Paper Girl

Woke up at 6:15am with a faint headache and an uneasy tummy mostly due to too much red wine the night before and somewhat due to the crappy sleep of peri-menopause. About the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed on this dark blustery cold winter morning and walk around with a newspaper bag (could have used a "paper bag" though) and deliver the thin news of the day. But I had promised my teenage son a sleep-in so me and my two university degrees are off to work, not the kind of work I had imagined years ago as a young excited student but a job nonetheless. Once out the door the maritime bite blew the crust out of my eyes and blew the fog out of my brain. I walked with my dog and my husband (who does the other part of the route) on light powder snow that in conjunction with the wind, pushed us around the corner. As we separated I acknowledged again how very precious he (the husband, not the dog!) is to me, how I notice the increasing number of grey hairs every time he gets a hair cut. As I walked over to the apartment building I was warmed by the Christmas lights shining through the blowing snow and I became okay with the fact that I was completely alone. I walked up and down the stairs, enjoying the tacky decorations and thinking about who lived behind those doors. Did they realize that I pay attention to a paper not picked up from the previous day and wonder if they're okay? Outside again I noticed some angel figures had blown over and briefly thought about righting them, then realized that they had their own guardians who would fix them, I don't have to fix everything myself.
Having completed the circle I'm walking back to my house I look for the footprints of me, Mike and Bailey but in the fifteen minutes or so they have almost been obliterated. I look again, there they are, so faint. Walking up my driveway I look at my cozy love filled house and I'm so grateful for this moment. I take one last look down the street - the Christmas lights so beautiful, swaying in the early morning light; it's no coincidence that we put lights out at this most dark time of year. There is always a light in the darkness, sometimes hidden from immediate sight, sometimes requiring a second or third look, sometimes requiring an early morning foray into the wilderness. I nod my head in thanks, go inside and go back to my warm inviting bed.

Angels in our Midst

Every once in a while someone does something really kind for no attention, no applause, just doing it because it's the right thing to do. When I was a young twenty something I was swimming across the lake at Lumden's Dam, a man-made lake near our home. An older couple in a row boat insisted on staying with me the whole time in spite of my youthful protestations that I was fine, I was strong, I could do it by myself, the silly stuff you say when you are young and immortal. They very kindly brushed off my "thanks really, I'm okay" and rowed with me and possibly avoided a tragedy. My mother would shoot me if she heard this story, she always told us to swim along the shoreline and not across the water.


Several months ago I was in a situation where I had to leave the house quickly and get to a place where I had to sit in the car and wait. I was really really thirsty and to my amazement a man, a fire fighter, knocked on my car window and handed me a bottle of water. How did he know? It was 2:30 in the morning.


Yesterday Mike and I took our newly minted eighteen year old daughter to the airport to fly by herself to Japan. As we hovered in the background and watched her check in I noticed that the woman behind the counter leaned towards Allie and smiled at her in a truly genuine manner. I could tell from the woman's body language that she had just processed the fact that this young girl was flying around the world by herself. This simple, subtle act of kindness actually broke me up a bit (well I was feeling a bit fragile anyway). 


Acknowledging these angels and others is important for me as I work on developing a sense of gratitude and gratefulness.

Obsolete

Today I feel sad because it feels like everything I love is obsolete: small bookstores, quality products that are meant to last, elderly people, face to face teaching. At age 47 it feels like the world is slipping away on a technological tsunami where fewer and fewer people control a larger and larger share of power/money/control. We recently watched "The Social Network" and the last point made is the billions of dollars Zuckerberg is worth, far far too much for any one person. What brought on this melancholy was the realization that one of my favourite little shops, a camera shop independently owned, has closed its doors for good after 33 years of business. I was forced to go to one of those dreaded soul-sucking big box stores to have a picture printed off, the colours were fake, the process unsatisfactory.

On the other hand, technology has democratized our political systems and countries like Egypt and Libya can rise up against dictators who have been in power for far too long. Through twitter and facebook millions of voices can be heard - that's never a bad thing.
But for today my question is "Where is the beauty?"
This picture is one of those happy intersections of bad housekeeping and good timing. The statue was a gift from my brother, I've had her for years. The cobweb is the result of, oh I don't know, spiders and dust and whatever cobwebs are made of. It makes it look like she is crying. We'll say that she's crying for the state of the world, but at the same time it's actually kind of funny that the spiders created this image. Sometimes in big box worlds and cookie cutter buildings and homes we have to look a little harder to find the beauty - it's still there.