Follow the Joy

 

Looking back at my childhood, I realize I deprived myself of many sources of joy. My sister was four years older than I and was a very talented person, both musically and artistically. I, on the other hand, had a poor ear for music, was left-handed and struggled with my fine motor coordination. Even my mother would say things like, "Don't worry about it. You're such a hard worker and that makes up for a lot." People were always comparing us to each other and I internalized that comparison. No matter what I did, I could never measure up. 

As a result, I steered away from things I loved, things that brought me pure bliss and joy. I could not stop my need for music and pursued it despite my shortcomings, but I turned my back on art and visual expression and never looked back.

Through the years I ended up teaching both music and art in public school. I tried to help kids find the joy in their expression and not to worry about comparisons or competence. It was as much about the process as it was the final product. One day I realized the things I was telling students also applied to me. I needed to move past the feelings of being compared to someone else and being found wanting. I needed to embrace the things that brought me joy and made me whole. 

I posted this little painting, not because it's wonderful, but because I remember the absolute joy I felt while painting it along with my grandkids on an art afternoon in our family. It has some obvious flaws and I wanted those to show, too. We don't need to be embarrassed that our work isn't perfect. When I look at my little painting, I think of the joy, not the mistakes. 

I have many things that bring me joy on a daily basis. I love to write, both poetry and prose. I love to sketch and paint, and enjoy music in its many forms. I enjoy sewing, gardening and cooking. I'm not an expert in any of them, but it doesn't matter That's not the point. The point is that they lift my spirits and bring me joy in my life.

What brings you joy?

Confronting Clutter

Every day we are bombarded by clutter. We live in a period of time when there is just a lot of stuff and every time we turn on the TV, open a magazine or newspaper, or go online we are overwhelmed with advertising to buy more.

My mother was an orphan during the Great Depression. She had nothing. A scrap of paper, the stub of a pencil, a couple of spoonsful of leftover porridge - all was to be used, treasured and saved against a time of want. She taught all of her children well. Do not waste! Gather against a time of need.

The mindset that drives hoarding is fear and anxiety. Feelings of safety and security can come from having stuff. But when you mix yesterday's mindset for dealing with scarcity with today's reality of being bombarded with stuff, it's a recipe for disaster.

Having stuff takes work, and possessions can become an obstacle and a burden. That is the mindset that goes with the minimalist lifestyle. Those who have always had enough are not frightened by having only a little because there is a sense that there will always be more to get when you really need it. 

The current pandemic has stopped us in our tracks. Could we find ourselves without what we need? Loss of health, jobs and income bring back anxiety and an urge to save and collect against a time of want. The long term economic impact of the coronavirus is yet to be understood and it could be represent create systemic poverty for a long time, perhaps we are entering the next Great Depression. 

How are you managing the scarcity or abundance mindset? What strategies are you using to manage the day to day clutter? I'm caught in the middle. If only I had a crystal ball!

When You Pause to Remember

 

My research for Book Three in the Windy Rafters Roughnecks series includes time travel to WW2. I've been thinking a lot the last week or so about the impact of war on those who stayed home. Just as we are all impacted by the pandemic, everyone at the time was impacted by the war. This poem reflects some of my thoughts:

 

When You Pause to Remember

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

Who said their goodbye, then, letting tears dry

Counted days until he came home.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

Who stretched out the sugar and butter and meat

Who grew Victory Gardens and vowed no defeat

And believed that it could be done.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

Who raised the kids and cared for the folks

Who kept the fires burning and kept alive hope

Then prayed for the strength to go on.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

Who rolled all the bandages, knit scarves and gloves

Sewed vests and pajamas infused with their love

While thinking of days that were gone.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

Running factories and farms, tired backs, weary arms

Carrying burdens, so often alone.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

Who tried to stand tall when death came to call

And they heard that knock at the door.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

And when he came back, injured or maimed

Haunted by demons that couldn’t be tamed

And they knew it had only begun.

 

When you pause to remember

Remember the ones who stayed home

When they said we had won and the fighting was done

But their sorrow and pain lingered on.

The Tortoise or the Hare?

Are you living life as the tortoise or the hare? I am constantly challenged by this, especially in my writing life. I like to think of myself as being more like the tortoise, having a quiet, uneventful routine and structure to my days. But when I get flashes of creative insight, I have to admit I'm off like the hare. I have a vision in mind and and I see the finish line beckoning me. Sometimes these creative stints can leave me exhausted and depleted.

Here are some examples. When I'm working on smaller pieces like this blog or my instagram stories, I think about them during the day or the week and write a little each day. This is easy to fit into my daily schedule without creating too many wrinkles for myself or others.

When I am preparing to write a book, I can be like the tortoise. I do a lot of reading, research and thinking. As I let all of that information just sit and percolate, somehow it reorganizes itself in a myriad of ways. I know I have to take time and process everything I've been learning before I start writing. If I try to push it into a structure prematurely, I'll end up frustrated and stuck. When I wait, I start to get new insights about how the setting, my characters and the plot events will contribute to the themes of the book and the story starts to take shape.

Then suddenly I'm ready to write and I'm off like the hare. Writing the first draft is an intense and all encompassing experience. The ideas, the characters and plot are burning to come to life on the page. They nudge and push at me. I write feverishly trying to get it all down. During this phase of the writing, I often get sudden flashes of ideas to take the story in a new direction. Usually these are productive. Sometimes they're not. I can't put this writing into my regular routine. It just doesn't work for me. During this time, it is hard to focus on anything else.

Once the story is down in some form, I can finally relax and resume working as the tortoise. Little by little and day by day I work and rework the material, sometimes making minor changes and sometimes deleting or adding whole scenes or chapters. Then I rework it again and again. It usually takes several revisions.

I'm almost at the end of my research for book three in my children's historical fiction series. I'm really getting ready to take off like the hare, but I'm feeling held back by a number of other responsibilities and practical considerations. Is there some way I can learn to write the first draft more like a tortoise? I'm not sure... If you don't hear anything from me for a while, you know the hare is off on a writing spree!

 

The Sound of Silence

 I fell into a restless sleep last night, as the wind continued to howl outside, the way it had for the last 48 hours. Suddenly I woke and sat up in bed. What had woken me? And then I realized. 

It was silent, completely silent. I had been woken by the sound of silence. 

As the irony of that idea took hold, I knew I needed to explore the thought and decided to make it the topic of today's blog. 

As I thought about setting up the blog, I realized I would need a picture to go with it and I wondered, what does silence look like? I scrolled through my camera roll and found a few pictures of nature in serenity, but I realized that silence looks different depending on what it means.

Sometimes silence is just that, a form of repose that brings peace to heart, mind and soul. That kind of silence is a rest or a reprieve from the relentless demands of daily living. Or from the constant buffetings of the wind. At Windy Rafters, when there is absolutely no movement in the tree in our front yard, when not a leaf, seedpod or twig of that maple tree moves, there is a welcoming silence.

Sometimes silence is empty, a void that seeps deep into the loneliest recesses of the psyche, as if one was the last person on earth. I wonder if those who have travelled in space and ventured outside the spacecraft into space itself, or looked back on the earth and realized they were separated from all humanity have felt that kind of silence. I would like to know. 

Silence can also be ominous. I'm thinking of the "lull before the storm" or being in the "eye of a storm". I remember travelling to Edmonton a number of years ago and as we got closer to the city there was an ominous silence as strange cloud formations drifted silently across a greenish purple sky. When we arrived we discovered a tornado had just touched down, taking the roof off of the aquatic center where we were supposed to meet family. Many people died in that tornado. 

Silence can also be full. I love this print of a painting of an elderly man in prayer. To me this silence is full. It is warm, full of gratitude. It is like an unvoiced conversation between the man and is Father, an old friend.

In relationships, silence can mean so many things. It can seethe with tension or be full of anticipation. We speak of a pregnant pause or that silence is taken as agreement. 

Years ago I had an English professor who told us we should look for the spaces, look for what is not being said or who is not speaking, as well as the spoken word. I am certainly going to look at how I use silence in my writing. How do you write silence? Just something to think about....

Winter on the Prairies

 

As I drove out of my heated garage in my heated vehicle on Monday and headed for town, the thought came to me, "What was it like to live in southern Alberta in the winter long ago?"

The one constant is that the prairie winters have always been dark and cold. Our strategies to cope with that have changed over time. 

Even as a kid growing up in the sixties and seventies, I have memories of life in winter being different than it is today. I remember quilts and coats being heavier, but not as warm. I remember mittens knitted from wool getting soaked right through after snow  ball fights and making snowmen. It seemed that the winters were more severe and lasted longer then. The snow was deeper and my dad made a trail from the house to the barn. I remember walking through it with snow piled high on either side. I remember taking out our little wooden sled and being able to get some pretty good runs in the drifts just in our own farmyard. I always liked it when the snow was crusty and you could walk on top of it and didn't sink down. 

School mornings began in the dark with a bowl of oatmeal or cracked wheat porridge and getting dressed was a rushed affair as furnaces and insulation were not as effective back then. I was just grateful that girls were allowed to wear pants by the time I attended school, unlike my older sister, who had to face wearing a dress everyday in the cold. Those were also the days before leotards and pantihose and keeping your legs warm required wearing long stockings, held up by garters. Uggh!

My mother grew up during the Great Depression and I remember her telling about riding into town in a buggy with quilts covering their laps and heated rocks to keep their feet warm. There was no central heating and she remembers waking up in her attic room and finding frost on her bedding. Homework was done around the kitchen table by the meager light shed from a kerosene lamp. Evenings were cut short as times were hard and the kerosene needed to last as long as possible. Bedtimes were early and the nights were very long and very dark. 

What would it have been like to be a First Nations person in the early times and spend winter in a tipi out on the prairie? What strategies did they have to keep their children warm through blizzards and temperatures below zero, much below zero?

I realized that all of my Windy Rafters Roughnecks books take place in the summer, when the Ferris cousins gather to run the resort for the tourist season. Perhaps it would be interesting to set one book in the winter and explore those dynamics, especially historically.

As I drove along I had another more sobering thought. What about those, even today, who don't have adequate food and shelter during the winter? What about those living on the streets whose circumstances of unemployment, mental illness or addiction have left them vulnerable. Is this year, given the pandemic, going to leave even more people than usual in desperate circumstances? Something to think about looking out on a cold winter morning from inside my warm house.

Researching the Missing Chapter

 

My preparation for Windy Rafters Roughnecks Book 3 takes me into the era of the Great Depression and the beginning of WWII. What do we know about this time in Alberta's history, particularly among the Blackfoot people?

Over the last few weeks, my research coincided with Orange Shirt Day commemorating the years of  residential schools in Canada. I have been slowly uncovering what is sometimes called the missing chapter in Canadian history. It isn't easy to open this chapter and turn these pages. I am astounded and saddened by what I find. 

My sources include an online presentation given by Dr. Tiffany Prete from the University of Alberta. She is from the Blood or Kainai people and has recently completed a research project about the different types of schools on the Blood Reserve and their history. I have also watched the Orange Shirt Day presentation for Alberta students Grades 5-12 developed by the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation to be shared as part of Orange Shirt Day throughout the province.

From there, I spent time reviewing everything on the website for the NCTR, as well as looking into the calls to action put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I thought I would share some of my findings.

First of all, I was amazed at how long residential schools existed in Canada. The first schools were opened in 1831 and the last was closed in 1997. Over 150,000 indigenous students experienced some form of residential school education. This is called the missing chapter in Canadian history for important reasons. Survivors of these schools, who experienced the trauma of being separated from their families, taken from their culture and way of life, and often neglected and abused, do not easily share their experiences of these dark times. Some did not survive to tell their stories at all. For example, I read a very sad newspaper report of three young native boys, under the age of ten, who ran away from the residential school they attended after being harshly disciplined, and froze to death, trying to make their way home. 

The only records from those times and places were kept by the schools, presenting only one perspective on what took place. These have not been open to the public until recently and many of these documents have been tied up in the largest class action lawsuit of Canadian history. There are questions about the accuracy of some of the information kept, particularly about the whereabouts of missing children. Many of the statistics show hundreds, if not thousands, of children registered in schools who simply disappeared. We know some were buried in unmarked graves on school grounds. 

School officials, many who were also priests, nuns or other ministers, sometimes  "bought" the children from their parents for food or money to get them to come to schools. Those running the schools often had no training as teachers, doctors or nurses and yet they provided both education and medical care for the children. Many children died of hunger, malnutrition and sickness. There are even instances cited where nutritional research was carried out using indigenous children. It is hard to believe that this is the Canada we know and love, yet the records speak for themselves.

As researchers like Dr. Prete work, they discover the history is very fragmented. It involves thousands of hours of examining documents and trying to put the pieces together. It is also hard going because of the emotional distress that arises from reading and processing these painful stories and statistics.

Schools for indigenous children were not all the same. On the Blood Reserve alone there were many different types of schools. Mission schools, opened by churches before the Indian Act, have no records.  After the Indian Act, government records show that the purpose of these schools moved from the assimilation of indigenous children through segregation from their families and cultures to assimilation of indigenous children through integration into western culture. Both of these were highly traumatic to the children. In reading what was written by government officials at the time, it is clear that the purpose of these schools was to eradicate First Nations, Metis and Inuit culture by taking the children and erasing their language, culture and family ties. This was desired because the First Nations culture was deemed to be heathen and inferior to western culture. The only hope of redemption was to be found in destroying it and adopting children into European ways of life.

I am only scratching the surface of this research so far. I am impressed by the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which issued 94 calls to action based on their findings, one of which was the development of the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation which has taken over this work and is housed at the University of Manitoba.

I was encouraged by the Orange Shirt Day presentation prepared by the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation. While there is sadness in the acknowledgement of the TRUTH, there is clearly hope for the future through RECONCILIATION. That hope lies in those who were once exploited, the children. 

The question weighs heavily on me, how will I incorporate this piece of history with truth and sensitivity into my next book?