.’ On our walks I had constantly to check where I was putting my feet, least I stumble or slide. She on the other hand bounced gracefully along at a pace that took into account both mine and that of Sadie. I am aware of variously diminishing capabilities in many and varied dimensions and see clearly where I am heading. I have to say, however, that I find this part of my life to be wonderful in many respects and that I am enjoying it. Elizabeth would put out her hand to me at different points on our trek and would stand by patiently when I needed some time to rest and lower my rapidly beating pulse. She was and will become even more in some yet uncharted future the one who looks out for me, even as my siblings and I took some care of my mother in her last years. The cycle of life, no getting away from it.

And now I’m back in Toronto, glorying in the Blue Jays wins (I watched the games out west also), studying the various reports about polls and trends in our election just three weeks away, and out walking our multi-national streets and chatting with my neighbours from so many lands. Yes, I love Vancouver and may someday spend more time there, but as cities go, Toronto is also one of the very best.

Being At Home

I’m in Vancouver for a few days visiting Elizabeth and Billie. Once these guys get up and going E and I are driving down to Anacortes, Washington to visit a gal whom I haven’t seen since we were about 20 years old. Despite all those years and all that space between us, the affection that we felt toward each other during the relatively brief period that we lived close to one another, has endured. I look forward to seeing her.

Last Tuesday I attended the first of a series of gatherings of a memoir writing group, a “class” offered by the Academy of Life Long Learning at U of Toronto. All of the teachers or facilitators of the Academy’s offerings are volunteers and the classes are not for credit (in the academic sense). Rather they fulfil the desires of the participants for intellectual and social connection and stimulation. All of the roughly twenty-five people present for this course, including the facilitators, are about my age – i.e., retired folks (as they say in the US). The first hour was spent hearing about the format of the course and in introducing ourselves briefly – name and reason for joining the group or what we wished to derive from it, followed by a tea break. In the second hour we were given an eight minute period of writing from the prompt: something that used to be but is no longer. I wrote about the steel tub in which my grandmother washed bedding and clothing for eight children and a host of employees who bunked at the farm to help in the lumber mill. Each person read his or her brief piece. So many of these brought old memories to us all; there was much humour and delight in the sharing.

The group will meet every second Tuesday morning for the full academic year. Because I will be away from mid-November until the end of April, I will only be there for five of the sessions. I explained this to one of the facilitators by phone a month or so ago when I was deciding whether or not to even begin. She was most encouraging despite my situation, so based on my conversation with her, I decided to go. I’m very glad that I did. Over half of the group has been a part of this little writing community more than once. I quickly felt at home and at ease with the entire group and with the facilitators: all were welcoming and friendly and the brief readings that we did were varied and interesting. We have been given an “assignment,” to write a brief piece on “home.” So I sit here in my daughter’s living room on the west coast, still in Toronto time (9:42 AM) as she and my granddaughter snooze on in Pacific time (6:43 AM), thinking about home and what that term means to me.

While still lying in my made-up bed earlier, I did a rough calculation about the number of places I have called home. At last counting I would say there have been 39 moves. As a kid with my family I lived in eight different homes – two in Belleville, one in Brockville, three in Ottawa, and two, briefly in Toronto. As a young adult – 19-35 there were 13 different places, mainly in Toronto’s Annex area. Since there have been 18. When I add it up it looks like my life has been terribly fragmented and chaotic though I haven’t experienced it that way. Each move happened for particular reasons that are clear to me and that had meaning at the time. Because of this multiplication of residences I have no enduring sense of location over long periods as would someone who has essentially lived for a long time in one house and one city. The multiplicity has given me something else, however: I am able to pinpoint with fairly reliable accuracy the periods in which various things happened and the reactions that I had to them. I am in a stage of my life in which I look over the past as I have experienced it. I find myself able mentally to as it were “walk into” one of the places where I have lived at another period, to walk about there connecting with those others with whom I shared that space and time, to recall not just specific events, but even the feelings that I experienced during and after them, as well as the ways that I dealt with those feelings and experiences given the capacity I had at that period to process, to understand, and to articulate to myself or to others what was happening.

There is another dimension to the meaning of home that is important to me: it relates to what we mean when we say we feel “at home.” Learning to feel at home with myself and with others has definitely been a life-long learning process and not an easy or painless one. To feel at home, at ease, one must feel safe. Reaching the place of relative safety that I experience at this stage of my life has been hard won. It has been facilitated by many people and experiences. One important experience of this kind over the past six or seven years has been my involvement in a writing group with six other women whom I have known for decades. It was there that I especially have found my own voice. Discovering over time through trial and error, sometimes through writing out or talking out my feelings with these women, I have come to a sense of much greater freedom about expressing whatever is there within me to express, without (at least so far as I’m aware!) editing myself out of a fear of censure, attack, or rejection. When I came to the first session of this Academy writing group, I quickly felt “at home,” at ease, and safe. That I was able to do so is the result of the work I have done but also because of the tenor of the group set by the facilitators and the other participants. Like me,  those present appear to want an environment that is accepting and safe, where judgement and competition, such large components of our earlier lives, can be set aside. Few things in life are as sweet as the sense that you can be the whole of yourself, truly “at home” with others.