one day gone
unpack my bag
the hand me ups
soft loved items
memories emerge
scented candle
subtle florals
a woolen hug
shoes at the door
sharp salt crystals
fall from the treads
memories emerge
walks to the beach
wind whipped our cheeks
frozen belly laughs
scroll the photos
your beauty wrapped
in bright orange
memories emerge
the electric track
tinged with fear
high on life
hear your voice
one day gone
a stuttered hello
memories emerge
child of my body
woman of your world
small of my heart
Warning, by Jenny Joseph (1932-2018)
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Another inspiring writing prompt from my monthly subscription package – but perhaps not in the way that was intended.
The prompt is to take the gist of the poem above and talk about “some point in the future that holds a lot of energy for you” and think about what it would mean to you.
Your prompt: When I am _______ I shall…
For me, as soon as I read that line I thought of the countless promises I’ve made to myself regarding my weight.
When I am thin, not overweight (pick your poison), I shall be….what? Better? Happier?
Weight has been a thing for me since grade six. That’s a whole lot of times stepping on a scale, a whole lot of times when I made and broke promises to myself.
My heaviest was when my father in law died in 2009. The lightest adult weight I’ve been was in 1994 – after I was overly successful at weight loss and went far below ‘my goal weight’. Equally unhealthy.
You might say, I’ve lived a life where I have over loved food and under loved myself. Or you could say that I have had an unhealthy relationship with food. I’d say it’s been more complicated than I imagined.
My mother used to call me when I came home from school and ask how my day went. Often the answer was not well. As mothers do, she wanted to make it all better and she would send me off to engage with two of my favourite activities: eating cookies with milk and reading a book. (I am not mother blaming here; I put on my grown up girl pants everyday and have full agency over what goes in my mouth.)
I did not associate food with comfort then. But somewhere along the line, I did. Maybe comfort isn’t the right word – maybe escape?
In my life, I’ve read hundreds of books and eaten hundreds more cookies.
When I was diagnosed with celiac, in 2016, I felt confident that the restrictions on what I could eat would be a way to help me gain that illusive self-control when it came to food.
For a while, it did. But I missed what food, especially comfort foods like cookies, brought to my life – that feeling of escape. When the going gets tough, I turned to food.
What I’ve since accepted: it wasn’t about what was going in my mouth, but it was why.
Writing has helped. A lot. It is a new way to deal with stress and anxiety. It is a good way to confront the why.
Writing is a good pairing with meditation. And reading about other people’s struggles with life – and body image – has been amazing. Roxane Gay’s Hunger has been helpful in getting a clearer view on my relationship with food in the context of abuse.
As I started to think about writing this post, I considered who has a great relationship with food and realized that would be my children. And my hubby.
They all love food, but they don’t love it in an unhealthy way. And that made me realize, I haven’t been in love with food. I have loved the anesthetic it has provided.
***
Recently, I started physiotherapy due to knee pain. The therapist is around my age and is wonderful at putting the responsibility for my care in my hands. It’s been a very empowering feeling. I have to decide if I want to be able to access those very necessary joints in my lower limbs; it’s not up to her. This was not stated to me in some sort of shaming way; it is a fact that I have to want to do the exercises for the gains it will achieve.
When I make my short walk home from the GO train, music playing in my ears, I know that I miss long distance walking and so, physio exercises are an easy priority.
Yesterday, we went to a great gluten-free bakery and got some (very expensive, very tasty) bread. When I taste a good, squishy bread, I know that having a true love affair with food is possible. One where I am engaging with the tastes, not the momentary disconnect from whatever negative feeling I am having.
I mean, this is really good bread.
Lately, I have been making note of when I want to grab food that I shouldn’t, that I don’t need, that will mentally and physically weigh me down.
Boredom is the number one culprit. Anxiety is now second.
That is a very big shift in my mental health.
I can deal with boredom – the second part of my mother’s cure for a bad day is reading and that is truly a wonderful thing to exchange for cookies and milk. Those long walks, a good movie, all good remedies.
Having anxiety fall to second place as a reason to eat, well, that’s a good thing. I’ve enriched, enhanced and broadened my meditation practice. I’ve engaged in some good old deep breathing in public places and elevators. Learning to watch emotions and thoughts drift down a river of calm, acknowledging them but not engaging with them (mostly), is a beautiful feeling of success.
***
Another big shift over the past few years is about weight versus health. It’s a tough habit to break, focusing on weight. When my doctor stopped weighing me a few years ago, I slowly began to think about what that had meant – the number on that scale – in my way of judging me.
Success vs failure. Weak vs strong. Good vs bad.
***
I went back to university at 51, in anthropology (“the degree that makes you question everything”) which is proof positive that it’s never to late to change one’s thought patterns.
I’ve always said my biggest takeaway from university was the knowledge that I can do it, whatever that it is.
There are two parts to being able to be successful here: prioritizing oneself and being able to ask for help. That’s another thing that university taught me – the journey is so much easier when you let others walk with you.
***
My answer to the prompt?
when I am ready to love myself enough to do the work, I will do the work.
I’m ready.
when I am unable, I will ask for help.
I’ll let you know.
I’ve written three different blog posts today and don’t feel ready to publish any of them – could be because I worked on (someone else’s) taxes all afternoon and I’m just tapped out. Or it could be the rain.
But I have wanted to explain my work at McMaster so here goes:
It’s kind of hard to explain – but basically an archeology professor of mine is doing a long-term study on commemorative practices in cemeteries in Cambridgeshire, England. In order to do that, he needs a really big database to be able to make comparisons and figure out what are the motivators for people to commemorate, what are the patterns (do rich people do a type of commemoration and then others follow?), what are the economic factors, do people commemorate children or marginalized people (people from asylums, or workhouses) – he needs data.
I don’t get to do actual on the ground work in England. And no, I don’t dig up dead people. Not even close. I like cemeteries and I like the stories they tell, but don’t put me near bones. No thank you.
The work (done by other research assistants and me) involves taking burial data from the various parish records in Cambridgeshire and filling in commemoration information as well as occupations and other census data for the people buried. In the period we are investigating (1845-1925), the occupation of the head of the household, usually a man, is how everyone within that household is defined.
We look into genealogy sources (Ancestry being our most utilized) and graveyard sites. We have a success rate of finding occupation and other records of well over 85% for most of these parishes.
As a person who likes to make up stories, there is a significant amount of possibilities for storylines – with entire family stories written out over the decades. As the prof once said, you see the birth and the death of many people in that 80-year period.
Most parishes average about 350 burials in that 80-year time span so you get a bit of variety in the work, going between inputting of data and the internet research.
Yesterday, I completed a parish which had 6700 burials in that 80 year period meaning at times there would have been a burial every 2-3 days! It took me two months of work (about 21 hours per week) to complete. It hurt my brain to be doing relatively the same thing for days on end.
Upside: we are creating a database that will help support researchers beyond this project as well as the prof who hired me. This thought has been a good motivator in the depths of the repetitive nature these past few months.
So, not sure about next steps – discussions about what happens when my contract is up (in 10 days) have not taken place. It might be time for a bit of space between me and that computer, or that could just be the ridiculously big chunk of research talking!
Déjà vu all over again – the government and the education sector, butting up against one another and the government whipping anger with a media frenzy (and way too many standing ovations). People working in education will be made out as money grabbing and our elected representatives will not only feed that negativity and misinformation, but they will do everything possible to come out as good leaders, stating it’s all for the greater economic good.
What a load of propaganda.
I know about fiscal restraint. I worked in special education for 15 years and was at the top of my pay grid and took home less than $35,000 a year.
Yup. You read that right.
Right now, RIGHT NOW, there is no talk about more/less money because we are not negotiating yet.
Right now, RIGHT NOW, the protests are about the cuts, about the threats of cuts, about the pile of damage being created by decisions being made by the government.
The government started on the wrong foot by cutting out curriculum development which would have increased Indigenous content – curriculum changes set out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The debacle that is, was, and continues to be funding for children with autism is part of the protests.
Increasing class sizes, having students take e-learning courses – and don’t even get me started about the health curriculum.
The government says teachers are promoting dissention with students and using classroom bulletin boards as places of anti-government information sharing.
If the term ‘fake news’ was not so overused, I’d use it here.
There are so many issues to protest, but RIGHT NOW, salaries is not one of them.
When it comes to fiscal restraint, the Ford government has not actually been practicing what they preach.
Buck a beer? License plate redos? “Open for business” signage? Stickers to agitate against carbon tax?
And then there are the salaries of friends and associates in jobs that either didn’t previously exist or were at lower salaries previously: $348,000 to a health care advisor; $140,000 for a formerly part-time position as EQAO chair; $350,000 for a trade representative. And then there are folks who are in senior positions after being part of the Ford team in various capacities: Ontario Energy Board appointee, $197,000 and chair of Public Accountants Council for $166,666.
These inflated “dollars for supporters of Ford” would make an incredible difference in the lives of students in Ontario. Money that would allow for more speech and language support, autism intervenors (cause given new policies and money shuffling, we are definitely going to need more specialists), and specialized equipment within schools.
What about the senior students, those with learning needs who do not have the depth of programs they need to prepare them for the world beyond the education system? Their programs have been cut and their support diminished because special education has been underfunded for years. And years. And years, first by the Liberals, now by the current government.
Another way in which this government is failing is that they keep announcing funding as if it’s new – slapping a ‘new and improved’ label on already existing, lower than needed, funding. And people are being fooled into believing it, because they want to believe their vote for this government was the right one.
Wrong.
Special education students are capable and want to contribute in whatever way they can to society – but they need the foundations to do that and they need those programs to last through the end of their final year of school (and beyond).
I worked in special needs and behaviour from 2003 until 2018. I value the work of all the members of our education system, but special needs is what I know and therefore the reality of that work is what I can best speak to. Special education means working with the most vulnerable members of the system and of society – children with physical, intellectual and mental health issues. We are the people who, along with the teaching teams, deliver education to students who need more – perhaps it’s personal care, or curriculum support or behaviour management. Everyday, members of that employee group are faced with unimaginable stress and incredible types of successes.
Let me focus on the stress aspects: We feed students who cannot do it themselves. We change diapers, clothing and sanitary pads, often lifting students the size of grown men and women. We can be kicked, pinched, punched, scratched, spit on, urinated on, have feces or furniture or pretty much anything thrown at us. I have worn protective gear to minimize the chances of injury, which makes it harder to move around. In addition to this physical abuse, we also can be subjected to verbal abuse. Personally, I have had all of these things happen to me, including being hit so hard in the face that I fell to the ground. I have visited the emergency department of my local hospital on more than one occasion for myself, in addition to accompanying students with seizures and other medical conditions.
When you pull money out of the system, more of these tasks are put onto fewer workers. People think their child will have one on one support.
Those days are long gone. Student supports are prioritized by categories such as safety and personal care, not by educational needs.
The more money pulled out of the system, the less time front line workers and teachers have to teach students the skills which allow them to be successful, to not have levels of frustration that can cause them to act out in aggressive and violent ways – skills that allow ALL students to be included in schools and their communities in meaningful ways.
And that violence? It is experienced by all students and staff who are present when it occurs.
Appropriate funding needs to be in place in order to make school a place where students can learn and grow; it should not be about warehousing children and youth with special needs.
That is my greatest fear when I think about their future.
And guess what? When I was dealing with out of control students, or otherwise doing my job, you know who was standing right next to me? The teaching staff. Early childhood educators. Other teaching assistants. My principal. All are at risk every day and they need to know that their government is behind them.
When the government make claims in the media that it’s about the money, they are right.
There is a component about being compensated for the work we do and for the injuries we sustain doing that work.
That is not the issue RIGHT NOW.
The bigger, RIGHT NOW issue is that people (students, staff, parents, Boards) are angry about the government not properly funding the education system.
I want to tell this government, as I tried to tell the last one, walk a mile in the shoes of those teachers and education workers you talk about in such negative ways. You would love aspects of your job. You would be exhausted and inspired.
And you would be devastated that your government undermines you both on a personal and on a professional level.
You would be more than devastated to see amazing students not get the chance to succeed because your government felt it was important to support personally motivated projects over supporting students.
No matter how you spin it, this is the reality: the government has chosen other priorities in front of the future of Ontario. That future includes the children and the people who are educating and shaping them every single day.
For education workers, teachers, administrators, communities and families, RIGHT NOW AND ALWAYS
IT IS ABOUT THE STUDENTS.
Last fall, we went down to one car. This has meant a shift in my lifestyle from car dependence to walking/transit independence.
It may seem I have those descriptors backwards, but I do not.
I do plan my life much more carefully now, but I feel more stress free taking transit. I feel more reliant on myself, which I know is the complete opposite to how most people feel when they give up their car.
I am actually less rushed; I often did not give myself sufficient time to travel when I drove. Now, I make sure that I give myself more than ample time to get from point A to point B, especially during the winter or taking the subway (sorry TTC, but your reliability is not very, well, reliable).
Each work day, I take a GO train and then a GO bus to McMaster. There are the ‘regulars’ in the morning; the man who waits in a shelter with me at the GO station – he works outside doing roofing. We have a chat each morning and it’s amazing what can be summarized about life in 3-5 minutes.
On the train, there are not a lot of people going out of the city towards Hamilton, but there’s the guy whose already on the train when I embark; he’s always got a big coffee and when, on occasion, a friend gets on the train, it’s apparent he also has a very big voice (to hell with the Quiet Zone signs).
There’s a girl on the mid level and she’s always asleep when I board. One day I thought I might have to follow the directions of the ‘customer service ambassador’ who says to “give a little shake if you see a fellow passenger sleeping”. Fortunately the girl woke up on her own.
Of course, the train ride is always made interesting by that one special customer service ambassador who thanks us for “choo-choo-choosing GO” just before we leave the train at Aldershot.
Coming back home is a little busier, especially if there’s a hockey, baseball, TFC or basketball game. The Quiet Zone (the upper level of the GO during rush hour) is completely shot to hell then. Little kids are super excited to be going to the game which is completely endearing.
There may be a wee bit of alcohol involved in the small clusters of other groups heading to the game which makes for some interesting overhead conversations (and absolutely no reading accomplished).
That, though, is one of the great joys of transit: overhead conversations. I guess in polite society, we should pretend we don’t listen to other people’s conversations – and honestly, I don’t always WANT to hear people’s conversations – but I mostly find it interesting. In the writing course I took recently, it was recommended that we eavesdrop to help us learn how to write dialogue for our fiction pieces.
That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
What’s really interesting to me is that when I take the GO train from Toronto to Mississauga on Fridays (after my writing workshop), there is NO TALKING at all in the Quiet Zone; people police others. I have seen many people remind others about the Quiet Zone and seen it escalate beyond polite reminders.
The subway (and the streetcar maybe too) are the best for people watching. I find it fascinating to watch how people interact with each other: men towards women; men towards other men; everyone toward people with disabilities or otherwise marginalized; how people behave toward the elderly; interactions (overt and hidden) between people of different races – you name it, take two stops on any subway and you will see it play out.
I have taken some of my commuting time to acknowledge my own prejudices and try to unpack them. When someone is fidgety and agitated, am I concerned for them or me? Is the concern for me stem from the fact they are unkempt? Because their skin colour is something other than white? What if it was a white man in a business suit?
It’s not always a comfortable answer, but the questions are pretty damn important to consider.
Another large portion of my time is spent observing people – like the man who was reading over a woman’s shoulder and, fortunately (I guess), was a faster reader than her, so he was never left behind. I wonder if he went and bought the book?
Next to the reader was a woman who was taking frequent, long swigs out of a bottle. Not a bottle in a brown paper bag. A large bottle of dark rum (straight up) that she took out during pauses in doing crosswords in a little booklet.
Generally, people on transit are friendly or, more often, neutral. I smile, usually people smile back. I greet the drivers, they say hello back. I’ve been offered a seat by young(er) people on more than one occasion. I’m never sure how I feel about that – it’s lovely and sweet, but am I really that old? I tried to decline once and the young man said his mother would be very upset if he was sitting and I was standing. So now I sit when a seat is offered.
I’m not sure, but maybe these people will help me create truer characters in future writing.
“I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles,” he said. “With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization – that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls.” – Booth Tarkington
writing in the (mom)ent 