I Will Never Stop Learning My Lessons

Monday, December 26, 2011

When I was a kid, I wished I could hide inside our Christmas tree and gaze at the world through a rainbow of bobbles and lights—the way  “Chip and Dale” did in the Christmas cartoon “Pluto’s Christmas Tree.”

Sometimes I still wish I could do that.

To compensate, I do the next best thing. One evening each year during the holidays, after all my Christmas decor is in place and the tree is trimmed, I get bundled up, turn out all the house lights except the Christmas ones, and go outside.

I pretend I don’t live here and peek in the living room window like a stranger looking in on the Christmas of someone else. It’s a favorite tradition where once a year I look in on my life in a perfect world.

I did this on Christmas Eve on Saturday night. Mother Nature was in her mild-mannered way and it wasn’t hard to stand out there for a time in relative comfort, unlike other years when the ends of my fingers would freeze in a New York minute.

I stood outside looking in and wondered how many children have played and danced and laughed throughout this house in the last 67 years. My mother and I and my cousins and my children and my children’s children are among them. It seems so trite to say “I love this place with all of my soul,” but it is my truth and where I belong no matter what else happens in my life.

My perfect little world thinking doesn’t last long. It’s not supposed to and that’s okay. Besides, if it did, I’d have nothing to write about every week.

Not long after I start frosting up the windowpane with my breath the cat and two dogs figure out no one is inside the house or around to catch them nosing for Christmas nibbles left in dishes on the coffee table. It’s all but a mad scramble for me to dash inside, scold, and then pick out all the red and green jujubes that were not dog-licked it the candy bowl.

I scrutinize what’s left after the cull, close my eyes and eat one and another amid muffled screams akin to Lucy Van Pelt in ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas.’

“I have dog germs! Get some hot water! Get some disinfectant!” 

Ah, yes, this is my perfect little world with dog germs, cat hair, and squirrels that fill the inside of my skates with pine cones so tightly that I need a jackhammer to get them out.

There’s but a few days left in 2011 and I suspect I’ll be eating too much leftover Christmas chocolate and soaking up the last fleeting days of Heather’s visit here with as much intention as I can muster. 

I go to great lengths to live a purpose-filled life—and often go far enough as to drive my loved ones bananas with my “non-stop” approach to every day.

I understand that no matter how life may saddle me, I am exactly where I am supposed to be. “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should,” (taken from the “Desiderata”) says it best.
And while there are bound to be many future times when I will frown on that outlook, especially when life stinks, I will still believe it to be true.

That belief keeps me approachable to learning more the why and what of this fascinating and multi-layered world and the importance of my part in it. 

So my dear readers stand on the horizon of 2012 and look back at what you’ve seen and done and learned, and what you’ve lived through, cried through, laughed through and shared, and then grant yourself peace and go forward.

The Four Noble Truths encourage us to show up, pay attention, and tell the truth or keep noble silence, and stay wide open to change.

Peace to you.

And as the poet “Rumi” wrote, “This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor . . . . treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.”

Make 2012 count.

The Cat Rules Are A Merry Mix

Monday, December 19, 2011

It’s down to a one-hand count to Christmas and I’m within moments of grabbing the nearest “Krazy Karpet” and disappearing to a remote location where there are no holiday stressors.

This time of year always gives me a renewed appreciation for mothers who work full time and still manage—atop their regular Wonder Woman deeds—to fit their Christmas baking, gift-buying and wrapping, and their children’s Christmas concerts into the chaos of the family circus.

Every year I intend to be more prepared and have my sugar cookie baking done and my gifts wrapped far in advance of the garland-spackled holiday and yet here I am again within an ear shot of Rudolph shouting “Full speed ahead” and nary an item checked off my Christmas “to-do” list. But I do have my tree decorated!

Of late, the Christmas tree is the centre of attention for “Millie the cat,” the newest member of the household, whose coat is as black as the inside of a cow—making her classically invisible in the house at night—and whose radar is equipped with the latest in stealth modifications.

Of important note is that she is referred to as “Jon’s cat” during bouts of mischief.

She is a feline who can’t get enough of rubbing up against the human ankle and whose endless purring whirrs of satisfaction and engaging meows were adopted in by “Yours truly” as part of Jon’s dowry.

But life with cat began with the “Cat Rules.”

Firstly I decreed that the cat is not allowed in the house. Okay, the cat is allowed in the house, but not in the bedroom or the living room. Fine, so the cat can come in the bedroom but not while I am sleeping. Yes sure, okay then the cat can come in the living room but not on the couch and not on my favorite chair.

Millie currently sleeps wherever the heck she pleases. Like I said, the cat rules.

In a scene that fell just short of something out of Steven King’s horror novel “Pet Sematary” and from which I have not yet recovered, I awoke one night shortly after her arrival to make the usual trip to the bathroom that follows too much tea before bedtime.

I was sitting there in the quiet darkness hazed over in some kind of midnight stupor waiting for the tinkle to begin when I had the odd and eerie feeling that I was not alone.

If someone had poured cold water down my back just then, the sensation would have been a dead ringer to the shivers I was getting at that moment.

I reached down to grab the flashlight (I have one in every room) and turned it on to find two green-hued golf-balled sized cat eyes boring a hole into my brain from where it sat like a statue on the side of tub beside the toilet. A third eyelid washed over one of her eyeballs as she squinted at me and jumped into my naked lap.

In a microsecond I shot to a standing position and the feline catapulted off and away somewhere that I did not pursue. I went back to bed and fell into a dream world of scary zombie cat movies.

I awoke the next morning to find a curious deja’vu situation in my living room reminiscent of the days leading up to Christmas last year, when “Oliver the cat” ruled the roost. Sadly, Oliver used up all his nine lives in the late summer when a night owl stole him away.

And like last year, once again I found Christmas tree ornaments strewn everywhere—and no cat in sight.

Upon investigation of the whereabouts of “Jon’s cat,” while returning the ornaments to their rightful place, I found her staring at me wide-eyed through the branches in the middle of the Christmas tree with that classic wild look that precedes the pounce.

I had a flash of anticipatory terror only this time it wasn’t just a scene from the movie “Alien,” when that seed pod thing jumped onto the face of the innocent astronaut. 

The cat-a-pult from the tree onto the front of my housecoat happened so fast that I was sure I would never recover from the shock. I wasn’t sure Jon would either when I ran screaming into the bedroom where he was fast asleep. He sat straight up in a wild “deer in the headlights” stupor as I rushed at him like a steaming locomotive with the cat knitted to my housecoat.

Author Helen Powers said, “Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attach the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling.”

“Jon’s cat” has made her attempts to claim rights to just about every spot in this little farmhouse some of the time and does exactly what she wants most of the time, but it is a scientific absolute that “Millie the cat” is an all-time hit around here.

But remember “The Cat Rules,” Millie. You are NOT the owner and I am NOT your staff.

By the way, would you like gravy with your salmon?

Home always is where the heart is

Monday, December 12, 2011

Last July I was watching the fireworks with my 20-year-old daughter  and all I could think about when I looked at her was that the celebration we were sharing was among the last time for things of the home child.

I was bucking against the truth that the living with each other moments of quiet mutual presence and the mother/daughter mysteries of tolerance that we had been grooming would soon be over.

What did I know for sure on that night in July? Life was going to change for the both of us.

I miss my Heather. I haven’t seen her since the end of August and on that day when the calendar with all the big X’s on it that hung on the wall in her bedroom had finally landed on the departure day for college, there was little time for weeping warriors of parenthood.

Heather was far too excited to get the mud out of her wings to be mired in the blubbering arms of her mother. She’d had her bags packed for weeks, dreaming the big and best dreams a young, aspiring woman can have of heading off to the big city and a three-year college course some 1,400 km away.

I remember feeling slighted ever so slightly when she bolted from my grasp in the parking lot and threw her suitcases into the trunk of her friend’s car, shouting “Goodbye Mom!” as she jumped into the front seat and took off for her future. Perhaps it was for the best not lingering on farewells and snivels.

I saved the big sob for my lonely drive back to the house. I felt like a strand of “Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel.” Part of me was separating.

But change is good. Change has opened me up to love again, write more, and live louder.

As I sit here in on a Monday morning in my writing sweater with my writing music and my cup of writing coffee (strong, strong, strong) I get all pumped up because I’m going to see Miss Heather again when she bunks in for the Christmas holidays.

I couldn’t be more excited if Oprah Winfrey called me. Well, maybe that would make me more excited, but . . . I am very excited to see my Heather on Saturday.

And when she walks through the gates at the Thunder Bay Airport that morning, rest assured she will hear me before she sees me when I break open in my “Bose” surround sound voice of motherly anticipation.

She will smile and roll her eyes and turn around and pretend to re-board the plane. I will laugh and cry and jump around and she will say “Mother” in a drawn-out low tone of voice I have heard a million times over that means, “For Heaven’s sake could you just act normal just this once.”

The four-hour drive home will fly by and we’ll wonder where the time went. The dogs will realize who she is the moment she steps from the car in the driveway and her heart will melt at the sight of them.

Then will come the moment when she will walk in and take another leap at growing up, when she realizes that the age-old saying “You can’t go home again,” is true.

It’s all good in my world but life has changed around here and a part of me is melancholy for the moment one’s child understands this, because I remember what that felt like as a young woman away at school and who came home to find that the world didn’t stop turning when I left.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (540BC-480BC) said, “You could not step twice into the same river, for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” Smart ancient man.

Yet as Fredrick Robertson penned—and I know is true—“Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other.  It is the place of confidence . . .”

I can’t wait to see you. I love you around the world and back again in a circle never ending.

By the way, some things never change. You have to wash the supper dishes.

I don't know much but I know what I like

Monday, December 5, 2011


Lisa Kogan, a writer-at-large for Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine has the floor. 
“You could fill entire football stadiums with all the things that I don't know.”


I, too, admit to my unknowns and some of them perpetuate in relentless head-banging fashion.
I don’t know how the manufacturers of pantyhose expect that a pair marketed as a ‘Size D’ (for the apple bottom crew) is going to cover the acreage of 46-inches of hips when the spindly thing measures just seven inches at the waist coming out of the package.


I don’t know why I forget that I have such trouble getting into this nylon contraption. Perhaps I suffer from the same evolutionary glitch as the deer, which seemingly have not passed down to the next generation the dangers involved in crossing a busy highway. When it comes to putting myself into pantyhose I have, for the past 40-some years, never learned from my trials either. 


I have been in all sorts of situations where the threat of someone walking into the room has presented itself while I am addressing the issue of the pantyhose. 
As I have stated in previous column rants about pantyhose; there ought to be a warning label in red bold print that cautions the wearer of ‘Tummy and Thigh Slimmer’ pantyhose to put them on in an isolation booth secured by a deadbolt. 


Of course the booth should be big enough to allow one to lie down because as surely as eggs is eggs a writhing will occur that begs for a wide berth.

I don’t know how I survive these brief encounters with a two-legged form of shrink-wrap without having to go to counseling. 
On two recent occasions while primping for social outings, I’ve been faced with the threat of being seen by another human being whilst stuffing myself into the nylon contraption in an act that emulates the comedic contortionist routine of Jim Carrey. 


I was sharing a hotel room with a girlfriend and while she was in the bathroom I decided to tackle the new pair of pantyhose I’d bought at the mall for the artificial toning beneath my work clothes.


Once again, it was like putting a band-aid on a spurting artery.


I began at the toe, one and then the other, jostled and teetered and by the time I had the device mid-calf on both legs the waistband slammed shut cutting off the blood supply and turning my feet a sickly shade of blue. I waddled like a penguin to the bedside and crashed on top where I writhed like a dying snake suffocating in duct tape as I jostled them on. 


Lucky for me my roommate was still in the shower. However, I do believe that had she witnessed my struggle she would have had the greatest empathy for my plight. Most women would. 


The only man who would understand the pantyhose plight is movie star Mel Gibson. And though it would be fun to have Gibson around once in a while, the reality is that I don’t share breathing space at home with someone who tried on pantyhose and gained the ability to hear what women are thinking. 
And although I wish that sometimes Jon could read my mind I have no desire to have him bear witness to the possessed woman I become when I am fighting the nylon demon.  


In fact, I’d like to keep things just the way they are where he is none the wiser to what lies beneath. 


Just the other day, I had a second isolated session with my shrink-wrap undergarments, and had completed the insanity with a party dress. 
I was standing there critiquing myself in the mirror just moments after stuffing back in the little roll of displaced fat at the top of the pantyhose when Jon walked into the bedroom. 


“Well, that’s as good as it’s going to get,” I said, twirling ‘round. 
“You can’t improve on perfection,” said Jon. 
“Stop right there. Don’t say another word,” I said with a smile and a wink of my eye. 


Lisa Kogan you have the floor. 
“You could fill entire football stadiums with all the things that I don't know . . . but there is this one little thing about men that I do know with crystal clarity: I know what I like.”