Gratitude

I titled this post appropriately. Because honestly? Even through the worst of times we can seek out the little things that make life a journey of gratitude if we seek out the slivers like slashes of sunshine seeping into a cloudy day. Always look for them. They are there. 

I remember hosting a dear friend who was older than me, who stayed with me at my lovely home around the bay. She brought her daughter with her. Her only child who was approximately fifty to her seventy-five. What blew me away was the tenderness exhibited by her daughter towards her mother. Daughter treated her like a precious jewel without being nauseatingly solicitous or patronizing in any way. I thought to myself - oh to have such a relationship with my own daughter.

Moving on approximately fifteen years. And here I am facing many health challenges and my daughter has quietly stepped up to the plate and she is exactly the same as Shirley, the daughter of my dear friend, Laura, who passed away a few years ago in her eighties. Daughter is with me through all the tests, the lab work, the X-rays, the consults. Asking questions, reporting symptoms I have forgotten or thought inconsequential. Officially, there is no real prognosis apart from an enlarged heart and some shadowy bits on lungs, which could be congestion, but no one, has as yet,identified, as my internist is unexpectedly away and moved my appointment to May 22nd.

Meanwhile, true friends have stepped up to the plate and check-in and remind me to reach out for help any time of day or night. Support by digital means from afar is never, ever taken for granted, either. 

All in all, it remains up to me to reach out to others (always a challenge for me - eldest of 6 and the one in charge, so asking for help is an alien concept.

After a day fraught with challenges, Daughter drove us up in the wind and sun to Signal Hill and this sky just captivated me. 

Gorgeous, isn't it?

You can also see the whitecaps which were far and wide on the windy sea and I couldn't capture a wandering iceberg on the far left of this photo.

What are your slivers?

Constant Beauty

 I think if one is born to an environment of natural beauty one can be immune to it.

I find this immunity prevalent amongst many of my Newfoundland people.

Yesterday I trotted out to pick up some groceries and asked my friend with dementia if she'd like to come along and she was thrilled. I can't abide shopping and pre-order my groceries on line and then have them all loaded into my car at the pickup.

I stopped outside my home and took this photo of the fog over the Atlantic in the distance and the blues just took my breath away. "Isn't it stunning?" I said to my friend as I snapped away. "I suppose," she answered, a born and bred Newfoundlander.

So this is for Marge, who is a faithful follower and loves fogs as much as I do.

We picked up the groceries and I asked her if she'd like to trot up to Middle Cove, the glorious beach near where we live and she agreed. I said I come up here a lot and she said she would come there a lot as a child and I said never since? And she said no. I was shocked. She took a long walk on the beach. I took some photos. There were many there, kids and dogs and some fishing off the shore.

We sat for a while and she became quite emotional, remembering the picnics and "boil-ups" on the beach as a child. It had never occurred to her to just visit and just be there for an afternoon.

So I talked of the healing effect of sitting by the ocean and all its different moods. And to reflect on how small we all are in the overall scheme of things.

And she agreed and said she had been so agitated about so many different things and her stress had been bad and now she could feel herself relaxing.

Her gratitude quite overwhelmed me, she went on and on about the afternoon and what a mighty gift I had given her.

And I was reminded of something I had learned a long time ago.

Measure wealth not by the stuff you own and hoard, but by the things in life that don't cost a penny.

When Life Gets Busy....

As life is wont to do now and again.

I go to my local beach.

Today I brought lunch and knitting.

Morning was busy and so was afternoon.

Nice busy vs stressful urgent busy I should add.

I met many dogs there today.

I had a long chat with one who looked like Ansa and paddled and obeyed commands just like her too.

Her name was Fermie. And she took a moment to rest herself on my feet for a while which took her human companion and myself by surprise. Ansa would do that. Fermie was a rescue from Labrador. I sensed that she knew of my loss.

I took this rather lovely photo of the view in front of me and my knitting. I call this #40shadesofblue.

I find the ocean marvellously healing. The surf was high and the herring were in. And for once I didn't cry over Ansa which is a gift. Thank you Fermie.

I hear on the grapevine that the board of this building are reconsidering the no pet policy all thanks to the submission I and my fellow advocates made. If so, I'll be first out the door to the humane society.

PS for those who care, I updated my 2019 book list but need to update Goodreads too when I get a minute.

Potluck

Me and my H20 today (from my deck).

A friend of mine and her brand new husband have built their dream retirement home. All cedar and pine with a huge great room with a vaulted ceiling and a wood burning stove and comfy chairs and sofas and cushions everywhere. Quarried stone floor, honeyed pine walls. One of those enormous cast iron chandeliers beaming down on everyone. Vast vista windows everywhere. Overlooking, well, nothing, really. The shed where hubby tinkers out back, the front stone driveway with parking for twelve cars. The reason I mention her view is that Newfoundland is an island with lashings of water everywhere. Ponds (we don't use the word lakes), streams, rivers and oceans and waterfalls. You'd have to work hard to get a building lot not overlooking some kind of H20.

But they managed it. I've seen this oddity of habitation/domicile here before. And I've asked about it. Like, WTF? The response has always been the same.

"I just hate the bloody water."

"Why?"

"My grandfather/uncle/father died in it. Murderous is that water. A killer."

Yeah, so go ahead, really punish that water.

We had a potluck there yesterday. There were fifteen of us lounged around the Great Room. With space for about thirty more if needs. The food was amazing. I brought my braised coconut spinach dish which I've written about.

The company was wonderful. Very enriching and interesting and time raced by as it does when you're having lots of laughs and interesting convos.

But I couldn't help thinking: why would anyone build such a gorgeous place and have it overlook such mundane and utilitarian humdrumity?

To each her own.

Voyage

{Topsail Beach, Newfoundland)

He folded his jacket and placed it just so, high up enough on the stones of the beach that the tide wouldn’t get to it.

You’d think he was going to do what he always did every morning for the last ten years.

Ever since he moved back home from the mainland.

His own routine. If you were watching you’d say tai-chi and change your mind and say qi dong and then you’d catch those karate moves followed by some push-ups on the grass above the beach and think it was a unique workout of his own. Which paid off because for a man in his sixties he exuded health and a physical elasticity rare at his age. A very positive man, you’d say.

But this one morning there last week, after his workout, or maybe not, along with the jacket he took off his running shoes and lined them up right beside it. Neatly. He was a neat man. You’d never see a sweat on him after those workouts and his entire repertoire of moves would take about an hour.

The truck was what was noticed first. And that was the following morning, very early. It stood out as it was the only truck there in the parking lot at that hour. Frosted up, so it was there for a while. And then you walked down the steps to the beach and there was this jacket and those shoes. Covered in frost also. Alarm bells went off. The police were called.

It looked bad, they said. It was the shoes that were the giveaway and then to top it off the truck held all his ID, his wallet, even his passport.

So the divers from St. John’s were called in and they spent days and days. And lots of volunteers combed the beach. And volunteers sailed in on boats with grappling hooks and those complicated telescopes for looking down to the bottom of the sea.

And six days go by and not a trace and no one comes forward either to claim a relationship with him. And maybe he just left his old life and began something new somewhere else. But you’d always go back to those shoes lined up which put a stop to that line of thinking.

And it was a young lad that found him on the seventh day, twenty kilometres down the coast at another beach. He thought it was a big bundle of rags at first. And then he spotted those swollen, naked feet and had sense enough to run home and tell his mother who called the police.

And yesterday, I drive the coastal road beside that long, last, lonely voyage of his. And think of the distance he travelled. And ponder on what his last thoughts were as he sank shoeless into Mother Ocean’s waiting arms.

Drowning in our own Waste

I was alarmed to read this in The Independent today:

It seems that in the past year this plastic garbage swamp, floating in the Pacific, has grown from an area the size of Texas to an area twice the size of the continental U.S.A. .

Why should we be concerned?

Well, any seafood you eat is permeated with this crap. Not to mention the minced seafood fed to the ground that nice salad left and that roast chicken....?