THE KEEPERS

It’s been a thoughtful week.

My uncle passed away.  He was almost 93 years old and had lived a good, long life.  His health, and therefore his quality of life had been in significant decline in this past year.  There are all kinds of ways people rationalize this set of circumstances: “it’s a blessing”, “it was his time”, “he’s not suffering anymore”.  While all of these are strictly true, the sadness of the last goodbye is every bit as sad.  Maybe a more up-lifting approach is to be thankful that we had him for as long as we did.  It’s still sad, but helps us focus on the times we had together rather than the future we now face without him.

I know that my time this week has been spent reminiscing; revisiting the days of my childhood when he was a solid, every day presence in my life.  A few specific memories stand out of him – moments I keep close to my heart – but these memories are just the starting points for the bigger picture of those times and the people who were there, but are no longer here.

I’m in my mid sixties.  Lord only knows how this could be true, but the calendar keeps telling me the same thing.  The math works out.  Nine people call me grandma.  It’s difficult to come to grips with this when I never really aged past 26 inside my head, but times like this week do force me to confront aging on a more comprehensive level.  We – my siblings and cousins – now find ourselves very close to being the seniors of our family.  You can scoff at the idea of being in our sixties and seventies and still taking comfort that there are people we consider ‘older and wiser’ than us still on this earth, but it’s a true thing.  There is solace and consolation in knowing that we still have our elders to look up to.

In my immediate family we lost Mom and Dad the same year; Mom at Easter and Dad just before Christmas in 2004.  We were all grown and gone from home, it’s not like we were their dependants.  In fact, we all had busy lives of our own with families to care for, jobs to work at, bills to pay.

And yet, there was this unmistakable feeling of being orphaned.  Now who was I going to call to ask how long to cook the Christmas turkey?  Whose memory was I going to call on when I couldn’t quite remember which year Aunt Helen came to visit, or which neighbour it was that married so-and-so and moved out to B.C.?  Who was going to inspire me with new flowers to try in my gardens?  Over and over again during the next few years I would find myself, upon hearing of some neighbourhood news, thinking “I’ll have to call Dad.  He’d like to know that!”  Only to remember in the next instant that he wasn’t there anymore.  They were still the anchors they had always been in our lives, but the physical tie had been broken.  It leaves a person feeling adrift in the world.

It also elevated our feelings toward our aunts and uncles; we held them more dear.  They were our link to the past and each of them represented a portion of the foundation we were built on.  It’s not that they lived close and we saw them all the time, but it was comforting to know they were there.

Mom and Dad were the first of each of their families to go, but over the intervening years we have lost everyone on Mom’s side – each one leaving us a little the poorer for it.  With my Dad’s brother’s passing earlier this month my thoughts of a dwindling connection to family history have re-ignited.  That, and how dangerously close we are to being “The Elders” made even more urgent by the passing of his sister ten days later.  We are down to one uncle and two in-law aunties.  We are precariously close to elderhood.

Maybe it’s time to embrace this inevitable step, though.  What this family position really means is that we are the connecting link between a past we experienced and anyone in the present who might want to hear those stories.  As we gathered in the cemetery – thirty strong and Covid masked – to say our farewells it was reassuring to see traces of faces long gone, to see the kind eyes above the masks and the tall thin bodies, to hear Grandpa’s low voice and slow, measured speech.  Maybe we aren’t so much the elders as we are the keepers.

I kind of like the sounds of that.

 

HARNESSING FITBIT POWER

I got a Fitbit for Christmas, and as Martha Stewart used to say, that’s a good thing.

When these things first hit the market I thought they were nothing but an expensive accessory, a status symbol of sorts.  If I’m anything it’s deadly practical.  There is no way that wearing an overpriced, over glorified piece of technology on your wrist is going to make a person lose weight.  It was just one more battery to go dead.  One more slice of software to need upgrading.  One more charger to forget when you go somewhere.  One more thing that would be obsolete before you got home from the store.

All of these things are still true.  If a person is going to make a commitment to exercise more, that decision comes from their head, not their wrist.  You can’t buy your desired weight no matter how good your credit card is.

I struggle with my weight.  Well, actually, I struggle with my self image ... you know the “self” image projected on to me by movie stars, magazine covers, and fashion models.  I don’t look like them.  I might have briefly in my late teens, but since then I’ve looked like a regular human female; it’s a tough row to hoe.

I would estimate that over the past five decades I have swung from “I have to lose weight!” to “If I’m fit, what does it matter if my waist isn’t ten inches smaller than my chest and hips?” to “What I really need is to be ten inches taller!” to “I can live on 1000 calories a day.” To “This is me, just accept it!”

This past while though, as I still feel the need to be unsatisfied with my body, my focus has been more about keeping active – the old “use it or you’ll lose it” advice.  When you’re in your sixties this adage hits a lot closer to home.  Believe me, when your grand daughter wants you to make snow angels with her and your first thought is ‘if I get down there, will I be able to get back up?’ you know that the old body might need a little work.

My feelings toward Fitbits didn’t change overnight.  I guess you could say that I went from thinking them frivolous, to not having much of an opinion at all.  I’m just not the person who is going to notice if someone is wearing one, let alone be able to tell a new one from an old one – the desire for the latest fashion is lost on me.  It was a luncheon conversation with three women whose judgement I value highly that started me rethinking my stance on electronic fitness monitors.  Two of my friends already owned Fitbits and the third was preparing to buy one.  As we awaited our lunch she asked advice on what she was looking for. 

Instead of the high pressure sales pitch and the ‘can’t live without it’ propaganda, here were people whose opinions I respected talking about what they liked about their watch/fitness monitor.  Practical things like getting a buzz for texts or calls even when their phone was on mute (I didn’t even know they did that), having an accurate count of activity, being able to see charts and graphs of activity over time, and even monitoring sleep patterns.  I have to admit, I was intrigued.

Not so intrigued that I went out and bought one, though.  My cheapness still won out over my fading scepticism, but when my husband was stuck on what to get me for Christmas it was on my list.

I have to confess I really do like my new toy.  I spent Christmas morning feeding it my information so that it knew my stride length, and general unfitness level.  I even shared with it my goal weight and to its credit, it didn’t laugh.  I solemnly presided over the wi-fi marriage ceremony between my phone and watch and we have all marched forward toward 10,000 steps per day.

I say these things with self deprecation, after all it does seem like I’ve bought into this ‘owning a Fitbit will solve all your problems’ business, but it’s not working like that. 

It is working, though.  One of the goals is to do at least 250 steps per hour for nine hours of the day.  This is totally doable; easy peasy even.  And if I haven’t accomplished this at ten minutes to the hour it buzzes my wrist and tells me I have like 87 steps left.  A tiny but effective challenge to move.  It counts how many flights of stairs I do a day – again, I am challenged to see how many I can do.  And 10,000 steps amounts to only my regular day plus a two mile walk – provided the weather stays nice that isn’t even a hardship.

I stand by my mockery of an accessory being able to fix anyone’s life, that’s not what is happening here.  The decision comes from me, of course.  That’s the only way any self improvement plan can succeed.  The role of my Fitbit is making what I’m doing measurable.  I can actually see the kms I’ve walked, the stairs I’ve climbed, the minutes of cardio I’ve put in.  And, I can compare them to last week’s performance.  I am the most uncompetitive person on the planet when it comes to putting myself up against others, but me doing one better than the day before is my rendition of a win.  My progress, should I make any, will be just be between me and my Fitbit.

Maybe, by next winter I won’t have such serious reservations about snow angel activity.  I did make it up again without help – even have a picture to prove it

 

WHAT DAY IS IT?

Every day is the same.

Being the one who wakes up first, I usually roll out of bed, kick the coffee pot into gear, let the cat and dog out, and then throw a coat and boots on over my pyjamas and head over to the shop to stoke the wood burning stove.  We have our vegetables over there in an insulated room and it’s vitally important that the temperature never goes below freezing.

It doesn’t take long, and soon I’m back in the kitchen, sipping my first cup of java, and scrolling through my memories of this date on Facebook.  I’m not a fan of everything Facebook does, but I do love this feature.  It’s like having a glimpse of how the grandchildren are growing as most of my memories involve pictures of them, each photo labeled as to how many years ago it was shared.

This year though, this daily wander down memory lane has been even more important.  Each day there are new memories and comments to differentiate that day from the one before or after it. 

Here in 2020 another side effect of Covid-19 lockdown is this feeling of limbo.  Every day is the same.

Although I’ve never realized it before, I must usually gauge the Christmas season on a scale of ‘getting ready for company’ or ‘getting over company’.  Without these markers I am adrift in a series of days that just mirror each other.  And I’m not the only one who feels like this ... the other day (maybe even yesterday) my spouse asked me what day of the week it was.  My answer was “Be darned if I know!”  We had to consult our phones and a calendar so reset our place in the space/time continuum.  This is important – there are only a few days left in this disagreeable year.  I want to know when we can call out “Home Free!”

I suspect that I’m not the only one who feels this limbo-like trance.  My long winter evenings are spent watching movies, thankfully there a lot to choose from.  I’ve noticed that the conglomerates that do TV programming sort what they offer us by season, hence the war movies close to Remembrance Day and the Christmas movies throughout December. 

Their research must go a little deeper than that though, because as I scrolled through the possibilities last night Groundhog Day came up.  My first thought was not that they were getting ahead of themselves.  What I instantly thought was “You got that one right!”  I’ve been repeating the same day for ages, and I’m not even sure which day that is.

So I cling to my Facebook memories:  Six years ago this house was what in 2020 we would call a super spreader event with the entire family home for the holidays – all clustered inside the same house, even the international travellers from Australia, and contributing to the most profitable year the Redvers Coop Grocery Store ever had. 

Four years ago we had a Christmas Day blizzard and one set of grandkids got three extra days of Grandma and Grandpa before the RM graders came along and freed them.

And, dream of dreams, three years ago today we were sitting in Vancouver Airport awaiting our next flight to Sydney to spend our hottest ever Christmas in the land downunder.  Just imagine: travel, visiting, warm weather holiday in the dead of winter.  Ah!  Those were the days!

As much as I am relying on these memories to keep me grounded though, I do realize the only way to get out of this mess is to move forward.  With all the days being identical this is a tricky thing to measure – kind of like watching paint drying or grass growing – but I have come up with a plan.

The one change I have detected going on around here is that all the baking and goodies are disappearing.  I think we are down to a few mince tarts, a dozen gingersnaps, and a box of turtles chocolates (mainly because I hid them).  The butter tarts are gone, and so is the fruit cake and also the lemon cheese puff pastry.  I am sure that if I had kept strict inventory over time a person could work out a scientific formula to describe the passage of time by means of the depletion of baking.  Conversely, another formula could be developed to describe the reappearance of those calories on a person’s hips – but who really wants to get that technical?

And, if we really wanted to go long term, we could work out how long it takes for those hip and tummy calories to dissipate.  My guess might take about the same time as we will wait to get our vaccination ... June-ish.  Hopefully we are all reset back into our proper place in the space/time continuum by then.

 

COVID CHRISTMAS

And so, this is Christmas ...

Here we are in mid December in the unsettling year of 2020, coming to acceptance that just like everything else this year, Christmas will be different as well.  This may sound weird, but I can’t help but feeling that a regular Christmas – even if we could manage it – would not give what we’ve been through a fitting ending.  Maybe I’m just looking at it from the perspective of a writer, but stories need balance.  After what the world has been through in the past twelve months a ‘normal’ Christmas just doesn’t fit.

In a way it seems much longer than a year since we first began hearing about a virus problem in Wuhan, China.  In truth, we were much more focused on the fires in Australia – remember those?  That was only a year ago.

The story grew, expanding to a problem on cruise ships.  Scientists were sounding alarms but the rest of us were still thinking about taking our usual winter holiday.  That was back when being in our own ‘happy little bubble’ meant we were oblivious to what awaited us.  The word ‘bubble’ has a whole new meaning now.

2020 has enriched our everyday language with many other words seldom used previously.  Words like ‘cohort’ and ‘pandemic’ and ‘nova coronal virus’ are all words we’ve heard thousands of times since February.  We’ve also learned about PPE and respirators and essential workers.  And, lockdowns don’t always apply to a prison’s response to rioting.   And there’s a difference between ‘self isolation’ and ‘quarantine’.

The big one, though, was the implementation of the term ‘social distancing’, quickly revised to ‘physical distancing’ to try to soften the emotional isolation humanity began to feel.  In such a time of fear and sickness and so many deaths, not being able to meet, to be together to mourn, to celebrate times – both happy and sad – to share meals, to enjoy sports or movies or concerts all began to take its own toll. 

By March our world was turned upside down.  Schools – on the whole planet – were closed.  People worked from home ... if they could work at all.  Some had no jobs to go to.  Some had to quit jobs to stay home and home school their kids.  Some tried to do both.  For months we banged pots and pans to thank health care workers for their work and sacrifice.

Travellers were trapped in foreign lands with no flights to get them home.  Some were trapped on luxurious cruise ships, Covid stalking them from cabin to cabin with no port of call willing to let their ship dock.  Hospitals over flowed.  Field hospitals sprang up.  Morgue trucks lined up to store the daily tragedies.  Weirdly we all became avid fans of government announcements – who saw that coming?

Our shopping habits have changed.  Our holiday plans are different.  Visiting family and friends – especially out of province – is totally modified.  The ‘old fashioned’ pastimes of baking and gardening have gone through a huge revival.  Golfing and fishing are in and baseball and hockey are out.  2020 has tipped us out of our comfortable boat and made us learn to swim in these uncertain waters.

And so, this is Christmas 2020.  Our bubbles are smaller than ever.  There will be no big turkey dinners or family get togethers.  Our Christmas Eve church services will have to be online, and carolling only outside and far apart.  Zoom will go from work to play as we ‘meet’ over the holidays to share our stories and offer virtual hugs to our loved ones.  A ‘normal’ Christmas it will not be.

But whatever we do with this season will fit our story.  Personally, I have just finished decorating my house – it doesn’t look like any other year.  My tree is smaller and the decorations I used are much less than usual, partly because we will be the only ones to see them, but also because why not try something new?  Our menu will be different too – who has ever heard of a turkey for two?  The important thing is that we will stay safe until our turn at vaccination and the return to a time when Christmas can indeed be ‘normal’.

 

REASON FOR THE SEASON

The whole world seems a little bit wonky at the moment.  We head toward the holiday season unsure of how that will look by December 25^th.  Will we be able to celebrate with our families?  Or will 2020 be a quiet affair, each of us celebrating in our own homes and hoping that the Internet can handle all the Zoom calls?  The happy, sweet innocence of Christmas 2019 seems so much longer ago than a mere twelve months, and the tantalising promise of a safe, vaccinated celebration in 2021 seems too tenuous to trust at the moment.  Here we are – stuck in the middle.

Some things never change though.   This past week or so I’ve started seeing Facebook memes asserting that everyone must say “Merry Christmas” because any other greeting this time of year are fighting words.  This implies that Christians somehow own December, and I think to myself that this whole our-way-or-the-highway attitude is a most un-Christ-like way to treat our fellow men and women.

Did you know that December 25^th is a made up birthdate for the baby Jesus?  People in the Roman Empire picked that day to celebrate the Christ child’s birth almost 400 years after the fact, and not because they were making an educated guess about when it actually happened, but because all the pagan peoples they were trying to convert to their Christian beliefs already had a huge feast and festival at that time of year.  It was proving to be much easier to insert themselves into the pagan celebration than it was to try to banish it.  True story.

Bringing a tree into the house?  Decorating?  Feasting and gift giving?  Lighting candles?  Burning a Yule log?  All of these things were ways humans celebrated long before Christianity came along.  And what they were celebrating, you ask?  Why are there so many ‘competing’ holidays at this time of the year? 

The answer is something every civilization in the Northern Hemisphere has had in common since the dawn of time: the winter solstice.  Imagine living at a time when the daily loss of daylight was unexplained, when you had no supply of artificial light like we do today, when your very food sources – life itself - were directly tied to the sun and the seasons – would you not celebrate when the days began lengthening out again? 

The whole point of celebrating is to be joyous together about something special we believe in, even if our beliefs aren’t exactly the same.  And yet, here we are in the 21^st Century exerting exclusive privilege on a date and a season we borrowed from others.  It seems like a most un-Christ like thing to do.

It’s not the baby Jesus himself that is the ‘reason for the season’ but what his birth symbolized – the beginning of the New Testament ... forgiveness ... love of our fellow man.  Arguing over the proper response to seasonal greetings cheapens what should be Christianity’s most sacred duty – to love our neighbours as ourselves.

If we need something to say that conveys the real meaning of Christmas, let’s follow the angels’ lead and simply greet people with a smile and say “peace on earth!”

It works for everybody.

TOO MUCH COVID TIME ON MY HANDS

 It is said that there are two universal languages in this world: music and mathematics. I can do neither. I can’t read a note of music – all those lines and dots and artistic symbols. I know they tell a story but I can’t read it. I am confined to just listen; that’s why I play the radio, not the piano or guitar.

 It’s even worse with math. There was no one slower at speed math quizzes in Grade one. There was no one more devastated in Grade three when we were told we were about to up our game and meet multiplication and division. And I can scarcely find words to describe my dismay the first day of Mr. Johnson’s algebra class – as if working with numbers wasn’t bad enough! Now they wanted to throw random letters into the mix. 

 The moment I heard tell of a thing called calculus where what I had learned in Grade one – that 2 plus 2 equals 4 – wasn’t necessarily true, I quit school, got married and raised children. You know; took the easy way out.

 It’s strange how things come back at you though. All this Covid alone time has got me contemplating things like the meaning of life, the insanity of U.S. politics, and the space/time continuum, to name a few unknowables. This mind journey seems to have jostled some long unused brain cells into activity.

 

It was probably 1970 when Mr. Johnson began his quest to teach me algebra, something I was certain I would never use again in my life. Karma, of course, has a very long memory and these past few days I’ve been trying to come up with the terms he tried to plant in my memory banks. According to him the language of algebra provided a way to express mathematical ideas in the same way we used English to tell stories. Obviously I prefer writing stories to anything to do with numbers so I ask you, why am I trying to recall algebra terms in 2020? And what on earth am I going to do with them if they do come back to me? 

 I think it started one day when I was trying to describe how this prolonged Covid tourniquet on our lives felt. Something like: “It’s just one long constant. What we need is more variables.” (Well, actually, I would have used the word ‘variety’, but it means the same thing). No doubt it was the use of the words ‘constant’ and ‘variable’ in such close proximity that stirred the algebra class memories. From that point on it became a challenge to see what else I could unearth from those dusty memory files. What else had Mr. Johnson managed to get through my math fog? Turns out not much: I had to ask Google to shine some light on the rest.

 Apparently ‘variable’ is an algebraic term but it doesn’t mean variety, it means an unknown – those nasty little ‘x’s and ‘y’s that really represent a question mark. A ‘constant’ on the other hand, are numbers that we do know, unless of course they are right beside a variable in which case they become known as ‘coefficients’. My former distrust of algebra instantly re-gelled.

 There were other terms too: monomial, binominal, trinomial, and polynomial – all sounding like some kind of sketchy living arrangements if you ask me.

 The one word that felt like I had hit pay dirt with though, was ‘exponent’. Now here was a term that did indeed seem useful in expressing life with Covid. An exponent is when they put that tiny little number at the top right hand of either a constant or a variable. It expresses how many times you have to multiply the number or letter by itself to get the value it represents. And although I do grasp this concept and could even articulate it on paper, don’t go getting the crazy idea I will ever use this knowledge in my daily life. I do concede that rocket scientists may feel differently. 

 On the other hand, the language of algebra has given me a way of expressing the Covid Effect – a term I have just coined. It is a way of describing how our world has been altered since Covid came along. Remember the regular level of frustration back in the old days at not having anywhere to go? That was just plain old-fashioned frustration. In 2020 we are faced with this same frustration, but now we can’t go anywhere. No shopping, no leisurely, luxurious restaurant dinners, no tropical holidays or even weekend getaways – this is frustration to the power of, oh I don’t know, maybe 10? 

 Likewise, it can describe stupidity ... you know, toilet paper panic with the exponent of at least 7. 

 Or planting your first, or the biggest, garden you’ve ever planted because of food insecurity – something you’ve never experienced before but reached an exponent of 5 by May.

 I sure hope Mr. Johnson is proud of me, unearthing all these terms after so many years; and I was so sure I’d never have a use for it! I wonder if I can come up with a few chemistry or physics principles too? You know: and put Mrs Mitten in shock.

FANCY SCHMANCY If you could see me now! I sit in a pretty, tidy, organized office the likes of which this place has never known before. What started out with the solitary job of changing the flooring in this room but ramped up to it-could-use-a-coat-of-paint-too-while-we’re-at-it kind of adventure, finally morphing into an all out makeover with beautiful new office furniture and organizers, compliments of my two daughters who did their Christmas giving early this year. I surmise that the cramped space and towering clutter that I normally work in got to them, and my desire to get rid of filthy carpeting was their chance to redo the whole room. I appreciate the gesture, truly I do, but I have serious trepidation that my personal Muse might actually be powered by clutter. What then girls? What if I can’t write with a clear desk? What then? I enjoy sitting here, though. The walls are a muted yellow that amplifies the light from the north-facing window and sets off the dark wood of the furniture. The floor looks and feels clean – I’m sure it’s been a decade since that could be said. The few papers that are out at the moment have a place to go back to, the pens are in a pen holder, the scissors and stapler in another, note pads in a third. The most valuable book on the farm, the one I call my ‘Sh*t I’ll Never Remember Book’ stands at the ready to tell me what my Wayfair password is. It used to take me a five minute search to locate that sucker. Mind you, it is so scribbled up that it still takes me so long to find the right page that the webpage shuts itself down before I get back to the buying business. Sometimes I think I should copy all that info out nice and clear, and then I think that would be too easy for anyone who wanted my secret information. The way it is now, it’s pretty much written in code. Better to leave it that way. In a way this is an example of clutter working for me, not against me. It remains to be seen if this clutterless environment will inspire me to get more done. So far I have managed a couple emails – but they had a deadline. I usually do okay if I have a deadline. And while I’m waiting for replies to those communications I’ve spent a few minutes scrolling through Facebook and played a game or two of Mah-jong ... that’s totally standard office activity for me, too. That’s a good sign. And, I am catching up this poor neglected blog. I tell you, this past month with my computer in another room and unconnected to the Mother Interweb, life has been very detached. Typing on an iPad screen is not optimum, I’m so glad to be back. I guess that’s a good sign, as well. I have my Christmas letter nearly written – that’s on course with other years. I’m working on the local Tourism update for the Provincial Tourism guide for 2021; another annual project on track. Although there was near record turnout for the RM election for Reeve last week I was not the winner. Part of me is still dealing with disappointment, but another part has already moved on. I have this book I’m going to write. This will be the real test. I seem to be able to manage short term tasks in a non-clutter environment, but what about a whole book? Maybe I need scraps of paper scribbled with ideas for plot lines or character flaws? I defiantly require my name and age index to keep my minor characters straight. And how many times have I worked out the timeline to make people fit their history? You have no idea how tricky fiction is until you start writing it! Thus are my worries. My hope is that my Muse and I can cope in this pretty, tidy office until either we get used to it, or just like the Charlie Brown character Pigpen, the clutter follows me around and settles where ever I am. Give me a month and we’ll see if I just end up in a classier case of clutter.