Gratitude – Post 90 – Wasting Food

I am grateful for the hearts and brains that reside in those who find solutions to problems and change the face of humanity even if only briefly or in a small localized area. Some of these superheroes are tackling the idea of waste not, want not.

To say I find the number of those living on the street in this country, in any country, alarming and upsetting seems an obvious statement to make and somewhat trite. I heard someone in political authority once say there is no solution to poverty that poverty begets poverty. I think the latter part of that statement is true. How does one break from the chains of poverty when the weight of life is so very heavy, the opportunities so limited? But a solution still exists, buried beneath the rhetoric and lip service, denying those who claim from some misguided religious doctrine that those who live in poverty are there because they have “earned” it and likewise for those living with extraordinary wealth.

Some time ago I watched a film about the waste of food in grocery stores and restaurants. I’m sure it is no surprise the facts are disturbing. Perfectly edible food ends up in landfill because it is part of doing business the big grocery stores claim. When Marketplace dug through Walmart’s garbage bins in 2016 they found a staggering amount of fresh edible food, cartons of milk still ahead of its best-before-date, cheeses, oranges. Walmart’s solution upon being exposed: build a fence around their trash bins. And as an added concern, this food was thrown in the trash without being separated for compost and recycling. Walmart isn’t the only violator, but the other big chains use a trash compactor to hide their transgressions. Meanwhile, the homeless go hungry and food banks struggle to provide quality food to those in need.

850,000 Canadians use food banks every month, reported CBC Marketplace in 2016, yet $31 billion of food ends up in landfill and composters each year. Many countries have been looking long and hard at this problem. France has banned food waste. Supermarkets are required to create partnerships with charities to keep food out of the garbage bin. Italy has taken steps making food donations easier and offering tax credits for food donations.

Government has been slow to respond in Canada, but charitable groups and entrepreneurs are thinking creatively to solve the problem of food waste, the superheroes, if you will. Toronto’s Second Harvest has been involved in “food rescue” for more than thirty years. Not Far From The Tree, another Toronto initiative, harvests fruit from trees in private yards and gets that surplus fruit to those in need. In 2015, the UN signed on to cutting food waste in half by 2030, at both the retail and consumer level.

We are consumers who insist on beautiful produce and the “ugly fruit” gets tossed because of its aesthetic value, not because of its food value. I watched a local gardener last fall grind up a mountain of carrots to put back on the land because of the imperfect appearance of the carrots. Though that is better than occupying landfill, I think of all the families who could have benefited from an “ugly” carrot. I’m rather fond of an ugly vegetable. As kids when potato harvest was upon us we looked for the lopsided, strangely shaped potatoes and we were absolutely certain they possessed an amazing power that we would inherit if we ate them. What if that were true?

Gratitude – Post 89 – Castles

I am grateful for castles. I would like to live in a castle, maybe one in Ireland, because I’m fairly certain that Canadian castles are in short supply.

The selection of castles in Europe is extensive, I’ve read. Windsor Castle holds some sort of record for having been continuously lived in for the longest period of time, all the way back a thousand years to when William the Conqueror built it. Windsor Castle is home to the royals and despite its size it would feel crowded to me and a bit stuffy, the Queen telling me not to run in the halls or slide down the banisters, that sort of thing I would guess, though I’m not sure castles have banisters come to think of it. So I’ll not live in Windsor Castle, even if they invite me. I’ll choose some other castle.

Wales boasts the most castles in Europe in terms of castles per square mile, with over 600 of these amazing structures. Surely I could find a castle that suits my needs. I suppose I could live in Wales with a field of Welsh ponies that I would survey from the “keep of the castle”. That’s castle lingo, refers to the highest point and the centre of defense. A castle dweller should know such things and use the correct terminology.

But I’m leaning to Ireland as a home base for my castle, Ireland with its perpetual green-ness, at least in my mind, with rainbows everywhere and leprechauns scampering about hiding their pots of gold and stone walls as far as the eye can see. Ireland seems the best plan for me. I’ve never been to Ireland so it would be a real adventure.

When I was little and had a nightmare or any frightening experience, I would imagine running to my castle for safety. My castle came with a very deep moat around it, filled to the brim with nasty creatures to gobble up my enemies and the scary things that terrorized my dreams. The draw bridge was heavy and mighty, the chain cranking loudly and slowly, so slowly that at times I wasn’t sure the draw bridge would make it to the upright position before the monsters got to it, but thankfully it always did. I kept a big pot of boiling oil at the ready should someone with evil intentions try to scale my castle wall. On a more positive note, my castle had a central courtyard with lush green grass, a huge swing with someone obligated to push me higher and higher, and a big fire pit on which to roast marshmallows, from my perpetual inventory of marshmallows.

That’s what we do as children, we create sanctuary in our mind, that safe place to go when life gets confusing and wrought with danger at every turn. I think of the children growing up in this unsteady world, one in which the adults are always waging war with one another, usually with the innocent falling. These children have no sanctuary and I’m willing to bet their life is so wrought with danger they have a hard time imagining a castle that will keep them safe. So I feel great pride that I am Canadian and though we don’t have castles here, we certainly have safety and I hope we never lose sight of that rare privilege.

Gratitude – Post 88 – Labour

I am grateful for labour, of the childbirth variety. I know that sounds like a strange thing to be grateful for, but …

It is my baby’s birthday today, April 26^th, the youngest of my brood, four daughters who are no longer babies at all, but instead are full-fledged adults, living lives in which I am an accessory, no longer a necessity. I can’t pull them on to my lap and kiss away their tears when they are hurt. I can’t speak up for them and be their shield when others would do them harm. I can’t go along with them to interviews and proclaim their unsurpassed value and how bloody lucky any employer would be to have them, mother bias aside.

It’s a strange sensation, every now and then, when I realize how quickly the time passed. The diapers and night-time feedings, the getting teeth and the losing teeth, and the growing pains that required leg massage in the wee hours of the morning, are all but a distant memory.

I just saw my Laurie, daughter number three, through labour and delivery as she welcomed Abigail Anne into this world. It is not an undertaking for the faint of heart and there were moments I felt crazed enough to demand to know where the off switch was, so we could both take a breather from the torture-like endurance test of giving birth. Laurie may have had it a little more difficult than myself if I am being honest, but it was really really hard. No other way to say it.

As I collapsed into bed at 6:00 in the morning, when it was all done, after running this marathon for almost twenty-four hours I was thinking about labour and wondering why it is so painful and wouldn’t we do better having been equipped with a zipper or using a teleporting method or osmosis or something without so much intense pain. Wouldn’t that have been a better idea? I may ask the powers to be when I get to where I’m going and I might consider some scolding and encourage evolution to pick up the pace. In the end, I think labour serves a valuable purpose.

Motherhood is all encompassing. It is my life’s work, and everything that came before or after pales in comparison. Labour and delivery is a rite of passage, and it is an experience that tells women we can do anything, that arms us for the heart-ache that comes with watching our child hurt and struggle, or worse, to lose them. Having been through the intensity of birth tells us we are survivors, even in those moments when we are certain we will not survive.

I recently heard a speech given on how we cripple our children. We have created a generation of those who feel entitled, who don’t want to fly the nest, who think life should be perfect and aren’t willing to settle for less without complaint and angst. Most of our suppositions about parenting are clearer in hindsight, so I tend to err on the side of what my heart tells me to do.

We could take some notes from the animal kingdom. Beavers allow their young to stay with the family unit for more than two years before driving them out. Elephant mothers nurse their young for four to six years, the calves staying with their mother for as long as sixteen years. But my favourite – the killer whale, whose young stay with their mother for life. That makes the most sense to me. And what do I have to say about the mind-numbing pain of labour? Worth it, every second.

Gratitude – Post 87 – Richard Wagamese

I am grateful for Richard Wagamese. I like to think Richard and I are friends. I can’t bear to put that in the past tense, because I never got to meet him and the opportunity won’t come now. I won’t bump into him on the street and introduce myself as his fan and fellow writer, though I will be quick to add that my writing isn’t at his level. He won’t assure me we are all family, all of us who share this county. He won’t smile at me with his beautiful smile and gather me in and advise me to write from my heart, the way he did, letting down all the barriers, being open and vulnerable on the page. We won’t chat about the land and how the rugged beauty of the northwestern Ontario wilderness defined him and pulled him back when he had been taken from it, taken from the land, from his community, from his culture, all those relationships extinguished, but he found his way back. Thankfully. Richard Wagamese has left us and his passing has dimmed our light.

Richard and I are the same age and we are both from Northwestern Ontario. Surely that qualifies us as friends, surely that connects us, gives me permission to speak of him as though I knew him. I didn’t know him, but I believe I found him on the pages of his many books, in the fiction and the poetry and the memoir. Richard’s writing was inspiring, was honoured by many and valuable to all, and while difficult to read because of the painful truth of it, his writing was a privilege to read, an apology on my lips at every page. I believe it was Richard’s writing that helped him find his way back to his starting place, back to when he was perfect, when we are all perfect, before life changes us.

Richard had a smile that was infectious, a wonderful smile because it was real. He had searched for it and found it. His smile was comforting to me, seemed filled with hope. Richard’s childhood was filled with loss and heartbreak and loneliness, a childhood that would have destroyed most of us. Perhaps I have no right to presume I understand the purpose behind Richard’s smile, but I have given myself permission to speculate, because his writing gives me license to do so. He wrote about suffering and loss in a way that ushered the reader through to a clearer understanding and he led us to truth, not merely for the painful details, but to find ourselves at higher ground, with a deeper understanding.

I am so very sad that Richard has gone ahead, sad that he isn’t still helping to shape the change this country so desperately needs and helping us to see where we went so horribly wrong. All Canadians are fortunate to count him as one of us, to share his gift of writing, to be witness to the magic that was Richard Wagamese.

In honouring him, the responsibility falls to each of us to do our part. I can’t sit back. I must push on, obligated to accept the personal challenge of finding truth and from that truth learning to build bridges and extending my hand in apology.

Read his work if you haven’t. You will be changed.

Miigwech, Richard.

Gratitude – Post 86 – Stuart McLean

I’ve not been feeling particularly grateful for much the last few weeks as I seem to be constantly on the end of a shovel. But that’s shame on me, not shame on anyone or anything else. Could be the seasonal blues.  But one thing I have felt incredible gratitude for has been the voice of Stuart McLean. And I’m incredibly sad that our time together has come to an end.

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer, said those words and he is the same age as our beloved Stuart McLean whose death left our world a lot less bright today, the day I am writing this, writing to soothe the ache in my heart, as though Stuart McLean was my family, my friend. The truth is he belonged to each of us who dialled in to his Vinyl Café and giggled along with the stories of life, the funny bits and the sad bits and everything in between as we listened to Stuart’s preacher-like voice tell us about Dave and Morley and their escapades.

FaceBook is laden with farewells and sorrow regarding Stuart’s passing and I can’t even look at his face that exudes gentle kindness and integrity and honesty. It might be easy to say that we don’t really know the man, but rather the persona. I think it is fair to say we knew the man by what he said and nothing probably more so than his address to Prince George when celebrating its 100^th Anniversary in 2015, one of his last public performances before he began the hard war with cancer. In that address, he first pointed out the shameful things done to those who first called this land home. He suggested that in the slow process of coming to truth and reconciliation that we “shut up” and listen to those who have lived here so much longer than we European immigrants and he reminded us that the loudest voices are not necessarily the wisest.

Stuart’s stories had a conscience to them, a self-awareness, and got to the very truth of us. He called himself Canada’s favourite story-teller and then claimed this so-called lie as his own, never taking his celebrity too seriously, and certainly never more important than the message he wanted to convey, needed to convey to perhaps ease the angst that he felt at being part of a machine that loses sight all too often of humanity. He was never more surprised when people cheered and welcomed him with great fervour, as though that almost seemed ridiculous, nonsensical. He used the platform he had created to remind us of the things that truly matter.

Stuart had the great wisdom and ability to unite us, to make the sweeping geography of Canada feel less vast, to bring us all closer together, to pull up our symbolic chairs to the radio while we listened. Though he was a radio personality, his face and humble wave linger with me now. We are heart-broken. Come back, I want to cry. Don’t leave us.

It is the details of our life that distinguish us from one another though, not our death. No one has really died until the stories they have told are forgotten, silenced. Stuart McLean will live on long after you and I have gone.

Gratitude – Post 85 – Good Manners

I am grateful for good manners. We were discussing good manners the other day, my daughters and me, and the conversation circled around the importance of learning to extend respectful kindness to those we encounter in a day. We have made it more of a challenge for our wee ones these days to whom we instruct, it seems, from birth not to speak to strangers. The chanting of danger danger seems more a course of action than please and thank you.

Three-year-old Linden has good manners, saying please and thank you at the appropriate moments. Though the concept at this point may be considered rote, more of a reflex than a willing practice, it’s a good convention to learn early on. Having said that, manners are tested when a house fills with relatives. But still Linden digs deep for the fragments of good manners that in moments may seem out of his reach.

            It’s not easy to have guests when we are three. Actually, it can be a challenge at any age, but Linden is giving it his best effort and he may be re-writing the rule book, certainly adding to Emily Post’s The Blue Book of Social Usage, first published in 1922. Linden has added some essential edicts to Emily’s thoughtful ideas. Let me explain.

Linden is currently engaged in learning the intricacies of washroom use in an attempt to give up the crutch of diapers once and for all. It’s a slippery surface, with a two-steps ahead and one back sort of progress. Using the toilet is never an easy transition. Thankfully, most of us don’t remember our personal struggle from those days long gone. To ease the burden of learning a new skill, his mother reads him stories while reassuring his safety on the big porcelain monster and after a successful flush Linden enjoys the spoils of Smarties for a pee and a chocolate for the more challenging pooh. The rewards are adjusted accordingly in regards to effort as with most things in life.

This morning when Auntie Mantha, who arrived late last night, had to use the facilities Linden stepped up to make the experience more enjoyable for her, more relaxing, to make her feel at home, like any good host would do. First, Linden directed all foot traffic away from the bathroom door. He used his big voice, the one with a hefty volume with his hand held up instructing passers-by to stay back. Then he got his favourite books and set up shop at Auntie Mantha’s feet. He read to her, patted her knee, encouraging her to relax while checking on the progress of her bowel evacuation at appropriate intervals. And so he facilitated her bathroom experience with great skill and aplomb. It was inspirational and though I may not be quick to employ his tactics with my own guests, I was undeniably impressed. Credit where credit due, I like to say. Take that, Emily Post.

Gratitude – Post 84 – Card Shops

I am grateful for card shops, the ones that stock their shelves and racks with laughter, shops like Le Tablier Blanc in downtown Toronto.

“I laughed so hard my water broke …. and I’m not even pregnant”. A story goes with those words, words I recently found inside in the card shop I just mentioned. Let me explain.

Le Tablier Blanc was a card shop on College Street in Toronto. My friend Allison and I were out for lunch, having a catch-up as old friends do, never running out of stories to share, making plans for future stories. On our walk back we popped into Le Tablier Blanc a few blocks from Allison’s home. “We are closing,” the proprietor said. Not closing as in the end of the business day, but the end of business literally. He welcomed us in and I felt a jab in my heart that someone had to close down their dream, had to re-start their plans for the future.

Allison and I started reading cards and before many seconds had passed the laughter started. I couldn’t stop. Every card was funnier than the previous and I laughed until I could hardly get my breath. I tried to stop so as not to disturb other shoppers, but they began laughing along with me as we are inclined to do, without invitation or purpose, when we encounter someone in the throws of uncontrollable levity. I bought a few cards and thanked the man behind the counter for not throwing me out of his establishment for disturbing the peace and thanked him for allowing me such a delicious adventure with laughter, for replenishing my stores of endorphins.

As I turned to leave he dashed down the basement and returned with a stack of about forty cards that he stuffed into a bag for me and handed it to me with a big smile on his face. “So you can keep laughing for the rest of the day”. I was stunned by his generous kindness, stopped in my tracks before thanking him and wishing him well. Then I most certainly did laugh for the rest of the day.

Some of the cards he gave me were just too funny to describe and some of them I know of no one I could send them to, but they were all beyond funny. And when I was done laughing, which of course one should never be done doing, I felt physically better. It always surprises me what a good laugh can do to all parts of me, inside and out. I visualized germs running for cover as the silly and happy surged through my body boosting my immune system. Laughter relieves stress and tension and allows muscles to relax for forty-five minutes after. I was a noodle walking home, the human living version of play dough.

Maybe there should be a card shop on every corner. Maybe we should have laughing stations throughout the travels in our day so we can greet our problems and challenges with new energy. Maybe I could start a franchise and laugh my way to personal wealth. Nah. I’ll just keep laughing.