Renewing Relationships

Sitting in a small cabin with a wood stove blazing and pans of maple sap evaporating gave me lots of time to think.  Through the windows I could see the snow falling as squalls came off of Georgian Bay.  Outside, was the damp of late winter and the ice of melting days and freezing nights.  But inside we were really warm and peaceful.  This was the first sap that my partner had collected this year.  The aluminum pans were gently “hummering” on the wood stove, making the same sound as my tea kettle does on the kitchen stove. The water vapour rose gently from the bubbling sap and condensed on the windows.

In a few days, on March 20^th, it would be the Spring Equinox.  On that same day, the full moon would be called the Sugar Moon in the Anishinaabe calendar.  As I thought about cyclical time, we had come around to spring again, or it had come around to us.  We were renewing our relationship with the Maple trees.  The sap was from the three Sugar Maples in the yard.  The wood burning was from a Maple tree that a friend had to cut down.  We had picked up the logs last winter and stored the wood for a year now. It burned well.

I thought about how the Maple leaves had used their chlorophyll to capture the energy of the sun and how they had used that energy to split off electrons in order to create glucose from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen in the process.  I had learned about the process in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.   The glucose had been stored in the tree’s roots as starch all winter.  Now, as the days became longer, the photosensors in the tree buds put out a hormonal call to the roots to create amylase, the enzyme that breaks starch down into glucose again.  This rising sugar level would have drawn water into the tree roots and on days when the sun warmed the tree bark, this sugary sap rose up to the buds, bringing the energy they needed to grow and expand and eventually create new leaves that will produce glucose once again.  We humans are sharing in this spring rising that the trees are generously providing.  We drink some of this sweetwater as a spring tonic and boil most of it down to produce syrup. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass, our gratitude is the reciprocity for this gift.  It is important to acknowledge this as we renew our relationship once again.

As I watched the water evaporate from the pans, I remembered that these water molecules had fallen from clouds as rain, soaked into the earth and were now being drawn up by the roots of the tree into the trunk, where they came through the spiles, into the buckets and into the sugar shack.  These water molecules were now rising as water vapour back into the air.  Every time we opened the door, they escaped back into the sky, or condensed in the cold onto the snow where they may rest as a solid before melting and evaporating again.  This ancient cycle was being carried out before my eyes.

I thought about how as we age, our experiences go through a similar cycle.  I thought about raising my four children.  The memories of all the meals cooked and cleaned up from, all the diapers changed, all the clothes washed and the floors swept all kind of evaporate.  Even the frustrations felt, the patience spent and the tears shed all disappear.   Every now and then I would get up and scoop some foam off of the top of the pans.  We had already filtered the sap through a pillowcase to capture any impurities.  I thought about the memories that had to be released, people forgiven, injuries healed.  In the end we had a thick sweet syrup which is precious.  We will celebrate it on pancakes.  We will bring this liquid sunlight into our bodies and feel grateful for the gift, for the sweetness that has been distilled from the work of the leaves.  And if we sift through our memories and choose which ones to keep and which ones to let go, we can be grateful for the sweetness that our other relationships have created.  Perhaps we have to let the everyday water evaporate, filter out impurities and scoop off the foam.  We do after all narrate our own stories to ourselves all the time.  We get to choose what we highlight and recall and what we choose to let go of.  Some people call this remembering what truly matters.

This is what I came to, as I renewed my relationship again this spring with the Maples.  This is the wisdom distilled from my years, that rose to me as I paused from the business of my life to watch the sap evaporate in our little cabin under the Sugar Maples.  I breathed in the warm steamy air and I breathed out carbon dioxide that will be used in producing more sugar.  I breathed out gratitude for the trees and I rested in the cycles that carry us all.

Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) “ Maple Sugar Moon” in Braiding Sweetgrass.  Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.

Bright and Shining Above Me

I lived on the top of a hill in the centre of a farm with fields all around me for over twenty years.  When the fall came, the constellation Orion the hunter would appear in the southeast sky accompanied by his dog star, Sirius.  My father had taught me about this constellation when I was a child and how to identify Orion by the belt of three stars at his waist.  So, when Orion appeared in the night sky as fall began, it was like seeing an old friend once again.  My eyes thrilled at recognizing this pattern of stars that humans for eons had turned into a story, as it came into view again.  I knew that Orion would be my companion through the dark of winter until he disappeared once again in the spring.  When I went out in the cold winter dark to feed the animals or to assist the sheep in lambing, to gather eggs from our hens, to take carrots to the beautiful horses or to go for walks in the field with my dogs, there was my faithful friend accompanying me, bright and shining and seemingly eternal.

The other constant in my life has been my father.  He is not a warm fuzzy man but he is tremendously ethical and has always tried to do the right thing.  He supported my children through post secondary education when I became a single parent.  He attended every graduation of every grandchild from elementary school, high school, college and university.  And he took pictures at every event.  He taught me about respecting and loving the natural world and being respectful of other cultures.  Music was his first and last love and it transported him.  He sang in a famous choir and in church choirs with his deep bass voice.  He made sure I had music lessons and taught me about classical music.  He gave me both his classical guitars and his electronic piano.  He attended every musical event that my children took part in. He loved to travel and did a lot of it including emigrating to Canada as a young man.

And now he is almost ninety-two and has landed in hospital due to being prescribed too many pharmaceuticals.  They have adjusted his medication but the change of living conditions has pushed him further into the dementia that he has been fighting against.  And now his retirement residence that he has lived in for seven years, won’t allow him to come back home.  So, he is homeless in hospital while we work to find him somewhere else to live in the midst of a care system that can’t keep up with the demand.

He is slipping away mentally and perhaps physically and this is so hard to watch.  I can’t micro manage his care as I have to be at work much of the time when he is lucid.  When I get to the hospital he is often sleeping or restlessly moving his hands and arms but reluctant to open his eyes and unable to speak above a whisper which my aging ears can’t hear.

Last night, I returned home from another disappointing “visit”.  I am in uncharted territory, not knowing what to do, if anything.  I loaded some music on an iPod to play for him, but the device didn’t work well on the weak Wifi signal in the hospital.  I have loaded another device with his old CD ROM’s to see if that will bring comfort but I haven’t tried that with him yet.  How do I help?  How do I let go?  How do I watch him emigrate to another place where I can’t go?

When I got home, my partner and I went for a later winter walk after a lovely supper that he had waiting for me.  We walked down the hill to the shore of frozen Georgian Bay.  The moon was just setting in the west.  We turned our eyes high up in the southwest and there was Orion and Sirius.  Oh, my heart leapt to see them there.  I felt so much comfort at having something familiar and constant, bright and shining above me.  Something bigger and older than all of us.  My partner talked about how we are at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy which is spinning within the universe.  My mind expanded out and out and out just as they say the Universe is expanding.  And I knew that I have to let my father go on his new journey.  The departure will take whatever time it will take.

I found a picture recently of six people standing on a ship dock beside the giant hull of an ocean liner from the 1950’s. The thick rope that tied the ship to the dock stretches over their heads.  The six people are my grandmothers, one grandfather, an uncle and two aunts who came to say goodbye to my father when he boarded that very ship to come to Canada.  My mother is not in the picture.  Perhaps she was at my father’s side even though she came six months later.  Those being left behind grimly pose for the camera.  It is not a happy day for them.  It is the beginning of a new adventure for him.  I kept that picture on my table for weeks although I wasn’t sure why.  It was all so long ago, before I was born. But now I get it.  That rope would have been released and the ship would have sailed away.  Those on the dock including my mother would have waited for it to leave, waving madly, watching until it disappeared into the horizon.  And then they would have gone home and gone about their lives, written letters, adjusted to the absence.  Some of them eventually came for a visit to Canada, but my father never returned to live in England.  He had a good life in his new country and lived it how he wanted.

Now my brother and I are standing on the dock waiting for his new ship to sail.  He is not excited about his new adventure and we feel I imagine just as his family did on the dock.  But leave, he will, as he should, as we all do.  When the rope is lifted and the ship is free, we will watch as it becomes smaller and smaller against the horizon, until it is gone.  Perhaps we won’t wave but we will be grateful at having him in our lives for as long as we did.  I suppose he felt like Orion to me, always there, constant.  But even stars die eventually.

I will make the transition to understanding who he was in my life, and which of his characteristics I carry along the family line.  I will go on with my life in a new way. I will still be comforted by Orion, and the moon and the sun and the North Star and I will find my own way with those who love me.  “I think it’s going to be okay,” my brother told me.  I heard him but wasn’t too sure.  When I saw Orion last night, bright and shining, I knew he was right.

Circling Women's Stories for International Women's Day

In Writing a Woman’s Life, Carolyn Heilbrun wonders if a woman’s story can be told in isolation.  She writes, “I suspect that female narratives will be found where women exchange stories, where they read and talk collectively of ambition and possibilities and accomplishments.” (46)

I recently entered a painting in an International Women’s Day art show in Orillia, ON.  The show is in its third decade and is unjuried in order to create space for as many women as possible to express themselves.  The theme for the show this year is Connections.

As I viewed the exhibition I noticed several expressions of the theme.  There were many pieces that explored our connections to nature with trees, roots, webs, land, water and sky.  Some artists depicted the Earth as a woman.  There were many pieces that depicted the connection to the self and to family and other people, including hands touching, mothers and babies and family trees.  Connections to place and through time were also explored.  The power of connection for survival, growth, healing ad flourishing was expressed over and over.

Overall, the exhibition expressed to me, diversity, richness, abundance, possibility, security and the strength of many fibres, many voice.  In the stories that went along with the art, I found courage, freedom, strength, beauty, wonder, compassion, giving and nurturing life and magic rediscovered.

Some of the artists shared the stories behind their work at the Orillia Storytelling circle held in the same building.  I listened to the various artists telling the stories of the people, animals and land that influenced their work.  I wondered if it was true that women’s narratives will only be found where women exchange stories as Carolyn Heilbrun wrote.  It seemed that these women’s narratives would not be authentic without the stories of their connections being shared with other women.  I wondered if there was something alchemical about women telling and listening.  

Personally, I found it empowering to tell the story of my painting in a circle that had invited such stories.  There was no competition to find space in which to speak, no fight to be heard which is all too common in our society.  We each held a raven feather as we spoke, the sign that others would listen and wait their turn.  There was the inevitability that each turn would come as we moved around the circle.  No one who wanted to speak was left out.  

In viewing the art work in the exhibition, my mind moved even farther.  Perhaps our stories are not authentic unless they include the connections to all of life, to All Our Relations.  Perhaps the narrative of isolation is always a false narrative and our true story is only evident when it is told as part of the whole.  Perhaps each one's story needs to be heard and held within a circle to truly live.  Perhaps this is the new story. 

This is the painting that I entered.  Here is the story that went with it:  

Farewell:  This is the last goodbye between our Quarter Horse Robbie and two rescued Mustang mares, Majesty and Rain who had to part under sad circumstances.  I felt so connected to these horses and they to each other and I painted this picture to deal with the grief of losing them.  The only point of view that expressed this was the impossible, invisible, intimate one of being between the mares as they are reflected in Robbie’s eye.

Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1988)Writing a Woman’s Life.  New York: