Here's To The Women

 

Here’s To The Women

 

Here’s to the women

Who show up with casseroles

And tell us we are beautiful

When we cry the ugly cry.

 

Here’s to the women

Who sit in the silences

And take up the strain

When our arms are too tired to bear the load.

 

Here’s to the women

Who tell us we’re brave

When we can barely find

Courage enough to breathe.

 

Here’s to the women

Who love us, broken and flawed

On the days we can’t

Find the way to love ourselves.

 

Here’s to the women

Who show up with wine

And let us be silly

And dance with abandon in the living room.

 

Here’s to the women

Who witness our worst behaviour

And assume that though we’ve been fools,

It is not a permanent condition.

 

Here’s to the women

Who pray for us

And keep vigil in the

Quiet and dark spaces.

 

Here’s to you

Here’s to me

Here’s to us all, strong and united

In sisterhood and love.

Wolf Moon

 

The Wolf Moon howls in the January night

Rising through the sky in the fullness of our sight

And in her howls we hear her voice echoing the pain

Of the fear and isolation that make us feel insane.

 

Time has slowed, the lonely hours now stretching on and on

In the greyness of the days and long darkness between dawns

Soaking in the anger of every news report

Every tweet and posted meme and scathing sharp retort.

 

Comforting hugs and touches, distanced from our thoughts

Hours of planning holiday gatherings sadly spent for naught

Weeks of isolation within our painted walls

Restricting interactions to email and videocalls.

 

And somewhere in the midst, we forget the way to live

The blessing and the gifts that these separate days can give

The chance to reimagine how the world can really be

When the walls of solitude come down and we are finally free

 

The Wolf Moon howls in the January night

Rising through the sky in the fullness of our sight

Let her voice be our reminder that our pain can be our might

If only we remember to look up and see the light.

Of Computers and Sedition

 

Sedition

[ si-dish-uhn ] 

noun

incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.

any action, especially in speech or writing, promoting such discontent or rebellion.

Archaic. rebellious disorder.

 

I am once again living in computer hell.  My son can't figure out why I can never seem to get more than four years out of a laptop, no matter how expensive it is.  I've been nursing this one along for about a year now.  It started giving me grief a week after my three year service contract expired.  My plan was to buy a new computer and send this one in for repair so I could keep it as a back-up.  I was set to do it as soon as we returned from Australia in March.  I wasn't contemplating a pandemic when I made the plan.  So I find myself limping along with the computer I have. My charging cord is duct taped in.  My system somehow manages to shut it self down several times a day with no help from me. If I'm in the middle of work, it can be a real problem, but I'm limping along.  I know there will come a day when my laptop gasps it's last breath and I won't be able to limp along anymore.  I'm hoping it will come after lockdown has ended.  It's a bad time to be trying to buy a new computer.

 

The truth is, I hate buying new technology.  It will mean I have to relearn how to use everything.  Nothing is ever the same and I am an old lady now, learning new technology doesn't come easy.  But of course every time I get a new computer, I'm also amazed at how much better they are than the last.  Faster speeds, higher resolutions, better sound.  I forget that part as I patch, patch, patch my old phones and laptops until I can patch no more. Things really need to break before I can summon the energy and the courage to get rid of them and replace them.  The good thing about laptops and phones is that when I get new ones, Jacob downloads all the good things from the last devices and puts them into my new devices.  I don't have to get rid of all my history or all of my good work but I get to choose what to move forward and what I am prepared to let go of forever.

 

Yesterday, the world watched in horror as a gang of domestic terrorists attacked the U.S. capitol, rioted and trashed the offices of the congress and invaded the House of Representatives and the Senate floors.  It was a terrorist attack incited by the highest elected official in the country.  Death and mayhem courtesy of Donald Trump.  CNN just reported the fifth death resulting from yesterday's insurrection.  An officer of the capitol police has succumbed to his injuries.

 

For four years, we have watched an ailing U.S. limp along infected with hate, lies and division, run by a pathological, sociopathic, narcissistic conman.  For four long years it has been patch, patch, patch.  Yesterday it broke.  As heartbreaking as it was to watch, I couldn't help but feel that perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing that it happened.  Now that it is broken, our friends to the south have an opportunity to build a new country.  The United States of America 2.0.  They can still take all their history and all the really good parts of the old country and install them in a new one.  They can create a better, fairer system for all their people.  This is their chance to do better and be better.  But if it's going to work, it's time to face some hard truths.  It's time to stop saying "This is not who we are", because it actually is who they are right now, but that doesn't mean it is who they have to continue to be.  If they are honest with themselves they will know better and when they know better, they will do better.  It is time to stop saying that the president of the United States is the leader of the free world.  I am not American.  Their president is not my leader.  The rest of us in the developed world have figured out a few things that might help our American friends - like universal healthcare and decent gun control laws.  If they ask us for our help, I'm sure we will give it.  Canada and the U.S., siblings separated by the longest undefended border in the world, have been closed off from one another for months now, the first time in our history but it didn't have to be that way.  We could have worked together to fight the scourge of this pandemic.  But we didn't because for four years, Donald Trump has been trying to pick a fight with us.  So pathetic and so deadly.

 

But family is family.  We take care of our own.  We are always standing by to provide help, support and refuge if asked and if things get really tough, a butter tart or two.

 

 

Finally Hindsight

 

The last day of 2020 is finally here.  What a year!  There will be few people who won't be happy to see the back end of this one.  Not that it was all bad, at least for me.  It started strong - twenty-five incredible days exploring the other side of the world, the trip of a lifetime.  But by the time we got home in mid-March, the world was already coming unglued.  We went directly from the airport into coronavirus lockdown and though we thought it wouldn't last so long, we are are still there. 

 

We suffered the disappointment of no Easter celebrations.  The Australian-themed dinner I had planned for our annual Good Friday gathering got re-imagined as an Australian-themed Christmas Eve. It seems naive in retrospect.  There was no Mother's Day visit from my son though by the time Father's Day arrived, the warm weather had arrived in time for a Father's Day golf game and dinner on the deck.  The summer days were easier.  I turned sixty-five in July.  My sister hosted an outdoor gathering.  There were afternoons spent around the neighbour's pool and visits on the deck from friends we had been unable to see. A much anticipated wedding of some dear young friends went ahead in a significantly altered form.  I wasn't able to be there but I still got to help with some of the details and there were wonderful pictures to enjoy.  Less than two months later, we lost our dear friend, father of the groom.  The normal rituals of mourning went out the window in favor of a socially-distanced, restricted gathering that provided little comfort or solace. I thought my heart would never mend but I did the best I could to support his family and kept my tears to myself to be sobbed out over morning coffee and soaks in the tub. 

 

But there was hope amidst the weariness of continuing restrictions.The numbers were flattening.  The vaccine was coming.  Restrictions would be lifted. Maybe we just got too complacent or maybe it was just an inevitable part of the cycle, but the numbers worsened, restrictions tightened and my Australian-themed Christmas plans went to hell.  

 

Christmas Eve dinner became a scaled-down event broken into individual portions.  Trifles and charcuterie plates delivered to different houses along with green tomato relish, jars of goodies from my canning shelves and bags of Hershey's Hugs and Kisses as a substitute for the table gifts I ordered on Black Friday that still haven't arrived.  There was a Christmas Eve toast on Zoom, not the usual festivities but the best we could do in lockdown.  Jacob came home for a week so rather than sit around our usually noisy Christmas Eve table, we ate downstairs, chatted and watched It's A Wonderful Life. Different but still sweet.  We have never had a Christmas Eve where it was just the three of us.  Gifts of experiences normally given to share in the coming year were exchanged for small thoughtful offerings, painstakingly considered by their givers - excellent and meaningful books, local honey and hand-painted chocolates, a photo compilation from our trip. Best of all, a Christmas note of love from my son that is destined to be my finest treasure from the year.  

 

And now we have reached the end of the year.  Jacob has gone home.  The house feels quiet and cavernous.  We are locked down tighter than a drum, back to days of no socializing, no bubbles, no hugs or coffee afternoons.  It feels bleak.  We have decided to leave the Christmas decorations up longer.  We'll leave the lights in the trees and on the deck, the bannister boughed and lit, and the angels watching over us that fill the foyer and living room.  Let there be light in these dark days.  Chances that we will be vaccinated before the end of summer are looking like they are slim to none but there is at least a vaccine.  We know there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Our challenge is to create the light in the darkness along the way until we can finally step into the sun again.

 

Happy New Year Everyone!  May 2021 treat us kindly.