THE TREE OF LIFE

Instead of a guest book the bride and groom had requested us to sign our names on a large poster board with the image of a large rambling tree on it.  Here and there, scattered across the paper, were leaves of varying sizes to choose from; I picked a pen and a leaf and added our names, and thought how this fit into what I had been thinking earlier while we waited for the ceremony to begin.

It was an outdoor wedding in the happy couple’s backyard.  Rows of white chairs, a garden gazebo decorated in white fabric and green vines, white petals tossed along the path the wedding party would use, and as a backdrop to the scene tall and mighty trees.  The skies were threatening to let loose on us and I felt protected with them there. 

Or maybe it was a sense of being ‘at ease’.  Or, a little bit blessed?  Perhaps ‘at one with the Universe’?

Wedding crowds are a gathering of many people – some that you’ve known all your life, and some you’ve never laid eyes on until you arrive for the ceremony.  Seated all around us were the aunts and the uncles and the cousins of the bride and groom, and with the groom’s side of the family that’s a lot of people.  That’s the side I hailed from, and it was good to see so many of their familiar faces.

But thinking of how good it was to see them inevitably brought my thoughts to those who were not there.  The groom’s mother, his uncle, a cousin, an aunt, all of his grandparents – if this was the tree of life it had certainly been through a few storms, there were branches missing.

My daughter and her two little boys sat beside me; her father’s branch had been ripped off when she was younger than they are now.  Time has passed, the tree stands strong and vital, but there is still a scar where the damage was done.

My sister, the groom’s aunt – the empty spot on the trunk where her branch was is a much newer vacancy.  It still feels odd to be with all of these people and not to have her there too.

The mother of the groom – such a lovely lady – gone too, but the crowd is dotted with her sisters and nieces.  I hear her laugh, her voice.  Without a doubt she is the most missed person of all on this day.

And yet ... I had this feeling of being surrounded, of being in a bubble of contentment and peace.  Was it my thoughts of those who were missing that stirred these feelings up?  And if so, did the feeling come from me?  Or them? 

For a moment or two their absence felt more like a presence.

There’s this children’s animated movie that came out a few years ago – Coco.  You should see it. 

When it first came out there was some controversy about whether it was appropriate for little kids; it’s about death.  But it’s not about how our North American society sees death, it’s about how the people of Mexico and other Latin American countries see it.  They keep the memories of their ancestors alive and believe that they are always close by.  In our sophisticated, North American, common sense approach, we believe that if we can no longer see our loved ones, or interact with them, then that must mean they are completely gone.  Sometimes being practical isn’t the smartest thing to be.

Of course the story line of the movie is much more involved and entertaining, and the colors they used are amazing, but the part that stays with me is the final scene where the living are having a family celebration.  Everyone there is dressed in their finest clothes, there are tables of food, and happy music, and little children run about playing ... and right in the midst of all this (although unseen) are their family dead, their ancestors, as natural a part of the scene as anyone else.

I’d like to think that’s what was happening at the wedding dance.  There was food and music and small children dancing.   I wonder if there  were a few leaves on that family tree poster that remained unsigned - well, by any ink that we could see, anyway.

BEING BUZZED

I’ve got a bit of a stubborn streak in me. 

Oh maybe ‘stubborn’ is a trifle harsh.  Let’s use the word ‘persistent’.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I can procrastinate with the best of them.  I even amaze myself at how many excuses I can come up with not to do an unpleasant task ... or even a task that is pleasant but I just don’t feel like doing.  Put these two personality traits together and you’ve got someone who can be downright determined to avoid work that they don’t want to ... yet.

My plight this week is that ‘yet’ had finally caught up with me.  My gardens are at the tipping point between ‘a terrible mess’ and ‘too far gone to even try’.  If I wanted to harvest anything – heck, if I want to be able to find anything to harvest – I have to tackle the weeds while I can still pull them out.  Another week and their roots will be wrapped around bedrock and the opportunity will be lost.

This gardening year has been quite the journey.  Right from the get-go things have not gone according to schedule.  It did not rain.  It did not rain before I planted.  It proceeded to not rain after I put seeds in the ground.  Nothing germinated.  Well, except for the stinkweed.  Apparently all stinkweed needs to germinate is the memory of moisture.  For the longest time it was the only green I had and it seemed a shame to pull it, but eventually I did.

And then I replanted the tiny seeds and counted the plants that did grow.  I had 7 peas, 12 beans, 5 beets, and 17 corn plants spread over four rows.  Every single potato I had placed in the earth came up; that’s nothing short of a miracle, even in a good year.  The only up-side to this pathetic scenario was that the weeds weren’t germinating either.  I dithered about what to do.  I could give it all a drink of well water but I was reminded that this might be making the choice of garden veggies this summer or being able to shower next winter – not something to be taken lightly.

The rains finally did come, and then Mother Nature turned up the heat.  Up came the first planting of vegetables ... and the second ... and the third!  But who could tell?  The ground was a solid carpet of pigweed and portulaca, lamb’s quarters and a million baby maple trees.  This work overload situation immediately triggered a procrastination period; why pull four inch weeds when you can put it off till they are ten inches tall?

As of this past week I have moved on.  The strawberries needed picking and since I was out there I kinda got into the groove of pulling out anything that didn’t belong with the berries.  It looked so much better from where I like to sit on my deck and admire the rows from a distance ... except that the rows didn’t really show very well in the sea of green.  I knew the time had come.

It’s always easy to identify prime weeding weather – it is at least 27 degrees with a humidity factor of 106% making it ‘feel like’ you’re going to melt somewhere between the zucchini and the zinnias.

But my ‘persistent’ streak had kicked in.  Heat and humidity be damned!  I was going to have clean rows, or die trying!  It’s been close a time or two, but I’m still among the living and I only have about one third left to go.

I am greatly aided by the aerial crop sprayer who buzzes our house at 5:00 in the morning; no need to set an alarm clock.  Then it’s breakfast and coffee and off to the trenches before the sun is too nasty.  Just so the job isn’t too overwhelming I choose how much I’m going to tackle for the morning and then proceed to ‘get down and dirty’.  The rule is I can go beyond my daily allotment but I can’t quit until at least that much is done. 

I have powered through blisters on my hoe hand.  I have to continually stop to wipe the sweat away from my eyes.  I wear a big sun hat to keep the sun from crispy frying my ears. The dirt sticks to everywhere I have applied sunscreen, but the spot I missed sizzles to a lovely shade of tomato.  The other day I was almost hit by a terrified bunny.  Actually, I never saw Mr. Rabbit but the dog loping through the corn gave me a pretty good idea what had grazed the top of my head.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that weeding the garden in a July heat wave isn’t without its risks and perils.

Once I have my persistent little brain focussed on something, though, I just don’t want to give in.  I know sunstroke is a serious thing but I just have to finish this one... last ... row.

I couldn’t tell you how many times the horse flies have had to come and save me from my folly but they did it again this morning.  I ignored the blisters and sweat and heat and the dirt and the dog and even the bunny but, just as the crop sprayer flying over the house at dawn got me out to my garden, being buzzed by a horse fly told me I was done for the day.

                                                              ANOTHER LAND LINE LOSS

The debate has raged on for years: lose the land line, or keep it.  Having been totally won over to all the goodies a cell phone and the Internet gave him the man refused to even use the phone stuck to the wall in the hallway.  I hated to give it up.

I liked the comfort of how the old fashioned receiver fit in my hand and against my ear on those long chatty calls with my sisters and friends, and how I could grip it between my jaw and shoulder if I had to peel potatoes and talk at the same time, and I liked being able to actually hang up on telemarketers; merely touching a screen just doesn’t give a person the same sense of power and defiance.  The trouble was, for the past year or so, those were the only calls that ever came in on that phone - sister calls and telemarketers.  It’s really hard to justify the bill that kept coming every month for something that we barely used.

Still, I argued.  Firstly there is the land line emergency factor.  Do you realize how useless a cell phone is if the power grid goes down?  I’m not talking about an hour here or there.  People have vehicles and generators to get them through short spans of time.  How about in a real emergency?  Something so catastrophic as to knock the power grid down for days or weeks?  Once you’re out of fuel to run your car or generator you are done – in the middle of a REAL emergency when you will need real help and communication.  Government guidelines won’t even let you set up an emergency command post unless you are equipped with a land line.

My second point of contention is also my pet peeve in life ... people who cancel their land line simply disappear.  You can’t phone them, they are not in the book.  Back in my days as a postmaster the words “this number is no longer in service” became my most frustrating issue.  How do you let someone know their parcel has timed out and is about to be sent back if they are unreachable?  People can have multiple phones on them 24/7 but unless you are one of their inner circle you have no hope of getting in touch with them.

Quietly, back on the home front, I continued to pay the bill, but eventually I decided to look into what the options were for going ‘full cell’.  Not that Sasktel wants to encourage customers to cancel any of their services but they do offer ways to help you out.  They will keep your old number for a set period of time in case you change your mind, and they will install a recording on the old number to inform callers what your new number is.  While this info was comforting I still held back.  The straw that broke the camel’s back though, was when our old phone decided to die.  How was I going to justify buying a new phone for a line we never used?

I gave him the job though.  The account was in his name and he was the one who wanted it gone so it seemed fitting.  And, I will admit I congratulated myself on avoiding the hour plus that he spent on hold to get that job done, but that little bit of self satisfaction has come back to haunt me.

I thought I had provided him with all the info he would need and how to avoid any pitfalls that may arise, but it seems there was one glitch no one saw coming.  Apparently I was a very early subscriber to email.  So long ago that my email account and the phone number it was associated with were married.  When one died, so did the other.  It might have taken me a day or two to become conscious of my lack of email, but with every passing moment since then it’s become more and more painful.

My first call to Sasktel confirmed my fears – that my problem was linked to cancelling the land line, but the gal I was talking to said “no worries” and promised it would be all fixed in five minutes.  She was too young to know what she was talking about.  The fellow I was referred to on day two of my plight was also too young to know about the old ways but knew enough to ask a senior admin.  It seems, back in the day, Sasktel would give their own admin email address to an account and then let you make up your own which they referred to as an ‘alias’.  When gal #1 ‘fixed’ my problem on my first call in everything disappeared.  My buddy from day #2 went looking for it but he couldn’t restore it in the same way.  He left me with my new account and a back door way to be able to go fetch any old emails I might want. At the time we both thought this arrangement had everything covered.

We were wrong.  I have just discovered that the complete list of email addresses in my address book have been obliterated. 

Deep sigh.

And so, should you want to get hold of me by phone the technology is in place for you to do so – NO PROBLEM.  If you ever want me to be able to email you ever again you might want to send me one so I can capture you address ....