Random Musing: “Little Things” 2018 Highlights

My list of 2018 highlights….

Little things

I’m grateful to end my day with Dave in bed beside me and Bean beside him. In preparation for sleep we accuse the other of snoring and how beatings will ensue. Then like synchronized swimmers we insert our ear plugs and don our eye bras, kiss each other good night and drift off to sleep but not before I hear the train across the water which reminds me of long ago.

I am very thankful for my friend  Anna who  agreed to help me rescue the crow even though I knew she’d rather have gone to the  mall like she had planned:)

If I’m lucky enough to make it to 96 I hope I have as many renaysances as my wonderful friend Inge who is full of impish delight, humour, wit and generosity.

Last year I did the Polar Swim to raise money for elephants. Dave and friends stuffed me full of waffles, cheered me on and then warmed me up when I came running out of the ocean. For a nanosecond I felt like a coddled elite athlete. So thanks for my Olympic moment guys!

I was dispatched to Vietnam by work and randomly thrown on a bus with a bunch of fabulous nutbars.

After a massage a young Vietnamese woman hugged me. That hug collapsed oceans of difference between us.

Summers here now mean smokey skies. But on Salt Spring the smoke was laced with the scent of heavily ripened black berries. If I remember nothing else I hope to remember this. Late afternoon naps with Dave and Bean. Slow walks down the winding blackberry lined road. Early morning, mid-afternoon and night time swims in St. Mary’s Lake with my family.

I have a small circle of guy friends. They keep it light even when you’re stuck in a car for 6 hours straight trying to get through the border to a baseball game and have to  pee or you’ve been having a bad day. They’re like “Sit down. Bee-atch! Grab a drink and  chill yourself out. “They spiral it up. So thanks boys.

My sister-in-law, reminded me of the time when we were 18 and we had climbed to the top of a barn and drank wine for hours. Unfortunately (mostly for Alison) this was the exact moment I discovered my terror of heights. We still can’t figure out how we got me down but I imagine it was something along the lines of her  carrying me down on her back with a glass of wine in one hand and a smoke in the other. I think this best sums up our lifelong friendship.

I love  little conversations. The big ones are like major parentheses. They’re always there. But the little ones get me through it all. My sister and I are fierce in the morning. We hurl made up song lyrics at each other, frequently trying to rhyme our almost impossible to rhyme names. “Mia bom bia is a tree-aa. Oh ya- ah. “We rage at traffic and shake our fists at the sky. I regale her with my Seinfeldian office life. And  when the sads hit we listen, or get feisty. Humour is a fishing rod for our sads. There’s no sinking to the bottom of the ocean when you have the option to be hauled up by a life rope.

There’s a poem that Alison McGhee shared by a man called Tony Hoagland. I’ve read this poem over and over and over again and each time it makes me emotional. But here are a few lines that I hope will encourage you to read the poem in its entirety.

“Hotel of earth, where we resided for some years together,”
I start to say, before I realize it is a terrible cliche, and stop,
and then go on, forgiving myself in a mere split second
because now that I’m dying, I just go
forward like water, flowing around obstacles
and second thoughts, not getting snagged, just continuing
with my long list of thank-yous,
which seems to naturally expand to include sunlight and wind,
and the aspen trees which gleam and shimmer in the yard
as if grateful for being soaked last night
by the irrigation system invented by an individual
to whom I am quietly grateful.”

This “hotel of earth where we resided for some years together” is such a beautiful image. My own “hotel of earth” is given meaning by the little things. Sitting with my brother and his wife in our living room.. The years of knowing each other gives way to ease of being that’s earned through time and forgiveness and just plain having fun together.

This year we got rid of stuff. We’ve emptied our house of things gathered over the years. We are down to the essentials. I feel like it leaves more room to fill the house with more living of us,  rather than living of room. This is the place where Dave makes me laugh, where sometimes we dance, where we spend countless hours jut staring at Bean. “My gosh, she’s just so cute.” We say to each other over and over again.

This year, I hope like Tony and his beautiful poem that I go forward like water and flow around obstacles and second thoughts. I hope to remember all minutiae and the moments in between. I am eternally grateful to everyone who is a part of my hotel of life but mostly I thank Dave and Bean who carry me through the seasons with their steadfastness and love.