My relationship with water

There are thousands of lakes, and rivers and creeks in our country. Last summer, the icy chill of Lake Huron numbed my feet. It was July, but after the coldest winter in a hundred years, the water pierced my skin like shards of glass, my bones ached instantly and I retreated to the sand to watch the sun set and my son and nephew skip stones over the water, which was still and grey. The summer before, I coasted with my family on rolling, gentle waves on the green Ottawa river, jumping out of a raft to be carried on a current; gravity, for a moment, irrelevant. Last winter, we walked across the frozen Skootamatta and built a fire. It was warm enough to remove our coats, to hang our mittens on a tree, yet the ice was solid and snow crystals sparkled in the sun. With my daughter, I snowshoed patterns in the unmarked patches of the whitest snow: a flower, the sun, H-E-L-L-O.
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There are seas here, too, but because I don't see them, sometimes I forget they are also ours. They are cold, and feisty. They are overbearing, and dangerous. They provide livelihoods but they also take lives. Our seas are not merciful. The seas I love are warm, and blue. The waves roll out on sandy beaches or--even better--on rugged rocks. I like to feel stone beneath my feet, slippery with a soft film of seaweed or firm with jagged edges. Standing on the rocks, I am grounded to the shore and I stand on the edge of the earth's shelf, the waves crashing around me. The water neither knows nor acknowledges me.

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I sometimes fear emotional depths. I don't like to hear raised voices. I don't crave the adrenaline that comes from excitement or fear. But I feel emotions deeply: I experience love like a wave or a waterfall, pain or sadness as though I am sinking.
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I don't fear the depths of water. When I swim, I swim farther and farther. I like to look outward, with the shore behind me.

On Breathing

I almost choked on a chick pea last week. I was eating lunch at work, and one slipped down my throat before I could chew it. I felt it move into my esophagus. Slowly. There was a thickness as I breathed, a weight pushing on the inside of my chest as though an unseen hand was squeezing me from inside. I fingered my chest, hoping to coax the errant legume down faster. I drank some leftover cold coffee and felt it nudge the chick pea along. I stood up. I slowed my breathing. I took another sip of the coffee and I waited.

I was reminded of a similar episode years ago--a piece of apple slipped down my throat without my having chewed it. I was walking behind the building where I worked. There was no one else around and if I had choked no one would have noticed at that moment. I was pregnant at the time. I wondered what would happen to the baby if I collapsed, how long it would take for someone to walk by and find me. The dull pressure inside my esophagus winded me.  I could feel this internal organ squeezing and palpitating as it attempted to move the chunk of apple down towards my stomach. I stopped walking, breathed slowly and shallowly, and I waited.

In both instances, I had to turn over control to my body.

As someone who has asthma, I think about breathing a lot. There are times at night when my airwaves close and I wake in a fit of coughing; the spasms within my chest feel like water rushing into my lungs. At other times, a ride on a crowded, dusty bus will bring on a tickle at the base of my throat as my breathing passages tighten, clearing only with a puff from my inhaler. In yoga classes, we are told to focus on the breath, to inhale and exhale to the very depths of our abdomen, by contracting the diaphragm, and fully filling and emptying the lungs. Sometimes it makes me dizzy. If I've had a cold or am experiencing seasonal allergies, I am physically unable to breathe that deeply. But when all is clear within my breathing passages, deep breathing has the calming effect of aloe on a sunburn, the freshness of summer rain.

The thinnest air I have breathed was in Tibet, in Lhasa, at 3,650 meters above sea level. Walking up a flight of 4 or 5 stairs at the hostel winded me as though I had climbed a mountain or crawled in prostration, as some Tibetan pilgrims do for thousands of kilometers from their villages to that holy city where prayer flags whisper blessings into the air. The purest air I have breathed was in Hobart, Tasmania, said to have some of the cleanest air in the world. Breathing, there, was like skating on the smoothest, clearest ice: effortless and liberating.

This morning I awoke abruptly from a dream. I was on a boat, or more like a flat barge. Grace ran away from me just as we crashed into a wave. Water poured over the deck and pushed her off to the side.  She grabbed onto the railing as I lunged towards her--and then I woke. I was lying face down, my nose and mouth planted into my pillow, my breathing slow and laboured. I turned and gulped the air as if I had been suffocating or drowning.

"Breathe deeply," I tell the kids when they are anxious or upset. "It calms your body on the inside, and when the inside of your body is calm, the outside of your body calms down too." It works. It's true. Try it: breathe in for five seconds, hold for five more, breathe out for five again. Slowly. Repeat.

The Lung Association's tagline is "when you can't breathe, nothing else matters". Indeed, time seems to stand still at those moments. There is no before, there is no after. There is only air and the reaching towards it.

David Bowie, Death Doula

Yes.  I'm going to blog about David Bowie.  With all that's been said in the days since he passed, what more is left to say about the man who brought us Ziggy Stardust?  I've never been a huge Bowie fan, though I certainly enjoy some of his iconic songs.  But I appreciate the genius he represented -- he didn't push boundaries so much as he trampled over them.  He experimented and provoked, taunted and flaunted.  You didn't have to like him, but you couldn't ignore him.

An icon from my childhood and youth, and an inspiration to both the geeks and the cool kids worldwide, he was certainly unique.  He deserves the accolades, the outpouring of grief, the comparisons to the likes of Beethoven and Mozart in terms of impact on music and culture (see the CBC's panel, which included Jeff Melanson, CEO of the Toronto Symphony orchestra, discussing David Bowie's legacy:  http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2681722085).  But, after the fashion statements, weird music, bold makeup, and duet with Bing Crosby, it appears that David Bowie's lasting legacy may be in how he has made a generation of antiseptic and overprotected baby boomer offspring face the ugliness of death and find beauty within it.

I remember the first funeral I attended.  I was maybe eight or ten years old.  It was for the grandmother of friends of ours from church.  She was tiny and ancient, and she always dressed in black, in constant mourning for the husband who had died many years before her.  A classic Greek yiayia, she cooked and baked the most amazing food and pastries, and blessed her granddaughters and their friends with a firm grip of wrinkled hands and kiss of thin, leathery lips. On the nights she stayed home alone, when the family was out visiting or at Greek community dances, she would watch Dracula movies in the darkened house -- she laughed at these movies and never seemed afraid.

Her funeral was attended by the whole community, she was everyone's grandmother.  I remember approaching her coffin, with some trepidation.  What I saw was a shell of the woman, her eyes closed, with a greyness to her flesh, white hair combed and stilled with hair spray.  Her hands, cold to the touch, were crossed over her, possibly holding onto a small icon.  My fear and sadness immediately evaporated.  It wasn't her.  She wasn't there.  There was nothing to fear.

I admit to not having thought of David Bowie or his music for many years, so I was caught off guard by the release of his last album, and the subsequent news of his death two days later.  Hearing him now, and seeing him as an older and sick man, is disturbing and humbling.  He makes us look him in the eyes -- while he himself is staring down death -- and forces us to watch as he retreats before the grim reaper's arrival, to whom he says simply: come and get me.  It's a last laugh -- if nothing else, a stroke of marketing genius -- but also a gift and a reality check:  He forces us to consider, and to talk about, death in all its ugly glory.

Is it sad that he could not imagine a more beautiful death?  Yes, maybe.  Perhaps in the end he felt some peace and went softly into the night.  But to watch the videos of Lazarus and Blackstar it seems that was not what he was expecting.  I'm reminded of my mother's final hours.  They didn't feel peaceful, for her or for those of us around her.  She didn't go softly.  I think she was angry.  She, too, was staring down death, making it come to her.  She wasn't going down without a fight.  In the end, it wasn't quite what she had planned.  There was pain.  There was breathing anxiety.  There was confusion.  Her skin was sallow, her eyes sunken.

But there was beauty.

As her breathing slowed, we retreated, taking comfort in each other and drifting to sleep to the sound of her rhythmic breaths.  There was beauty in that.  I wrapped her prayer shawl around me, feeling warmth and comfort.  There was beauty in that.  I remember my aunt's soft voice, whispering tenderly to her sister: It's time.  You've given good witness.  Go.  There was beauty in that.  As we left the hospice and accompanied her body to the hearse, a flock of starlings circled overhead as if taking her spirit with them. There was beauty in that.

There was a lot of ugliness in Bowie's music, in the lyrics and the images that accompanied them.  And there was beauty. In his face, his skin almost transluscent; in his clothing, colourful and flamboyant; in the videos, with candles and chanting.  In the midst of so much ugliness in the world, he compelled us to take notice:  to acknowledge that beauty and art are what we make of it and with it; to realize that creativity is to be celebrated and shared;  to remember that we may have a single moment -- or a lifetime -- to find our calling, to create something, to find beauty in ugliness; and to learn, that when death does come -- as it will, for a mother, a grandmother or a famous singer -- we can meet it proudly, defiantly, confidently, creatively, knowing that our energy will continue, unfolding through the expanding universe where there is immeasurable and unending beauty.

Into the weeds

Something about supper on the weekend always takes me back to childhood.  Tonight, I'm making risotto and pan-fried tilapia fillets with lemon juice and olive oil and a bit of dried oregano from my father's garden in Greece.  Gabriel likes fish, when he turned three he requested salmon for his birthday dinner.  Jacob will only eat it fried, with lots of tartar sauce.  Grace will probably make herself an egg sandwich.  I get it, fish is not to everyone's taste.

My husband Dan talks of growing up eating fish sticks on Fridays -- his dad was in charge of supper while his mom did the weekly grocery store run in town and treated herself to Chinese food for dinner, her one night "off" from parenting a large family -- apparently it didn't go over so well.

My Dad used to make my brother and I take the bones out of our own fish at dinnertime.  He showed us how to cut along the edge, sliding the knife into the side of the fish, to open it up like a book.  He took the heads and the tails -- he loved to chew around the bones -- and left the rest to us.  Taking one end of the spine, we would peel it away from the meat and lift up the remaining bones with a knife, making sure to suck off any remaining bits of the lemony fish. They used to say that the cats in Athens didn't bother going to my family's residence, because there was no meat left on the bones. Clearly, we had learned well as we continued the tradition.

I always knew that the food we ate was not what you'd find on the dinner table at most of my friends' homes, where meat and potatoes were the mainstay and lasagna was considered a treat.  Grocery stores weren't what they are today so it meant some extra effort to find the right ingredients.  My mother would ask the grocer if he had any fresh parsley, and sometimes he would have a bunch out at the back, which he gave to her for free.  The only place in town that you could buy feta and kalamata olives was at the Italian store.  And I remember picking dandelion leaves with my mother and her friends from church, summer afternoons along the side of the main road near our house, before the newer subdivisions were built.  I prayed to God that none of my friends would drive by and wonder why we were weeding public property.  We collected bags of them, to be washed at home, then boiled and served with olive oil and lemon juice to take away the bitterness, together with the fish -- my dad's favourite meal: horta (dandelion leaves) and psari (fish).

My parents went to a Portuguese fish monger to buy whole fish, which he would clean for them, taking care to show them that the eyes were clear, not cloudy, testifying to the freshness.  You couldn't buy that kind of freshness, or the variety, at a regular grocery store in those days, so going to the fish store was a special outing.  Thursday evenings brought the latest catch, just in time for Friday supper. I thought it was something only immigrant families did -- in my hometown it was largely Greeks, Italians or Portuguese at the time -- so I was surprised one evening to see my sixth grade teacher there, her blond hair and blue eyes distinctly out of place in the smelly shop.  A sense of relief washed over me, seeing her there...maybe we weren't so strange after all.

These days, I buy my fish frozen in fillets but have two kitchen drawers full of spices of every scent and flavour.  I cook dishes of my Greek and Puerto Rican heritage, and also from all around the world: Italian, Indian, Chinese.  We live in a neighbourhood that is a veritable United Nations. Feta and olives are standard fare at grocery stores across the country, Food Basics has an enormous "Foods of the World" section, and you even can buy njera at the local Quickie.

The kids are now taking turns making supper in our house, so on Sundays we're planning the week's meals.  Up ahead this week: spaghetti and meatballs, a roast in the crock pot, and homemade pizza. Maybe this summer I'll take them out to pick dandelion leaves.

So I've become my mother. I'm writing a blog.

My mother wrote a blog (http://chaplaintogo.blogspot.ca/).  It was read by a small but vibrant community of friends and family, as well as some random strangers across the planet.  Writing the blog helped her get through the worst of chemotherapy and radiation during treatment for metastatic breast cancer.  Sadly, we lost her in 2012.  But she and her words live on eternally, in our memories and in the blog-o-sphere.

She used to repeat a saying, "as boring as a Sunday afternoon in Ontario", and I often felt sorry for her when she said it.  To my mind, she seemed to be missing some form of excitement in her weekend that made her feel the need to broadcast her disappointment.  I, on the other hand, always enjoyed Sunday afternoons.  As a child, it was often a peaceful and pleasant day: church in the morning, followed by lunch at Swiss Chalet with family friends and then a quiet afternoon at home. Dad would retreat to his study to read the paper or mark exams, and Mom to the living room curled up on the green velour sofa with a book - usually a mystery.  My brother, laconic at the best of times, usually retreated to his room, and I to mine.  I could read, talk to my friends on the phone, write in my journal, do homework, play with our cat. For dinner we could snack on weekend leftovers; Mom stayed in the living room.

Now, as a parent, Sunday afternoons tend to be filled with family visits, outdoor activities, and bulk cooking for the week ahead.  But as the kids grow older, I find myself with a few more minutes to call my own so I, too, retreat to the living room to read, or check Facebook status updates.  I used to call my mother.

Since I can't do that any more, I've decided to use the time to write. I don't have a particular focus or theme for this blog (yet), and maybe I never will. I don't expect a very wide audience (perhaps my husband will be my audience of one), nor do I anticipate fame and fortune will follow.  But I will dedicate an hour or so to myself and I will use this space to practice this strange craft.

I used to think that my mother actually did find Sunday afternoons boring, but now I'm thinking she probably got it right.

Faster, Stronger, Higher

Who are these youngsters? What are they looking at?  Whom do they see?  Where do they want to go?  

These are my children, on summer vacation last August.  They are looking down at the Seine, at Paris, from the Eiffel Tower.  They see a city of dwellers below them, and wonder if there is anyone like them down there.  They want to go higher up the tower, but their mother is afraid of heights.

My children always make me push my boundaries, and reach for new heights.  

This afternoon, for example, my daughter wanted to bake, to relieve the stress of returning to school tomorrow after two weeks of Christmas bliss.  She got a new cookbook as a gift and wanted to try making macarons. We had lovely macarons in Paris.  She's never made macarons before, and neither have I.  I can make a mean spaghetti sauce or chili, but baking is not my forte.  It has been an exercise in patience (mine) and perseverence (hers).  The batter oozes out more quickly than it should.  The food colouring doesn't come out like the pictures in the book.  The circles are not perfect.  My daughter flees from the kitchen, her wails following close behind as she slams the door and retreats to her room to ponder her next steps.  I lick my fingers - the taste, at least, is pleasing.

My older son has spent the past few days applying to a new high school.  He wants to study drama.  Or rather, he wants to escape his current high school and he's hoping against hope that the local arts school will be happy to have new male students.  I consider suggesting he ask his younger sister for advice, but think better of it. She doesn't seem to be in the mood for conversation.  He has worked hard over the past few days to complete three concise paragraphs on why he wants to attend, how he will contribute to the school, what his other interests are.  In the past, these interests have included competitive lacrosse, mountain biking and cross-country running, but after suffering five concussions in an 18-month period, he would do well to take on a more cerebral but less brain-bashing activity.  In the section to be completed by parents, I write a compelling 700-character explanation of why I think my son will benefit from studying in an arts program, and cross my fingers.

My younger son is saving for an iPhone.  He wants a new one, the latest version, with all the bells and whistles.  Nothing less (even a used one, if it could be found) will do.  At a $600-900 price tag, I told him to save his pennies.  His Christmas wishlist had but one word on it: money. He looks at my mini Samsung (I'm not even sure what version it is), purchased only three years ago -- sporting crumbs and dust in the interior from so many explosive drops -- with disdain.  In future, I suppose his children will communicate with their friends through microchips implanted in their brains and they will shake their heads at his handheld device.  I invited him to help me with the laundry in order to earn a few extra dollars, and his father put him to work painting the living room.

After almost fifteen years of parenting them, I still feel like I'm getting to know them.  New heights, indeed. No wonder I feel so queasy.  As for climbing higher on the Eiffel Tower, I sent them further up -- on their own.