Shortlists and Social Distancing

I opened an e-mail yesterday entitled 'Good News NB Book Award Shortlist'. It was good news and news I had kept under my hat for two weeks. Fear of Drowning has been shortlisted for the Mrs. Dunster's Fiction Award. Initially I had been so excited anticipating the week in May that would see Meg and the girls come home, a Thursday evening launch of When the Hill Came Down,WordSpring weekend with Friday night's awards for the WFNB's writing competition, giving a writing workshop to young writers on Saturday and the NB Book Award Gala on Saturday night. Well you know what has happened to all that.As I have reminded my granddaughter, it is of course not all about me. So many people are dealing with change and disappointment during this time of self isolation and social distancing. Strange times and frightening. I am content to sit tight, put dreams of book launches and award ceremonies in the future. I was able to visit outside with my across the road grandkids yesterday. I loved every second. Their energy and happiness thrilled me. They came to see our new calf. They waited for our front door chicken to lay her egg and put the warm egg to their cheeks.Yes we have one particular chicken who lays an egg at our front door. How amazing is that? They left again with their dad and left their grandparents thankful for their health, their happiness and the love and security their parents work so hard to provide.So much to be thankful for in all this and so much to fear. I pray for a balance. Oh and last night I got the full cover draft for When the Hill Came Down from my publisher. Holding my ninth book is getting closer and closer and I look ahead to that.Stay home and stay well.

In These Uncertain Times

March is waning. On the horizon April and May look the same as what we see right now. I have no profound words of wisdom but yet feel the need to voice my thoughts this morning. I am ok. I am fine at home . I am quite used to the routine that is now my only option. I have been promised a walk by sighting of my three across the road grandchildren and I look forward to that. It is the small pleasures that sustain us these days and I am a connoisseur of small pleasures.I often write about those pleasures; morning coffee, hot baths, writing time, wood road walks,my journal(writing and reading).I am thankful for each of the pleasures I enjoy within the walls of my home and the periphery of our property. I reach out to friends and family with texts and on social media. I call people on the phone.In these uncertain times I am doing what so many others are doing. The scope is unprecedented. Most of the trauma and challenges we experience are within our family or community collective. This however is world wide and has halted and mutated the world as we know it. It is frightening and unfamiliar.I have some disappointments to process some possibilities to accept. 82 Moms will not sit together at the end of the month as we planned. I will not have my book launch as planned. Two other writing events I was looking forward to will not happen. Meg and the girls will not come in May for those celebrations. I will not have the school visit I was looking forward to,. The market will not open on schedule. Perhaps the girls will not fly home this summer. PEI might not happen. Scotland might not be in our September. These are just my disappointments. The 2020 Olympics have been cancelled.Emma will not have a birthday party. Alice has had to adjust to stringent protocol as she sits with Paul at Bobby's Hospice.Gr 8's have no Quebec trip and graduation celebrations are not likely to happen. The scope of this is overwhelming and so unpredictable. The scope is too much so I return to this day, this one day and will take comfort in the small pleasures I am so fortunate to have access to. We all know the wisdom of one day at a time and even though we must pay attention to what the experts and our leaders are telling us and not be careless or cavalier all that is being asked of me on this day is to stay home . I can do that!

These March Days

In the letters I wrote to my granddaughters yesterday I said that they will always remember these March days of 2020.For now they are March days and it is quite certain these strange days will continue into April and May and who knows how much longer. Strange days of continual change and more social withdrawal. Unprecedented I keep hearing and that is true in some ways but not in others. Previous generations experienced similar uncertainty, massive change in the regular way of things and deep fear for what the future would bring. Mothers and wives watched men go off to a cruel war not knowing when or if they would return. Rationing and shortages were commonplace and sacrifices were made.Futures were altered ,taken away and reshaped.Each family faced their own challenges and adapted in their own way but a common bond cemented that generation and shaped them for years to come.So here we are living these March days and trying our best to navigate our way through. Huge change and constant re calibrating of all we have believed to be true about our present lives.None of this is easy whether you are ten or eighty. It occurred to me the other day that our parents and grandparents passed on wisdom and guidance to us because of the experiences they lived through. And now I am the grandparent and I have been called to glean truth from life and pass it on. So I say "This too will pass" , "Be kind" , "Be thankful",Remember the people you are self isolated with are the people who love you the most and who you love the most so remember to be kind to them" "Come out of this with more nice moments to remember than nasty ones" I can hear in my head my mom singing" Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but Me" and the profound "Mares Eat Oats and Does eat oats and Little lambs eat Ivy" Not so much does it matter what we say or what we sing but who we find ourselves to be in all this.So I will live these March days trying to be kind, trying to remember what really matters and trying to pass on a truth that has been revealed to me in these March days.

Breathe, Hold Your Breath and Exhale

Breathe, hold your breath, exhale, calm yourself, believe and accept and then what? I am the person who stayed tuned for hours watching the twin towers fall over and over. I am the person who watches the water rise during flood season when our community and so many others are altered by rising water levels. I do have friends that don't watch the news and know people who don't go on social media. I scroll through facebook regularly and sometimes wonder why I put myself through that. But without the news and my Facebook feed I would not have heard the prime minister assure us we will get through this together and I would not have seen the beautiful poem that spoke so deeply to me this morning. I get caught up in things as do most people but I did not see the need to go buy toilet paper. Perhaps that speaks to the optimist in me. I choose to believe the twenty rolls we have will be enough for whatever lies ahead until I can buy more as I normally would.I think this morning of the tension , the fear and the sense of the unknown in all this and I can't help but ponder on the self centered-ness of it. Do we think we are so different from generations before us and those who will come after us? My fear and tension is from a place of good health,a comfortable home, healthy family members, food, clean water , some financial stability, total freedom to stay home and decide on my social interactions so I can only imagine what some are going through. But still I am caught up in the tide of fear. I think of the Spanish flu, typhoid fever, the world wars , the constant and prevailing conflicts around the world, polio, aids. Oh my do I need to go on? I wonder about the value of my words as I write them. In the millions of words being shared on this day , some affirming and some adding to the chaos why do my words matter?Words can build up or tear down. Our actions can support or defeat. Giving voice to our fears can quiet them. So today I concentrate on the words I began this entry with and will probably need to repeat them quite often in the next while. I will breathe. I will hold my breath for the ten seconds suggested as a quick check for respiratory wellness. I will exhale and calm myself. I will believe and accept and then... Then I will be thankful, wait for this to pass, count my blessings. I will learn the lessons generations have learned before me. Life is fragile, pain is part of living, suffering is real, people are resilient, love makes a difference, we are a small fleck in the scheme of things, we can breathe.

Floating Dogs and Funeral Parlors

Floating dogs and funeral parlors have nothing to do with each other but as I sat writing my morning's journal entry this title came to mind. One brief news item was about two dogs that got themselves trapped on a chunk of ice. It was thought they would perish but the news this morning was that Heidi and her companion (forget the other dog's name) floated a fair distance and made it to shore. Someone retrieved them and all is good.A story to tell with a happy ending for the dog owners. We have such a story in our family and it often gets retold. One January morning our old dog Tanner and Caleb and Ashlie's dog Disco took off for some reason, running a few miles through the woods and out onto the Saint John river.They made it all the way across the frozen river without encountering open water or thin ice. They kept going when they reached the other side and ended up outside the Browns Flat Irving. A woman stopped her car and tried to coax them in. Disco accepted the invitation but Tanner declined running away from her. We spent a night worrying, sure our beloved dogs had met their end. Ashlie began the next morning calling every vet and the Animal rescue League.In the meantime Tanner got his weary self home, limping in around 10:30 the next morning with no explanation for his whereabouts or where his buddy was. Ashlie's calls paid off and a bit later she got a call from the woman who had picked Disco up. He had spent a warm, cosy night well fed and watered in the woman's kitchen. Ashlie and Mary headed over to Browns Flat to get him and all was well. Makes a good story as does two dogs floating away on a sheet of ice. Happy endings. The other aspect of my entry this morning has to do with endings as well.In our society we have practices and rituals when a life ends, as does every culture and society since time began. Funeral parlors and funeral directors play a part in families finding their way through death and loss. This morning my daughter begins a career in the funeral parlor business. It is a business but more than that it is a service and a caring assist with the transition from this world to whatever the next is. Meg has already begun her studies and today she steps into the front line funeral business. Not a career for everyone but for the right person a valuable offering and a blessing. I remember Brock and Barbra Reid and the wonderful service and comfort they provided us. I remember Lethe and Natasha and how kind and caring they were. I have seen my best friends daughter take this career path and glow with the pride and the reward of her work. I am so proud of Meg and wish her all the best on this, her first day on the job. I hope for a long and successful work life in her chosen field as she reaches out to those taking the difficult journey of letting a loved one go.

Let's Push the Worry Down

I have been here before and will be here again. Here is a mess of worry and sadness. I am watching a good friend die while watching his wife trying her best to find her way through the mess of it, the muddle of emotion, the weariness of wondering and wanting things to be different than what they appear to be. I randomly chose an entry to read this morning and stumbled on a 2017 one where I was lamenting my mother's current condition. It took me back to the days of worry that accompanied that. This day last year my dad had another spell in Florida and my brother was making plans to go down and bring him home and Caleb took Disco to the vet.There have been no days, months or years that have not held their share of worry, concern and heartbreak. Walking the halls of the palliative care unit yesterday I was taken back to the October days when we sat in one of those rooms and waited for Dad's last breath to come.This is the 'been there done that' aspect of life. I will run a bath in a few moments, I will wash eggs, make my bed, decide how to tackle this day; figure out what my priorities are. I will also count my blessings listing them beside my worries hoping to at least match the number if not overtake the worry with the gratitude.My mom is not here to council me, to comfort me, to tell me to just be my own sweet self as she always did. My dad will not offer words of wisdom and his quiet compassion but it still fills my heart and mind.Last spring brought days when Dad stayed with us and I treasure the memory of each of those precious days. It seems this exercise of finding the balance is ongoing and some days I am better at it than others.I know I have the tools and for that I am most thankful.So here goes!

And Then it's March

How quickly the months go. This morning I changed the calendars. Our February picture on the kitchen calendar reminded us of our dear friend Paul. The picture was of an open workshop door,and a man and his black dog in the yard. Every time I walked by and gazed at the picture I thought of Paul, his love of his silly, adorable dog, his love of the outdoors and his love of the time spent in his garage tinkering about. Paul is slow and steady, a what you see is what you get kind of guy, a loving, attentive husband, father and grandfather and a wonderful friend.Paul is not able to be in his yard or sit in front of his fire in his beloved garage. Paul has been hit with a mean and debilitating disease and he has spent the last three months in a hospital bed. His devoted wife has worried and fretted at his side heartbroken with the turn their life has taken. We feel so powerless to help and in some ways feel selfish to have health and well being and be able to go about living our lives. I will take this February picture and have it framed because it will always be Paul to me. We have been so blessed with his friendship. Many a meal has been shared at their table and ours.Card games have been played,trips have been taken together, memories have been deeply made and he will always remain the slow and steady guy we love who knew how to enjoy the simple pleasures of his life. We do not know what this month will bring; none of us do, and I do know Paul would encourage us to keep living and appreciating each day we mark on our calendars.