PUBLIC PRIVATE SECRET

A while ago I read an excerpt from a book on Jackie Kennedy Onasis where she was quoted saying that she had three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.  I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but don’t we all?

Not that my life in any way compares to that of a world-famous woman such as herself – and I wouldn’t trade places with her for any price – but what she said perfectly fits how I see myself. 

There is the public Jocelyn who you will see out and about in stores, at the post office, at public functions.  I’ve also written a newspaper column for a local audience for years, candidly telling stories of life in our house to the point where people who read them think they are being told the whole story.  Because my writing style is relaxed and open there is an illusion of full disclosure.  Believe me, the line may be blurred at times, but there is always a line I don’t cross.  Public is public, private is private.

Occasionally I do venture into writing about what I think – my private side.  These are the more thoughtful pieces.  I guess it could be said that my public side strives to entertain while my private side wants to make the reader think, and I’m willing to let enough of my inside voice speak to accomplish that goal.  Mostly though, I am the same as everyone else.  We tend to keep our private selves at home and share our idiosyncrasies with only our family and close friends.

Then there’s our secret self that only we know.

Think of it this way:  the public you sings a song out loud for all to hear, the private you has told a few friends that it’s your favourite song, but only the secret you knows why the song holds so much special meaning.  Everyone sees the public you, a few people know the private you, the secret you is invisible.

Or maybe not.

Last week I was in Regina doing some shopping.  Just wandering around a Walmart Supercenter with a list that took me to what seemed like every corner of the store.  Eventually I had crossed off all the items I was looking for and it was time to find the checkout and exit, but this wasn’t my regular Walmart and I was lost.

I was in unfamiliar territory, disoriented, dealing with too many foreign landmarks, and trying to make sense of the various signs along the walls.  I just wanted out of the maze.

If I would have thought about it, I’m sure I would have believed it was the public me standing there with my shopping cart.  Or maybe a combination of the public/private me.  But it seems that the secret me must have shown through.

“You look like you could use some help.”

A lady with kind eyes, a caring smile, and her own shopping cart pulled me back into my day with her suggestion.

Of course, I immediately said I was fine. 

That’s what a person does, right?  No matter whether we are, or not?  Besides, I had finally spotted the checkout sign.

But as she walked away I remembered the warmth she had spoken with, and how she had worded her offer.  Somehow she had seen all of me.

In hindsight I wish I had thanked her and invited her for a cup of coffee.  I have a feeling that her secret self and mine might have a lot in common.

 

ONE MORE BUCKET LIST CHECK OFF

When you get to be my age you find that you have assembled a bit of a Bucket List.  You know: things that you would like to do before you ‘kick the bucket’.

Some people are organized enough to write a formal list on paper while others might read about an adventure and just say to themselves “I always wanted to do that someday.”  Either way, it amounts to the same thing … time is marching on.  If you’re going to do it, you best get on it.

For instance, throughout all of my working years I envied the people who could spend their days working in their yard and gardens.  I worked fulltime and squeezed in raising and feeding kids and tried to help out as a farm wife in my ‘spare’ time.  I was lucky if the grass got mowed and the peas got picked.  I don’t know that retirement should be counted as a bucket list item but it is what has allowed me to realize the pretty yard we live in now.  This earns it a big Bucket List check mark from me.

If it were up to me, we would travel a lot more than we do.  In that way, in our marriage we do not have compatible bucket lists.  On the other hand, because our kids feel the need to live on other continents and hold our grandchildren hostage, he will leave the farm for them.  We have visited the Forbidden Palace in Beijing and climbed the Great Wall in China.  We have also collected sea shells along amazing beaches and camped at the edge of the Outback in Australia.  I’ve dreamed of seeing Greece too but my trip to Croatia last fall was pretty close so I’ll call that one crossed off.

Not everything has to be that big of a deal though.  There are also much more reasonable requests.

Back when Craven became a thing I wanted to go so badly.  I think it was a residual regret from being too young to experience Woodstock.  There was an (underdeveloped) piece of my brain that romanticized extremely loud music, crowds of intoxicated people wallowing around in mud, and no way to escape the hordes until you could finally make it to the road out.  The news reels of the intoxicated/loud/mud/crowds have helped me get over this little bit of insanity – mostly.

Anymore it has been scaled back to a much tamer version and much closer to home.  There was still mild curiosity to see what a music festival would be like.  You know, just so that I could say “Been there.  Done that.”

It came to pass last Christmas, when my husband was desperate to find a gift for me our daughter convinced him to buy tickets to the Bengough Gateway Festival.  She would take their camper and we would all go together.  You have to understand what a special gift this was … he’s not much of a camper, he detests loud music, and he doesn’t like leaving home.  On the up side, his sister and nephew live in Bengough to visit, and he would be able to hang out with his grandkids.  The part about leaving hay laying on the ground to go holiday for three days didn’t rear its ugly head till the week we had to go.  He went anyway, amazingly enough (grandkids are like a trump card in the game of life.)

How was it, you ask? 

The weather was stinking hot and the skies were smoky.  The genre of music was all over the place so there was something for everyone.  There were food trucks and face painters and balloon animal artists and vendors and a car show which all pulled together to give it a carnival feel.  We were camping with some of my favourite people, got to spend time with the Bengough relatives, and I even ran into someone from my Canada Post past.  We took the kids out to explore Castle Butte and I was also gifted with a small rock for my collection from this iconic place – a family tradition.  It was a good weekend.

I’m not sure what the next item on my Bucket List will be.  It’s funny, as much as it’s fun to get away for a bit, the best part of any trip is returning home.  Besides, he has hay to bale and I have peas and beans to pick. 

              In closing I just have to say Kudos to the community of Bengough.  I have been part of planning much smaller events and could see the staggering amount of work that goes into this festival.  Everything from turning a field into a campground right down to surveying out lots and flagging off the fire lanes to run through it, all the way to the gal who would be cleaning the campers that local folks donate for the musicians to use while they were there.  Some jobs are visible but a lot of them aren’t.  I am in awe of the whole spectrum of volunteers, from the top organizer right through to the folks up at 5:00 a.m. wiping down the beer garden tables to get ready for the pancake breakfast.                                               

              You people are amazing!

 

 

TO THE WIND

There is a painting hanging in our porch.  It’s not a scenic landscape or a family portrait or even a still life.  If you need a label I guess it would be best described as a ‘thought provoker’.

I’ve had more than one criticism of the subject matter.  Not everyone would hang a painting of a few dandelions gone to seed in their house, but I did.  You see, these dandelions don’t stand alone.  There is also the message “Some see a weed, some see a wish” under where the tiny parachute-like seeds are letting go to drift on the wind.  As much as I don’t appreciate that my lawn is yellow with them in June every year, there’s still the whimsical little girl in me who likes to believe in magic and wishes, and being reminded of this as we leave and enter our house seems to be the right frame of mind.

This time of year, with the school year ending and graduations being celebrated, the concept of seeds scattering to the wind seems especially poignant.  They were born here, grew here, bloomed here, and over the last few years have matured (we hope) to the point where further growth requires that they take on new challenges.  They don’t all move in the physical sense to new addresses but their lives expand to involve jobs, relationships, travel.  Some find their new ground to put down roots right away, some drift on the wind for much longer.  Some stay close to home, some circle the globe.

The opposite of ‘scattering to the wind’ is happening in our community this weekend – the multiples of generations who have scattered to the winds have been invited back to their roots to share stories, renew friendships, and revisit memories – some of the most wonderful human experiences.  Everyone will return to their daily lives afterwards but for a few days they will touch base with their roots.  Sometimes seeing life through the lens of your personal history promotes new growth too, I wish a most wonderful weekend to everyone.

This summer is a time of some serious comings and goings for our family.  In less than a month we will say goodbye for a couple years to a daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons as they move to South Africa for work.  In the intervening time before they go they will spend as much cousin time as possible at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm and we will all try not to think about how much they will have grown by the time they can do it again.  There are big adventures awaiting and we plan to go share some with them in their new home.  We are counting on these seeds circling back in due time, although with this kind of experience so early in their lives it is quite possible that Africa will only whet the boys’ appetite for more.  Their seeds, once they are ripe, may travel even farther yet.

This is also the summer when one of our seeds returns from Australia – almost.  We have a grandson enrolling in a college in B.C. on a volleyball scholarship.  We have an Air B&B booked for a week in August to spend some precious family time with him and his father as he gets in touch with his Canadian side.  Vancouver is still a long way from Saskatchewan but at least getting there doesn’t require a passport and 24 hours travel time.

My ‘weed or wish’ painting has a few other symbols to fulfill its promise of good fortune.  The artist (a talented friend) also added the silhouette of two hummingbirds as she knows how I love them, followed by a trail of tiny loose feathers which symbolize gifts.  All of this on a humble background of rough barn board and painted in low-key colours.  It is not meant to excite the senses or dazzle with flamboyant colour.  Rather, it highlights the idea of a ‘cup half full’ and an attitude of ‘what might come next’.  Originally it was commissioned to hang in another room in my house but both the painting and its concept were too large for anywhere else than where people enter into, or take their leave of, our home.

Some see weeds.

I see wishes.

 

YET

I remember, about a million years ago, when I brought my first baby home from the hospital, how I was overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising a new human being.  The weight of getting it right, of feeding her the right diet, of making sure she got the right balance of exercise and education, of tending to her emotional needs, of teaching her the concepts of right and wrong, and most importantly – not biting poor little Robbie Fitzpatrick every time she saw him. 

Well, I doubted I was up to the task of child rearing.

I’ve often thought that it is lucky that babies tend to happen with very little planning.  If we parents knew what we were letting ourselves in for and gave creating a baby even an hour’s worth of forethought the human race would have died out back when we still lived in caves.

But, being new to the game and wanting to do my best I got my hands on the parenting book everyone was talking about; Doctor Benjiman Spock’s Baby and Child Care.  I know I read it from cover to cover, and I’m sure little Robbie’s mom and I discussed it over coffee many times but all I really remember about it now is that I stopped hanging on his every word when a story circulated that his son had ended up in jail.  So much for advice from the experts.  (I just looked it up, the story was not true, but my trust in him had been tarnished so his book got shelved.) 

My toddler eventually quit biting Robbie.  If I remember right the cure was for him to bite her back.

Over my child-rearing years I did read other advice books and columns but mostly I relaxed into the job with the philosophy of ‘trust your gut’, which is quite ironic considering that in my research on Doctor Spock I discovered that his main advice to new parents was to ‘trust your instincts’.  I guess his book had a lasting effect on me after all. 

There is only one other article that stands out in my memory.  I must have been raising teenagers by this time and the writer was talking about how difficult and also important it is to have rules.  And how the more rigid the rules are the greater the likelihood of failure.  She used the example of a game of tiddlywinks where you use one small plastic disc to move another one by pressing down on its edge.  If you press lightly it only flips a little distance, but if you apply a lot of force you might not ever find that disc again.  So it is with kids – apply too much force and you drive them away.  I don’t know why but that one always stuck with me.  You can take what you want from this … one of my kids lives in Australia and another is headed to Africa for a couple years.  I don’t think it’s related to tiddlywinks.

Regardless, I have moved on to grandparenting now.  It is absolutely no easier on the nerves to watch my kids raise their kids.  The challenges are the same, the stimuli of phones and computers and the Internet are everywhere, and the stakes are every bit as high.  All you want to do is raise a caring, confident, responsible, kind human being.  It’s so much hard work!

But, every-once-in a-while a true parenting nugget of wisdom comes along and you just have to appreciate its simplicity.

While I was visiting with my daughter and her kids on the weekend we went to a playground and she and her son were playing catch.  She was trying to teach him how to improve his throw but he told her “That’s as far as I can throw it.”

“Yet.” she said.  “That’s as far as you can throw it, yet.”

See the difference? 

By adding that simple, tiny, three letter word on at the end you have taken a statement of self-limiting acceptance and opened the door to possibility.  From a statement that sounds like defeat, into plan to do better.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen three letters – y-e-t - work so much magic before.  Who knew that synonyms for yet were hope, confidence, courage, inspiration, optimism, promise, and potential? 

Whatever we can’t do becomes a goal to work towards when you add ‘yet’.

This is not only my new go-to for parenting advice … but for life in general.

 

BITTER SWEET

I think I’ve told you this before: my favourite word is ‘serendipity’.

I’ve been writing all my life, beginning with letters my cousin and I used to exchange, and then other pen pals I had during my school years.  I’ve written journals too, it just feels good for me to put my thoughts down on paper. 

I suppose some people would call me a nerd and others might think I’m a bit obsessed but words and language and punctuation and syntax; they call to me, fascinate me, intrigue me. 

My dad once told me that they thought I was deaf as a toddler because I didn’t talk (hard to imagine now, I know).  They even had my hearing tested but I was fine.  Eventually they realized that as I played I would practise words quietly to myself – I wasn’t deaf, I was shy and didn’t want to say something the wrong way. 

I still hate being wrong, just ask my husband.  Luckily it hardly ever happens.

I also remember my grandmother (a woman of words herself) looking me in the eye when I was probably 7 or 8 and telling me that she could see I had a book in me because of the way I loved to use language.

I tell you this to show that my love of words is life-long, and as I said, ‘serendipity’ is a favourite.

‘Poignant’ is another.

Back in the innocent happiness of last fall, while I was waiting in an airport for a flight to a wonderful holiday, I went looking for a book to read on the plane.  There happened to be a buy two for $40.00 deal so that’s what I did.  One was a book I had been meaning to read since it had come out and the other looked okay-ish.  At the time I thought it was a love story.

Fast forward to the reality that is the of spring 2024.  I finally finished the first book and decided to pick up the second one.  It’s called Bitter-Sweet. It’s not a love story, after all.

Not only that, it’s not my kind of book at all.  If I had paid more attention in that airport book store I never would have bought it, but here’s the thing … Serendipity must have whispered to me “This one is for you” and I listened.

In this book the author, Susan Cain, explores personality types, citing many studies, interviewing many experts, and backs her theories up with anecdotes – definitely not my choice in reading material.  And yet, by page 5 I knew I would read the whole thing; she was talking to me.  Or rather, she was talking about me.

This is over simplifying the book but Bitter-Sweet tries to describe the personality type that sees/feels/embodies happy and sad simultaneously, or maybe better put, people who experience sad but use that experience to grow it into something good, or even joyful.  Her examples often cite great works of art or music like the work of Leonard Cohen and Beethoven.

Obviously I am not in that league, but I immediately recognised my life-long thoughts and philosophies in how she was describing others.  In her intro she lists several things bitter-sweet people have in common but the one that claimed me with the most power was when she asked if the work ‘poignant’ ‘resonated’ with me.  This is the perfect way to explain how that word affects me.   

I recognise that this is the perfect book for me to be reading at this time in my life.  I also understand that serendipity saw to it that I would have it when I needed it.

The next chapter is “What is sadness good for?”

I hope I can turn it into something good.

 

SOME DAYS

There was a friendly reminder on Facebook this morning that the deadline for submitting to Covering the Corner was coming up.  My first reaction was “Oh no.  Not this time.  Not this month.”  My style is to write what I think, and what I’m thinking these days is much too personal.  I would sit this one out.

But a seed had been planted.  My mind began organizing an outline, picking and choosing what needed to be said, sorting through the words that would say it best. 

This mind exercise was a breath of fresh air, actually.  Writing is therapy for me and putting my thoughts down on paper might promote healing.  I don’t know.  It’s worth a try. 

I will see how it goes.  If you are reading this I have decided it is worthy of sharing. 

We are almost a month into our family trauma.  We have worked our way through the ritual of planning Mitchell’s funeral, comforted and strengthened to share this burden with family, friends and others.  We are honoured and thankful that so many people care. 

It has been reassuring to make contact with his online friends.  He’d told me lots of times how close their friendships were, talking and coaching each other as they played.  As these people from far and wide posted their memories and impressions of him on a page they created for that very purpose, it was obvious they knew the same Mitchell we knew and would miss him as we do.  It seems alien to my old-fashioned brain that your can form powerful relationships over the Internet, but our hometown son travelled to Texas for one friend’s Grandpa’s funeral, to North Carolina with a bunch of buddies and ended up helping with hurricane clean-up while they were there, and he even drove to Edmonton to be groomsman for another friend a few years ago.  He seems to have coloured outside the regular lines with his life, and he would be proud to hear me say that. 

Counting the number of one’s days is a poor method of measurement.  You can live 9 decades and have nothing to show for it, or just 9 years and be loved by all who knew you.  We are not the only ones who are missing him: his co-workers, his customers, his close-knit group of D&D friends.  His absence leaves a gaping hole in our days.  

We don’t get to pick how long we are here, and we foolishly behave like we have endless tomorrows.

I don’t know if I’m just overly sensitive to such stories, but in the past few days I’ve heard of two more un-fore-see-able deaths of people much younger than I am.  People just scooped up out of their lives while supper was cooking.  Leaving those who love them reeling with shock and sorrow.  It’s not that I would wish this upon anyone else but it does help put the trauma in perspective.  These things happen every day.  Certainly we mourn our dead but there are also new babies to rejoice over born every day.

Time moves forward.  The world rolls on.

How are we doing? 

Well, some days are not so good.  Some days, not so bad. 

Humanity is a blessed thing.  Beginning with our close circle of friends and family, then widening outwards to include the immediate community of Redvers with all the food and gifts and thoughtfulness they have offered, and then stretching even further to encompass those we don’t really know but who have reached out to us because they have suffered similar losses and therefore extend to us priceless empathy and understanding – all of you are helping to steady us in this storm. 

We thank you.

 

FOR THE GIRLS

‘A woman’s biological clock’ is a term we’ve cooked up in this day and age when women are trying to cram two lifetimes (career and having a family) into one lifespan.  Whether they are sitting in their fancy CEO corner office or at home rocking a newborn to sleep they can hear that darned clock ticking away time whizzing by on the other end of their dreams.  There are only some many ‘hours’ on any given clock.

Let’s go all retro here and imagine one of those old-fashioned wall clocks with the numbers from 1 to 12 arranged around the outside edge.  Let’s say that we come into existence at 12:01- our first ‘time stamp’.  That’s the moment when our biological clock actually begins ticking.  We are brand-spanking new and our time has just begun. 

We while away our childhoods doing kid stuff until about 4:15 when puberty kicks in whether we like it or not.  Suddenly the ‘storks bring babies’ story gets updated to a much more preposterous account of where babies come from, and life gets real.  Talk about the truth being stranger than fiction.

So, from 4:15 to about 7:30 we can produce babies.  That’s nice.  Most of us choose to do that.  Some of us don’t.  For some there is no choice.  But the clock goes on ticking regardless.

On about 7:15 the government takes a sudden interest in us.  Since we’ve wrapped up that baby making business we aren’t checking in with our health care providers on a regular basis anymore and studies have shown that it’s more successful (and therefore cheaper) to correct what can go wrong with our ‘clock parts’ if you catch the malfunction at the very start.  We get letters inviting us to various checkups. 

We look at our clocks and think to ourselves “Well, I kinda want to be around to hold grandbabies and great grandbabies.  If I want to make it all the way to 11:59 I better keep up on my maintenance.”  And obediently we make that call.

Now, as much as the stories of childbirth filled us with apprehension before we actually participated in the sport, the stories about mammograms run a close second.  Unless you enjoy having a total stranger (probably with cold hands) occupy your personal space, manipulate certain sensitive body parts into weird positions and then flatten them like pancakes, don’t expect this to be a pleasant experience.  On the other hand, if you and the technician both have a healthy sense of humour, it’s not so bad.

Whether you like it or hate it though, expect another invitation in two years.  That’s the way this thing rolls.

For the first few times I did exactly what the letter said to do … I called for the appointment and diligently showed up for it.  All by myself out a sense of duty.  Then a bunch of us got smart.  We now make it a girl’s day for ‘the girls’, if you get what I mean.

Life is too short not to have fun.  Our clocks are ticking, after all! 

We call ourselves Breast Friends (or Boob Buddies) and we book the whole day off to do some shopping, treat ourselves to a meal out, and with laughter and conversation turn a necessary but uncomfortable clinical procedure into a much anticipated fun day.  In fact, we double the fun by getting together to make our appointments as they all have to be made on the same phone call so that we are scheduled back-to-back.

On our way home from 2024’s adventure it was decided that two years was too long, that we could plan a Girl Day without including the gal on the mammogram bus.  By the time we got home we had adjusted our plans to twice a year instead of every second year.

No one knows how close we are to midnight.  For all I know my hour hand might be almost perpendicular.  My Breast Friends and I have decided to pay more attention to the minute hand seeping past all those shorter intervals between the numbers.