Out of Left Field.....

Is when it hits me. What a bloody awful year of loss and pain and grief.

And days go by and I think I'm dealing well with it. And then I'm caught sideways and I just want to cry all day long under the covers.

Any friend I would have shared this maelstrom of feelings with is gone.

I had to force myself out the door today and then pull over several times in the car as grief just overwhelmed me. To say I was shocked and, yes, ashamed, is to understate it. The day was glorious which made it even more poignant. The two words "Never Again" kept reverberating in my head.

Some emotional states you can't think or reason your way out of. It just takes you like a tide of longing and despair. I haven't felt that alone in a long, long time. It's a horrible feeling.

And I go into this cheap dollar shop, I'm sure I was a total mess but I didn't care. I wandered uselessly in the aisles, talking inwardly (I hope) to my dear, lost BFF, when a voice hailed me by name and I cringed as I turned to face her and drew a blank. I had to sort through all the filing cabinets in my head and there are many. You come to a new province and meet well over a 1,000 people and it's difficult to place them. My daughter was on TV and that was her opening gambit. And then she fell into her proper file box - a member of my book club but she hasn't been for 6 months.

I yanked myself forcibly out of my own pit of despair long enough to notice how dreadful she looked and discovered she'd had multiple serious surgeries, been divorced from Husband # 2 and husband #1, father of her kids, had died. Plus her only son, brother to her two daughters is transitioning to female.

Reluctantly, feeling whiny and rather stupid, I filled her in on my year so far and you know what she said?

"You must feel like a cork bobbing on an ocean, all adrift, all by yourself, pretending most of the time you're fine when you're not. Not at all."

And she gave me one of those hugs that lasts and lasts. And I attempted a joke about her taking me home and she said:

"Anytime, honey, anytime. There's always a chair at my table and a spare bed somewhere upstairs."

And slowly I felt much better, her kindness so genuine in the midst of her own anxieties and troubles, a fragile connection with all that's so good in the universe.

Crash-boom

It was one of those days today, I had a serious run-on of PGs, needs must as they say, and then no more bookings for about 10 days. I need the time for me, for other stuff that calls. Sometimes I wish I was in my forties again, with the life experience of my own age behind me but the sheer ENERGY of my forties would be lovely.

But elder exhaustion caught up with me and I took two naps. One before a meeting in the morning and then one after my Book Club Meet in the afternoon before a fire department meeting in the evening. I know. But tomorrow is MINE all mine. I get excited about mine days. No one pulling on my sleeves for anything. No meetings, no people.

I took the pic yesterday after a social event. Fog and uncertain sun and calm seas and sand. I trudged across the beach with the dog and the camera.

I said to her: "We'd better make it through the winter old girl, what do you say?"

Her back end is uncertain, lots of helpful mats on the floor, sometimes a small assist from me to get her cranked up in the morning. She's thinner. But gameball. That's all that matters now. Gameball.

PGs*

*Paying guests.

An advantage of having PGs is that it forces me to be tidy. And clean. And smiley. And to interact nicely with strangers.

Another is I get to meet people from a specific walk of life. These people are the non-Holiday Inn types who thrive on different types of vacations, take the road less used and are usually far more travelled, globally, than the norm. Interesting in other words. No CBs evah.

The couple with me at the moment are a case in point. They are spending a month in Newfoundland, two nights with me, and are seeing all the sights and soaking up the experience by using AirBnB when they can, getting to meet the locals on a one to one basis. Of course I throw everyone for a loop when I tell them I am Irish hatched, matched and dispatched to Canada. But when they recover they're interested in my journey from there to here.

I truly find life is all about stories. Theirs and mine. I soak them up. Current female PG is a choir master/music teacher. I asked about her unusual name and she tells me a story of her mother escaping from Poland post war. He is more reticent, an IT man, eagerly asking me if I had computers to sort. Where are these guys when you really need them, I think. But, knowing myself so well, I will get to the bottom of his life too.

One of these days.

One of these days - yeah verily I say unto you - I will rescue some good photo shots out of the Best Shots folder in some dark dungeon of the interwebz and get prints made for an art show and sell them on Etsy in response to those who have asked me to.

One of these days I'll actually set up an Etsy site.

And verily again, I will truly totally pack up the 200 megatons of unwanted extraneous crap-shyte in my office and store it in the empty plastic bins on shelves purpose built, oh six years ago, for such crap storage in my garage. Crap storage=abandoned client files which may, at some point, be audited by the CRA - Canada Revenue Agency.

One of these days I will actively pursue a literary agent or failing that self-publish.

One of these days I will wake up, yeah verily, and be one of those highly organized efficient people dressed in yoga pants and floaty orangey tops and bits of spandex and will run 5k either outside or on my treadmill in my freshly magnificent clear space with ocean view followed by one hour of yoga stretches before breakfast and then work 6 hours just writing in my spacious Zen office. And be one of these people who has a laptop for just her writing. And NOTHING ELSE.

One of these days I will get a treadmill and a yoga mat and assorted spandex bits and a floaty orangey top.

CBs Anonymous

I've had more than my fair share of these lately. CBs - my code name for Crashing Bores.

While I start out with a great deal of sympathy for them, as the time elongates and elongates my nerves start to jangle, I have to come up with more and more questions to keep the conversation flowing. And the CB answers run into a full length novel ("I opened the door of the car, but had to go back in the house for my purse and then the phone went and I was late for my doctor who took another patient which upset me as I was meeting Elsie at Tim Horton's which didn't have my morning glory muffin, good for my bowels"....you know the drill) or conversely a monosyllable. I don't know which is worse.

I've been afflicted with several in the last few weeks. I think what bothers me most is their complete and utter lack of self-awareness. Not even a smidgin. Followed quickly by their astonishing lack of curiosity as to the world around them and specifically to the people who inquire after their health or their opinions or their wellbeing.

I had an unexpected CB last night. An acquaintance from yonks ago. We didn't hang out then but she has chased me over the years on email.

I live in a small village. She remembered the name of the village and inquired in our small store and he was kind enough to lead her to my house. At 8.00pm when it was raining and getting dark.

And she stayed and stayed and regaled me of how she was in the business of helping people as she was like Mother Theresa that way, her role model, always thinking of others and how she could help them and she thought she might set up a kind of monastery in Newfoundland for all those people needing help, I would be amazed at the number of people she has helped with her wisdom, a gift from JC high above, only very few got this gift so she was thankful every day she was so gifted, she knew how rare it was and most people, probably me too, didn't understand or appreciate all she had to offer us unfortunates, she could lay on hands if I wanted her to - no? - I didn't know what I was missing as she had this gift...........

For a few hours I endured this. I had to lie to get rid of her, not a nice lie either, a sleazy kind of lie about my "friend" sleeping over, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

And after she left, I thought: Crashing Bores Anonymous. Where CBs would work there way through a socialization structure, starting with forcing themselves to ask just one question of an acquaintance or family member a week (they could practise with each other) building up to a full conversational interaction after a year or two. Or more.

But then I thought: But these unfortunates never, ever have the self-awareness to recognize their problem. Even when their targets fall asleep in front of them.

It's all rather hopeless really isn't it?

Lament

Lament: I don't often hear the word. A fine old word. Comes from the Latin "Lamentum" which means moan or wail. Many sad old Irish tunes are "Laments". We're a great lamenting lot, us Irish. We lament everything: our children's emigration, our history, our language, our land, our people. I think we're born with a lament written on our psyches.

So I was mulling all this over in my car yesterday. I had to go to town and mulling is de rigeur when I drive by myself. I was trying to come up with a brand new short story for the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. To keep me sharp,I made a resolution this year to plaster all these short story competitions with entries. I get short listed, usually, which pleases me intensely, as it means the stories are readable and interesting. I don't aim to win or place, though that would be a lovely shock. But to go on a list of 100 out of, oh, 3,000-5,000 submissions is very, very pleasing.

So y'all know what I'm talking about - here's a sample of one lament. You can hear the sorrow threading through it. Words are not necessary in a lament.



This is called Lord Mayo and Joanie Madden, she of "Cherish the Ladies" fame, tackles it.

So I was playing this in my car and as luck would have it (it does happen now and again) a short story fell into my head. About this woman at a dinner party being asked to sing an Irish lament. And I wrote it last night and have been polishing it today amongst other stuff like my washing machine breaking down and blueberries needing to be jammed and a Tigeen needing to be cleaned.

Priorities.

Crystal Moments

You're up at the crack of dawn and a laundry load is ready (gratitude for "delayed wash cycle") and you start another. And now you're working on the second clothesline, the one for the sheets.

It's a denim day, air you take deep down into the lungs like a heroin addict who can't get enough of a hit. It's so early there's no traffic and you can hear a gathering of loons around the bay, calling to each other. The sun, the enormous sun, blesses all around you with shards of golden light. You think to yourself: that dinner with the former husband went really well, really, really well last night, a good Newfoundland dinner. A lovely gathering around your table. And you peg up the clothes and what the hell throw on a final load of laundry and think of the day ahead: make soup and bread and stock the new batch of fresh yogurt in the fridge and welcome new PGs at 6 when they arrive and maybe feed them some of that homey goodness. Just what you yourself would want after a six hour road trip.

And everything else recedes for that moment, Syria, the death of close friends, bills to be paid, repairs to be made, editing to be done.

And deep down you know life couldn't get better than this.

And you smile.

What the hell is it about clotheslines anyway?

You wish you could just bottle it up and sell it as your granny would say.

Syria

The comic linked below is easily read and understood and captures the whole situation in Syria succinctly.

There are many reasons for the refugee crisis but the major one is climate change. Millions of small farms have been wiped out. I and many more have maintained for years, that the next global catastrophe and massive migrations of starving people will be over water. This is just the beginning.

See it here.

So it takes the death of one small boy to make the world sit up and take notice. And I do wonder why my small province, hungry for immigrants, can't hold out its welcoming hand to these desperate refugees. I'm sure they would contribute, at the highest level, to Canada as a whole and to Newfoundland particularly.

What kind of a world is this?

We are a sad, sad, species.

Why?

I have to question the sanity of us all when a helpless 19 year old girl moves far, far away from her family 50 years ago to give birth to a child "out of wedlock". Her parents and friends don't know about the pregnancy. It would be a cause of enormous shame and embarrassment. Girls who got pregnant without the sanctity of the ring around their fingers were sluts and the parents who gave birth to these sluts were shamed and often shunned. The tentacles and condemnation and judgement of the RC church was everywhere, even in Canada. Especially in Montreal.

So this 19 year old found an obscure town on a map of Ontario and gave birth in the local small town hospital and insisted on keeping the child. She had to fight to keep this baby as the chaplain and the holy sisters of the hospital were adamant in their lectures about the "child's best interests."

She left the hospital with the baby in a blanket and caught a bus to her rooming house and her money was running out so she asked around, in shops and the neighbourhood, about a private care home for the child and found one. She then secured a job in a nearby city. And commuted to her rooming house and paid the care home for the 5 day care of her daughter. She'd pick her up on Friday night and then spend the weekend with her. And this went on for 9 months, her life revolving around her job with its long hours, the minescule paycheques, the payment to the care home and her weekends with the baby.

And then, out of the blue, the temporary care parents took her to court. They said the child was upset at being disrupted every weekend. They didn't think the mother was fit. Their children were grown and gone. They could dedicate themselves to ensuring this child had a better quality of life than what this irresponsible single mother was offering.

And the 19 year old pleaded at the judge's bench she had to work to support the child, she saw her every chance she got, she was studying every night of the week after work so that the two of them could have a better life, maybe a live-in nanny.

Her tears and eventual sobs fell on deaf ears. The judge ruled in the care couple's favour and they could proceed with formally adopting the child. The mother was classified as unfit.

Years later, years and years, she reconnected with the child. The child refused to meet with her. Over and over and over again.

She said she would never, ever forgive her for "giving her up," even when she knew she was dying.

The other side of this story has never been written.

And I wish it was.

Down the Rabbit Hole.

My dear D**** left us early this morning. I had written to her as I had every night before going to bed. Recounting another memory of some event we'd shared. I always loved hanging with her. The thick and thin strands of our shared lives.

I may be getting custody of her dog. Which will all work out.

I took in another pet years ago when another friend died and no one wanted her beloved cat. Her cat was hard to love but I made of it an office cat and it got socialized and lived happily ever after. For years and years.

Maybe that's my function, taking care of the pets of my deceased friends. I don't know what happened to Helen's dog. Another out of control snarly pet. I would have taken it too but quarantine stuff between Canada and Ireland would be a huge roadblock. I think she was "unrescued." I don't ask.

The rabbit hole is weird, my day to day stuff keeps me going. I'm glad of the PGs who are not aware of my broken heart, my private tears.

It's been a year from hell so far, I feel the wind blowing through my soul for far too many moments.

I am so very glad for those in my life who reach out and comfort me in times as these. I've never been more aware of the love offered by those I trust in my times of almost unbearable fragility. I am truly grateful.

Blog Jam

Lovely days out here on the Edge of the Atlantic. Big moons, big suns. Green grass. Denim water.

What's there to whine about?

There's always something. My legs are still causing me difficulty even with the switch in meds. I'm not up to much, about 2k, and the pain is something I have to meditate through. I keep at it - Elder dog and I, she's very slow which suits me.

I talked to Ansa's groomer a few days ago. She's going to take her in as a solo with no other dogs to make the occasion as free from stress as possible. Sixteen years old (over 100 in human terms) is pretty ancient and deserving of slow pampering. I was reluctant to add the burden of clipping and shampooing to her, BUT she needs it.

I've been editing up a storm on this anthology we're producing at the end of Workshop 1. Some really good writing.

PGs are trickling in. I get a lot of last minute PGs which I decline as it is too stressful given an hour or so's notice. But I'm looking forward to a visual artist from Quebec coming on Monday and Larry The Gambler is still here and we had a lovely chat tonight.

I feel I could bore for Canada right now. I could go off on a political rant but I don't have the energy. I want to curl around the end of my current book "Girl on a Train" - anyone else read it?

And oh, I did my volunteer stint at the library today and while there I designed and made this dishcloth. Can you tell what it's meant to be?

Mulling

I've got a weird brain, it shoots off in strange directions sometimes. And I so enjoying mulling.

Like: I have a PG staying with me for 8 days. Let's call him Larry.

Larry has removed himself from his home in Las Vegas, Nevada to spend a year in Canada due to U.S. Tax laws which will assess him at a far lower tax rate if he hasn't lived in the US for 330 days. So he's travelling the length and breadth of Canada in a fancy car he drove up from LV. And I imagine he likes the non-sterile environments of regular people's homes to stay in through the web-based service where I and many others are registered to rent out rooms for a fee.

The thing is that Larry's fortune has all been made on gambling.

Mull: aren't these millions infected? In some way their foundation is based on other people's pain, desperation, addiction and possible bankruptcies, isn't it?

Does the misfortune of others cling to this money?

Mull: what money is clean? We don't really know if it's clean, do we? Do hardship and sorrow cling to the bills I throw in my wallet?

I remember a spiritual guide once telling me we have to be careful as to the karma each piece of earthly treasure holds as it can steal our very health and wellbeing.

"Keep your good money separate," she advised, "Pass on this goodness to others."

Strange Times, Unimaginable Scenarios.

Edvard Munch - at the deathbed of a child.

My friend, who is so ill and looking at the final exit door has a huge challenge tomorrow. I keep thinking about it. My friend is nearly 70 and her parents are still alive and she has to tell them, face to face, she is dying. She wasn't going to. She had intended to have her brother break it to them when she'd passed as she is highly sensitive to prolonging pain for them. But her brother is, as he always has been, a complete and utter jerk. Oh, the stories I could tell you.

Her parents are on their way from the seniors' complex in Ottawa to Toronto where D**** is in hospital.

I can't truly imagine what this is going to be like. She's very close to her father particularly, and he will be devastated. I met her parents a few times back in the day. A spry and fun couple, her dad one of those enthusiastic jokesters interested in everyone and everything. Much like her. The news may just about kill them. Seriously.

And my own previously unimaginable scenario? Planning a dinner here in my house for Daughter, her father and his wife.

Strange times indeed.

Jackets and Gooseberries

"It wouldn't buy a jacket for a gooseberry" was one of my mother's phrases when observing a pittance of cash offered for some bauble or other.

Well, that was me last night.

I got paid to perform. And the lovely audience there bought some of my greeting cards featuring my photos and my poetry.

And all the big bucks were added up and there wasn't a jacket to be had for the poor gooseberries.

But was I thrilled to pieces?

Unbelievably.

So I stroked the wee cheque. And counted the cash and put it into an envelope and tucked it away.

And I tell you: There's nothing better than getting paid for something you'd do for nothing you love it so much.

Fooled

Maybe it's my age, having lived looooong but today I was caught completely unawares at my hairdresser's. I think I wrote about her place before. An old Victorian house in St. John's. All artifacts preserved, fire places, chandeliers, crown mouldings. A darling place with stairs running everywhere and the best atmosphere.

Every six months they mix up all the cutters and stylists and colourists, give them new work stations in different rooms in the house, match them up with those they haven't worked with before.

"Keeps us all fresh," says Bernice my faithful stylist. She's a gift, took me from hair to the waist to a smooth bob that lasts and lasts. You find a good cutter you stick with her/him.

So now she's been matched with this absolutely outrageous stylist for 6 months. I think my jaw dropped when I cast eyes on her for the first time today. Breddie, her name sounded like. Breddie was dressed in an absolutely wild purple and orange mini-dress revealing much of her body. Bright red pumps with 6" heels. Piercings with hardware all over her face including her mouth and nose. Matching colourful tattoos featuring wild flowers covered both her legs, her arms, her breasts and her neck. Her dyed blonde hair with purple streaks swung to her waist festooned with yellow bits and bobs. And one long ostrich feather of emerald green. I took her for an out of control 19 year old.

"Breddie's a card," laughed my stylist who's in her mid forties and dresses soberly in black with sensible work heels and a soothing manner.

Well, thought I grouchily, "card" would be a massive understatement in my book. I can just see the drug den and the biker boyfriend and their lives of dodgy cop avoidance.

An older woman toddled in and sat in Breddie's chair and proceeded to ask her for the wedding photos from the weekend. Whose wedding, thought I, surely Breddie and her criminal dimwitted druggie biker wouldn't be invited to anyone's weddinge

So Breddie hauls out her Iphone and treats the four of us in the room to HER wedding pictures at a pricey well known golf club. In white. All tats under wraps. All hardware removed. Criminal Biker Boy is in a black tux and a perfect hairdo with not a tat or a piece of metal or leather or hairy armpits in sight.

And the killer shot? Their two little flower girls scattering blossoms at their feet as the bride and groom kiss.

Their daughters, five and three years old.

Downhill to the Barriers

My friend goes downhill rapidly. We talk. She wants me to come. So we can hold hands for a while. All expenses paid (she can afford it).

I didn't sleep last night. Tossing and turning. "I have to." "I can't." Nothing was clear. There are too many commitments here. Not least of which is to elder dog, Ansa, who is getting frailer by the day. The walk tonight was pitifully slow. She's gone a bit barky also because she's deaf and also "sees" danger in the shadows of trees. She will go down protecting me. I can't pass her over for care to anyone. For one, she can't jump into the car anymore plus she's too heavy to lift. And she's a real care now.

Next, I have a performance - advertised on teevee yet - this Saturday, sold out. Like, I don't show for this?

Then I have two separate PGs coming to stay next week.

I could go on, there's loads more but I'm boring myself to bits as it is. Someone reminded me of how sick I got the last time I was in Toronto and I positively dread the polluted air there. I have weak lungs (double pneumonia and pleurisy as a 9 year old)and last time was so bad I had to leave earlier than expected.

And guilt, we haven't talked guilt yet. I'd love to see her and there is such urgency to it as she tells me she's terrified her brain won't be there by the weekend even. I cry a lot of useless tears.

But, I can't surmount all these obstacles to get to her. And I'm old. Did I mention that? And, um, tired and not overly well myself. And still reeling from Helen's death. And Laura's death.

Apologies to faithful readers: I'll get around to reading your blogs one of these days. Promise.

Help!

Anybody out there know how to "fix" the formatting on my blog. It's been wonky for a couple of weeks. I went into the backlog of posts to see if a photo/picture was too big or book list too long, etc. But to no avail. My posts are thrown to one side and my archives list emerges on the left.

It shows up on devices with none of these issues it appears.

Much appreciated, it's, well, irritating.

What Keeps Us Going

I don't know the answer to the question for the "US" of it. I can only talk about me.

Talk. My friend and I talk. Yes, she's still in the hospital. We chatted into the wee hours of this morning, even though I had a "look-sharp-and-alert" meeting in a few hours focussing on local demographics. It was good to hear her voice and wit and intelligence. She's a brilliant woman.

She's taking notes of all the stuff going on around her and she read it to me and we were hysterical laughing even though a lot of it wasn't really funny at all but taken out of context it is. Hospitals can be cruel, callous places. Particularly for those who don't behave as expected - subservient to Demz in Charge.

I said to her: these writings of yours need to be a performance piece, seriously. For example: she is lying there with her eyes closed and two nurses are changing both her colostomy bag and her diaper and she overhears one of them say to the other sotto voce: "Did you ever see such a weird vagina?" And of course, this begged the question: how could they see inside her vagina, or did these two supposedly medically articulate people mean vulva or labia? How confident am I, she says, when the hospital staff can't accurately name body parts?

Meanwhile we crack up through further readings from her journal. Every overheard conversation or off the cuff remarks by doctors to each other, her hand-wringing visitors who find her 'difficult', her inept wheelchair pusher who loses control of all her life-giving gear in the garden and literally trips over all her tubes.

And that, my friends, that joyful hooting, keeps me from curling into a ball and sobbing my heart out.

Blog Jam

Ansa's getting old. Really old. Bad incident last night with her bleeding from her mouth all over the downstairs. I think her cataracts cause her to bump into things. At first I thought it was another animal attack outside but there were no scratches on her face and I think she pierced her lip with a tooth when she ran into something in her 2 minutes out of my sight. I can't get near her jaw to check.

Tonight she got stuck on the floor. I'm not an engineer and she's a heavy dog + bad back here too. I tried a sling with a sheet and then as she licks my hand (gawd, it breaks your heart it does) I heave upwards with her back end and she lets me. We are both weepy from the indignity and the effort. Problem solved. For now. I've now banned her from the office as she won't walk on the rugs laid down all over it. Dog are like that, delicately stepping around all safety measures. She's on the back hall big rug now. I may have to fence her in a little more.

Meanwhile my PG* has fallen so deeply in love with Newfoundland he's bought a house here and is not going back to the U.S. but is outsourcing the sale and disposal of his properties in Massachusetts. Imagine. I don't think it's my delicate crepes for breakfast or my wee Tigeen doing the trick but how lovely. He is enchanted. As I was and am. The fairies got him too, as the saying goes.

We have our big community midday dinner tomorrow. Hot turkey meal, veggies, dessert, tea/coffee all for $12.00. I mean seriously. I couldn't cook it for that.

I made an old recipe from Ireland tonight. It was served in spring when there were more winter onions than they knew what to do with left over hanging from the rafters in the barns and sheds, so they'd be incorporated into a lovely whole wheat bread. Lashings of them. Usually served for breakfast with an egg or two. The carmelized onions sit on the bottom of the pan when you stick the loaf in the oven and then they swim their way through the bread, some breaking rhrough the top. Heav-en-lee.

*Paying guest

In praise of the ordinary.

All under this very same moon some are going through rough times right now. I think of them as I do my day to day routines. I hang clothes on the line. I have a long term PG* staying at the Tigeen. I cook breakfast for him every morning. We talk. For hours it seems.

I list my two spare bedrooms for rent. I rewrite draft 8 of a short story I am submitting to a local competition. I pay bills. I knit a bit. I read. I nap. I drive to get the mail. Friends drop off produce from their garden. I plan a curry for tomorrow night. I talk to Daughter who invites me for a lunch of shark meat. I email my hospitalized friend a few times during the day. She is writing a story too. I cry reading a few blogs. I laugh reading a few more.

I pick some beach blossoms and vase them. I frolic with the dog on the meadow. I breathe in the smell of the sheets and duvet covers fresh off the clothesline and think of my granny who dried hers on top of the hawthorn at the side of her field. Oh - that scent of all that is good and simple.

I think: ain't life grand. Look at that moon! Oh, the golden light of it reflected in the water!

Thank you, grandmother moon. Thank you for this extraordinary, ordinary life.

*Paying guest