Word(s) of the Year 2020

In 1971, the Association for the German language   began the practice of choosing a word that was the most representative of the previous year. The word (WOTY), chosen by various means, is selected as the most important word expressed in the public sphere in that year. In 1991 the American Dialect Society began to offer one or more words of the year. Several bodies of determination have emerged, and thus we get a variety of words chosen.  Dictionaries take the lead in this assessment. 

Now words of the decade are also chosen. Google was chosen for the 2000s.  Words for centuries are also chosen, and jazz was the word for the twentieth Century. She was chosen as the word for the last millennium. 

It gets more and more complex as words are chosen in multiple categories, such as most useful and most unnecessary. In 2015 manbun was chosen as the most unnecessary. In addition, different countries choose different words. Australia has chosen “iso” for its WOTY for 2020.  This is the Australian abbreviation of isolation. If the Aussies can shorten something, they do!

For the nerds amongst you, the Oxford English Dictionary published an hour-long U-Tube video on how the word is chosen and why, in 2020, many words had to be chosen and not just one. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2020/

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has chosen pandemic as the WOTY of 2020. On March 11th, 2020, The World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic. Pandemic is defined as an outbreak of a disease that occurs in multiple countries or continents and affects a significant proportion of the population. Merriam-Webster found that of all the words looked up in 2020, pandemic sustained being the most researched over the entire year. It is my choice too.

A month or so ago, I heard Noubar Afeyan, the Co-founder and Chairman of Moderna, interviewed on CNN. I was impressed. Afeyan is a two-time immigrant. He was born to Armenian parents in Lebanon, immigrated with his parents to Canada as a teen and went to school in our country. He then went to MIT and alas, we lost him in the brain drain to the USA. There are now 820 employees at Moderna and they have citizenship all over the world. Their scholarship has given us a vaccine now being administered everywhere in the world. 

This COVID-19 pandemic will be stopped by a pan meaning “all” or “every” and demos meaning “people.” The pandemic will be stopped and healed by “all the people.” This is becoming literally true. 

When Afeyan spoke, he stressed that a pandemic is world-wide. He was warning us that nationalizing their vaccine would be counter-productive; in fact, a disaster. He said that, if the virus was anywhere in the world, it is and will continue to be dangerous.  Coming from such an international citizen, these statements came with significant authenticity. 

For me, it challenged me to share. I was glad that as a country we had ordered enough vaccine to share. As a person, I realized I had to more patient in waiting my turn, never my strong suit. I liked the irony that the vaccine was coming from the minds of people from everywhere who were literally, in many cases, immigrants. Whatever impulses are inside of us to reject the other must give way when that shot goes in our arm. It will be a moment of oneness; a deep and healing unity. 

The 2020 pandemic has brought so many new words that now appear regularly in our everyday discourse. My number two choice is coronavirus.  I like the word corona and will forever associate it with cold frothy beer on a sunny bougainvillea-draped terrace in Mexico. Le Cervase maz fina!  Alas not this year. 

artist” Keitha McClocklin

Why does this pesky virus have to be so stunningly beautiful in appearance? My friend Lynda’s daughter, Keitha McClocklin, is an art student and above is her depiction. This dangerous deadly microscopic parasite is just enchanting in all its depictions. Those spiky appendages have the power to penetrate our cells and seriously damage us. They have to be neutralized, which is what the vaccine does. Was Keitha’s artist mind foretelling our future when she depicted many different manifestations of the virus? We now know there are variants; UK, Brazilian and South African variants with likely more to come. According to Keitha’s imagination, there may be a Scottish one on the horizon. 

How do we make sense of beauty and the reality of disease and death that are so entwined in this beautiful and deadly virus? Do we see life more clearly when we experience the shape of death? This is an old theme. Snow White embodies it. She is pristine and virginal in her death sleep. Many have found a quiet beauty in their lives when the world has stilled and locked down. For me, I confess, it would be easier if the virus simply looked ugly and despicable. 

 Lastly I choose a word that if I never hear again it will not be too soon. 

You got it! Unprecedented. We seem incapable of any other words and the overuse of this word is a pet peeve of mine. Maybe it is true that no other year in my life has been as extraordinary, unparalleled, yes even unprecedented, as 2020. I don’t question that it has been a difficult year and that losses abound perhaps as never before. My daughter’s friends lost their parents to the pandemic. My grandkids lost their graduations and the reality of university lives where they went to class and socialized in person. I missed being in the Baltic for summer solstice. I have not seen my family for a year. And for some reason I am fed up with that word on everyone’s lips. Maybe my pandemic fatigue just needs to rage a little. 

What will be the words of 2021? There is a longing for truth. How refreshing. A friend suggested hugbuddy. Maybe a world-wide eruption of hugging will occur. I have heard real offered, as relief from virtual. Perhaps experiencing crowd energy again would be amazing at a theatre, a concert or a game. I am choosing vaccinated. I am expecting that the process (two doses plus wait time) when completed will release a joy in my being. I promise to crank up a sea shanty and dance on the front lawn. After that there will be family plans, travel plans… and dreams will once again flourish for us all.   

A Happy Place

Perhaps it seems counterintuitive to write about “a happy place” as 2020 draws to a close in the midst of a raging pandemic. Yet, perhaps such a place is even more necessary and a balm for the times. 

 What is it?   Where is our “happy place?”  How was it created? 

What is “ a happy place”?

The idiom first appeared our language in the 1990s and dictionaries give fairly similar definitions. The Oxford dictionary describes it as “a place which a person associates with happiness, visualized as means of reducing stress, calming down; hence a happy state of mind.” Longman Dictionary tells us that if we are in or go to our happy place, we imagine we are in a place that makes us feel calm and happy because it helps us stop thinking about a bad situation. If we want a rougher, more colloquial definition, the Urban dictionary puts it this way: “It is a place inside of all of us where we are all happy and get warm fuzzies. Our happy places are insulated from the shitheads that make up just about everyone we encounter.”

For me, it is a place that grounds me, reduces drama, celebrates my worth, allows perspective and fosters resilience. For me, it is also a place that has the spiritual dimension of nurturing my soul. It is place that ultimately delivers joy. Is this not just what we need this December?

Where is this “happy place?” 

 Often it is an exotic location  that requires travel to get there. This year my friends and I have frequently experienced the sad ache for Hawaiian palms, the fragrance of plumeria and a piña colada by the ocean. 

 For some people it is a cold place, high in snow-clad mountains on a sunny fresh powder day. It is a place which is different from the everyday. In this place we are lifted out of ourselves to a better, kinder, more relaxed version of ourselves. 

 Not all happy places are faraway holiday spots. This is a good thing when travel becomes impossible.

 I grew up in a multi-generational family. I was the baby. Neither my parents, my siblings, their friends, our boarders nor my live-in grandfather can remember where I slept. As a teen I would ask them rather plaintively, “where was my room?” With no one able to recall, they suggested the hallway, the closet and, finally, the corner gas station. As we had only one bathroom in the house, I was frequently sent to the gas station to use the washroom, which made that suggestion a bit plausible. Eventually they all got married or went to war or both and left home. At last, I was to have my very own bedroom. My father wallpapered it in never-to-be-forgotten blue morning glories. My bedroom became, in my mind, the happiest place I had ever known. 

 The result is that my bedroom remains such a happy place for me and I get to visit it every day and spend hours there. Over the years I have been able to upgrade it, and now it is the most spectacular space in my house. I attempted to give my children unique and private bedrooms. My son’s, with a built-in hanging ten-foot-long bed, was a winner. A remnant of the circus bedspread still hangs in his office window as a curtain. My daughter’s hot pink walls,  I have learned, was a bit of overkill. 

 I wish for everyone a happy place within their home. My mother’s was the kitchen. For my father it was a chair by the window which gave him a view of the world. For my elder brothers it was their cars. For my sister it was her craft cupboard. 

Pretty simple magic

 This Christmas my back porch is such a happy place. For $40 spent at the local hardware store I found a string of lights that are shaped like stars.  I keep finding excuses to go out there and dance a little and just smile and smile, even in a pandemic. I lose myself in possibility and beauty. 

Many people have a happy place in nature. I am so blessed to live in “Super Natural British Columbia,” as our slogan points out. I am five minutes from the sea, and it is always a soul-replenishing place for me, even when I lament its condition. In the 1980s, the Japanese gave the world “shinrin-yoku,” forest bathing. I never was a woods walker, but I am now converted.  This COVID year has transformed just about everyone into a gardener, even if we are just working with indoor plants. The city-bound can find their place in a park or by a water fountain. Some of us can return again and again to a nature show on the screen.  

Sometimes it is a place where your roots are. I know someone right now for whom it is Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he grew up.  Sometimes the roots can go a long way back. My niece and I simply feel it when we put our feet down on the soil of Cornwall. This goes back to this house, still standing, which our great great great etc grandmother left in the early 1800s to come to Canada. This house, about to be updated once again by distant family, appears in the Domesday Book, commissioned in 1085 C.E./A.D. 

Here it is, standing still by the sea.

We have so many ways of keeping happy places close if we cannot be there. Mementoes and photographs, clothing, reflection, food, activities and language keep a happy place beckoning us to return. I regularly buy clothes made in Cornwall just to mimic being there.  

 For some, a happy place is a feeling. The hour or so after vigorous exercise is glorious. The released endorphins lift the mood and all that was not possible is now possible. I have often witnessed that when partners in intimate relationships engage in regular exercise they argue much less. I know another person who feels this when his yoga class finishes and he can rest for a precious moment before facing the world replenished. 

The feeling of satisfaction at the end of a task, a project completed is a happy place. From my grandmother I learned that the last stitch in any finished sewing project needs to be kissed in celebration. This is my last essay that completes a New Year’s resolution to write twelve in 2020.  XXX!

Often being in a relationship is a happy place. There is a reason that drinks before dinner are called “happy hours.” A couple shared with me recently that for 45 years of marriage, almost every evening before dinner they share a glass of wine and discuss the day’s activities. Their intimacy is grounded in this happy place. 

 For many as they enter the door to home the welcome of an animal eager to play and cuddle is the most dependable happy feeling of the day. I am sure we have all come to know about what I call a COVID puppy. 

 For so many, it is a song that evokes so powerfully a good and deep place; the song you fell in love to, the anthem that inspired you and even the cello music that played your grief. Music evokes places of wild happiness, of joyful aspiration and also peaceful release. 

Once our minds turn toward happy places, we can be flooded with our own. It is my wish for you in these dark days to spend time in your happy places.

 How do happy places get created?

 Sometimes happy places evolve over time. It takes effort in more ways than one to make a dwelling, a home.  Sometimes, we have to wait for the place and/or experience to grow on us. Sometimes, we can have to wait for the dream place to arrive as in my bedroom. Sometimes, they seem to appear out of nowhere and surprize us. The first time I went to Cornwall, I wondered why I slept so well. 

 A happy place requires of us an open mind and heart. We must consent to be changed. There is choice. Happy places are transformative and we must be willing participants. I have opened slowly to being a forest bather much preferring the sand and surf. The forest remains for me, a work in progress. 

 In the past year I have  observed two happy places I would like to celebrate; one newly birthed and another enduring over time and space. 

 Early in September I was privileged to have my grandson and his girlfriend visit for nine days. They are twenty years old, in a three-year relationship, on a holiday before returning to university. I took them to many places, but most importantly to Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This is a happy place for me and for my grandson, who has been going there since he was a toddler. He was bringing his “love” to this place for the first time. What a gift for me to be an observer.

 Nature cooperated and gave us four days of blue sky in Tofino. The ocean crashed. The surfers and boogie boarders did their thing. My grandson took off on a boogie board while his girlfriend was less sure on the board. There were moments of tension, and then he slowed down and she caught up. A “happy place” was born for them both.  I got to witness it and capture it in a photo.

Oh to be 20!

The second celebration was shared with me by friends on Bribie Island in Queensland, Australia. Their son, his wife and their only grandchild live in my neighbourhood in Vancouver, Canada. This sort of long-distance grandparenting is very common these days.  The grandmother in Australia and the granddaughter in Canada have a very happy place. It is a laptop infused with meaning. 

 Every day, for one to two hours, at the now-seven-year-old’s pre-dinner time, she and grandma hang out, reading and exploring and doing things.  Grandma tells me this time is inviolable , seven years in duration and is regularly scheduled in her agenda. The young girl carries her laptop around with her. Recently she and grandma gathered acorns, placing them on leaves and making a buffet for the squirrels. Across oceans they commune in such a happy place of connection.

Grandma and grand daughter.

A Feast fit for Royalty!

I wish this December to celebrate your happy places and encourage you to be open to a new happy place, gobsmacking you with awe and wonder. 

The 73, 890, 295 vs the 80,026,721

“Canadians are all pressed up against the plate glass window like this,” she says making a splurgy face. 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/12/margaret-atwood-if-youre-going-to-speak-truth-to-power-make-sure-its-the-truth

I am one of those Canadians being described by Margaret Atwood. From this “splurgy” vantage point, here are my thoughts; not on person Trump, but on his followers and the divide between Republicans and Democrats. I explore but a sliver of the divide but one that is informed by my life work. 

It is a very good thing that I am intrigued when two people disagree. Otherwise, I would be a terrible relationship counsellor. 

I grew up in a family with more than its share of disagreements. Fortunately, they were out-in-the-open disagreements. My mother and father disagreed about how they slept. There would be a double bed period, followed by a twin bed period and then it would happen all over again. My live-in grandfather and the local minister disagreed over whether or not to play cards on Sunday. The minister lost and my grandfather continued to play cards and not go to church, but they never quit arguing about it. My aunt and my mother disagreed over sliced vs unsliced bread. My mother paid the penny more for  sliced and my aunt was sure that children were starving all over the world for want of that penny. The minister solved this one once every three months by denying them quarterly communion if they did not make up. My father was a die-hard Liberal and my mother was not so sure he was right. They often split the vote. My mother fed the boarders steak and my father pushed for hamburger. I grew up in a swirl of well-articulated disagreements. 

Recently, I watched a CNN interviewer in conversation with a Trump supporter in Black Lives Matter Plaza who was there to state  that the election had been stolen. I was struck by her welcoming smile and her infectious enthusiasm. She appeared entirely likeable. She shared her abiding loyalty and her conviction was admirable. No fact could shake it. 

 Do you worry about this:  74 000,000 on one side and 80,000,000 on the other? I do. This is a whopper of a troubled family relationship. Like many Canadians, I have friends and family south of the border who are part of one side or the other. As well this divides threatens the globe.

Tyler Combie in November 16, 2020 issue of the New Yorker illustrates this divide as a bomb.

Throughout my life as a marriage and family therapist, I have always wondered about the macro divisions. As I child I spent a summer consumed by novels about the American Civil War. I went to graduate school in the USA, when you were either for the war in Vietnam or against it. There are Christians in this world who believe that every word of the Bible is the direct word of God and there are other Christians who understand the Bible as a collection of human witnesses writing their accounts of what they saw and heard.  These sides have a hard time, even after centuries, of acknowledging that they are both Christians. Concerned about the Palestinians, I once spent a week living in an Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem to see if I could understand the other side. Twelve years ago, I spent a week in upstate New York with the cream of the crop of American intellectuals, who were seriously debating whether evolution should be taught in American schools. I once had grandiose dreams of being called in to be the therapist to Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Why do people disagree so vehemently? 

 As a therapist I try to listen intently to both sides. However, long ago I gave up trying to be neutral. In the female/male divide, women have generally done more work to achieve a balance between work life, with its focus on individuality, and home life, with its focus on connectivity. For centuries women have been socialized  to commit to the “we.” Quite often, but not always, men have more growing to do in learning how to connect authentically. I have had to learn to listen well to the male journey. It is not an easy time for relationships to bridge differences and thrive. I bear witness to the fact that it is, often but not always, possible.

What about this great divide that we are facing as a world? Here goes with what I am thinking as I apply my therapeutic knowledge  to the highly explosive and all-consuming macro division of our times. 

The 74,00,000 have the characteristic of not liking experts and the 80,000,000 swear by them.  For the 74,000,000, these experts are part of a gigantic and poisonous elite. By contrast, I like experts. When I think about why, it is because, for the most part, they have not hurt me. It is also because I did well in school and easily pleased the experts. Not born to it, I joined the elite through education.  I am with the 80 million. 

 What if the 74,000,000 have been hurt by experts? What if school was a terrible experience for them and they hated it because they did not learn the way others did, for many very good reasons? What if the American dream has not worked so well for them? What if good things like jobs and living wages have been promised and not delivered? What if some of them are white males that have been displaced by the feminist revolution and are angry? Is it possible for me, as a representative of the other side, to truly empathise?   

I think about a time in my life when I really trusted “the experts” and I was betrayed by them. I was profoundly humiliated. Is there a worse condition than such humiliation?  What if I had had few corrective experiences to this but rather multiple reinforcing experiences?  What if I met thousands of people who had my same experience and felt as I did? What if a leader came along and assured me that he would take away this degradation? What if such a leader promised me that they would rid the earth of such devious manipulative gaslighting experts? What if he promised “to drain the swamp” of all of them? I would be tempted. 

The divide is further characterised by a battle to be right. Each side thinks they are right. In this scenario there are winners and losers. Assigning blame is operative.  Every relationship therapist encounters this divide. I think a mentor of mine, Terry Real has real wisdom when he said, “you cannot be right and in relationship.” Often this is true. 

Therapy with such a couple is  about exploring, at the depth, the reasons for their sense of rightness and validating that for that person, they make sense. This is not agreement but empathy. Most of the time processing in this manner, it is possible to attain compassion. Some of the time, one side, when deeply understood and valued, sees the wisdom of the side of the other and moves to that position. Sometimes both make moves toward the other. 

As a young woman, the father of our children said to me that I was not to work outside the home. I had a graduate degree and was equipped to hold down highly professional work. This did not matter. It would be handy if he died which was the prevalent thinking of the time. It was a tenet of patriarchy that still holds power in much of the world. Only for the first time has the USA  elected Kamela Harris, as Vice President Elect. I did not agree with him and longed to be a mother who worked. We were on opposite sides. He had centuries of patriarchy to back him up. I was part of a fledging group of feminists. We were frozen in a very serious divide and we had only just married!

From this perspective, I think about the 74,000,000 and the 80,000,000 as being equally paralyzed. 

The 74,000,000 for the most part align with Donald Trump and form his base. For the 80,000,000, this is hard to understand but we must in order to be in relationship. Some people have the gift of charisma, and Trump has it and plays to it. The golden hair, the long tie, the endless humourous name-calling patter, the promises and the demand for loyalty. He certainly puts on a larger-than-life performance. He fosters blame of the other and promises the end of their oppression in a manner that captures and liberates his followers. This is not fact based, but the hyperbolic lying appeals. He has rock star appeal in a rock star venue. 

If you are highly rational, what the 74,000,000 do will not make sense to you but it cannot be dismissed. Maybe once when you were young you gave yourself to Tea for the Tillerman  and knew every word of every song on rock star, Cat Steven’s iconic album. Maybe you have purchased the current release of Tea for the Tillerman 2 just because. Remembering giving yourself wholeheartedly to a person who moved you will help you understand and empathise with the hearts of the 74,000,000. Maybe you felt this at a Bruce Springsteen concert.  Reflecting on this could be a starting place. 

Spiritual people have always understood what it is to be apprehended by something bigger than they are. There is an old hymn that begins, “make me a captive Lord and then I shall be free.”  It expresses the exhilaration of giving up self to another. “Imprison me in thine arms and strong shall be my stand.” We speak in hushed sounds about being captivated. In a similar way, the 74,000,000 are and may continue to be captivated by the power and charisma of President Donald Trump. 

When a couple comes to me they are often on the edge of divorce. Usually, they have tried very hard to repair the arguments. They come, and often one is more reluctant than the other. They come suspicious of therapy and the experts. They have a belief that if the relationship doesn’t work easily it was not meant to be. They step across the threshold into my office, or at least they used to. Now they press the Zoom button. At this moment, important things happen.

They open themselves, if only a crack, to a third party. They agree to tell me in their own words what is happening. I have to listen compassionately to both sides in order to help them find their shared view of reality. Maybe they loved each other once. Maybe they share the same citizenship! 

They also agree upon a space: my office or the Zoom screen. It is my job to make this space safe. They have not felt safe with each other for a long time. In this space civility is encouraged and expected.  This step over the threshold into my care brings palpable relief to both of them.

I think the 74,000,000 and the 80.000,000 need a therapist and they need a safe space. In my opinion, the safe space and the therapist is the government. Face pressed to the glass, it is my idea that in the case of the USA, this is Congress. They have a big and sacred job to do, as I do with the disagreeing couple in front of me. They must be a safe container for what, in this case, may be no more and no less than a shared citizenship and since they voted, a shared commitment to democracy. 

Will enough of members of Congress step up and do it? Many voices reflect the sentiment of Larry Diamond, a political scientist at Stanford’s Hoover institute when he states, “The Republican politicians who know better in the House and the Senate and the governorships have to speak up…putting the preservation of democracy and civility over the preservation of their own political careers”.  Surely, this is a moment of possibility. 

In therapy it makes a big difference I have found if the couple is surrounded and supported by family and friends. Way back in my life, the patriarch of my husband’s family stepped up and said to his son. “I made a mistake when I forbid your mother from following her career dreams. I was wrong and you can see how she suffered. Don’t make the same mistake I did.” This intervention made a huge difference in the life of my family. It allowed us both to identify the ways in which patriarchy had hurt us both. We moved. Healing happened. 

Based on my experience as a relationship therapist, I suggest that right now, ordinary people can step up, support and pressure their elected officials to move for connection, repair and life and not for division, war and death. Right now, individuals in the 74,000,000 have family and friends in the 80,000,000 and vice versa. This creates moments of opportunity for listening without judgment. Here are the questions. 

Does what holds us together matter? 

Could I listen compassionately to what your position means to you and why you hold it? 

What do each of us have to put on the table to make a bridge? 

Is it okay to fail and try again? 

Often in my office there are nasty explosions where one side moves for power and control. It is a fraught path to reconciliation. It is not always successful. The divorce rate is very high. 

I notice in the next generation, those children of divorce choose their partner carefully and work diligently to find bridges over disagreement. I just heard an interview in which Michael Moore said that he thought it might take a generation for healing to happen. He might be right. It might take multiple generations, but that is not a reason to give up but rather to start the process now. As Obama is fond of saying, “we work for a more perfect union.”   

From my perspective, this is the work of courageous men and women on both sides, held and guided by mature Congress. Please, my dear neighbours to the south, demand at least this. 

As I said in the beginning, I, as a layperson, am exploring but a sliver of this divide and the directions forward taking shape in my mind. Wiser and more powerful minds than mine are addressing this issue.  I want to lift up the ideas people like us and I welcome comments and thoughts from your perspective. In a democracy there is room for us all to have a say.

Racisim/ White Supremacy

For centuries this country repeated that we are brute beasts; that the human heart-beat stops at the gates of the black world; that we are walking compost hideously proffering the promise of tender cane and silky cotton, and they branded us with red-hot irons and we slept in our shit and we were sold in public squares and a yard of English cloth and salted Irish meat were cheaper than us and this country was quiet, calm, saying that the spirit of God was in his acts.

̶ Aimé Cesairé. (1913-2008, Francophone Afro-Caribbean(Martinique) author and politician)  

As you know, I am a psychotherapist who works with couples most of the time. I am primarily a “family of origin” therapist. This means that, in totally simplistic terms, I hold the position that none of us fall far from the tree. We are born into a family system and this system has a script that it follows as it engages with the world. In my thinking, it is imperative that we become conscious of this script and make decisions about it. In my family of origin, setting the family table for dinner was an art form. This involved the right linen, the appropriate dishes (bone china for festive events and pottery for regular meals), flowers if possible, the right cutlery in the right places, napkins and some thought to the theme of the occasion. I liked this script and have chosen to follow it. I note and enjoy that both my children hold onto pieces of this script. 

There are many other delightful scripts that I have inherited and follow with enthusiasm and gratitude. One of them is voting!

 At the same time, I was born into a racist family, complete with xenophobia and abundant prejudices. It was a family with a white supremacist script. Of course, I want to qualify this. My folks were good and kind and deeply Christian. This was true until the arrival of certain other people. Let me introduce you to some of these others, and my journey to become conscious so that I could make my own decisions. Maybe this will resonate with you and cause you to rethink some of your decisions concerning your own script.

I was born at the very beginning of World War II. At that time in Canada we did not like German people and we came not to like Japanese people. “Krauts” and “Japs” were the terms in my childhood home. When I entered kindergarten, such an ironic term, I was taught to step on cracks on my way to and from school to break a German’s back. Good girl that I was, I did so and reported daily to my parents the number of Germans I had killed.  I was a committed and proud little killer! 

 Later, in high school, to my chagrin, I was not up to speed in French language classes, but for some reason had a gift for the German language.  They say God has a wicked sense of humour! I decided to study German but to hate the teacher who was a German. I grew to appreciate the language and its poets. I was not yet emerging from a racist position but it was a start. 

In the passionate global response to the killing of George Floyd , I am finding meaning that helps me understand more deeply my struggle with my own racism. I am learning that white supremacy/racism, xenophobia and prejudice are not interchangeable words. I have always thought that one of my life tasks was dismantling the prejudice of my family of origin script. I am now seeing that it is much more than that. 

Xenophobia is an unwelcoming and fearful attitude toward strangers, foreigners and anything unknown. It is the opposite of hospitality. My family welcomed many to our table but there were many who were unwelcome. The poor were welcome but Germans, Jews, Roman Catholics and Blacks were not. Usually xenophobia is an aspect of white supremacy/racism. 

Prejudice is the biased contempt one feels toward others that one has not gotten to know. It is a matter of the heart.  Though I sat in my German class and learned the language, I would not open my heart toward my German teacher. I hated him, and it is more than ironic that his name was Herr Schatz (“Mr Sweetheart”). This is prejudice, and it, too, is often a component of racism. Currently on CNN there is a very warm-hearted bromance between Chris Cuomo, a white Italian-American broadcaster, and Don Lemon, a Black broadcaster from Louisiana. They model how prejudice is broken by opening one’s heart to the different other.

Reflecting on these concepts, I can see how I took on the work of dismantling my German prejudice and xenophobia. I kept up my studies of the German language so that it became my second language in academia. Eventually this led me to pursue theological studies in Heidelberg. In those days it meant taking a ship to Germany, a two-week voyage. Naturally I chose a German ship to strengthen my German fluency. On board I fell in love with Jorg, a German student on his way home. I felt I was making progress in my attempt to rid myself of this prejudice. However, after a week of speaking only German I knew that I did not have the skill to study another language in German. I would be studying Hebrew in Heidelberg and the instruction would be in German. I made a u-turn, got off the boat in the UK and made my way to Scotland where I studied the Greek New Testament in English! In Scotland, my roommate was from Germany and we became fast friends. I did keep Jorg, though, for quite a while longer. I now see that I had been busy in my life ridding myself of at least one prejudice. 

The commitment to learning Hebrew had been part of my attempt to understand Jewish culture. While my family was quite antisemitic, their expression of Christianity was deeply rooted in the stories of what then we called the Old Testament and would now call the Jewish Scripture.  I loved these stories and they continue to inspire and instruct my life. My family with Puritan roots observed the sabbath on Sunday. I deeply appreciate their observance of the sabbath and incorporate this ancient Jewish spiritual practice into my current life.  Within my Christian practice I honour that Jesus was Jewish and often, in my liberal theology, think of Jesus primarily as rabbi. 

Quite incidentally and hopefully not deliberately, I also learned that having boyfriends that were forbidden by my family was a way to break down prejudice.  I seemed to have a talent for this, and my next boyfriend was Jewish. In this case, his parents were as unwelcoming of me as mine would have been of him, had I ever told them.  I was indeed a work in progress. 

I n the next few years I found myself as a pastor to two or three reservations on the Prairies. I was tasked with opening my heart to Indigenous peoples. Fortunately, I was terrible at bringing them to Jesus (as they had their own beliefs) but they taught me beautiful crafting, and I learned to appreciate their art work and to try my hand at beading and moccasin making. Slowly, I learned just a little about how hard their life was in a white world. I was completely naïve about the deeper issues. I am only now waking up. Just recently I picked up my daughter from a meeting with several chiefs of the First Nations of our country. I waited in the hall and some of the members of the task force found me waiting there. When they discovered I was the mother of Mary, they welcomed me with such warmth. They told me that they regarded my daughter as one of them. I was so immensely touched and proud. Perhaps generation by generation we are doing better. 

Next I was assigned as a student pastor to a mission in downtown Montreal. Here I made my first Black friend. My job was to get to know the kids in the neighbourhood and she was one of them. She was just a bit younger and she embraced me. The other kids listened to her, and she said I was to be trusted. Maybe I helped her too just by being white and being with her on the street. The police often harassed Black kids out on the street, and in response they did mischievous things to express their anger. They tipped over post boxes and rang fire alarms. I was often with them, and my new friend, their leader, protected me. It was exhilarating for me to be so accepted by them. 

Later I asked her to my home in WASP London, Ontario for Thanksgiving and she came. My parents treated her somewhat kindly but it was forced and she knew it. She left early and our friendship dissolved. It is very very hard to break family scripts.  Clearly I still had work to do in uncovering and understanding my racism.

 My battle to accept Roman Catholics ran very deep in my heart.  When WW II ended, I was five and my brother came home from overseas with a girlfriend who was Roman Catholic. When she came to visit in our home and I could see that she was not welcome. I found her enchanting and exotic and it was a struggle for me to accept that she was “other” and had to go. How could this be?

London, Ontario was the territory of the Loyal Orange Association, an anticatholic secret society.  It was popular and our first Prime Minister was a member as was our thirteenth Prime Minister. We all knew the story of the Black Donnelly’s whose homestead in the 1880’s was in a town, Lucan just outside of London. They were Irish Catholic immigrants that had not fought for the English or the Protestants in Ireland. They were murdered by vigilantes for the anti Roman Catholic sentiment. It is a gruesome story that was imprinted in our brains.

It was a struggle for me to open to Catholicism. As a psychotherapist with a theological background I longed for a discipline of spiritual practice which is so akin to psychotherapy itself.  The Roman Catholics had kept this tradition alive within their practice with monasteries and convents and retreat centres world-wide. Protestants had held such practice in deep suspicion. We had an enormous collection of hymns and we sang our spirituality. Protestants protest and are not given to the interior life.  Eventually I found myself pursuing the spirituality of the great Christian mystics and for the most part they were Roman Catholics. I tend to jump in and I did, in this case as well, and began with a two week silent retreat with a group of nuns still in full habit in a retreat centre in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Gradually my prejudice was eased and has continued to develop to this day. 

As I grew and learned, my racism was eroding but there were times I reverted to script. They remain deep moments of shame. As a student in Chicago in the mid-sixties I was pregnant and needed an obstetrician. My colleagues told me about a great doctor who saw students on campus. I made an appointment and when he came to call the other patients into his office, I saw that he was Black. My family’s racist script hit me full force and I fled the office never to return. There are absolutely no excuses. By this time, as an adult in full command of my faculties, I was a racist. Full disclosure!  Though I now had many Black friends, was part-time staff at a multi-racial church and worked for Jesse Jackson, I fled the office of a qualified Black obstetrician.  All I can do is confess, forgive myself and know that early scripts can be triggered throughout life at moments when least expected. 

Finally, I was beginning to understand that white supremacy/racism is a societal script. It is not a feeling (prejudice) or an unwelcome attitude toward the unknown (xenophobia) . It is the development and maintenance of a system for the benefit of white people only. It is what Amié Cesairé grasped so brilliantly in the last century. Black people continue to be treated as walking compost that gives rise to the literal and figurative sugar cane and cotton of white people. This is a thoroughly invasive political and economic system. I, as a white person, have this script tattooed upon my life by both my family and my society. I need to acknowledge this, continue to uncover all the ways it makes me act as less than human and do better.  It is the task of a lifetime. 

Currently I am finding the old familiar hair washing command   ̶  wash/rinse/repeat  ̶  to be helpful in understanding  my responses to racism.  For example, at the personal level, I want to defend my action in the obstetrician’s office. I want to wash it with the context of my situation at that moment. When I walked into the office, I had been unaware that the doctor was Black. Next, I want to rinse it by telling you that my last child had died, and that I had specific ideas about the kind of powerful doctor I needed. Then I have to realize that washed and rinsed, without shame and confession, I am totally likely to repeat.  Without the difficult and demanding work of addressing my racism, I will keep washing, rinsing and repeating.

At the societal level, I want to continue washing by telling you that racism is a problem in America, but rarely a problem in Canada.  In the bestselling book The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power,Canadian writer Desmond Cole demolishes any such thought. A former Toronto Star reporter, Cole looked at the year 2017 in Canada month by month,  reporting on news stories in which Black and Indigenous people and the BLM movement have been fighting a losing battle with police and school boards, Pride, the federal immigration authorities and other communities all across this land. This is information most Canadians do not want to know.  Wash it out. Or at best rinse, explaining why it is so and why it is not racism.  And, as Cole makes clear, in every next month of 2017, it was and would continue to be repeated. He left his job with The Toronto Star, Canada’s most liberal newspaper, who could not tolerate his activist voice. Yes, racism/white supremacy lives in Canada. We must acknowledge this; we are complicit if we deny it is so. 

British Columbia is having a provincial election. Recently, the party leaders had their debate. The buzz after the debate was that both the main party leaders had been racist in their comments when responding to questions about race. Our current premier shared a story about playing on sports teams as a kid with kids of colour and that, as a result, he did not see colour.  His simplistic answer was immediately identified as racist and challenged. To his credit our Premier immediately apologized.  The new leader of the Green Party, a woman, said clearly that Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour experience racism on a daily basis. We all have to truly get this before we can move forward. 

What to do? Become conscious of your own script from your family of origin and how it has both personal and societal implications. Be able to define what white supremacy/racism is. Confess, if this is in order. Take steps to change. Stop washing and rinsing and repeating the situation. Open your hearts to the other. Be courageous if an activist opportunity comes your way, or initiate one yourself.  I think it is about being engaged without making excuses that we don’t have the time or money, or that we’re too old to make meaningful changes.  

I walked with a friend from Toronto over Thanksgiving, and she shared that she has spent the summer engaging with many books on racism. That is her way of responding.  My eighteen-year-old granddaughter is reading James Baldwin. Two other friends just told me what they are doing in Philadelphia, a swing state in the upcoming election. They gave me permission to share their telling of this. I am humbled by their courage. 

“I think last evening was the 17th Tuesday we stood in silent vigil on the church steps at my sister’s nearby church. Our sign, We Stand Against Racism, has evoked so much positive response from traffic on the busy street - waves, horns, applause, thumbs up, shouts of thanks. We stand for an hour. One week a member of their peace and justice committee counted positive feedback from 127 cars. Of course, not everyone likes us. A guy known in the Glenside neighborhood has taken to joining us on the public pavement in front of us. His sign, I Hate Virtue Signaling White People, causes confusion unless cars are stopped at the light with time to figure our conflicting messages. Last week a courageous Black gentleman parked and walked to confront our harasser, who gave him a taste of the charming rhetoric he’s flung at us. Someone standing with us became frightened and called the police. The sign bearer protested about his first amendment rights. All ended peacefully. We did not have to implement plan B: duck into the church.” 

We must all find a way to confront our script of white supremacy.  Changing a systemic script is profoundly difficult but our voices matter.

RBG and Me

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, affectionately known as RBG, was six years older than me when she died this past week. During the tumult of COVID, forest fires, racial tensions, hurricanes and floods, a deeply partisan American election, a snap election in British Columbia, and perhaps a Canadian federal election, there was barely a moment to pause and reflect on gender issues. Then RBG died, forty-five days before the American election, and now we are concerned about abortion rights being overturned! Women’s rights are less secure right now than they were a few days ago, and worldwide, those rights remain small and precarious.  Like many of you, we are contemporaries of RBG composing a life in parallel circumstances. I am compelled to share my story from the early 1960s when I was fighting for women’s rights to work in an area occupied almost exclusively by men. It is critical that the work of RBG, and so many of us of her era, not be overturned. Our position as women in the world is still fragile. I hope my story serves as a reminder of this. 

 The CNN documentary The Notorious RBG takes us back to the fifties and what it was like for smart women who also wanted to marry and have children.  RBG married in 1954 and I married in 1962. It was a period when women were beginning to rock the known world. She was at the head of the line. Betty Friedan was yet to write The Feminine Mystique in 1963. 

 When I married in 1962 and became Ann Bartram, my future husband asked me to promise never to work outside the home. I had a graduate degree but still I promised. I had studied theology, but functioning as a working pastor in my circumstances had not yet been done. Yes, the very liberal United Church of Canada (of which I was a member) had ordained several single women and one married woman who was past child-bearing years. I had really thought about this, and could not see a way to work in my chosen field. My mother, my sister and all the generations of women before me had been homemakers. 

 As I walked to Emmanuel College where I studied, I passed a University of Toronto building that had an inscription in stone above its portals reading, “Household Science.” That is where I ought to have gone to university, I thought, or to the Secretarial Science programme. 

 As RBG did, I married and had a child in 1964.  But RBG had a very forward-thinking husband, Martin Ginsberg, who had studied with her at Cornell and knew that the scope of her brilliant mind outshone his own. He was having none of her staying home, and encouraged her to study law as he had. He was clearly ahead of his time. RBG always remembered that they had been a team from the beginning. This was reflected in many of her rulings. To her, human beings, men and women, were equal before the law always. 

 At that time my husband was determined to become a concert pianist and was practising eight hours a day. A patron of the arts had given us his gentleman’s farm outside of Toronto as a place to live. We were also responsible for lambs. We had zero farming experience. 

 Our son was born and we brought him home to that farm. It did not have a washing machine and the laundromat was about a mile away. This was before Pampers! Going to the laundromat brought relief from the hours of scales. 

 About six months after my son was born, I began to lose it. We also discovered that lambs born precipitously in the middle of the night in the winter, because the ram got out too early, froze to death. Frozen baby lambs are heartbreaking. The flaws in this idyllic plan were fast collapsing. I had to work outside the home somehow somewhere.  

 I had to get my husband onside. I wish I had known Martin Ginsberg. I might have called him up. My mother-in-law had gone to university and was a graduate in Household Science from the University of Guelph. However, she longed to be an opera singer and had serious talent. She gave it all up to become an M.R.S, raise her sons and see that her church purchased the largest organ in South Western Ontario. Her husband, a little like RBG’s husband, sensed that something was very wrong with this plan, though he saw no way to change it. But he became my ally, telling his son not to make the same mistake that he had.  This support allowed my husband to stand with me in my pursuit to seek ordination so that I could practice what I had studied to become. As RBG had, I benefitted from this support. 

 This struggle now seems so archaic as to be not true. But it was, and still is in many parts of the world. The fight for gender equality is not over.  Many of my dearest friends were never able to work in the area they had studied. Their gold medals grew dusty. Their husbands did not grow. Frequently those women began to feel they were crazy for wishing to pursue their professional dreams.  One of my friends now understands that she was gaslighted. The Feminine Mystique is all about the depressed and angry housewives that followed. That book inspired me. I had to focus on a way out and forward. 

 Battle one which got my husband onside was won. The next one was to get the church onside. One battle at a time. I was becoming an activist on behalf of myself and, of course, all the women who desired to become ministers/pastors/priests. 

 I knew I needed a powerful support team to crack open the courts of the church. In order to ordain me, the church would have to allow sexually-active and possibly pregnant women into the pulpit.  This was very different than a celibate woman or a woman with adult children.

 For the year, preceding the annual 1965 Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada, in many committee meetings I was examined on every front. I was even asked by one of these committees if I would take a vow of celibacy. It seemed that having me in the pulpit might incite men in the pews to unholy fantasies. My young support colleagues argued vociferously  that these committees had no room in the bedrooms of the church.  The older support team asked me to shut them up.

The Globe and Mail  newspaper reported that I was called “a frustrated housewife who might flunk the job.”

Globe and Mail, May 1965

It was also argued that my theology was not sound. My high marks at university were questioned. The transcripts of my marks were examined and found to be accurate. Still my theology could be questioned and was. I must be too liberal in my thinking. It was further argued that if they ordained me then they had to follow their rules and find a church willing to accept me and they could not find one. 

 In the weeklong Conference  that made the decision, the tension was very high. My name had been forwarded  to the Conference from all the lower court committees with no recommendation for or against ordination. They had passed the buck after a year of consultations and examinations of me. As the Globe and Mail reported years later when they followed me in my career, “charges and counter charges were hurled across the floor at that annual Toronto Conference Session.”  The conference got tied up in whether a secret ballot was necessary. At some point, my idealistic husband and I realized this was a completely political fight between conservatives and liberals. Sound familiar?  At the very desperate end, hours before ordination, the conservatives argued that I could not be ordained because it was too late to have my name printed in the programme for ordination! At that point I knew we had moved the church. 

 The battle had been drawn out over the months preceding the conference. My husband and I often considered quitting. One media article quotes me as saying to my husband, “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Maybe I said that. The press followed the story, publishing both sides of the argument.  Then the biggest name in Canadian broadcasting journalism, Gordon Sinclair, an avowed atheist, took up my cause, chastising the church frequently and often. My elder support team debated at length whether this would help or hinder the cause, but there was no stopping Gordon Sinclair.  

 In the final minutes, the last order of the day voted to ordain me by a show of hands that did not need to be counted, and was said to be about a two thirds majority. I was declared fit for ordination and that night I was ordained.  

The Rev. Ann in the Star Weekly

RBG graduated tied for first in her class at Columbia Law School but this did not open the doors of any law firm to hire her. She was a woman, a Jew and a mother of young children. She persevered, and has become the icon, RBG.  Now in death, she is fighting to have her last wishes to have the next president appoint her replacement be respected. It would be no surprise to her that they will not be honoured.  

 For me also, ordination was but a step. It was difficult for the church to know what to do with me and me with it. However, I did find a way to contribute to its development for most of my working life. RBG, while life changing in her majority opinions, was powerful in her dissents. This has inspired me as I found myself often trying to move a resistant church. I have always challenged it to be more and have often found myself on the side of the dissenters, as RBG did. I have no regrets that I pushed the church to open its tent wider. In theological language, I was more prophet than priest.

 In all likelihood, RBG will be replaced on the Supreme Court by Amy Coney Barrett. Her politics are in line with the present administration’s needs. She has impeccable credentials and no one in power will question her conservative position.  In her previous work she was respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. She and her husband are members of People of Praise, a group endorsed by the Pope, that takes very seriously being Christians in this world. There is real fear that in her extreme Roman Catholic conservatism she will act to overturn Roe v. Wade, cast her vote to end Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) and, if necessary, vote to extend Trump’s term in office if he contends the election result. We must hope that she will be more than a spokesperson for Trump. I am encouraged by our own retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLaughlin who, this past weekend on CBC’s Cross Country Checkup, declared that, optimist though she may be, the work of Ruth Bader Ginsberg will stand the test of time and will not be erased. 

 I want to encourage all of you to remember RBG and all of her dissenting opinions, as well as her wins. You know women of her era, myself included. Our energy is there for inspiration. We want to pass our liberal position forward. So many causes compete for attention. Gender equality has changed our world and needs to continue to be on your mind when you speak and when you vote. It is anything but a done deal.

Light Bulbs and Aging Well

If you are over the age of sixty and have not encountered Daniel Levitin, then you are missing exactly what you need. Wikipedia introduces him as “an American-Canadian writer, cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, musician, and record producer. He is the author of four New York Times best-selling books.” He is sixty-two years old.

 Earlier this year I purchased and devoured his book, Successful Aging. I keep rereading it and trying to incorporate it into my daily life. It is my current Bible. Near the end of the book, Dr. Levitin encourages us to answer three questions first posed by Joseph F. Coughlin, director of MIT AgeLab. I find myself constructing my life around my answers.

1.     Who’ll change my light bulbs?

I live in a house with a twenty-year-old interior. It has ten different types of light bulbs. I am serious. One such bulb, which I cannot purchase and will never be able to replace, is embedded within my chandelier. Some are tiny and some recessed. Two years ago, I replaced a lot of pot lights with what I call my terminal pot lights. They are guaranteed to outlast me! I was determined to do the job myself. It took a lot of YouTube instructional viewing and a tall ladder.  With sawdust falling out of the hole in the ceiling into my hair and eyes, and balancing in mid-air (as my house has very high ceilings), I answered my ringing cell phone. My son was horrified when I described my situation. He suggested, no, demanded, that I needed a better plan. I did and now I do. I found Vic. He is a tradesperson who can fix anything. Too frequently it is the pesky lightbulbs in the rest of the house. And he fixed my laundry room door, my Juliet balcony and the floor boards in my deck. He is a treasure. 

 Coughlin/Levitin’s point is that we need to think about who will do repairs and maintenance as we age. It is very difficult for some of us to not do them ourselves. How many people do you know who have fallen off a roof? I know at least two.  

 We need to think about smaller tasks as well. If you develop a tremor, can you chop vegetables or open a bottle of wine? What if your eyesight begins to fail beyond the magic of cataract surgery? Most importantly, accepting that you need help is critical. How much will it cost and will you afford it? It is really more about “will” than “can.”

 I have noticed that folk begin to say things such as, “I can put up with that wobbly door because I won’t live long enough to bother fixing it.”  Then they live twenty years with a broken door, or even three years. I am one of those folk who keeps dismissing having my back door fixed.  I hereby resolve before my next blog post to call the company that Vic recommended. 

2.     What if I want an ice cream cone?

This one is quite literal for me. I always want an ice cream cone. It started young and, given the ice cream I saw my brother and mother consume, I think it is genetic. This is my mom choosing the strawberry side of the brick of Neopolitan. My brother took the other two colours. 

 We were a church-going family, and I mean three times each Sunday. Sunday was a holy day in my childhood home.  Everything was prepared on Saturday, including me. I hated the hair part. Saturday afternoon my hair was washed in saved rainwater, because it was softer, and then it was tied in rags that I had to sleep in. This was to perfect the beautiful ringlets that my aunt and mother formed out of my mop on Sunday morning before church. I was to look like Shirley Temple and God would be so pleased but, more importantly, all the other moms would nod approvingly at the prowess of my mom and aunt.  

However, in the afternoon just my Dad and I went to Sunday school. On the way home we stopped at the Jewish deli which was open because they had Sunday on Saturday, my dad explained to me. The deli had the best ice cream cones. This became my dad’s and my secret forever. I had chocolate and he had vanilla. Before we got home he carefully wiped my face and swore me to secrecy. We had shopped on Sunday, a very bad thing in the eyes of my mother who did not quite accept that the Jewish Sabbath was Saturday. Consequently, I loved Sunday school, the Jewish Sabbath and chocolate ice cream cones. 

You just have to know where to get an ice cream cone at all times and you have to be able to walk there. I have constructed a life in which, so far, I have always been able to do this. Literally I am on board with the ice cream cone question. 

Of course, it is meant to be a metaphor inviting us to attend to the quality of our lives. It is the ability to do things spontaneously. We need to geographically locate ourselves where we can bring this off.  For me, it means being able to walk to activities where I have fun and have people to do those activities with. It is getting up at 6:30 this morning to walk down the street and swim in the best outdoor pool in Canada at Kits Beach.  It is about little experiences. 

Kits Pool at sunset. 137 metres in length!

My grandfather lived with us when I was growing up. Every morning at 10 a.m., he put on his boots and tied the laces, which had little buttons near the top. Then he strode out walking until  noon when he returned for lunch. Sometimes I went too. It was an adventure of meeting folk and stopping to chat. It was exploring a new neighbourhood. For him it was a daily pleasure. His simple routine taught me a lot about how to age. 

 The cover of August 17, 2020 edition of the New Yorker says this clearly:  

August 17 2020

Wayne Thiebaud, the artist, is almost 100 years young and when interviewed about this painting, he commented that he saw the ice cream cone as a treat to be cherished in summer heat. It is a reminder of small pleasures that we need to keep accessible in our lives always.

3.     Who will I have lunch with?

Got to love University chums at lunch celebrating a birthday.

Here the issue is both friends and a vibrant community. In the last third of life these become more and more important. I have found that maintaining my community is work. It takes effort to keep up with old friends and more effort to meet new people and try new things. Increasingly we live far away from our children. You may be blessed to live in a village with your children and grandchildren nearby, but many of us do not. You may be blessed to be living with your soulmate but many do not. Now we are all challenged by COVID. 

How are you doing with keeping a circle of friends across age groups? Book clubs can help, but often they are a set group of dear friends of the same age. The Liberal Church was once a dependably  cross-generational community, but it is no longer, as young people have left this church in droves.  Sports activities are done more often than not within your age group and skill level. I find my women’s golf day ensures that I golf with different age groups. There are no easy solutions, but it can be done. I am wondering if I should learn to code. I think it would definitely engage me with younger people if only virtually.   Music pursuits definitely offer multi age expoeriences.  I have a friend in her sixties who is learning to play the piano. Her concerts, which I attend, are filled with youngsters. Choirs are another activity that promise a wide age range. I have the pleasure of having met new friends while travelling, and I know this to be true for some of my friends. My niece met many new friends, many older than she is, in a very active hiking community. 

 As we age, it is important to think about vibrancy when we decide where to live. At one point, as a family, we  encouraged our parents to move into an apartment in a residential part of the city with tree-lined streets. It was quiet and private. They put up with it for about two years before informing all of us that this was enough. Then they moved to what we thought of as an industrial park. They loved it. Out the window that had so much to watch and keep track of: deliveries, who lunched where, different makes of cars and trucks and vibrant city energy. Birds and trees were fine for outings, but daily bustle was what engaged them. As their children we finally understood. I think their friends on quiet streets sometimes envied them their decision. 

 Light bulbs, ice cream cones and lunch are such a catchy mantra for guidance in healthy aging. Levitin’s book, Successful Aging, is a treasure trove of inspiration. Reading it I got very enthusiastic and began to think I could easily live to be one hundred. Then I crashed. My plans did not include aging beyond ninety. I got anxious and lay awake at night trying to figure out if I could afford to live that long. Light bulb. I needed to get help to sort this out, and so back to the financial planning desk I went. 

 In this phase I was chatting with my twenty-year-old grandson. I told him I could live to be a hundred. He replied that this would be absolutely wonderful. He approved. Such a grandmother whisperer he is.  But I told him, I was not sure I can afford to live so long.  Big pause ensued and then he replied, “Grandma, if you can get to be ninety-five, I think I would be able to take over by that time.” Now how sweet is that? 

 However, I thought this was maybe not the best financial plan, and so back to the broker and bank and accountant I went. It seems, with care, I am able to live financially to be one hundred. Now I am free to  keep living by the Levitin map. I am finding so many gracious surprises  along the way. He encourages me to stay engaged with meaningful work. I see my doctor regularly but not obsessively. I engage often in forest bathing. I have begun to value that as I age I am better and better at being able to identify patterns of behaviour. I am just about to engage on a nine day vacation with my twenty year old grandson and his girlfriend. What is not to like about Dr Levitin who supports all of these activities vociferously. You are most welcome to join me. 

PLAY

Tired, haggard even, Mark looks at me from the client chair. He is in his mid-forties, with a wife, three kids and a big job. In such a forlorn voice he tells me, “I never have any fun, not anymore.” My heart breaks a little because I have heard this pain too many times. 

Just before COVID shut down our city, I took the Saturday Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, to Granville Island. Spring was in the air and the sun was warm. I sat out on a large public dock to read the news and all the commentary. The city had just placed an enormous sparkling star as an art installation on the dock. It is a metal and fibreglass construction, clad in shimmering woven threads.  Prior to its installation, children here spent their time feeding and chasing pigeons. It was noisy and messy, and not exactly healthy. Much as I wanted to read the paper, I was compelled by the scene transpiring before my eyes. 

Granville Island is a major Vancouver tourist attraction. Pre-COVID, children from all over the world arrive on any sunny Saturday. I was amazed at how they turned this star into a play opportunity. Little ones touched it, would-be ballerinas danced about it, daddies lifted them up high into it, young boys jumped and jumped to make the highest touch, volleyball stars in the making. In this photo, one curly-headed lad decided it was a picnic gazebo. He arrived with his slice of pizza and a chocolate milkshake. He looked it over, picked his spot, sat down, unfolded his napkin, set down his milkshake and began to eat. Within seconds, two boys of similar age with giant green lollipops joined in. Children just know that making friends is the most fun. The sculptor, the city and our taxes all combined to make this happen. 

When asked to think about play in our lives, many of us return to our childhoods. I am always startled to see children on the news playing in the rubble of war-torn Syria. As children we seem to know that, even in terrible times, play irrepressibly erupts and promises hope. 

I know that I have inside play and outside play. Inside, I treasured snow days when I read for hours adventuring in faraway worlds. I played house with dolls. I frightened my mother, who, in those days, made all the beds in the house each morning after the others had gone to work. I ran from room to room ahead of her and hid in the strewn bedclothes. I would jump out at her and scare her. She never seemed to catch on. I see my grandchildren play endless board games on the living room coffee table and also create messes in the kitchen making cookies and cupcakes. Often there is a pet to play with and snuggle with. There are so many magic places in a home. 

I have misgivings about inside play that is attached to a device. Much of it is called gaming. It is also called playtime or screen time. I often play solitaire on my computer to relax. Families are playing Ticket to Ride and Code Name or just plain poker with other families online in these times of physical distancing.  I think a lot of us see computer games as a guilty pleasure. I expect we sense that they carry an inherent addictive danger like alcohol and drugs? Surely you have wondered if you are addicted to your smart phone? 

Outside play is marked by freedom. There is an unforgettable vastness for your voice and your body. My first bicycle was momentous. I remember summer days, picnic lunch in my bike basket, heading out of the city early with friends to go exploring nearby villages. There were no cell phones on which we had to make reports. For my son it was the first a go-cart he constructed, as he never lets me forget, with wheels made from peanut butter jar lids.  I am sure that there are many pick-up games in our memories in drive-ways, on ball courts and in soccer fields. For me, it was the community swimming pool. I still kick up a huge spray to catch the sun at the pool after each big swim. For my grandson, it is an enormous ice rink in the back yard.  For my granddaughter it is a soccer ball and cadre of girlfriends. COVID is ensuring that families are recovering the pleasure of camping. I have just read that canoeing is perfect for physical distancing.

It seems easy for us to recall the play times of our childhoods. Usually they are simple and do not require too much equipment. How is it that a deck of cards can foster so much intergenerational fun? 

I think that there is a gender difference in play that takes shape early in our development. Girls are often less physical and boys more strenuous. How does this happen? I observe that in childhood, boys read as much as girls and then it changes. Both sexes experiment in the kitchen and then girls stay with it. These are stereotypes, of course, and it is changing. But it is still passed down from generation to generation. Boys look to their fathers for forms of play and girls to their mothers. I expect my client Mark’s father stopped playing at some critical moment and left Mark feeling short changed. In a similar fashion, girls often focus on caring so much that they forget to learn the dance steps for themselves. Hopefully I have inspired you to think about this and ponder how much it is changing and what you are doing to establish more gender balance in the field of play. We have come a long way from pink and blue, but we are not there yet.

 Post puberty, play enters a new phase.  It is more dangerous. Hormones run amok. Sexuality and drugs of various sorts enter the scene; not gently but forcefully. First loves are rarely forgotten. A first time drunk is remembered too. The whole world opens up. I remember my daughter biking in Europe with her peers and a guide as an early teen. Or maybe it is just an overnight camp in a nearby campground with your church group as it was for me. Boundaries are being tested. Parents fret. Risk and danger attach powerfully to play. 

 As high school ends, the desire for freedom grows even stronger. Presently it is clashing in city after city with COVID constraints. At this moment, mental health experts are rightfully concerned that our youth are being denied an important stage in their development.  From the time of our very first steps, we begin to walk away from our parents’ safe orbit. By the time we are young adults we want to live on our own. We have to prove that we can control our own lives. My eighteen-year-old granddaughter  finds that university education will be conducted remotely this September. She could stay home but she and her friend will live in the new city in their own digs. At twenty, my grandson just purchased his first car for $500. A thousand dollars later it is road-worthy. Who doesn’t remember the freedom and joy of their first car! 

 As we age, play often gets attached to winning. People do not forget when their sports team takes the championship. That is an unmistakeable high that entices us to invest more in sports outcomes and sets a standard for fun. I have talked with many male adults who, when asked to share their moment of greatest joy, cite when they held high a trophy either as an individual or as part of a team. Victory is an altered state of being that is treasured and coveted. Unfortunately only a few attain it, but many get a taste of it second-hand as a spectator. 

 Winning is all about performance, and performance in our society is linked to wealth. Frequently people think that having money will give them access to enhanced playtime. Money and play are connected. Money makes it possible to have the most toys and the best travel opportunities. In reality, the capacity to play can be lost in the pursuit of wealth and it can also be enhanced. Play is not possible without time. Too often the pursuit of wealth demands all the time there is. Why is it that our poorest provinces, the Maritimes are noted for fun-filled musical evenings where the community gathers and sings and dances until morning, not one night a year but regularly?

In my definition, play is an umbrella term for fun, pleasure, joy, ecstasy and all the other feeling words listed in the thesaurus. I think there is a continuum along which play moves, from exuberant antics to quiet pleasures. At certain stages of our lives, one form may emerge stronger that others. Perhaps the quiet end of the scale is often overlooked and undervalued. 

Play is also associated with losing time. We become so engaged in what we are doing that we are later amazed that time seemed to stand still. Time did not control us. We have all been with a three-year-old who just discovered an ant. Could this be one of the allurements of our devices? They help us move into that space that stops time.  

What happened to my client Mark, and all others like him? Why do so many people,  particularly men, experience an absence of fun and a longing for it? Responsibility descends with courtship, which turns into commitment for the long haul. Homes are created and families birthed. Time is now precious and limited. After the endorphin high of sex and winning, simple pleasure is just not enough. A new stage of play emerges. 

I think women are more at ease with this change. Most women played house as children. Many played with dolls. We see creating a home as a deep creative pleasure. Caring for children is fun. As young girls we wanted dolls that wet themselves. How crazy is that? It prepared us for the joy of responsibility. Men might think we just got duped. Maybe it is a conspiracy! 

As women, our bodies have an innate rhythm that comes with regular periods. We expect seasons. Creating a home and having children is a season. This is expected, anticipated even. It is not a foreign interlude between unencumbered fun and later hoped for Freedom 55. I do believe this mid-life season is not so easy for men. As I watched the play at the Granville Island star, I noticed one dad who began to play, led by his little one. I expect long ago memories inside him bubbled up.  He almost danced with pleasure. 

Is there such a thing as adult play that is fun and not hurtful to others or ourselves? Swimming with sharks may be totally exhilarating and it is most certainly life-threatening. It is not easy to experience fun that lacks the danger. As well, fun that doesn’t involve winning is often judged as boring. It is difficult to balance play with responsibilities. Ask any couple in a committed relationship. 

I wonder if it helps to partner with a person who plays as you do and at the same level? Two ballroom dancers, two tennis players; I have always wondered about Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf.  Does this make it easier? How do they handle the competition? 

I expect Mark longs for the play of his childhood and youth. Growing up is not fun for many men. His buddies have disappeared into an acceptance of family life as fun: camping, play structure outings, and, for some, a once-a-month card night or a yearly fishing trip. What happened to meeting up and carousing and flirting and scoring? What happened to spending all summer building go-carts out of scraps? What happened to locker room jostling after winning a hard-fought game? Family fun that is safe is dull! 

I am starting to ask adult men what they do for fun. One fifty-year old told me that the feeling he has after an intense yoga session is absolutely blissful. I know another whose joy is having a camera attached to his hand. He makes beauty from beauty. On one of my local walks I pass the garden of a man who I know takes inordinate pleasure in a new bed of peas that he has created on the city boulevard. My ninety-year-old brother and his wife still enjoy ballroom dancing twice a week in the afternoon!

In the second half of life I notice that a lot of having fun is about giving. Recently, my friend, a middle-aged and physically compromised woman, told me about getting her sister (who is equally compromised) to accept the help of her two hunky sons to help her into the warm Caribbean Ocean. Her face was flushed with the joy of it. As girls, these sisters were acclaimed synchronized swimmers. Play is about accepting who you are and going for what is possible within your limitations. I  retrieved my bicycle this past weekend from two years of storage. After filling the tires and cleaning it, I tried riding it up and down the back lane. I was very unsteady. My neighbour kindly offered me the training wheels her grandchild had just given up. 

I know a man and his wife whose kids helped them celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary by renting them a honeymoon suite and giving them the gift of every wild sexual toy they could find. They all laughed and teased each other, and the kids gave thanks for the inventive sexual life they knew to be their parents’ deep and abiding pleasure. What a gift that couple gave their offspring. Sex as play for sixty years and counting!

COVID is so much about containment. Play is about freedom. Growing up is accepting limitations, being a child is about open horizons. Play evolves in stages. New play horizons are always before us. We can stay fixated on our past experiences of play or we can embrace the new stage of play before us, treasuring, even incorporating, the memories of what was. Maybe I am needing a tricycle! 

The Human Spirit Persists toward Racial Justice

1968 and 2020

A Letter to my grandchildren Nora (17), Miranda (13), Henry (20) and Ben (14)

My grand-daughter Nora and her mother were recently on a walk, talking about the protests and riots happening right now in the USA and around the world. They stopped to call me and encouraged me to write about my experiences in the late 1960s when I lived in Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago. “Is there a difference between then and now?” they asked. Implicit in this question was, “Dare we to hope that this time change will happen?” 

I had just heard Chris Cuomo on CNN talking about his mother, Matilda, and how she felt when she saw the George Floyd video. “Will it ever change?” she wearily asked her son. I hear this sentiment a lot. Nora, you are right to ask me and I must respond. 

Chicago Theological Seminary

Dear Nora, Miranda, Henry and Ben, 

 In 1967, your grandfather began theological studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS), one of the most radical places to study theology at that time. The seminary was in the middle of the University of Chicago campus and we moved into university housing. We were a poor student family with a three-year-old son, supported by grants, his parents’ financial assistance and part-time jobs. I had just graduated in theology and also became a graduate student at CTS. We were Canadians exposed to the sixties in the USA. The country was in the middle of giant protests against the Vietnam war. Our classes were filled with draft resisters who by attending theology school were spared military service. They were smart, confidant, loud and challenging. They were intent on changing the world. It was nothing like the sedate nature of my previous studies in St Andrews, Scotland. Respect for professors there was automatic. Now I saw professors having to earn every moment of attention. Classes were not to be missed. 

 We were molded into activists. We marched with our toddler son, your Uncle Dave/father, high on our shoulders. We got involved in Jesse Jackson’s movement, Operation Breadbasket. Your granddad became a white presence in the apartments of the Black people, modifying brutality when the police attacked their homes on the pretence of finding drugs. We learned to use the word “Black ” instead of “Negro” and shouted right along with “I am Black and I am beautiful.”  Sometimes our parents were afraid and asked us to come home.

 In the “Red summer of 1919,” Chicago saw many riots and deaths over race relations. Dogs and water hoses had been used to flush the streets where we now lived. Our elders told us about those terrible times. At that time our apartment block had been outfitted with bars on all the accessible windows. Our son’s bedroom was on the lane by the fire escape. The steel bars were sturdy. Late at night, patrol cars would park under that window and “protect us.”  It was odd for a Canadian girl, where we still rarely locked the doors, to fall asleep to patrol car dispatches.  

 My dear Grandkids, there are so many stories to share but at this time I recall one story which has many parallels to our present moment of protest. Thank you, Nora, for asking me to tell you.  

 On April 4, 1968 at 6 p.m. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. Our local leader and fellow student, Jesse Jackson, was with him. We were at our community supper at the CTS cafeteria. I was eight months pregnant and it was a precarious pregnancy. I had just spent two months on bed rest for a tear in my placenta. I had only recently returned to the active life of a grad student. 

 As the news was announced, we felt our community change and react. Deep down we knew we were outsiders. We had not grown up in Black America and we were not Black. There were tears and hugs and fears. We were instructed to go home swiftly, not to loiter and to inform others that we had made it safely. We knew there was a sense of imminent danger. The summer of 1968 was just ahead. 

 As well as being part of CTS, we, as a family, became part of The University Church of the Disciples of Christ, which was a block or two from our apartment. When we first attended the church, the community left there was a remnant of its former glory. The church was vastly endowed and could have existed forever, I suppose. Instead, the few families who remained went for broke and we went along with them. They hired Charles Bayer, who served as pastor there from 1967 to 1973. This church became and remains one of the most sociologically experimentative churches in the USA. I was hired to be the Director of the Church School beginning in September 1968 just after my daughter Mary, your mother and aunt, was born. I had no idea of the magnitude of the experiment in church life that was unfolding and in which I was to play a part. At my doctoral defense years later the sociology professor on the examining committee was in awe that I had been on staff there.

 On the morning of April 5, I went to class as usual. The day was like no other. The fear and grief was palpable. In 1960s style we were asked to make art out of what we were experiencing. Songs were written. Students remembered that Joan Baez had come into class not so long before to get students singing their protest to the Vietnam war. (Yes, Grandma is name dropping a bit.) I remember writing a poem that I wish I had kept. Preparation for riots and how we would respond was on everyone’s mind. I had no idea how to prepare. I went home and got ready for my evening work at the Disciples of Christ.

 I have to digress and tell you that one of the things we did to inject new life into this church was to start a coffee house, not a very original thought for the 1960s. It was called the Blue Gargoyle in celebration of the actual gargoyle atop the church.

Gargoyle

There was no one left in the congregation to seriously dispute such an outrageous idea. As group of Divinity students, we opened this café right in the sanctuary in January 1968, just before King’s death. We thought we were creating a place for students and professors to come for discussion. I envisioned it like the cafes of Yorkville from my student days at the University of Toronto. Initially this happened, but very soon neighbourhood kids piled in, and it became a place for positive opportunities for mainly Black youth and families. It only closed in 2009 due to financial strains and the withdrawal of state funds.  Reading about the contribution it made to literacy is humbling. https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2009/4/17/as-blue-gargoyle-closes-staff-works-unpaid-to-relocate-clients-of-all-ages-to-new-programs/

It is amazing to know that in 2017 it found a way to continue, transformed as an open mic forum which continues to this day. 

 That evening, I was in my office at the church after a counselling session when I received a message over the intercom: “Ann, do not come downstairs. The Blackstone Rangers have arrived and they are armed to the teeth. Stay where you are!” The telephone went dead. 

 The Black Stone Rangers had begun as a gang to support Black youth but gradually changed into a more and more radical group supported by criminal activity. They grew to be 100,000 strong. In 1966 they had peacefully marched with Martin Luther King in civil rights marches. 

 This night they were hurting. One of their idols, Dr. King, had been senselessly gunned down.  Violence was hours, if not minutes, away. At the very least there would be a gang war for territory with their rivals, the East Side Disciples. 

 In a few short months the Blue Gargoyle had become known. Somehow, the Rangers felt they could claim this place. It was in their hood.  That night the Rangers showed up on their Harleys ready to make plans at the Gargoyle before heading out to burn, loot, riot and possibly kill to protect us from the Disciples. The church leadership had been preparing with other community leaders for the summer of 1968 and the mounting racial tensions, but we had not prepared for this. 

 Pastor Charles set up a spontaneous altar for Martin Luther King Jr. in the sanctuary.  The Rangers put down their weapons, lit candles and slowly took seats in pews. They talked in strangely subdued voices. Church will do this to almost anybody. Charles talked and listened. I came downstairs, listened, watched and handed out candles. It was breathtaking. I had never seen so many guns. There was only candlelight, as I remember it. Charles was strong, calming and gaining confidence. There was an eerie silence. Time went by. They stayed for hours and at last went home and the South Side did not burn and was not looted. The Black Stone Rangers grieved instead.  Anger expressed eased slowly into sadness. 

 Late that night, your grandfather got a neighbour to watch your sleeping uncle David/father and came and got me. Twenty-one days later, your mother/aunt was  born.  And Mary thrived and still does! 

Did we make a difference?

I do think the protests following Dr. King’s death did make a difference. While the East Side burned that night the South Side did not that night or any other in the protests and riots that followed. This happened because a forum spontaneously appeared where listening and grieving could happen respectfully. Education for Black people did improve slowly and steadily, though not easily, for at least ten years.  Your uncle David’s school was integrated. The Vietnam war ended. The Blue Gargoyle continues to this day. In January 2009, a Black man became President of the USA. Strides were made but they have not been enough.

Will the protests today make more of a difference? 

 What I learned in the church sanctuary that night was the power of giving voice to anger and grief in a peaceful manner. I learned that grieving people need a space and they need rituals that are calming. The news channels these days and nights have been filled with examples of just this. It is as simple as Samantha Francine, a Black woman taking off her sunglasses and making steady calming eye contact with a man who was angry with her protest.

 https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/girl-black-lives-matter-montana-agitator-trnd/index.html

People lie down in the streets, hands behind their backs for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.  People kneel. These are such commanding rituals.  We are able to see them now as never before thanks to social media spreading the videos. Grandma laid face down on the stones on her patio and it is powerful. 

 Obama notes that the protestors are young and multi- racial in a way that were not true in my time.  You are all one with them.  This hope is being offered by so many thoughtful folks as the one to make a greater difference. I am cautious because I have seen how the establishment waits and then abolishes gains.  Keep your eye out for this. Your votes are compeling  and your voice, especially on social media, will matter in every country in the world. 

 In my time, a lot of white people were involved but when the Civil Rights Movement chose to ask us to stand back, we did. In retrospect, maybe this was not as helpful as it might have been. We did not use this time to probe our own racism but rather to supress it. We pretended it was not our problem. We must not expect Black people to help us with our own racism. Unfortunately white people rarely truly listen to Black people. I think we have to dig deep, and I hope all of you will gather the stories of racism in your own families, mine included, over the past generations. I wonder how it leaks through into your unexplored behaviour. 

 We need compassionate leadership at every level of society. It has never mattered more. It is happening. Mayors and Governors in the USA are making changes. Because of COVID-19 in Canada, the Premiers and our Prime Minister are cooperating as never before. In B.C. our dear Dr. Bonnie Henry was just celebrated in The New York Times. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/canada/bonnie-henry-british-columbia-coronavirus.html

 Protests raise our consciousness. They are high adrenalin events. Then we need policy leading to new laws and then we need to implement the change. This is steady, and sometimes tedious, work. There are many more signs that this time we are moving beyond the protests. Maybe it is symbolic, but Black mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington D.C. changed the name of the square outside the White House to Black Lives Matter Plaza! I love it

 As I have followed the news, I have been drawn to Detroit. Being a child raised in London, Ontario, Detroit was my American city. You probably have yours. It is where I saw Ted Williams play at Tiger Stadium and it is where I first saw Black people. I also know Detroit went into decline in 1967. I know it has the largest Black population of any city in the USA.  It became a city few people want to visit. 

I am amazed that Detroit did not burn, did not loot and did not have many arrests. For the most part its people peacefully marched and protested and asked to be allowed to breathe. Arrests made there were 65-75% out-of-towners. Why were they so peaceful, we need to ask? The people had learned from the past.  Black people and white people had learned to listen and talk with each other. Mayor Mike Duggan (who is white), Chief of Police James Craig (who is Black) and Chief of Public Health Denise Fox (who is Black), who knocked down COVID-19 in Detroit, are talking with each other and to many community groups regularly and often. They have been building trust over time.  

 Detroit was the first city to call George Floyd’s death a murder. The Chief of Police, when the protestors asked the police force to kneel with them, explained that tactically this was not possible, but could he kneel with them?  They said yes and he did. When he talks about this on the media his tears flow. This creative vulnerability under pressure builds trust. The community wanted to be Proud Detroiters and they are. 

 Detroit had a ten-mile march and the protestors dispersed at curfew time, as requested. There was no violence, none.  They were helped by a sixteen-year-old, Stefan Perez, a red-shirted lad seen jumping around the crowd with a bullhorn.  Please listen to this if you want to believe that change will come. It is a well-spent eleven minutes of your life. Detroit gives me hope that change is occurring and will continue to occur. With the Stefans of this world we may even leap beyond the limits of ourselves.  

 This is all, my dear ones,

 Your loving G.A.

Brothers: East of Eden

If, as one of the lucky ones, you find yourself with time on your hands during a pandemic, there is an opportunity to read a classic novel. Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square (GPS) on CNN is my favourite Sunday morning viewing. Zakaria, a journalist and author, recommends great reads, and a few weeks ago he declared that East of Eden was, in his mind, the best American novel ever written.  I purchased an audio book and was, quite literally, on my walking way. Twenty-five hours and twenty-three minutes later, after three bruised toes and countless kilometres paced out, I finished my COVID classic. My brain races with thoughts and my heart bursts with the intricacies of this great epic novel. 

 The book led me to think a great deal about brothers. I have two of my own, Ralph and Roger, who I mostly thought of as fatherly. I was younger than them by sixteen and eleven years. Now I am thinking about them as having their own relationship as brothers. 

East of Eden is a book about brothers and stretches back to the story of Cain and Abel, who we first meet in Genesis 4:1-16 of the Bible. In this novel, which John Steinbeck thought was his greatest work, Adam and Charles are stepbrothers. Aaron (Aron) and Caleb (Cal) are twins and the Hamilton brothers are George, Tom, Will and Joe.  

 I let my mind loose on brothers. James and John (who Jesus nicknamed the Sons of Thunder), the Kennedy bothers (John, Robert and Ted), the Marx brothers (Chico, Harpo and Groucho), my dad and his brother (Fred and Albert), my children’s father and uncle (Bill and Ted ), and my own sons (David and Jonathan), whose brotherhood ended shortly after it began with Jonathan’s death as a baby.  I also think about the hockey-playing Sedin twins (Henrik and Daniel) , the British Royal brothers (William and Harry), and the very topically-relevant NYC Cuomo brothers (Andrew and Chris). Let your own mind play with the pairs that come up for you; some personal and some public. This exercise is guaranteed to trigger memories.

 The women of East of Eden are rather one-dimensional.  There are a lot of them, but only three of significance. Cathy Ames (also known as Kate and Mrs. Adam Trask), the central woman in the story, is almost pure evil from the time she is a child. For starters, as a young adult she begins her murderous life by killing her parents, and in the end, as the madam of a sadomasochistic house of prostitution, she kills herself.  Mrs. Liza Hamilton is a workhorse, tied to a literal interpretation of the Bible, who after a long life will take her broom to heaven to clean off the wings of angels. At the end of the book, Abra Bacon shows promise as a woman with a wise heart. She opens a new door within herself and emerges transformed, and also as a transformative person for others. I think that she, with the help of Lee, a wise male Chinese servant, changes the course of history for all the brothers and consequently for all the female characters as well. 

 However, East of Eden is a primarily story about the brothers in the Trask family.  As a template for this relationship it offers the well known story of Cain and Abel. The Biblical story is a short one, told in sixteen verses. Adam and Eve bear two sons, the first is Cain and the second Abel. Cain is a farmer and Abel, a nomad, tends the sheep.  Dutifully they make gifts to their Creator. Abel offers a fat lamb and Cain, the best fruits of his crop. Who knew it? God prefers meat for no apparent reason at all. Cain is naturally very angry and their sibling rivalry is born. In verse 7 God tells Cain to lighten up and promises that if he does well he will be loved, but that sin is always lurking at the door and he…  How you fill in the rest of this sentence yields the core meaning of East of Eden. How we respond to the rage of jealousy or to any evil opportunity, constitutes for Steinbeck, humanity’s defining moment.  

Steinbeck gives the task of understanding the next words of the story to Lee, a Cantonese cook. He is basically a servant to Adam Trask. He is a marvelously-drawn character and my favourite in the book. There are ways in which I have waited for years to meet him. This book was written in 1952, when the Chinese in North America were a beleaguered minority, working on railways, cooking and doing laundry.  I grew up in a home whose laundry was often done by the Chinese laundry at the corner, which was run by a “Chinaman,” as we called him then, who did indeed speak pidgin English. Especially in this moment of growing anti-Chinese sentiment due to COVID-19, Lee is a person you must meet.

Lee is preoccupied with this story of fraternal conflict, and goes to great lengths to understand verse 7 of Genesis 4. He even learns Hebrew. God tells Cain that, in his fit of jealousy, he timshel, a Hebrew word with multiple possible meanings.  Lee considers several of these possible meanings and their ramifications. In the process we get to digest Steinbeck’s theology. 

1.     In the first interpretation, Cain will conquer his urge to do a bad thing because God has promised that this will be the case.  It is predetermined and a matter for God to decide.

2.     In the second interpretation, Cain will rule over his urge to do evil.  Now it is not a promise but an order. Cain, you must do the right thing. Cain be obedient.

3.     And finally, there is the conclusion Lee arrives at after prolonged study: Cain may make a choice for good or bad. He has a choice. “Thou mayest” is how Lee translates the Hebrew word timshel. 

In the Bible story, after God’s comment on Cain’s anger, Cain kills his brother, is marked by God so he will not be killed in retaliation and is banished to the land of Nod, which is east of Eden.

The whole book of East of Eden hinges upon timshel, its final word, and how you understand it. I have come to discover that if you want a literary tattoo, there are two crucial decisions, the word and its position on your body.  “Timshel” is a very popular choice that will stand the test of time. Thus, East of Eden gives one an essential head-start on a tattoo. Yes, I am tempted.

Since I am psychotherapist, as a result of reading this novel I am preoccupied with thinking about brothers. Is it still true that a parent tends to favour one child over the other, in this case one boy over the other?  There are no reasons given for God’s preference, which suggest this preference has a very ancient source.  I think my eldest brother, Ralph, was favoured. This creates a mythology that is hard for Roger, his younger brother, to sort out. Ralph fought in WWII while Roger fought in what is often seen as the forgotten war, the Korean War. In my family this mattered. Consequently Roger worked very hard to be as favoured as his older brother. I think this is an effort that extends well beyond Ralph’s death. Once, in adult life, I had a fight with Roger, who was angry that I had not treated Ralph as he thought I should have. Ralph put his arm around me and said tenderly, “Ann, this is a fight you will never win. He loves me best and knows I can do no wrong.” Brothers know. I learned that love and adoration get very mixed up with envy and jealousy in this bond.

In East of Eden, Adam knows he is loved best and Aron knows he is loved best and Charles and Caleb know they are not. It happens overtly and covertly. I think the ones not loved remember it best and feel it most deeply. Steinbeck pulls you back to the Cain and Abel story masterfully. A stray puppy dog is chosen over a hard-earned special knife; a possible university diploma is preferred to a successful business venture. Is it ever thus?

In Journal of a Novel, Steinbeck writes: "As I went into the story [of East of Eden] more deeply I began to realize that without this story [of Cain and Abel]—or rather a sense of it—psychiatrists would have nothing to do. In other words this one story is the basis of all human neurosis—and if you take the fall along with it, you have the total of the psychic troubles that can happen to a human."

 I invite you to consider your male clients afresh in the light of their brotherliness. What do they do with jealousy and rivalry? How has it affected their lives and the course of the history of their families? It is a diagnosis you will not find in the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)!   It is also to be noted, that in the Cain and Abel story, God does not give up on Cain even for fratricide.

Cal thinks he killed his twin brother Aron. Abra attempts to pass on her wisdom and insight to him. Abra also helps Adam, as he lays dying, evolve in his relationship as a father to Cal and Aron. Steinbeck’s story is an important step forward in how we understand God in the Bible. I have so much more to say about brothers and free will, punishment and love, but to fill in the blanks here might be to spoil the possibility that you will expand your horizons with a magnificent read.  

Brace Yourself! COVID-19

I am a confessed aficionada of calendars. I have five in my house, and each has a special place and must be a particular size. I choose them carefully. They have different purposes. One introduces me to an artist whose work I don’t yet know. One helps me reflect on the great wisdom of the ages. One commemorates a trip I have taken in the past year. One is a freebie that comes in the mail and is kept in a closet. And one is folksy, with pleasant aphorisms, such as the one above. I never peek at the pages ahead, so on the first day of each month I make a trip around the house and am surprised and delighted.

On the first day of March 2020 I was invited to “Brace Myself,” and for the whole month of March I was doing just that. Everything was up in the air, and staying grounded was more and more of a challenge. COVID-19 sent our known world into a tailspin. 

If that was not enough, when April came and I turned the calendar I found this image. Here I see myself, a little petulant, deep clouds, waiting for sunlight. There you have it; calendar wisdom for a pandemic. Brace yourself and wait it out, preferably in the company of animals!

Mary Englebreit

Have you noticed that your inbox is full of reflections on what all this means? It is a quite terrifying prospect to add my ideas to the overflow. I just found out that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the Bubonic Plague. If that doesn’t stop me from writing, then there is also Margaret Atwood, who, in a recent Globe and Mail said everything I might have said about quarantines. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-growing-up-in-quarantineland-childhood-nightmares-in-the-age-of-germs/

As a child, I used to take food parcels and school assignments to my friend’s house which was plastered with “Polio Quarantine” signs and we would blow kisses to each other through the window. 

As I wrote these words, my neighbour knocked on my window and said she would be grocery shopping in the next two days and to let her know what I needed. My daughter would be smiling knowing that finally her mother was being cornered into accepting help.

Here are some observations that, so far, are not coming into my email box. 

I am a vulnerable person because I am older, and though fortunately I am not compromised, I am still the subject of much care and concern. I wonder how other people like me are experiencing this? I have been startled by neighbours I have never talked to, who seeing me putting out the garbage, are asking if they can help me in any way. Whatever fantasy I have of being young and not vulnerable is ripped away. Who was I fooling? It has got to be the crazy mop of white hair I have. Maybe I should have kept colouring it. 

My children are especially solicitous. I check this out anecdotally and find that I am not alone. I find that children are not quite as kind about this as friends. I got an email from a dear friend who wanted to advise me gently to stay inside. Between each admonition she paused to write that she loved me. My children are, in my experience, bossier. After all, I know they love me ,they say. Is this a reflection of how I was with them?  Did I delight in laying down the law with them? I rather expect so and now it is their turn to insist upon my obedience. They care that I stay safe and follow all the protocols. I have to confess that I feel rebellious. I even lied to my daughter.  

I am a person who likes to see what is on the other side of any locked gate . Throughout a long life this has been both rewarding and troublesome for me. “Stay home,” my Prime Minister tells me daily. My mind starts squirming. Where is the loophole? Can I go walking? Yes. Can I meet up with a friend? No. But what if I meet a friend by accident? Can I go and get my own groceries?  Maybe not because I am so old, but then I am also so well. And then I begin to bargain. Maybe I could have a birthday party at the beach and we could all stay two metres apart? Why not? I saw some 30-year-olds doing it just before the shutdown. My desire for freedom is not easily constrained. I prefer to lead and I strain against being led. Inside my intellectural embrace of interdependence lies a noisy and selfish independent urge. 

Since I am not able to live my normal life I find that it is important to have a routine.  Part of that for me is to look good. I exercise, bathe and shower, and get dressed every day. A radio programme  suggested I look for fun items in my closet and today I am dressed in hot pink accents! However, I had forgotten to get my hair cut before the shutdown happened. I managed to squeeze in an appointment, the last one my hairdresser had before she closed down. Prudently, I got my hair cut very short. Then I Zoomed with my daughter, forgetting that my hair was different. She said my hair looked good and asked what had I done. I lied and said I had tied it up. Then I spent a sleepless night, in the midst of which I penned and sent off, a very long and sincere apology.  This  whole parent-child thing went into reverse. I am pretty sure that something like this is happening to more people than just me. I look for loopholes at least twice a day. I am learning restraint, but the urges remain. I resist yielding to even the most loving and wise guidance which can sound to me like so much like unkind authority. My daughter who lives in Ontario responded to her mom in Vancouver’s apology ever so warm-heartedly. “Mom, Vancouver has never seemed so far away.” 

Have you been receiving tender poems and tiny essays on the joys of being shut in? I have been. I am sure they are all written by smiling oldster introverts. How many of the classics have you read that you had always hoped to find the time for? Are you listening to symphonies provided free? And the extroverts all wish they had purchased stock in Zoom. 

You may not get so many reports from the overwhelmed.  I know a young conscientious mom who is having to work from home who has three young kids with school closed,  a husband not quite accustomed to all the family demands also working from home in a closet and she is trying to wash her fruit and vegetables in soap and water.  She is getting up at 5 a.m. and working two hours, then parenting until 7 or 8 p.m. and starting work again until 2 a.m. if she is lucky. There is not much time for poetry reflections for her. She reported to me that her life was a blurrrr…!

I remember what that was like. As a young mother I was so busy that I literally missed all of the Beatles. We hear from those who are working on all the front lines and how terrifying it is for them. We know some of them. Among us are those at each end of the spectrum and all places in the middle. I am concerned that we not forget the many who will need the support of our mental health caregivers to stay sane and recover from incredible stress. My profession and my country needs to prepare to counsel the exhausted, the grief stricken and those suffering from profound trauma.

Alas, I have not written King Lear, but I want to acknowledge that most of us have Goneril and Reagan moments, wildly searching for loopholes. We have Lear moments, longing to lead when, blinded, we are actually called to follow. What we all hope for is plenty of Cordelia moments of kindness and compassion to see us through to the other side.  Although it stretches us to the limit to hold on to hope, that is what will lift us through these unusual times. 

A Place for Mom/Dad or Not…..?

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I chatted with friends, talking about holiday preparation, what the grandkids were doing, golf scores and the weather? Today when we chat, it is about doctor’s appointments and which friend just had a colonoscopy or is about to go into chemotherapy or has broken her wrist in a fall or has decided to stop driving. Increasingly we discuss what we thought of an obituary. This is happening so fast. 

I have always been precocious. True to form, it makes sense that I am getting to my death ahead of time. As a result of divorces, my two kids currently have six parents (biological and step) age eighty or more in their circle of love. I am determined to prepare as much as possible to make things easy for them as I approach all the nasty possibilities that come with aging. I live alone and currently I live 4300 kilometres away from them.

Because of the urgency of climate change and the persistence of Marie Kondo in reminding me to declutter, I must address my demise. Accumulating stuff is hurting the planet. It is not possible to throw something ”away.” There is no ”away.” I am accosted by startling pictures of unimaginable volumes of plastic clogging our rivers and oceans.  With hope, I am about to wash my hair with a bar of shampoo that I purchased in a cardboard box. 

When my mother and dad gave up their family home, my elder siblings came in with a U-Haul truck and just put everything in it and it went ‘away’ to the dump. I was a very much younger sib and I remember my terrible distress. I was learning, brutally, the lesson of impermanence. My siblings did not want what was in the house. Their own houses were already full. I was too young to have a house and all the things that had made me feel safe were flying away to the dump. The wooden mincemeat bowl is gone forever.  

Now I have a house and I have stuff and lucky me, I have Marie Kondo on Netflix in my den. I must keep only what gives me joy and all else must go, hopefully to be recycled. How did I get so much stuff? Out with a friend recently, I purchased a new skirt. She remarked, and kindly, that I must have twenty-five skirts!  I was shocked by the possible truth of what she was saying. In fits and starts, I declutter. My son has told me I am getting there, as he says that he and his sister could empty my house in less than a day. Yet it is hard to cope with such a small imprint. Of course, I am more than my stuff but so many items give me joy or are my friends filled with memories. They tell me to take a photo. While it is not the same, I remind myself that I do like looking at photos and that this might work.

I have this problem that I animate things with spirit. That broken damaged silver sugar shaker is so sad that it has never been repaired and that its days of usefulness are over. I feel guilty that I never fixed it. My children loved it into its present state of disrepair. Maybe sugar shakers have disappeared forever into nutrition eviction? This business of animation that I inherited from my ancestors makes it hard to let go. 

 I am thinking about giving up buying plastic altogether. Margaret Atwood did it for a year, I am told. I don’t think she is the cheating sort. I think I would have to cheat.

I drive a car very little and I ride in planes very often. So much energy goes into contemplating options. Can I truly be a less selfish “older”? My grandchildren have been inspired by the activism of Greta Thunberg to fly less often. We went on a driving holiday this Christmas into the heart of winter in Quebec City. Brilliant, I think. I accept, if I live, that when the time demands it, I will move back to Ontario and so flying to be with family will be over for me. 

I did decide to get cremated and where to have the urn buried. I did not want to reside in my children’s closets because they did not know what to do with my remains. I really wanted my body to be shrouded and buried in the ground. I like compost. However cremation seemed like the best choice for me, if not the climate, as I live a long way from the cemetery where I have arranged to be interred. Nothing seems easy or simple. I had to get written permission from my entire living family to have the privilege of being buried on top of the bodies of my grandparents and my two infant children. Apparently they also had rights. Burying my ashes was acceptable but not my shrouded body. There is always red tape. 

I made a list of all my possessions that I might like to have a particular destination, and I update it and send it to my children from time to time. I told them about what kind of a “funeral” I would like and who to ask to do it. I am blessed to have a lot of friends who are younger and who are clergy people. 

My will and other legal affairs are all set up. My lawyer tells me I need one more signature regarding the sale of my house, which I keep forgetting to get. 2020 will not happen before this is done! Ah, but it did. 

 My daughter says I deserve a “blue ribbon,” so I know I am doing not too badly. I may even be rolling right along. It is a time-consuming job, I am finding, this getting ready to die responsibly as a single person. 

 What I was not doing was figuring out what would happen if I got sick or my mind began to fail. I do keep up to date with MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) and have begun talking to my children about this. I think I am good with final case scenarios but not so great at the time that precedes such a decision.

 Keeping in mind the “before time” (too sick to manage on my own but not sick enough to die), I began a research project. The results are the basis of the rest of this essay. I visited twelve possible retirement home options in four different cities. I have a young voice and at times when I was arranging tours on the telephone I was asked if it was for my mother or my father? Cynical me thought perhaps this was flattery, but even if it was, it worked. Do we ever feel ready for this option?

 Two projects were co-housing projects. I was swept up in this possibility. If only I wanted to live in Sooke, BC and was about sixty-five years old with the money to retire. I would have to love hiking and biking and boating and be adept at a least one of them. I knew I would like to live in such an intentional community. The units hang over the Pacific; the eagles soar and the boats bob in the sunlight on the good days. On the wet days the fog swoops in, the mist hangs on the giant cedars and everything is glossy green.  While I was visiting, another investigator like myself entered a master bedroom, saw the view and her jaw literally dropped! The owners were such delightful people. I just knew that in a lot of ways they would be my tribe.  But I am also a very urban person who likes to holiday abroad, not live in places like Sooke. I felt I was welcome, even as I knew I would be the eldest among them. 

I came away from this research feeling happy that courageous people were finding ways of aging while doing the work of forming deep connections. These projects respect our desires to have meaningful and appropriate levels of control and at the same time profoundly share our lives. Now, they are happening in other parts of Canada. The philosophy was right for me but I had waited too long. 

Then I began to research private retirement homes. I seem to be just wealthy enough that this is a better option for me than public options.  I am discovering that retirement homes are big business. Some are part of huge conglomerates that have franchises all over North America. Others are very much smaller, with under five facilities. 

The ones I visited all had reasonably distinctive characteristics within a somewhat generic frame. They tend to be conservative in appearance and furniture. I have heard of one I did not visit that is entirely Scandinavian modern in design. This appeals, but I was told that such furniture might challenge my knees and hips! Some had phenomenal dining rooms with great views and one had exceptional food with a view of freeways in the midst of downtown Ottawa. Each had distinctive services. One, for example, was situated between three major hospitals and specialized in folk needing a lot of medical care. Two on university campuses offered a lot of interaction between town and gown.

All had a system of levels/neighbourhoods; think gated community/golf course/retreat centre. The fully-independent living was either in a separate condo building or in townhouses on streets. These surround the central facility commonly referred to as “The Big House,” which is where as many as five remaining levels are housed. These levels range from some meals and minimal care, to full-time nursing to “memory care” for people with dementia who wander and need the safety of a locked facility.  

 As in any system, there is a vocabulary. Are you ready?

 Cueing: This is a service if you need to be reminded to take your pills or to come to meals or any form of reminding.

 Portering: This is the service where you have to be helped to get somewhere because you are not steady on your feet or with your walker or wheel chair. 

 Touches: You can count the contacts the resident has with the staff and these are called touches. Some places charge per touch. 

 Memory Care: This is the neighbourhood for those with dementia in various forms. The important definition here is that it is a locked facility. I discovered folks with various levels of dementia in the other neighbourhoods but they did not wander. It is also important to know that private retirement homes are not equipped to deal with violent residents in any of the levels. This is when the public option must be sought. I visited several such “hoods” or memory care residences. I was impressed by those with a big, outdoor, safe terrace. I came away thinking everyone I saw was clean, dressed and being spoken to kindly and regularly. The rooms were spacious, the decor was homey and the residents did not seem drugged beyond alertness. Several spoke to me and told me stories with different levels of logic. One person was very sure I knew her brother. We had an easy chat that I think she enjoyed. I did. It felt like a gentle place. I appreciated that most residents had good use of their bodies. 

I thought about “what ifs” and choices we hope we never have to make. My mother was deaf for almost all of her life and she always played the “what if” game and was certain it was better to be deaf than blind. Would I rather have full body function and declining mind function or the other way around? I had those thoughts as I visited. I surprised myself by leaning toward the former. 

 Private retirement homes offer a lot of services. Some had a resident GP with an office on site. Most had foot care and eye care and access to dental care. They had hair salons and barber shops, pubs and bistros and private dining rooms for parties. Residences were pet friendly. There were shuttle buses and easily-accessible walking paths. I was impressed that many staff members had been with the facility over an extended period of time and that they had benefits. I knew that remaining in your own home and hiring help was no easy task and that regular certified care would matter.

 In one home, just after breakfast, I noted three women in animated conversation. Suddenly a full-throated rendition of an Italian operatic aria rose in the air and filled the vast room where we sat chatting with the tour guide. She was delighted and shared that this was the third solo by the woman singing. The soloist had moved in some months before and found two other Italian women who were residents. Their daily chatting was growing at exuberant speed. 

Private retirement homes specialize in helping you figure out whether you can afford them or not. The big conglomerates have excellent tools for this. Chartwell’s is available online. They seem to cost between $4000 and $8000 a month. This is very dependent on the level of care you require and the size of apartment you desire. As you require more care, your living space gets smaller. One facility I visited had up to 3000 square feet of luxurious living space if you required no care. A state of the art living with dementia home, The Village Langley, has been built in BC and the cost is $8000 a month. If you are entitled to government care, I discovered that one can bring this with you into the retirement home just as you can into your own home. Several of the homes I visited also had units for sale. Resale might be difficult as the potential buyers would be more limited than on the open market. The homes also help with inter-provincial moves and the relocation of your heath care. They also help with downsizing your current living place and will help you choose what to bring. As in the wider world, the units give testimony to individuality in decor. A studio can be made into a very creative and inviting space and I saw a stunning example of this. 

I immediately became curious as to why a person or a couple would choose to pay $5000 a month or more to rent an albeit luxurious townhome or condo in a city where you could just rent a comparable accommodation for $2000 or so less. Here are the reasons. In most cases you have access to all the services and activities of “The Big House.” The rent is inclusive of almost everything. You have a community that is built in. You are in the queue to move up (or down as you view it) in the system. Some people with good pensions simply have the money and like the security of having all decisions made. Frequently one or another of a couple has become more in need of care and the other spouse likes to know this care is close at hand. Sometimes a spouse has died. Perhaps another reason is a fear of waiting lists that will be too long. My experience at private facilities gave me the assurance that while there are waiting lists, they are not excessive. There is also the option of respite care. This means that you could decide to enter the system as a resident for a limited time because of a special need for extra care and then return to your own home.

At one facility, I met Dan and Ann. They had moved into a completely independent townhouse and were very buoyant in their enjoyment. I met them in the library in The Big House where they volunteered. They were in charge of an extensive library. They were emptying out 200 books for a city-wide book sale the following day. I also learned that Dan ran an extensive gardening program in the good months for all the residents. They were definitely outgoing and easily shared their pleasure with me at having decided to become residents. As I prepared to leave, Dan came over to me to offer his inside scoop on aging. In a conspiratorial air, he confessed to me that the secret of aging is, “You must have a purpose. Every day I have a great reason to get up and get going. The library and the garden need me.” Dan and I are cut from the same cloth. I share his sentiment exactly.

My sister spent several years of her life in Australia in an assisted living space. In several ways it was modest compared to the levels of elegance I had been experiencing in my touring. It was operated as the outreach of a church. I knew such places existed in Canada. One such place, run by the Unitarian Church, was recommended to me. Its location in Ottawa is ideal. It sits on the edge of the footpath along the Ottawa River, close to one of Ottawa’s trendy neighbourhoods, Westboro. It is also where my daughter lives. It is small, friendly and quite delightful. It has fully independent living apartments that house 80-90 people. They are registered under the Affordable Care Act, and a one bedroom apartment costs $990 a month. Alas, there is a ten year waiting list that is completely full. My brother, at 92, is still living independently in his home but sadly his wife has just moved into assisted living care. I thought, well, if the waiting list opens up I will definitely put my name on that list. Genes may be on my side.

The assisted care side of this complex offers a studio with private bath. It has multiple services and more can be added from the community. It costs, at this moment, $3400 a month. It houses fifty people from their late seventies to age 102. This waiting list has sixteen names and moves quickly. There is a down-to-earth vibe to the place as you approach and when you enter. 

Life in the other neighbourhoods (levels) would have its little challenges. I like a bathtub, and the apartments do not them because they are considered too dangerous. One friend who made the tour with me found herself struggling to imagine how her furniture would fit in the apartment we were in. Of course, the very friendly salesperson made sure that I knew that wanting to make this move made it significantly easier to relax and enjoy the transition. A very friendly person at one of the homes told me exactly this. “I was tired of making meals and living alone. I wish I had come earlier.”

The average size of a retirement home seemed to be about 200 residents. The average age in the homes I visited was 85.  25% were couples and of the remaining 75 % at least 60% were single women. However, I visited one facility where in addition to husbands almost half of the remaining residents were single men. I observed these men engaged in a number of male only activities. I am sure they felt they had lucked out and were forming friends they had not had since boyhood when they shared a tree fort. I felt really happy for them. 

It struck me that so many of the activities provided were for a younger and more fit cohort. Several had unused swimming pools and bicycle racks. What does this mean? I also thought that it would be good preparation for this period of life to know how to play bridge, do jigsaws, sing in a choir, play an instrument and be in a book club. Skill with crafts would also be good preparation. One, on a university campus, had a full curriculum available in fall and winter semesters taught within the building, by university professors 

I visited homes in British Columbia where I live. I visited homes in Guelph where my son and his family live, and in Ottawa where my daughter and her family live. I am glad they came with me. It made for very interesting conversation afterwards. Something about it all made us just a tad uncomfortable in different ways. I know I had not thought that at the end of my life I would be going away to camp fulltime. I have a friend who reframes it as a country club. I could see paying visits, but then I would want to come home, as I would after any group excursion. 

My daughter was overwhelmed by the fact that residents were all white. It is true that in twelve residences I did not see a single resident of colour. Very white people with very white hair were being cared for by a staff of every colour and ethnicity.  Why is that, we mused? Several of the complexes were owned and run by people of colour. It became very obvious that families of colour do not expect that their “olders” will live anywhere other than the family home. Is this a phenomenon that will soon change? Is this reality also true of publicly-funded facilities? 

Recently I spoke with a friend that had just spent time in a retirement facility to receive respite care after surgery. She was taken by the upstairs /downstairs reality. The staff had their own world and their own dynamics. She became very aware of the differences. When we live in our own homes we are more protected from this reality. Currently, care in a communal setting puts this reality squarely in our faces.  

We are now in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic. Retirement homes may emerge as hot spots as have nursing homes. The population post 60 is vulnerable. It makes the home I visited that was surrounded by three hospitals look very attractive. The pandemic is raising not anticipated realities for us all.                           

I am left thinking that we have yet to discover what works as a way to care for ourselves as we age. I think we can do better. In all likelihood the aging baby boomers will figure this out. Once upon a time, villages took care of their seniors. I grew up in such a home. My grandparents first lived next door and then, as they aged, they moved in with my parents. The church down the street held us all together. 

I think of the movie called Quartet. In this, movie a group of musicians rent or purchase a house and move in together.  More such movies are being made and books written about such experiments.  I experienced something approximating this while in Queensland, Australia recently. A classical orchestra retired and were living in a community. They all lived close to each other and met regularly to play and also to perform. They truly loved and cared for each other. I got to attend their annual Melbourne Cup extravaganza. In hats and gloves, they betted and then watched the famous race. I was completely outsmarted in all the horsey games played. Retired clergy have created a community in Marin County, California. Is heterogeneity what we crave as we age? One residence I visited in Ottawa was very downtown. Cars whizzed by the windows. The local street was alive with shoppers. It was one of the oldest facilities I visited and it was, I think, by far the cleanest. All were clean but this place sparkled. Maybe it had just been renovated. The independent unit there housed all ages including families with babies. There were many units rented by that cadre of young people under thirty who serve in the offices of the government officials. It was the only heterogeneous community I visited. 

At the end of this research can I make a decision? Not yet, but I am thinking and reading and asking questions. MAiD is in my mind more powerfully as an option. If I need memory care, I can now tell my children a place in each of their cities where I could live and they could feel I made the choice. I know that if I need the safety of a locked ward then I want to be in one where there is a large outdoor space that is attached and safe. I want to know that I can access the out of doors every day, even if I don’t know it. I hope this decision never has to be made, but if it does, then the city doesn’t matter to me. I want to be where one or the other of my kids can visit me and watch over my care easily. I hope my children would choose based on their life circumstances at that time.

If I do not need memory care but I do need assistance, then from the group of twelve homes I visited (with two more to be considered), I can make a choice. I know what to expect. I can see having to update this research from time to time. I am profoundly glad I made such a thorough run at it with all my wits and health around me. 

I have made progress preparing for the externals actions that will surround my demise. Alas, the harder and most courageous work of internal preparation beckons. I now know more clearly what I will miss from my present life.  Every day each of the special things about my home and my life in it are more precious than ever. I am grateful that as I sit here, I can watch the lights on Cypress ski hill shine in the night sky. I am thankful for the filet of wild spring salmon that will be my dinner. For now, I am most blessed and a little more prepared for what tomorrow inevitably brings. 

Aging: Challenges for Stepchildren and Their Elders

Children rarely get to choose their stepparents. 

A friend of mine, a woman of fifty, after a horrendous divorce, is asking her twenty and twenty-two-year-old adult children to do just this. With them she is compiling a list of desired attributes for her next partner, their stepfather-to-be. The kids are with her every step of the way and having lots of say. I wonder how it will turn out. They are certainly deepening and broadening the scope of power for stepchildren.

Being a stepchild is often fraught with much unpleasantness as the fairy tales point out. During your middle age, you may confront the reality of your stepparent in new ways that will surprise you. 

Mike and Natalie are a middle-aged couple I know. In their twenties, each of their parents divorced and each remarried. They found themselves with four stepparents, all of them strangers. Over the years they found ways to interact with them that were more or less successful. When their parents hit their eighties, illnesses began to show up. Natalie’s mom was sinking into late-stage cancer. Mike’s dad was showing signs of dementia. Rather than each navigating these health challenges with their other biological parent, they were now faced with the task of sorting these issues with a stepparent.

In both cases this was not easy. Mike’s stepmom was experiencing a lot of denial. She was only a few years older than Mike, her stepson.  She couldn’t believe that the dementia was real and something she needed to deal with. Natalie’s stepdad did not want help and was insisting on controlling the flow of information coming from the medical professionals. He did not know how things worked in his wife’s family. He had never been a live-in stepdad. 

 In both cases, the stepparent relationship was not secure enough. It did not come with the sanctity of a blood bond. Inheritance rights had not been openly discussed. Medical etiquette shut out the birth children. The healthy stepparent has the legal right to make the decisions in the event of illness, and is the one the doctors talk to unless more inclusive arrangements have been made by the family and are insisted upon in dealing with the medical professionals. The ill parent will most often defer to the wishes of their spouse, upon whose care they are dependent. 

 Natalie’s stepdad had three children of his own. He did not want them involved at all in the care of his wife or in his care. He wanted to protect his own kids and, without consultation, wanted to keep Natalie out of her mother’s care as well.  Mike was at a loss as how to communicate with his stepmom. He had never liked her and now felt obligated to have a relationship with her. He felt terribly uncomfortable and disloyal to his real mom. 

 All of this was going on while Natalie and Mike were at the height of their careers and finding themselves grieving the loss of their kids, who were going off to university. Mike and Natalie were sandwiched tightly between the changing and complicated needs of parents and stepparents and those of their own kids. Any hope of time for them to play just kept vanishing into a longed-for future. 

 In the western world, some version of this story is becoming more and more common. While it is often difficult for families that are intact (i.e. with no divorce), it is even more challenging for couples where divorce has led to remarriage and new partners.   The high divorce-rate of the 1970s and 1980s  (https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/millennials-divorce-baby-boomers/571282/) and the resulting remarriages created an abundance of new couples that are now entering the last stage of life. The end is in sight. Frequently this means serious illness. There is no primer for them or their stepchildren. This totally new aspect of the fallout from divorce demands study and preparation. It is right now exploding in North America. 

 Frequently, couples like Mike and Natalie’s parents and stepparents have not made plans. Sometimes they have not made wills because it is a great deal more difficult to make wills when there are stepchildren and stepgrandchildren. Maybe one side has two children and the other four. Perhaps these two sets of children barely know each other. Maybe one side brought in a lot more money and property than the other side. Then, sometimes when wills are made, important details are not shared with all the heirs because they might be contentious. There could well be a period when the stepparent is the survivor and therefore able to use the collective resources and even change their final destination. Intact couples are more likely to be clear with their offspring about their wishes regarding serious illness and end of life issues. At the very least, they are more likely to be equally committed to the children they have together. At times, even this can be fractious in an intact family. Thus it is easy to see how challenges can increase in a stepfamily. 

 Meanwhile, the now fifty-year-old kids, like Mike and Natalie and their stepsiblings, are trying to navigate their parents’ illness and care. They may love their parent dearly but what exactly is their power to influence and/or direct? How do they engage meaningfully with their stepparents? Substantial wealth and property increase the difficulties. It may be necessary to sort out differences in provincial and federal law where that is applicable.  I found, for example, that my children from Ontario could not sell my house in British Columbia without special papers being signed by them while in BC.  What if children give a lot of care and it goes unacknowledged once their parent dies? Do they trust or hire a lawyer? My legal friends suggest the second route; it being better to be safe than sorry. 

 This unexplored territory is the fallout from divorces that happened decades ago. Many of these concerns also apply where the spouse in an intact family has died, the surviving parent remarried and there is now a very new stepparent. There are few guidelines that prepare one for the eruption of these particular conflicts. 

 So here are some suggestions that I am creating for Mike and Natalie’s parents and others like them.

1. Face the music; death is coming for you both. 

 We live in a culture in which it is prevalent to deny death and its coming arrival for us all. Medical breakthroughs have extended life expectancy. We are just going to keep living longer and while we may slow down, we are just fine, independent and in control. Humour often disguises the reality of aging. We can make jokes about increased life expectancy. Maybe we don’t need to think about this until we are 115!  This is not a charitable position. 

 The first step is to move through denial.  Admit to each other that this is serious business. Know that it is even more formidable if you are a stepparent. 

2. Make a will

 When I was in my fifties, I met a couple with several stepchildren. They came into my practice as a marriage and family therapist because they wanted to be proactive in arranging their affairs. They could not decide how to make a will. They had gone through three family lawyers. The last one sent them to me. The challenge had driven them to the doors of divorce. This made no sense because they loved each other deeply, but they could not make the will that they knew they needed to make. One of the children was a multi-needs child. It took time and we got it sorted; they made a will and they stayed married.

 We often learn from our clients, and I learned from them. I knew I needed to get this done as well. Look around for examples, because they help you learn.

 3. Share your will with your children.

 Please don’t leave them in suspense. Your children most likely care for you and want to be included. Surprises can lead to generations of fracture in the family. Hold transparency in high regard.

 Susan, a friend, was absolutely sure than when her mother passed, she would inherit a piece of land that she had enjoyed as a child. It did not happen. Her stepfather sold it and the rancor that ensued ruptured the wider family, with no resolution in sight. The next generation is inheriting the animosity. 

 4. Prepare: Sort out your end of life preferences and make them known.

 Maybe we are blessed, we think, and die immediately. We get spared the onerous decisions. And yet, the left-behinds are anything but freed. Emily Dickinson wrote: “The Bustle in a House, 

                              The Morning after Death

Is the solemnest of industries 

                              Enacted upon Earth”  

We often miss the word “industry.”  It is a monumental amount of emotional and physical work to manage the aftermath of a sudden death or of the arrival of a serious and chronic illness. With no preparation, which too often is the case, the load is even more unmanageable.

 Isn’t it selfish to think, at age eighty, that you ought to be freed from the preparation for end times? Is this not even more true when you are not an intact couple or are a single person with heirs? In these cases, your children may be left caring for a parent that is not their own, or navigating delicate terrain with stepsiblings that they hardly know.

 Not preparing leaves the heirs with such a burden. Think how many times such people have said they will not be a burden to their children only to become one. They leave their children with houses to declutter, sheds to dissemble, intricate negotiations with a stepparent to navigate, perhaps an undiscussed MAiD desire (Medical Assistance in Dying plan available in Canada and other countries), real estate assets to sell, their own grief to process, and ultimately an urn full of ashes stored in a closet for want of a better place; all, while they are usually at the height of their careers. What could be more selfish or thoughtless toward their beloved children?  

 I have been asking my middle-aged friends for their opinions about my thesis that people my age are remarkably selfish. To a person they have all sighed with relief and told me about just how selfish they find their parents! It behooves all of us to do better.

 5.  Seek Resources

 Dr. Atul Gawande wrote Being Mortal, a book where he lays out the imperative for children and their parents to have regular end of life discussions that are frank and, in their frankness, kind. He promotes an “elder-rearing” program. Gawande is addressing health issues. My quite direct daughter told me to read this book! I did, and nothing has been the same inside me since. The book is an excellent first step in preparation for being mortal.  

 In addition to the conversations that Dr Gawande promotes, there need to be conversations that explore how these difficult matters are going to be managed with stepparents. If you are getting stuck, it is a time to consider employing a relationship professional to guide you. 

 How is management of the aging process and possible assistance to be fairly shared? This is a difficult conversation for siblings in an intact family to have with each other. It is vastly more challenging for siblings and stepsiblings to discuss what they regard as appropriate care and how they are going to share in providing it. For example, families need help to discuss gender issues when it comes to care. Up until now it has been mostly women who have done this care. I was blessed and my elder brother did this for our parents. I have never thought it was a job for women only. Such conversations that are held within the safety of a professional’s guidance allow for tough questions to be addressed as they emerge. 

 A couple I know, who are in their seventies, just employed such a professional, a family therapist, when they no longer had the skills to deal with a parent in her nineties. Promises to care within the family had been sincerely made long ago and yet naively created.  Cultural expectations were at play. Slowly all the players were heard and decisions made that respected the wishes of all of them. It took outside help and a willingness of all parties to open their minds and deal with inner conflicts of heart. Old promises were respectfully released. Difficult decisions were eased. 

 And my next essay on retirement homes, coming in March, may just be the resource number 6!  

 Death and illness are real. After the age of eighty, news of our fragility arrives every day when an email is opened, an obituary read or a telephone call received. Someone we know has fallen from health.  Those children who endured a divorce in their late teens or older, and are now in their fifties, may have eight elders in their circle of care; parents and stepparents all. Our children will burn out unless we oldsters prepare 

THEY: 2019 Word of the Year + Other Buzz words

When you are a senior like me, this selection is a challenge. The Merriam Webster Dictionary gave it a new definition in September 2019 and since then, it has sustained a 313% increase in the numbers of times searched. “They” is now described as a singular pronoun used to refer to a person whose gender identity is non binary. A non binary person is someone whose gender identity isn’t exclusively male or female. Some people who are non binary experience their gender as both male and female and others experience their gender as neither male or female. If you need to read this once or twice, join the club. It is difficult to get your head to absorb it. 

I am pretty certain this morning I showered in the pool showers with a non binary person.  I was a very naked “older” which is what I am calling myself these days. “They” were very tall and muscular in an abbreviated wetsuit. But I am guessing. It did make me think about the new sign on the locker room door, “This is a Gender Neutral facility”. It used to be simple or so I thought, before I entered into the process of being challenged by the millennial generation. 

I remember when as a feminist Christian I was very dedicated to changing all the pronouns for God.  “God’s a She, a He He’s not!”  “Our Father” became “Holy One”. Editions of the Bible were published with all the male pronouns for God erased. It meant you had to say God in a lot of sentences.  I made it through this. Now God is definitely non binary for me. Is this the best way to express this concept? Theologians out there, please advise. 

I find that my conversations with other grandparents has let me know that this change is here to stay. Our grandchildren have this down. They have adjusted their pronouns and are inclusive. Gender is a broad spectrum with many points on which to locate oneself. I will check out what I have written with my sixteen year old grand child, my most reliable source, to make sure I am on the right track. Whoops, I almost said my “grand daughter”. 

Do I use singular verbs with “They” as in “They is coming for dinner”? or is it “They are coming for dinner” when only one is? Apparently we are still conjugating grammatically and “they are” is correct when only one is. 

My grand daughter has let me know that it is correct to call her my grand daughter because she identifies her gender as female and has told me so. She also has let me know that making an effort is what really counts. A non binary person is pleased to be able to discuss the issue with me and if I am open to being educated they are eager to teach me. The proper use of “they” in its new definition is a work in progress and I am advised to be on a learning curve. 

Thus Merriam Webster, in its choice of word for this year, invites us all to become more inclusive in our speech. It is good to know we will be appreciated if we try. 

While reflecting on “they” I have some other words to put forward. 

Woke is getting used all the time. I have been thinking that it was a short form for being awakened after a spiritual experience or even a long sleep, even a nap. How unaware of me. 

No, it means being conscious of racial discrimination and other forms of oppression in society.

I definitely want to be woke and I expect you do too. 

Animus For this word I felt on firm Jungian ground. Animus is an archetype and as such indicates  the unconscious masculine side of the woman. Those of you therapists probably thought as I did. 

But alas no. Chris Cuomo on his CNN show uses the word often and it is usually connected to President Trump and his animus. It is now defined as hostility or ill will. It can also mean the desire to act strongly. I find it is almost a code word for angry. 

Proxy I think this means that if Iran wants to attack America right now the best way to do it is get someone else to do it so it won’t look like they did it!  if Iran can get some one in Syria or Lebanon to do something bad to the USA, then Iran will have attacked by proxy. Pretty sneaky and effective I would say. 

Perhaps at this moment both the USA and Iran will be wishing that they reined in their “animus” and used proxies to express their hostilities. 

Gaslighting This one is a dilly. I manipulate you by psychological means into questioning your own sanity. Maybe I am prejudiced but I am pretty sure that most of you who are women have experienced this. I have been thoroughly and overwhelming gaslighted in my lifetime. When you want desparately want to be right, engaging in gaslighting is very attractive. I think it can be easily done to children in abusive homes. I have seen versions of it in couple therapy over and over again through the years of my work. We can do this to one another. I have discovered that it is pretty easy to get a person to doubt their veracity. it seems women are most susceptible. It depends on trust and then trust makes one vulnerable to gaslighting.

The term came from a 1938 British play and subsequent movie called Gaslight. It goes something like this: a bad and manipulative husband sets out to have his wife believe she is insane and then he can have her committed. He turns the gas lights in their home up and down. When she notices, then he convinces her that this is simply not true and what she is seeing is not happening. The plot involves murder and jewels and a really evil husband. Please google it to get this fully straight. I get pretty riled up over this one. It is proffered that POTUS (President of The USA) engages in this technique. When you have been convinced by someone you trust that what you think is not what is happening, in all likelihood gaslighting is occurring. 

Mansplaining  Have you been with a group as a woman and tried to make a point? Suddenly you discover that a man or all of the men in this group know more about the subject than you do? If this has happened then you are experiencing mansplaining. Whatever you know about the subject has been trumped. (pun intended).  Whoever is mansplaining you is sure they know more, if not the most about this and pretty much everything else as well. Narcissistic males are particularly good at this mansplaining thing.

I hope you have enjoyed my attempt to be current in 2020 and I did not even mention quid pro quo! 

Justice: 2018 Word of the Year

Reeling from the Brett Kavanaugh/Christine Blasey Ford hearings at the end of September 2018, I was not surprised to find that “Justice” was the most looked up word in the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary in 2018. It is a word that covers so much. It is a technical and legal term as well as carrying lofty and philosophical meanings. In the past year we have thought about racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, economic justice and I keep thinking about gender justice. While I know personally and professionally that the world is not a fair and just place, I long for it to be that.

In November I found myself on beautiful Bribie Island in Queensland, Australia on a home exchange. I was sharing my home with “the” ecological activists of Bribie island. The home itself is a testament to ecological justice. Its water is recycled rain water and the heat is solar and the air-conditioning provided by shade trees and wind. The family save the turtles. This retreat for me was an inspiring perspective after months of CNN and Trump America. Hopefully this photo will transport you to a peaceful reflective place.

Early morning on Bribie Island, Queensland, Australia.

Before I went to Australia I found the book Destination Art: 500 Artworks worth the Trip. Of course I checked out Australia and found that the new Supreme Court in Brisbane had an art installation that was designated worth the trip. I was primed for a day in Brisbane.

As I entered the Plaza I was greeted by Thousands of Eyes, the art installation created by Yayoi Kusama.

These large childlike eyes were everywhere. I was surrounded by eyes. There are 90 metres of eyes. Sitting in their midst I began to feel accountable. Then I felt massively accountable. I did not even notice the court buildings. I gave myself the time to just absorb what stood out for me. I began to question “Was I doing enough with my life?” Was I attentive enough to those around me who need to be seen.? After awhile I thought about being the eyes looking for justice and mercy. I felt overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of us. Then I began to look where the eyes were looking. First I noticed that they looked out upon a stunning green space winding throughout the city, like a river. It could be an image for The New Green Deal. Maybe the artificial poinsettia is realistic touch?

It was more than an hour before I thought to find the Supreme Court building itself.

It took awhile to see that it was completely clad in glass. Any Supreme Court Justice striding its halls or any clerk for that matter had to come to terms with the fact that they were living in a glass house and being watched constantly. Transparency was a structural reality. The eyes of those seeking justice were right there and it seems to me, pleading with a childlike candour. Those who meted out justice were supervised constantly. I looked more closely and saw

that the eyes, by reflection, get inside the building everywhere. The glass brings what is outside, in. There can be no escape to an ivory tower of justice. I thought about our own Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley MacLauglin who retired in 2018. Continually she reminds us that justice must be accessible to all equally and yet, it is not. When the average lawyer’s fee in Canada is $338.00 an hour and a two to three day civil trial cost upwards of $60,000 it means that a lot of pleading eyes do not get inside. No place is this more critical than in the area of family law. There may rest the reason that the artist gives us eyes that a child would draw. There are many who think that children are the most short changed by our justice system.

In 2012 when this installation was unveiled there was widespread criticism led by Justice Minister Jarrod Bleijie. For him the installation was an “Eyesore” that cost one million Australian dollars. The conrtoversy carries on. More than one Australian found my pilgrimage to the site very strange indeed. I was the soul tourist exploring the site on a bright sunny Saturday.

Imagine how I felt to discover that the artist, Yayoi Kusama, is an octogenarian and further that she is a psychiatric patient at a Tokyo hospital and has been for 36 years. There she painted each eye in black ink before they were enamelled and mounted. I imagined making eye after eye and what that would mean. When we truly see, empathy is born. Surely she was trying to insure deep connection between those needing justice and those administering justice. I thought about how she knows what it is like to want to be seen.

In my field there is so little justice for the mentally ill. Slowly we are seeing and as a result accessibility of health care is being addressed. As I got to know her story the eyes took on yet more depth.

There is a plaque on the installation and here is how it reads

“In a time when public accountability is of the utmost importance, Kusama’s eyes not only look back at you, they surround the courts with looking.

“Metaphorically, the process of justice is made transparent through the building’s glass façade to the unblinking eyes forever watching. The universality of Kusama’s graphic language is as at home in the context of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics as it is in contemporary art.

“It is suggestive not only of a watchful public but also omnipotence, enlightenment and inspiration.

“While all senses are integral Kusama reminds us that it is through the experience of seeing another that our empathy for humanity is instigated and negotiated.”

In Australia, at the end of January 2019, the Victoria Prize for Literature has been awarded to Behrouz Bouchani, a Kurdish refugee, detained for more than five years in prison like conditions, by Australia on Manus Island PNG. He is not free to accept the $100,000 prize money in person. He has written No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison in Farsi on a cellphone and sent to a translator in short sections by What’s Ap. Let’s give a shout out for the Victoria Literary Awards committee! But as Bouchani texted in his acceptance, there are so many eyes in need of justice. Let’s buy his book and “see” Bouchani. It is a start.

In Canada at this very moment, February 2019, our government is deeply challenged by an issue of justice. Our former attorney general, an Indigenous woman, just resigned from the cabinet. Transparency is blocked by attorney client privilege. She must not speak. Canadians are deeply upset. Our Prime Minister who is not silenced uses his words and sounds like a betrayer of his feminist principles as he more than hints at blaming her. Racial and gender justice issues are exposed. Strong and angry eyes are turned on the Prime Minister’s Office. We await accountability. We long for the transparency and dialogue that Kusama is asking us to experience.

Kasuma called her work Eyes Singing Out. That is how I experienced her art form. . Surely this is a visual image worth attaching to Justice for the year 2019. It signals a better future.

www. ancestry.ca

I think you probably know someone who has sent their salvia along to ancestry.com and found out data about their heritage. As well, perhaps you have done so or at least thought about doing it as you watch the very clever ads populating so much space on the television. They get me every time. I stop fast forwarding for the one where the neighbours find out they both have a common nationality inside them. As a result they tear down the fence that separates their backyards and together build an outdoor skating rink. My Canadian heart leaps and I think if only we could solve world problems with our saliva!

This desire to discover our roots goes back such a long way. In the Bible in the first of its books, Genesis, knowing one's family tree is very important. Great pains are taken to record over and over how one person begat another. Genesis is currently thought to have been written in the 6th century BCE. or 2500 years ago. There is nothing new about wanting to know where we came from. 

Why do we do this? This is very complex. Historically it has had a lot to do with establishing power. Jesus' lineage is much debated for this reason. Who will be in and who will be out? Do we keep the fence in place or tear it down and build a skating rink for the neighbourhood. For instance late in the New Testament in the letter to the Hebrews we see the author trying to establish a “no genealogy” for Jesus so that all can be in. It is a problem with a long history.

I like to think that you and I are interested because we are curious. Why do I have a low forehead and not a high one. Why are my earlobes out of proportion? Perhaps somewhere inside is the hope that we will find a buried pot of gold waiting to be claimed? 

Unexpectedly this past summer I got caught up in my origins. Friends invited me to spend a few days in Cornwall and I knew I had roots there.  I knew that somewhere in my past a brother and sister had emigrated from Cornwall, the young woman  to Canada and her young brother to Australia.   The young woman was my great grandmother and her name was Elizabeth Trounce. The young man who went to Australia was Peter Trounce and I knew my sister had made a second marriage to the grandson of this man. The Trounces of Cornwall and Australia shared blood with me. I had sought out the Trounces in Australia while visiting there and met them. It was easy to get from them the links to the Trounces of Cornwall. It is a good thing I had this connection because there are a lot of Trounces in Cornwall and they go back a very long way.

I also had been to Cornwall many years back and knew that the place was magical for me. A most memorable moment of my life was sitting with my daughter on a cliff overhanging Tintagel waiting for the sun to set. I felt then some sort of unexplained connection to the land and the sea of Cornwall. It is a mystical place endowed with that kind of power. My father always thought I was marked with a bit of it.

There is also something about Doc Martin that just gets to me. Port Wenn which in real life is Port Isaac called to me as idyllic. Here is my Port Isaac. 

This is Port Loe and it is where my maternal family comes from. I was there for just a few hours this past summer and I am determined to go back. My great grandmother Elizabeth for whom I am named left this place in the late 1800’s and travelled to London, Ontario to be with her intended who had preceded her. How ever did she make this trip? I knew that she was a contemporary of Jane Austen and I knew how treacherous travel was for Jane even between London and Bath. That trip took two weeks and people and horses died on that route. I had to take in that I have a very spunky adventurous woman in my DNA.. I am pretty pleased about this.

The house she left has been standing since 1200 AD where it is recorded in the Doomsday Book, The Great Survey of England.  And being made of stone it is still standing and awaiting a renovation when a current will is finally settled. 

In that very long ago time it stood on more than a thousand acres  of Cornish water front. Imagine that. I came from landed folk on my mother’s side. I spent an hour or so by myself in front of this house waiting for the arrival of a distant cousin who was to greet me and tell me what he knew of my ancestry. I was very excited as I clambered about the land and surveyed the grazing cattle by the sea. Land is inherited by first born sons and the other children have to fend for themselves. Girls can try to marry a first born son and stay on the land. Boys could go into the church which did not seem to happen in my family. Boys could also fight over the land which in my family they did and were still doing. My great grandmother due to patriarchy had struck out for a new land. I felt a kinship with my namesake. 

I was delighted to learn that my very distant cousin was, all these centuries later, determined with his brothers and sisters to put an end to this warring. He was forging a way with his siblings to share. They were going to dismantle fences and do things differently. 

This  distant cousin, Jamie, took me about to share with me my heritage.  I have always felt the sea to be my second home. I can see the Pacific Ocean as I type this. I was overjoyed to be on the Cornish coast. I had roots.

My family I learned had a deep loyalty to the church. This surprised me to find this in Jamie who was but forty years old. With pride he took me to the family church and the grave yard behind it where they had just buried his dear dear Nan. The church is in the nearby town of Veryan(n). You have to know the name was not lost on me.

I share this with you because it has been a lot of fun and more as well. I encourage you to go for it; for if such an opportunity comes your way, you are to be blessed. I think it is  rare that this house still stands and is to be preserved yet again for more centuries. Even homes these days are built to be disposable. I know how fortunate I am to have this experience.

On my father’s side it is very different. My father was a homechild, an orphan on the streets of London England. He was picked up and shipped to Canada in the late 1800’s as a very young lad. He was more or less indentured to a farm family in the Eastern Townships. He was “scooped” as part of an English program to deal with orphans and sent to the colonies to clear the kids from London streets. The British maintained this program until 1970’s. The Canadian Government has taken actions to acknowledge their part in this scheme but has never formally apologized to the home children and their families as Australia has done. If you want to read or hear that incredible and thorough apology and have forty-five  minutes you can at http://canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com/australian-apology.html. It is the best apology I have ever heard.

Official Canadian documents were released and we as a family received some helpful information about our father. We learned he was a “good” child, who saved his meager allowance pay for his older brother’s passage to Canada. This was the brother the he was forced to leave behind probably as we now know, dockside. We learned my father was attentive at Sunday school, the only school he every knew. It is no wonder that as a child ,when he took me to Sunday School as he did every week, I knew he had forty years of perfect attendance. He had never stopped going and continued to serve impeccably this one place of learning.

Some how he managed to bring on that ship to Canada as probably a ten year old (he never knew his actual age), a very few belongings. He had his father’s work book, a small black scribbler that I have held many times and pondered. In it were names as well as his father's work orders. It had in it the sort of data one would have kept in a family bible. My grandmother Annie Louisa’s death at childbirth was recorded. The births his children and their names are recorded. My brother spent quite a period of time trying to trace those siblings with no success. He also brought with them a photo of his mother. 

Here is a photo of Annie Louisa

How often I have stared at this photo. They say I look like her. But I wish I had her high forehead and her tiny earlobes. 

But I have her hands and I like they are resting on a book and although such photographs may have been  posed I am glad for it. She could be holding a parrot! Then I would have had to revise my identity. 

Why bother with all this? Why share it? Do you find it interesting to wonder about your ancestry? I am curious as to why I have the urge to do this and further what it means that I am not alone with this urge. 

I find that on my mother’s side of my family, I am rooted in land and the cruelty of inheritance rights. Yet they yielded the resilience in my great grandmother that got her to to Canada and ultimately to my grandchildren. On my father’s side I am rooted in a very questionable program to rid England if its orphans. This yielded deep kindness in my father for all children and for my handicapped mother. That kindness is an important quality to emulate. I am grateful for it. In the world it led to an activism that has issued deep and meaningful apology.

Perhaps we live in a time where we need to find the goodness, resiliency and promise in our roots. It gives us hope for the future in these times. Could there be any better pot of gold?

COMPLICIT 2017

Advent (that four weeks of waiting for Christmas) is roaring in as Judaeo-Christian practice declares it must. In Christian practice this is a time, not for candy gifts each day but for a deep reckoning with the great public issues of our day: economic justice, war, peace and the worth of our human bodies.

Two years ago I read Bread in the Bone by Salem Nawaz. The book describes the life of two sisters, one of whom has an eating disorder. Since then, I have been somewhat obsessed by the word “complicit” and the various ways I and others are complicit in all sorts of inaction. I come from a family where men and women have struggled with weight issues for generations, myself included. My mother was always on a diet! In truth for a lot of my life I was on some sort of diet and later some sort of cleanse. I compared myself to models in magazines and found myself wanting. I find within myself a lot of judgment toward myself and others in the area of weight control. I also wonder how I am a bystander in this western world epidemic and what if anything I could do about it.

I am delightfully surprised and affirmed by the recent announcement by dictionary.com that the word of the year in 2017 is “complicit”. Simply put, it means being, at some level, responsible for something, even if indirectly. Or it is understood as one person’s contribution to wrong doing that is perpetrated by another. It makes me think about what it is to be both a bystander and also to have been the victim of bystanders. I invite you as an advent practice to explore this in your own life. It is possible to pick any issue and wonder about your own complicity.

Right now, more and more women and some men are announcing that they are victims of sexual assault and naming the perpetrator. In the past, persons who have done this have not fared well and have often been left unsupported while the perpetrator carries on with life with little consequence. I think this must be akin to being traumatized yet again for such brave people.

The “me-too” eruption has given all of us the encouragement to name our own experiences of such assaults from minor to major. Most women have had a first hand experience of this at some point in our lives. Today famous men, are being publicly shamed. Some will lose their jobs but at least one may win election to the US senate. We can be both victim and bystander to this behaviour.

What is my culpability, my complicity? It is so easy to be a bystander. Chiara Leproa in talking about her book Complicity and Compromise, states recently on the CBC, “Most people somewhat have the idea that doing nothing cannot be wrong. And so they think: 'If I act, maybe there can be negative consequences,'" I have experienced this thought in myself and others. I agree that non action is immoral but the cost of action in some cases paralyzes me.

This past weekend in Hamilton, Ontario a 19 year-old named Yosif Al-Hasnawi, was shot and killed in front of his 13 year-old brother. He had tried to help an older man who he saw was being accosted by two men on the street. They shot him in the belly. It is alleged the police were too off-hand telling him to stop faking it. He was dead on arrival at the Emergency. He was not a bystander!

American law profession Amos Guitar, in his new book The Crime Of Complicity, gives us a good Advent idea. The biblically-literate among you will think he has the perfect name, Amos. He makes a case for making bystander intervention not just a moral duty but also a legal duty. If this interests you, you can hear the professor talk about his book at http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-december-3-2017-1.4428070/the-crime-of-complicity-the-case-for-making-bystander-inaction-a-punishable-offence-1.4428074. Listening to this and reflecting on it is an advent practice. It makes me think about all the ways in which I would be required to take legal action. It overwhelms me. Would I be boycotting the junk food industry, not attending sports games where the risk of CTE is possible, voting for the Green Party and so much more?

Then there is the very subtle idea expressed by Chiara Lepora and Robert E Goodin in their new book. We would agree with them that not all ways of being mixed up in the wrongdoing of others are on a par; some are worse than others. Yet they further suggest “contributing complicitly to wrongdoing, while still wrong in itself, might nonetheless be the right thing to do if that is the only way to achieve some greater good.” This is a very fetching idea yet troubling for me.  I do find myself thinking this way I as I expect you have too when you give it serious thought. Is not keeping Charlie Rose in place better for us all because he is such a brilliant interviewer than firing him for alleged sexual misconduct? I confess I miss his wisdom. Also I was afraid that Roy Moore would win the vote in Alabama. I was afraid that the greater good would be a Republican Senate!

In Christianity, this idea appears in John’s Gospel. It is the position that the Jewish leaders took at the trial of Jesus. Rome occupied Syria, Egypt and Palestine but kept armies in only Syria and Egypt.  Rome’s job for Palestine was to stay peaceful and collect taxes to keep the Roman empire secure. Rome depended largely on the Jews in Palestine to perform these duties.  Reform minded Jesus, a good Jew, and his Jewish followers were a threat to these duties especially concerning tax collection. Thus, in John’s gospel we have the senior Jewish high priest Caiaphas at Jesus’ trial saying to the his people, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than the whole nation perish.” The crowds back Caiaphas and Jesus is killed.  Thus, the very troubling anti-Semitic idea that the Jews are responsible for Jesus death receives support. It is embarrassing for Christians. Yet, the gospel writer description of Caiaphas’ position is also the one espoused centuries later by Lepora and Goodin and remains a common idea.

After having raised this idea that sometimes being complicit with the wrong doing can be a worthy action, Lepora and Goodin  also ask us to look at another idea. They want us to look beyond successfully punishing the perpetrator as if that is the end goal.  While they affirm accountability, they go further and ask us to look at the whole system that gave rise to such wrongdoing in the first place. This is the system that has also victimized the perpetrator.

I like this a lot. I am a systemic therapist and in my field, I am excited about the work of Terrence Real and the way in which he is addressing the trauma that patriarchy has caused both men and women. I think we are crying out for root causes. Patriarchy is and still is a root cause of much that is not working. I notice in all the discussions about the Commission on Missing Murdered Indigenous Women, there is a consistent plea to get at root causes. This is long and time-consuming work. Are we not complicit if we are not engaged in this work?

One evening recently, I was having dinner with a group of psychotherapist colleagues. I outlined a workplace situation for them that caused us all to wrestle with how not to be a bystander. We could not stop talking and sharing ideas. Our energy for the subject filled me with hope. I think we all engaged in an Advent practice.

Yes, there is a lot to think about this advent. I think dictionary.com got it right!

Grey Divorce: Blue Monday

Since 2005 , the third Monday of January is called Blue Monday. A travel company thought this up and there is no scientific evidence to substantiate it. Accordingly, here we are on the eve of the worst day of the year. 

It is an auspicious day for the release of these thoughts. In this week Donald Trump takes office as the most powerful man in the world. To manage this, out going President Obama has instructed us to be “jealous anxious guardians of democracy.”  This makes sense to me. I am indeed anxious and often shudder when I read Trump’s tweets or hear him speak.  Are we on the edge of a “Blue” year? Will I be a guardian of democracy? 

This is also the month that sees the most break ups of relationships. It is said that 6 out of 10 couples break up this month. More and more of these are post 55 years old and in long term relationships. The phenomenon is now called “grey divorce”. Post age 65 the number of these silver divorces is increasing even more. 

Not every relationship can be repaired. Yet, as a therapist I am in the business of helping a couple find connection, to find their “we” from the self and other. I say every couple deserves a chance with help to make their decision to remain or not remain a "we" as wisely and non violently as possible. Each of you deserves no less.

Psychotherapy is gradually evolving from a consumer self in the direction of the connected committed self. Back in the 1960’s I remember sitting with my therapist and trying to explain the quandary I was in.  I kept saying that I knew what I wanted but I wanted to know what God wanted of me. I was positive that they might not be the same thing. I wanted to know how to discern this. This was a radical and yet ancient thought for that time period. My therapist at the time had no tools for this question. What I wanted was what God wanted, in the opinion of therapy at that time. But I was raising the idea that perhaps there was a dimension of commitment outside my self. To take God out of my question, what if what I wanted was outside my ethical commitments to spouse and family and community? Should my wider world inform my decisions? It is only now that psychotherapy is opening itself to such thinking and taking a critical look at the expressive individualism that has held sway for so long.

I sat with a couple this past week. They had come to see me in the autumn. The wife was ready to call it quits. She had had enough of the very evident dysfunction. We had begun to try to address this dysfunction and were making some headway. At the holidays the couple joined their families of origin in a holiday destination. Her father with whom she had shared her distress, took her aside and spoke to her of her commitment to her wider family, her children and her sacred wedding vows. He reminded her of how loved she was and how the family really believed that the choice she made was fundamentally a good one with a good man. He reminded her that marriage required hanging in when the deal was not what she had signed up for. His intervention carried a huge weight with her. What he said mattered more than anything I had said. The wider community showed up as they had promised they would at the wedding ceremony.  Remember when the crowd is asked who supports this man and this woman in their commitment and the crowd says, “we do”? As therapists we need to take more seriously the power in the connected circle of love. I don’t know what final decision this couple will make but being reminded of their beauty as a couple by someone they loved made a difference and created space for further investigation. 

Here are my thoughts on this development of grey divorce in long term relationships and in this video I express my hope for you if this is indeed a “blue Monday”.

The View from my Window this Christmas 2016

Snow is falling thickly in Vancouver. It is a “snow” day urging me to introspection and the time to send greetings.  

On the personal front my blogs below tell of my 2016 travels and interests. I just saw the film Manchester by the Sea which I saw while reading Romeo Dallaire’s Waiting for the First Light.  They reinforce each other with the depth of suffering that trauma exacts in those who hurt. My next book that I will read is Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Child hood by Trevor Noah and then it will time again for Canada Reads. 

In 2016 I became obsessed with US politics and a little smug about our dashing left leaning prime minister. As the year draws to a close, our prime minister’s honey moon is ending and compromises are being made. Yet my concern is for what is happening south of the border. 

I hear the sentiment around me that advises a cool head and a wait and see attitude. I also hear what I think is a false optimism espousing that everything will be just fine. Neither sit well with me. 

In Canada we have a philosopher Mark Kingwell who I follow and call a major public intellectual. Recently I heard him give a speech where he tells me that the age of reason is under attack. I was surprised to find myself nodding my head energetically. Me, raised in the 60ties when putting passion over reason was my guiding principle. I was all about getting in touch with my feelings. I am not about to rescind all allegiance to this notion. Yet, when Kingwell states that “we have to reorient and reconfirm our commitment to reason”  and that “we must reaffirm wonder where we are stretched beyond what we know because our experience of wonder is what makes us most humane", I hear a resounding yes within my soul.

Have you heard that we are living in a post factual age?  My daughter reminds me that this is not the first time in history that this has been the case. Nevertheless 2016 for me brings home the irrelevance of fact and truth. I can only think that we are called to vigilance; that each of us in our way must reaffirm the rigour of our minds and curb the post factual creep. Kudos to Kingwell for that turn of phrase. 

I think we also could ask ourselves to not only think but to move our thoughts forward toward wisdom.  Wisdom is seen often as soft, weak, and in its roots is a feminine noun. I am proud that in our Canadian cabinet this year there is parity between men and women. I see this as step toward wisdom. The signs toward wisdom can be discerned by those who look. Even the science of physics is moving in this direction. 

Some of you reading this are not spiritual, maybe most of you are and a few of us are still embracing the Christ whose entry into the world as Jesus  touches us with wonder. No matter. I make bold to ask you to reflect upon the invitation of a feminist Christian scholar who asks us to remember that Jesus saw himself as the child of the word, of Sophia, of wisdom. This Christ begs our attention. 

I wish you a 2017 marked by our vigilance to reason and our commitment to evolve in wisdom. 

With love to you all,  Ann

Confluences of Grief: November 11 2016

This is grief's week. Many countries come together to remember the sacrifice of all those who have lost their lives or been wounded in the past and ongoing wars of our world. Half of the population of our neighbours to the south is in grief over one of the most distressing elections ever. And Canada is grieving the loss of one of our most iconic poets and songsters, Leonard Cohen. 

In Canada we remember and honour our war dead and our veterans and their families. We do so by wearing  a red poppy on our chests over our hearts. We all do this and it is easy to identify us on the world news and everywhere on our streets. This year thanks to modern technology even our parliament buildings got to wear the red poppy.

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour a ceremony takes place on Patlaiment Hill at our Nation's war memorial. As the daughter of a military family this day has always been important. In the last ten years it has become more important to Canadians and they attend the celebration or participate via television in greater numbers than ever before. Celebrations happen locally in every city and town of our country. 

Our national broadcasting system (CBC) opened the ceremony this year by playing a recitation by Leonard Cohen of In Flander's Fields. This is the  poem written by Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a physician practising on the front lines in WWI. It is a poem every Canadian learns by heart in primary school. In this act the CBC joined two rivers of our grief.

I was particularly proud and moved to watch as our young prime minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire  stepped forward to lay the wreath on the steps of the war memorial for all of us. They stood in the cold and windy air silently praying. Before stepping back into their proper place in the line, our PM crossed himself. I was moved by this simple act of his faith. I noticed how later, bare handed, he shook many many outreached hands of the veterans stopping to speak with each of them.  I thought I have much cause to pray for him and his family in the days ahead.

I have recently been travelling with a group of very devout Roman Catholics. I attended mass daily and also visited many cathedrals in Europe. I noticed the ease with which they made the sign of the cross as they came and went. I thought as Protestants we have no simple way to identify ourselves and our faith. We lost something in this I think. 

Prayers were offered at the ceremony by a Roman Catholic priest and a Rabbi. Both were courageous emissaries of a compassionate God. They both prayed not only for those who had made the ultimate sacrifice, and for their families but also for those who are daily returning wracked with PTSD. The priest also prayed for those for whom the pain was so great that they took their own lives. The suicides were included. Our shame is great that this is not yet official policy. As our poet singer sang "it is a broken hallelujah" but it is a hallelujah!

Inclusion matters. The vitriol of the current President elect of the USA excludes Moslems, Mexicans, women who seek abortions, the LTGBQ community and their hard fought rights, the availability of health care to the poor and this same vitriol raged against the reality of climate change.  We know our friends in the USA are shocked and frightened. We share the anxiety as their friends to the north. 

Leonard Cohen is no stranger to darkness. Once asked if he was a pessimist he responded,

" I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin."

In times of dread and confusion, Cohen is a voice of comfort. He does not shirk from life's difficult moments. He rises to them and thus we know we are understood at the deepest levels. In a song called The Future one of the verses reads thus,

“You don’t know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
but love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder ”

Recently I was part of a study group led by Canadian Father Ron Rolheiser on his yet unfinished book on the last part of life. He names the task of this stage, "giving your death away". I think Leonard Cohen has done exactly this with this last album of his life, You want it Darker. We are so blessed by this offering. Here is its first verse.

“If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame”

“This same poet songster gave us from Anthem
”Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
and so we love him all the more”

To-day on the news thousands of primarily millennials are marching all over the USA. They want to be heard that they are standing with those who their President Elect cast off. One young man said it this way to the reporter. I want to say "hang in there, man. Yes, we did not vote but we are marching so that will never happen again. We will keep marching for 4 years if that is what it takes."  You have to love the enthusiasm for making amends of the young. 

From the man who plumbed the depths of the tower of song also came the hymn Democracy

“I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
As time cannot decay
I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the USA
To the USA
”

So be it.

The Dream that Shaped My Vocation.

Finally, as promised, my blog on the dream that confirmed for me the direction of my working life. Freud's work and my life intersect. This blog is a video. The photos which are interspersed I took on a marvellously sunny day in St Andrew's this past June. 

As a student of theology I was privileged to spend my second year of studies in St Andrew's as an exchange student from Emmanuel College, Victoria University in Toronto. Going back this year was indeed a pilgrimage. Mediaeval colleges do not change much and the town was as I remembered it. I even found my dorm room and the wide stair case that I floated down in my red ball gown for the St Andrew's College Ball. While exploring there, I met a student who let me know that the food had changed very little...boiled cabbage, turnip and one lamb chop on Friday evening! I ran on the west sands, walked on the golf course and made the trek out the pier, a famous tradition among college students. 

The dream I share in the video happened many years after I had been a student at St Andrew's. I really wanted to see the ruined cathedral where the dream took place. In the dream, the aisle was so very, very long. I thought I would never get to the altar. I was very sure that when I revisited the site, the aisle would be short and insignificant. Dreams so frequently exaggerate to get their point across. Then I stepped into the ruins and was gobsmacked. The aisle was so long I could barely see where the altar was. The length of a football field stretched before me. It was even longer than in my dream and it has been a long walk. It has taken a lot of effort to keep my hat on metaphorically speaking. Once again an old dream spoke to me in a fresh way.  Please listen to your dreams. 

Enjoy.