Open The Door and Kick Out The Elephant

Monday, January 30, 2012



On the afternoon of January 19th, 2012 my life and the lives of Dr. Jon Fistler’s children were forever changed and we were thrown to the wolves with unanswered questions and regret and unspeakable grief at the misunderstanding that followed his suicide.

I have discovered that I hate the word suicide. It is bitter and sour and razor-sharp and as I now understand it to be true—also is the biggest elephant in the room after someone dies at his or her own hand. 


In my last column of December 2011 I wrote the following:




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. 


Oh how little did I know when I wrote that.
Well, if the Universe is unfolding as it should and I am to keep approachable to learning the importance of my part in this world—which, to say the least, is a  &%$#@! big pill to swallow right now—then I am opening the door and telling the elephant to “Get Out.” 


The shroud of secrecy and the stigma surrounding suicide following major depression must be exposed. There is no shame here. Major depression is a disease like cancer and we must give it the recognition it deserves. 


So here I am joining the ranks of the “left behind.” I have a very long road ahead to recovery from what has happened here and there are three precious and beautiful adult children of Jon’s who also now have to find their way back from the darkness created by this heartbreaking tragedy. We are helping each other. Their support of me and mine of them is the grace to come out of all of this. 


I had a wonderful experience of the miracle of love with Jon in Canada where he was realizing a long time dream of practicing veterinarian medicine in the Rainy River District. His life was so very full of promise,
God Bless him for sharing an all too brief 403 days of his life with me. I know in my heart our love for each other was a wonderful respite of peace and serenity for Jon, especially in those recent times when depression and darkness crept in to his mind. 


I know this much to be true. Jon was a tender soul. Maybe some tender souls just cannot carry the burden on this earth and need to go to a softer gentler place more quickly than others. Jon’s spirit now is free to work miracles from the other side. May he come into the peace of wild things that do not tax their lives with forethought of despair.


I also know for sure that those of us who are left behind in our heartache and our unknowing about major depression have a big job ahead of us. 


There is a German proverb that says: “To bury grief, plant a seed.”


So I’m asking everyone who knew Jon or has known someone who has committed suicide to first plant a seed of gratitude. 


Say “Thank You” out loud a lot for his or her life, even if you’re not sure to whom or to what you are saying it -- say it anyway, especially when grief is about to swallow you up. 


Plant a seed of no regrets in your soul. Those of us who were closest to Jon, let us feel no guilt, and we should not and cannot carry his pain or his burden. He would not want that and we need to be free to heal.


Plant a seed of communication. Talk about your feelings with someone who will listen, talk about depression, learn about depression and suicide and speak its name. Plant a seed. Grow awareness. Please.


I carry your heart Jon. I carry it in my heart.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

I Cannot Deny It Is What It Is

Monday, January 16, 2012

This is one of those weeks when I have nothing better to write about than some of the things that I can’t deny. 


I can’t deny myself the Dairy Milk chocolate bar I found in a flat storage container under my bed. I swear I’m getting rid of it in the quickest way I know how—one square at a time. 


On a similar scope, I can’t deny that my resolve to exercise more is meeting with hurdles. I was sick this past week (and not from too much Chocolate thank you very much) and I’m finding it really difficult to get back on the treadmill after seven days of rain. 


I can’t deny that I’m really not sure my dogs would save my life in a time of crisis should a wolf confront me during our daily walks on the frozen creek bed. 
I have deduced this theory because of a fire log that Cash had in his mouth when we started on our walk one day and which he dropped on the trail when he figured out it was too heavy to carry. 
On the way back home we rounded the last creek corner and he spotted the wooden thing lying motionless ahead of us. 


All chaos broke loose. 


The hair between the dog’s shoulder blades stood on end and he jumped around like the “Chester the Terrier” from the “Loonie Tunes” cartoons.
Cash howled at the menacing object, while Dot stood in place barking her own frenzy and pawing the ground like a raging bull in an arena full of red capes. 


Neither one of them dared go near the log. These mutts should not quit their day job to become bodyguards.
Henceforth, I can’t deny that on my walk I should carry a big stick for self-defence. 


I can’t deny that in as much as I love screaming down the snow hill here at high speed on a Krazy Karpet on my stomach with my arms outstretched one minute and behind my back the next so that I am streamlined in loge precision, my rotator cuffs think that was a stupid thing to do. 

I can’t deny that I am still learning to sail my “relation” ship with the past. 


I know this for sure because when I was standing at the burn barrel a couple of days ago watching the flames blacken the edges of some love letters I’d found from during my years of marriage to Peter, I was rushed back to sadness, pulled into perplexity at the folly of it all, jabbed with bitterness and bits of unresolved closure. 


I still am learning to sail away from that ship almost two years later, with clarity and dignity. 


I can’t deny the Karma of this very moment. Just now the phone rang and a twangy-sounding saleswoman trying to sell me carpet cleaning said “Hello, Mrs. Suppa?” 
I paused and said, “not any more,” and hung up. I can’t deny that made me feel awesome. 


And finally I can’t deny that while I was born in the arms of a wonderful imagination, all of this is true.

Granny's House Is Where It's At

Monday, January 9, 2012

I lay prostrate on my bed. Withered by the events of the day I read from “The Book of Ages” in hopes of regenerating myself by living vicariously through the lives of others my age.

“Pffft.” Big mistake.

According to the book of miscellany by Eric Hanson, at the age of 51 the late Fred Astaire was kicking up dust on the dance floor with Jane Powell in the musical “Royal Wedding.” In the movie, he also danced on the ceiling, danced with dumbbells, a coat rack, a framed photograph, and a chandelier.

In my neck of the woods I needed three tablespoons of pure white sugar and a cup of strong coffee to get my carcass off the bed and over to the closet to get my housecoat.

I am 51 years old and worn out by a mere overnighter with my 18-month-old grandson.

How did I ever manage to raise three children all those years ago? Oh yes, I forgot. I had girls.

Taking care of this little jalapeno is akin to nailing Jell-O to a tree. He has enough spitfire to be his own billiard game.

On Friday evening at 5 p.m., I walked through the door with the little gaffer and his overnight bag; let Charlie out of my arms and “BLAMMO!” he scattered in 15 different directions at once. 

I never stopped chasing Charlie for the next three hours. My arms and legs moved independently of my brain, which wandered adrift in nursery rhymes that some chump had written centuries ago about little boys being made of puppy-dog tails and snails.

No sir. Little boys are made of Mexican jumping beans, monkeys, red squirrels, elastic bands, and slingshots.

I was reminded again why all those years ago my baby brother was habitually encapsulated in a large, locked playpen. Mind you, now he has a strange attraction to skeleton keys—but that’s another story.

How did I ever manage to raise my own children with going mad? Oh yes, I forgot. I had girls.

If I wasn’t blocking Charlie’s finger poke shots at the plastic insulation on my windows, I was running defense for the blinking lights on my ‘Apple TV’ monitor and DVD player both of which I found rearranged on different shelves of my entertainment unit when I raced back to the living room after a lightening-fast trip to the bathroom.

At snack time, I thought I had a reprieve of sorts when I gave Charlie a little dish of Cheerios and raisins. He toddled off to the couch to watch a television episode of “Max and Ruby.”

In a few minutes, he came back to me at the kitchen sink where I was inhaling the last piece of Christmas chocolate and asked for more “Some?”

I smiled and motioned for the little dish from his hand. He looked up at me and three raisins fell out of his right nostril. The rest of his snack was divided between the couch cushions and the front of his pants.

When I put him to bed at 8:30 that night, I’m not sure who was more pooped out, he or I. I snuck around on tiptoe until I was sure he was asleep and then jumped into a shower hot enough to cook a bird and then stayed up too late eating potato chips and watching mindless television.

A 3 a.m. my sleeping skeleton was stirred from a dream date with George Clooney by the cries of my small fry.

I opened the door to Charlie’s room and was hit by the smelling salts of a fermented gift that had leaked well beyond the elastic legs of his diaper.

At 8 a.m. when Charlie’s rejuvenated and audible spirit had roused both dogs and the cat into a spat, I opened one eyelid to the piercing reality of the morning.

“I feel like I have been dragged down the street by two Great Danes,” I mumbled out loud. Hugh Jackman had said that in a television interview.

Uh huh. I understood the feeling.

But—and this is a big But—the monkey, chipmunk, red squirrel and jumping bean, and the busy, busy havoc of my little jalapeno pepper and his 3 a.m. poopy diaper are trumped by the look on the little boy’s face when at morning I open the door to his room and he stands there with his stuffed animal in his crib.

He faces lights up and so does mine.

Grandmothers (and Grandfathers too) are important in the life of child. My grandparents taught me that and it’s why I’ll do this again and again.

There's Something Wrong With This Picture

Monday, January 2, 2012

I wasn’t going to make a New Year’s resolution because I figured that any day of the year I could make a change for the better, so why limit myself to one in 365 days for a personal decree.

But at 11:55 p.m. on New Year’s Eve I became aware of the need to adjust my thinking as my right hand stalked the last chocolate toffee triangle on the plate while my left hand reached for a gooey butter tart. All I could think about was which piece of lovely I would shove in my mouth first.

I could blame my extremities for having minds of their own but that would be stupid.

Clearly I have a real soft spot for sweets. In fact my soft spot has grown to twice the size it was before I started my Christmas baking frenzy on December 17^th which threw a big wedgy into my plan to wear the new jeans I bought for myself. 

So right then and there 15 minutes before the clock struck midnight, I vowed out loud to three witnesses in the room that my New Year’s resolution was to stay away from goodies.

I lasted until New Year’s Day at 6 p.m. when I was looking through my coat for a grocery list and found an individually wrapped “Turtle” candy in one of my zipper pockets.

Toasted pecans, soft caramel, and smooth chocolate never tasted so good together. I shrugged off waves of guilt, popped it in and hummed the song “Start Again” in my Alfie Zappacosta singing voice.

Then at 7:30 p.m., starving to death, I opened the fridge door to look for supper leftovers and found a bag of homemade peanut brittle my daughter had given me over the holidays.

I could market myself as the human vacuum cleaner. The waves of guilt lapped at my waistline as I took a handful and crunched it down. I shrugged at my screaming conscious and chanted, “We just start again . . .”

I repeated this lovely melody for a third time later that first evening of 2012 when I remembered there were three homemade chocolate truffles left and that I should polish them off.

“Out of sight out of mind,” I reasoned to myself as I leaned over my soft spot at the bake board table in the kitchen, bit into the creamy centers, and hummed my mantra while reviewing photos on my iPhone that had been taken over the holidays.

I stopped mid-song and muttered; “There is something wrong with this picture.”

Less than 24 hours earlier I had done two things. I had made a resolution to keep my hands off sweets, and had had a riveting conversation around the supper table with Jon and another couple about the chicken neck syndrome that suddenly happens when you turn 50 years old.

Mine was swaying gently to and fro as my jaws chewed up the final truffle when I came upon a photo that I must have accidently taken at some point while looking down at the iPhone screen.  

For a moment I wasn’t exactly sure who it was I was looking at, and then I recognized the loose skin under her chin. 

I don’t think a cattle prod could have produced more get up and go than seeing what gravity does to a budding chicken neck.

From now on I resolve to take a whole new position in life—on my back and looking up.

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.”

A wonderful mess is made with chocolate

Monday, November 28, 2011

I am no longer a drinking woman, but I sure could have used a stiff Marguerita before I went shopping for a gym suit a couple of weeks ago.

The last time I had my carcass in one of those contraptions was in 1974 when I was 14 years old and in Phys Ed class in Grade 9.  It was a blue zip-up thing that left my hairy armpits and legs exposed. As a teenager I hated gym class for all sorts of reasons and the gym suit just added a whole level of disaster to the experience.

Some 37 years later you’d think I’d have my gym suit issues worked out, right? Obviously not.

Denial is not a river in Africa.

I joined the gym in recent weeks because my Body Mass Index of 31.7 (I’d round it off to 32 but that would be stupid) was crying “Uncle.”

My bra contents could no longer slide in like a warm hug and it was a juggling match every morning pushing the bottom of my butt fat back into my underwear. Oh Lordy.

I needed to get back to the world of exercise in the same big way that Steven King purports I come to the writing table—any way but lightly.

So off I went to the local department store for the darkest fat-camouflage gym gear I could find. I chose carefully a two-piece black number that would cover everything from ankle to elbow and slinked into the change room to try it on, wishing I could knock back a Marguerita before I looked in the mirror at myself.

However I was pleasantly surprised when I peaked through squinted eye to see that the camouflage gear was living up to its name. Praise be to Lycra!

But I still needed to get to the gym to make this equation work. I packed a gym bag and drove from my house in the direction of the gym, all the while thinking of one hundred excuses why I really didn’t have to go at all. In fact, I drove past the gym twice just to see how many cars were parked there before I drew up enough courage to pull in. I so wanted a second Marguerita before I stepped on to the gym floor in my gym suit.

For all the belief I have in myself—and I do believe in me—all it took was the threat of exposing myself in a head-to-toe gym suit to put me at the back of the line in self-esteem. How crazy is that?

I managed to make it across the co-ed gym floor without looking up and bolted upstairs to the women-only section like I was being chased by Michael Myers from the “Halloween” movie. No word of a lie.

But I made it and when I got on that treadmill almost immediately I was fired with adrenaline. As I quickened the pace and the sweat began to pour off my face taking with it all my mascara I couldn’t help but believe I was a force to be reckoned with—a workout heroine!!  My 35lb weight loss goal (okay, 40lbs) had begun.

Day One was in the bag. Then I went to my workplace, souped up on myself, and opened the little drawer at the coffee station to fetch a piece of gum and discovered an opened bag of “Lindor” truffles staring back at me from their perfectly round and beautiful foiled wrappings.

I poked five of them in my mouth. Oh Lordy. The err of my ways.

Balance? Sometimes I do it well sometimes I do it appallingly.

But nonetheless I’ll be the first to admit—I am a wonderful mess (with emphasis on the wonderful.)

Comments on a job well done

Monday, November 21, 2011

What I know for sure is, that for the most part, I could take a lesson or two from the primary school of thought known as the three-year-old.

Small children are grounding spirits of presence who are wise beyond measure. Or so I believe anyway.

Sue Patton Thoele hit the nail on the head when she penned, “One of the quickest ways to disturb peace of mind is to worry about the future.”

Three-year-olds aren’t consumed by worries of what might happen tomorrow, or next week, and they certainly don’t let the overloaded soul get in the way of what’s right in front of them.

Quick is the decent to being the victim when my ego nags at me to be troubled by what might be in the tornado of the “future hole,” as Thoele calls it.

Then along comes a three-year-old to teach me about the present moment that I often lose touch with when I start projecting myself into the days that aren’t even here yet.

One of my six little peppers came to stay with me last week while her family was out of town and I’ll admit that in the days leading up to her visit, I was apprehensive because I didn’t quite know how I would juggle work, home life, and a child.

It was 48 hours of my life, and yet I was convinced I was too busy to handle it. Too busy. I am embarrassed to see the latter sentence in print.

Thank Heaven I didn’t let myself off the hook.

For two days I was captured under the spell of a little person who holds wonder for almost everything under the sun.

That’s not to say she didn’t “wig out” in the local department store and momentarily take on the personality of a budding Medusa when her Granny told her she couldn’t climb out of the shopping cart and run through the store. Oh yes, I have seen the flipside in its purest form. The only difference is that now, at the age of 51, I am not swayed by the public tantrums.

When I was a young mom and that kind of Tasmanian devilry occurred, it was all I could do to get out of the store with my screaming child and my embarrassment cloak thrown over my head.

The coolest thing about a little kid who is angry and upset is that, for the most part, the moment is lived thoroughly and then left behind as they move on to the next “now.”

I need to learn how to do that more often—to have my moment and move on and not cook it up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five days straight.

However, my little pepper’s 15 minutes of fame in the shopping cart is but an aside to the real lesson here.

I love my little peppers and I remind them of how awesome they are and how much I love them every chance I get.

I wish I could say I was the one who planted so well the seed of positive reinforcement in a three-year-old that she pays it forward every chance she gets.

I am not the one who did that.

Mother, father, and “Zaagi-idiwin Aboriginal Head Start” teachers, kudos to all of you.

My respect for your child rearing couldn’t shine any brighter than when my little pepper said to me, without provocation,  “Good job, Gran,” every time I did even the most simplest of tasks.

Oh, how the young can grow by example.

Good job, caregivers. Good job.

My pitching philosophy is simple

Monday, November 14, 2011

I don’t watch baseball, but I do know that a baseball bat is supposed to be used in the game of baseball to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher.

This is an open letter of sorts to the driver and his passenger who used a baseball bat to take out my mailbox at the end of my driveway in the wee hours of the morning on November 9^th.

At least five other residents along my country road also woke up to find their mailboxes smashed open or on the ground.

My ex-husband used to say, “It’s much easier to be bad than it is to be good.”

The last thing I want right now is to prove him right.

I challenge you to do better. Many will doubt that you will rise to that challenge. It’s much easier not to, right?

I picked up the pieces of my old, dear-to-my-heart mailbox that morning and carried its shattered little shell back down the driveway. Its day was done.

My mailbox was a bit of an icon in my neck of the woods. My grandfather, the late Joe Drennan, had built it some 25 years ago as a replica of the old red barn on the farm. It was one of the few handmade treasures I had left around here.

Finding it smashed on the ground that morning wasn’t the way I had wanted it to go out. My heart still hurts over that, and that’s the truth of the matter.

So my dilemma was this. Do I put up a new mailbox or forego the ritual of rural mail delivery and rent a post office box in town? Do I defy the vandals and re-group or give in to their spontaneous trickery and eliminate the temptation?

I was a lucky kid. I was raised to believe in the good in people and I have carried that sometimes challenging and often blinding notion throughout my life because not believing that means I lose. And I’m not a loser. I dwell in possibility and doing anything else is not an option.

So up goes a new mailbox. Do I run the risk of witnessing a repeat offence? Chances are pretty good, yes.

Peter DeVries said, “We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school.”

Well then, I guess I’m still in summer school.

I refuse to lose faith in the one who rides in the back of a truck with a baseball bat in his hand and that someday he will choose the harder path and take it to the game instead. This is my hope.

Here's to the wisdom of Andy Rooney

Monday, November 7, 2011

“My lucky life.”

That was Andy Rooney’s story title six weeks ago when at the age of 92; he spoke in his final television essay on “60 Minutes.”

And when he died last week, well, this “Rooney wanna-be” was very sad indeed. I guess I expected Andy Rooney would be around forever. After all he was the grandfather of the personal “take it public” essay and the face of someone who told the unspoken truths about life.

He was awesome.

I am an Andy Rooney groupie. I wanted to be just like him and I have spent much time at the CBS website, watching his essay videos with a magnifying glass at my computer screen, trying to read the titles of the books he kept on the shelf behind his desk.

After much eye strain and time I have managed to pull the names for three including, “The Book of Ages,” by Eric Hanson, “Fowler’s Modern Day English,” and “Giants Among Men,” by Jack Cavanaugh.

I want them all.

I just realized I already have the Fowler’s edition and I am elated.

Andy Rooney once did a three-minute essay on “Clutter or Memories,” and talked about among other piles of papers, the cardboard boxes he kept by his desk where he stored ideas on paper he thought were worth keeping. When a box filled up he’d just start another one.

Man, would I love to go through those boxes of his today.

Yet, here I sit at a desk in my very own writing den surrounded by all sorts of wisdom fairies of my own making. I have books by Eckhart Tolle and Caroline Myss, and New York Times reporter and journalist Nicholas Kristof. I have a really big 2010 edition of “Writer’s Market” and a little tiny book called “Creative Block – 500 ideas to ignite your Imagination,” which I use A LOT.

I now realize I have my very own clutter and memories right here on the upper shelf that includes a book of poetry I wrote as I was growing up, a pile of legal papers, family stuff, financial stuff, and thick rows of old school exercise scribblers stuffed with my creative writing and muses of the sort. 

There’s a candle burning, a container packed with more pens and pencils than I will ever need. I have my magnifying glass and a copy of “On Writing”—the best book, in my humble opinion that Stephen King ever penned.

And oh yes, a perpetual cup of hot coffee to help speed my brain along the path of original thought.

I also have this little head-bobbing, smiling Holstein cow toy that sits by my computer. She is my writing mascot and every time I need positive reinforcement I just tip her snout a bit and she nods “Yes.”

Today she is reminding me to give a shout out to the local farmer.

On Saturday night I sat among farmers of one type or another, at the Rainy River Federation of Agriculture’s annual dinner and general meeting held in Stratton. I am not a farmer.

Farmers are awesome. I was in a room full of them that night and it didn’t take long to realize just how important the local farmer is in this district and how very hard they work. Very hard indeed.

In fact, I could take a lesson or two from a farmer’s commitment to his or her trade. “Come to the craft any way but lightly,” as Stephen King penned.

“If you can’t it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.”

Support your local farmer.

And I’m going to keep on writing. My lucky life. Amen, Mr. Rooney.