Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #2016: Twenty-five years between one grad and another.
My step-daughter M. graduated from high school yesterday, which coincidentally was also the day that I was supposed to graduate from my Master’s program (scheduling conflicts mean that I will convocate in the fall instead). I surprised myself by feeling both overwhelming proud of M. and also a little bit sad for myself because although I am a grown up and can delay the satisfaction of graduating, I’m afraid that I will be doing it on my own because my friends all went up yesterday. And then I wonder, at this stage of the game how much the cap and gown thing matters anyway. When you leave high school, that graduation is such a big deal – it signifies a whole shift in life and expectations, the beginnings of adulthood, a move away from what is familiar towards unknown (exciting and terrifying) things. An undergrad degree denotes a similar shift – to the world of work, away from the supporting pillars of school life and financial aid, to being taken more seriously (or not). These are big life things, and so we mark them with pomp and circumstance (literally, they played that at M’s grad ceremony yesterday), awards and speeches.
But twenty years into this adult thing, completing a degree is just one more thing you do – for fun or work reasons – and you don’t really expect anyone to get all that excited about it (except my partner, he gets plenty excited and I love him for it).
All that aside, I find myself with a lot of emotions this week – triggered by this whole grad from high school that we marked yesterday. I am so interested to see what M. does next, curious about her way in the world, anticipating her discoveries as she moves into residence at the university in the fall and starts her own academic path. On the other hand, I can’t help but reflect on how different she and I are, how much easier a person she is in the world than I was at her age, how challenged I was upon graduation – how unhappy my life was for many years after that. Yesterday when we drove to the ceremony I told my partner that whatever she does, I don’t really care, but that I hope she can find her way to a happy life. And by that I meant, find her way to a happy life a lot sooner than I did.
Because for some reason I felt like the struggle against myself and everyone else was essential to who I was – anger, sadness, distance were all too familiar in my life to that point. I believed that I was marked for distress and depression and that those things were the *real* whereas any focus on joy or beauty was somehow artificial. And as one does, I reinforced those feelings with drugs and alcohol and sex and low-paying work – until they were all that was true about who I was going to be.
Fortunately, I have a strong life wish – it turns out – so strong that even this delusional state couldn’t keep me from finding things to be interested in. Mostly that interest turned around how I could get a job that paid more than minimum wage – which seems shallow – but it’s what propelled me into college, and then to the city and university. The beaten-down character of my own experiences made me rage for social justice and so I found actual things to focus my anger on (rather than myself). And so rather than fizzling out young, I spent my twenties and much of my thirties fighting the world and healing myself – though it was mostly fighting and not enough healing – growing my capacity for life bit by bit as I advanced along my path. I got the degree and a good job, I played fiddle in a band, and got into long-distance hiking, I bought my first house on my own and learned how to drive, I fought with the police and I got a good therapist, and sometimes I even felt like I was starting to “get it” – which was a long way from where I started on my path to adulthood.
And now I am 42, having learned that it is possible to turn towards joy rather than away from it. Which sounds crazy right? Because who would turn away from joy when it appeared? But we do it when we don’t know any better – and it took me a long time to know better about my worth in the world and my capacity for love. Which doesn’t mean that I have no sorrows, but that I am learning to accept each feeling as transitory – the good and the bad – which makes the world a much easier place for me.
It’s all this which I reflect on as I watch M. grow up, seventeen years old now, thirty in the blink of an eye. She has none of the edges that I did at her age, for which I am glad, but I wonder what *is* programmed in her (by her parents, by society, by media) that will impede her road to a happier life. I wonder if she will (mercifully) figure it out earlier than I did, than her father did. And I hope so much that she *can* get to it sooner rather than later so she can enjoy more of a life with grace rather than resistance. What she does in terms of work, love, children – doesn’t matter so much to me as how she *is* in the world.
But then, it’s our struggles for and against these tendencies which make us whole – and it’s the work of our lives to become fully human. I want an easier time for her of course, but too easy and she might miss the lessons of the journey altogether. I look at her and wish that at seventeen I was as possessed and confident as she is, but I also know that my hardships have brought me into a brighter life than I ever expected possible.
It’s remarkable, these milestones, and what they uncover in us – one by one.
Post #2015: MMMMMMorels!
This is going to sound strange, but both times Brian and I have acquired a new house/piece of property together, we have been rewarded with a crop of morels soon afterward. The first time, was at the Urban Crow Bungalow where we discovered a meal’s worth of the mushrooms growing in the shade of our north facing garden in a patch of soil that had been dug up by the previous owners. That spot is now a shade garden that we planted, but at the time nothing was growing there except these mushrooms which popped up two months after we moved in. And now, just this past weekend, our co-owner Leung spotted a luscious patch of these growing at the corner edge of our newly built cabin – in disturbed ground that has seen both fire and digging in the past year.
Sadly, I don’t expect to see them in either place again, for morels are not to be counted on to show up more than once in the same place – though their presence at our cabin indicates that they are in the area, and we might have some luck hunting them in wildfire and logging spots close by.
I’ll take them as a good omen, however, a welcome to our new home away from home (which is far from completion = but still getting towards plenty usable).
My favourite way to do morels is cooked with a light cream sauce over pasta – but since we had already brought a stew along to eat, we sauteed them in butter with some local late-asparagus (and a piece of bacon) for a super-fresh addition to our meal. It was a reminder that one of my big draws to the area (Keremeos in particular) is the plentiful fruit and veggies that come from the region – who knew that one of our first cabin dinners would involve tidbits grown right on our property.
Post #2015: Early summer love
Despite the fact that it’s only June, we’re already watering the garden daily – temperatures in Vancouver are above average for this time of year and the rainfall we normally receive in May and June is non-existent. I’m not one for hot weather, so this doesn’t bode well for my summertime enjoyment – but for now I’m enjoying my early summer garden. I took the above photo last night and somehow it encapsulates for me exactly what my garden in evening feels like right now – a little cool after the heat of the day, freshly watered, flowers and ripening fruits.
Post #2014: Finding my seat
I don’t want to be one to fetishize where I meditate because it feels like one more excuse that gets in the way of practice. My friend, D., for example will only meditate in beautiful (outdoor) spaces. Because we live and work in a city, and getting to a park where one feels safe and private everyday is challenging, my friend only meditates once or twice a month. In the wintertime, it’s probably much less. When I first started sitting, I was determined to fit it in every day, often at home in the morning – but at other times in ugly little rooms at the university or work, facing a corner of my office, trying to find my zen on a pillow in a hotel room, sitting on the edge of a bathtub with the door locked because it was the only place separate from other people. And that really is the point, I think, to bring ourselves into present moment awareness wherever we happen to be – in transit, at home, in cities, or in nature – without waiting for the perfect circumstances that might never arise.
Having said all of that, this weekend I spent part of my time at the cabin building a special meditation place – pictured above! Just off the back of our property line (the property behind us is lightly forested on the property line and then logged the rest of the way up) – I built this little piece of flat ground out of a pallet and some scrap wood left on the site by our work crew, and rocks collected around the deer trail that it’s situated on.
As mentioned, it’s up in the trees, far off the road and out of sight from our cabin/outhouse/tent platforms – in a location that I am pretty confident no one ever walks – and it provides a level place to set up my bench or cushion in solitude. It’s a bit of a steep trek up, but once there I am free to practice open awareness to the sounds of birds, insects, and trees moving in the breeze – aware that enlightenment is easy on such mountaintops, but still grateful to carve out a dedicated practice place in the forest.
Post #2013: The episode in which I’m learning to knit.
The photograph above represents my first ever knitted project – a dishcloth! I mean, a lopsided, mis-gauged, dishcloth – but whatever. I’ve never knitted before now other than a few feeble attempts to learn over the last few years.
To learn anything that involves technical skill (languages, woodworking, playing an instrument, sewing, knitting, etc) requires that one get at least a little bit obsessed during the learning phase – something that has been missing from my previous attempts to become a knitter. This time around I’ve got the bug for sure – I spent most of the day Saturday learning knit stitch and starting this dishcloth (several times), finished the dishcloth yesterday, and started another one on the bus today which has been ripped out to be started yet again this afternoon (I’m working on getting gauge a bit more consistent before I move onto purl stitches). I think part of the reason that I feel like I’m getting it this time is because a knitting friend suggested to me that as someone who crochets, I might find continental knitting (where the yarn is held in the left hand) easier. This makes sense, and it also makes sense that crochet was initially easier for me to learn because I have strong left-hand dexterity from playing the fiddle all my life. I’m clearly right-handed, but my left hand works better for some things that require small muscle dexterity – grasping and tensioning yarn being one of those things.
Anyhow – I’m in the obsession stage of learning and that’s really what you need to get over the hump of making ugly things. For the record, here is the very first crocheted item I made four years ago – see any similarities between the two?
All you can really do at this point is move onto the next project (dishcloth) and hope it gets better. As I recall, the summer I learned to crochet, I made many, many dishcloths and then I made a horribly lopsided blanket out of non-washable wool yarn. So you know – we learn as we go. At least this time I am starting with a familiarity of yarn types and how to read patterns generally – that already makes this venture seem easier.
Looking at this picture of my first crochet is such a good reminder that we have to crawl before we can walk – but if one practices enough, the progress is inevitable. The key here is that we keep on doing something until it gets easier/more intelligible – and that’s the beginner’s hurdle. How much time and brain power do you have and how much does learning this new thing require? It’s not always the right time or place to acquire new skills (or make new habits or break old ones).
But right now feels like the right time to me – I’m also meditating more and reading novels again – which apparently means that post-degree I’ve got a whole lot more brain space for other things again.
Red Cedar 