I relocated this morning to the dinette table, it offers better lighting and an easier typing setup. Except, hmmmmm, it’s within earshot of a clock, a ticking clock.

I hate, hate ticking clocks.

I don’t use the word ‘hate’ lightly. In fact, I don’t think I would use it for almost anything or anyone. To me it is such a powerful word, one which conveys an absolute disdain for the existence of something and deeming its creation a failure of humanity or the universe, whoever was responsible.

Anyway, I hate ticking clocks.

The sound almost gives me palpations.

A few years ago I had eyed a lovely, soundless, tick-less clock at IKEA, very reasonably priced, less than $20 for sure. I thought, ‘yes, I am going to replace this bastard.’

But when it came time to make the purchase the fancy clock, I couldn’t do it.

I just couldn’t. I wanted to, I did, but I couldn’t.

Here’s why.

The ticking clock still works. My mother, my grandmother, neither of these incredibly women would ever have replaced something that was working with something new. This would have been an unnecessary expense, worse yet; it would have been solely for the purpose of bringing about more comfort.  

Getting rid of the ticking clock, I knew, was solely to make me more comfortable.

Timeout: I have to move, sorry, pause, back to the couch. This ticking will drive me insane. (I know, I know, you don’t know that I stopped writing to change seats; I’m simply being honest about my process.)

Okay, I’m back in my previous spot. Lovely.

Change is awful isn’t it, ha, ha? I laugh. It isn’t, not for me, I like change, but I’m also human, which makes me a creature of habit.

All people are creatures of habit, who, generalizing here; to some extent or another often take the path of least resistance. Much like water, it is can go around the rock; why would it choose to dam up against its edge, waiting millennia until it borrowed a hole through it? It wouldn’t, it doesn’t.  

Habits are important, absolutely, because they create predictability, sometimes efficiency, they can help amateurs turn into masters. Habits create a rhythm in life and that rhythm can be of great use.

But they are also a dangerous thing.

Think about it, who is hungrier for greatness, the master or the amateur?

When we master an environment, we’re at risk of becoming complacent. We risk stalling. We can slide into autopilot, where we mighty lose our advantage, the momentum we’ve gained.

Comfort is a tempting friend, but not one that leads to change.

Change comes from a place of extreme discomfort.

Our wisdom and mastery, unless they are being challenged and sharpened, will naturally dull.

That is because the world, life, is not static. Things keep moving forward and unless we are in the practice of pushing against the outer edges of our dreams, our imagination, or our expertise, we’ll find ourselves swimming in an ever shrinking pond.

So the clock remains.

It drives me crazy, but it is a daily reminder of where I’ve come from.

The clock humbles me.

My childhood was materially poor. Very poor. As a child however, I didn’t feel that, because I’m not sure that children ever do. Except on a few occasions, when I knew, there were things I couldn’t have. Although I don’t think I understood why I couldn’t have them, just that I couldn’t, nor could I ask for them.

One memory of that awareness has stayed with me. Clear as day.

I must have been in about grade four, in Canada only two years maybe. We were a family of seven.

Warning…….

I’m going off on a tangent. Skip ahead if you like. The minimum wage at the time was $5 per hour. (Just think about that for a moment, sorry, I had to look that up and now I’m going to go down this rabbit hole a bit. It’s now $11.95. Thirty years later! 30! Let’s be generous and call that 2.5X the amount before. What do you think has happened during this time with respect to the price of goods, housing, food? Do you think in 30 years the price of a home has only increased by 2.5 times?

Sorry, I’m about to go off on another tangent about public policy, poverty, the need for good data, etc. Actually, let me make this easier for you if you don’t think that kind of stuff. (Mine is a mind that is an expanding sponge, I try to learn something, several somethings every day, I love it – anyway). Skip the next two paragraphs if you like.

I did a quick google search; there is an interesting archived page on the Statistics Canada website called “Prices over the decades”. This page turned into the “Canada Year Book”, described as “Presented in almanac style, the 2012 Canada Year Book contains more than 500 pages of tables, charts and succinct analytical articles on every major area of Statistics Canada’s expertise. The Canada Year Book is the premier reference on the social and economic life of Canada and its citizens. Notes: This publication has been discontinued as of April 2013. The last issue of this publication was November 2012.The Canada Year Book 2006 to 2012 is available online in html and pdf formats. The Canada Year Book Historical Collection features digital year books from 1867 to 1967.”

I stopped there, the google searching. One could follow the breadcrumbs indefinitely and lose precious writing time. I must protect my writing time. I do wonder if we (Canada) have continued to gather these statistics in a meaningful way. Probably not. Sigh. Another failure of leadership. Yes, this is the fault of leadership.

Leadership is a crown and a cross.

A very heavy weight on one’s shoulders that must be carried on behalf of others. (I’m not trying to be disrespectful with respect to the Bible or religion, quite the opposite.)

Leadership comes from the verb, ‘to lead’, defined online as “cause (a person or animal) to go with one by holding them by the hand, a halter, a rope, etc. while moving forward”

My point is that it’s very meaning comes from “holding someone by the hand… [and] moving forward.” Is there any higher calling than that?

We’ll come back to this another time.

TANGENT OVER…….

Okay back to the story, sheesh, if you’ve stayed with me through that, well done. The mind does wonder, all of our minds wonder, but when the strolling is written out like this, you begin to see just how much so. (Never end a sentence with a preposition, ha, look at me, I’m doing it, breaking the grammar rules – badass writer).

The memory…..

Chrissy had a Minnie Mouse sweater. It was beautiful. I think it was white, jersey material, long sleeves, cuffed around the wrists. Minnie’s huge smiling face covered the entire front. It was clean, without holes, Chrissy’s size.

Even today, I can see the sweater in my mind’s eye. That article of clothing became a visceral memory.  (Not sure if I am using that word correctly, visceral – I just googled how to use it in a sentence – this looks right, but I could be wrong. Forgive me, the copy editors will correct it one day. Ha, look at me, talking about Copy Editors, LOL. Love it.)

Every time she wore her Minnie sweater to school I found myself admiring it. I was filled with envy. That sweater was unattainable to me. I would never have something so wonderful.

That is because, in my house, we got our clothing in two ways.

Most often, clothes arrived in large garbage bags that were emptied onto the living floor for us, three daughters, to frantically sort through, grabbing at whatever caught our eye. It was a race. You’d see a pattern you liked and yank it out of the pile. It would go behind you. This would continue until everything was segregated and before any of us could really look at what we had gathered. Left over were the things no one wanted.

Then we’d start examining our stash. It was thrilling to be honest. We weren’t close in age or size, so that made a difference. One by one we’d take our items and examine them. ‘Oh, okay, this pattern I decided I liked in a frenzied microsecond turned out to be a skirt’, so the thinking went. ‘I hate skirts, plus it’s four sizes too large and the button is missing,’

“Who wants this?” I’d shout out, displaying my item, like an auctioneer.

My two older sisters would look up from sorting their own piles. If only one wanted it, easy, I handed it over. If both wanted it, well, strongest would be the victor.

Sometimes there were tears, a punch or two was thrown, and our mother was called in to intervene.

Sorry, just stopped typing for a few minutes as I broke out in laughter. It’s all true, so true. Now, thirty years later it’s funny too.

The sorting, wheeling and dealing, and negotiations would continue until everything was with its new and rightful owner.

Thus, you understand, my awful envy, and desire for that Minnie Mouse sweater. Those garbage bags never had things like that; they never had fun characters or cool things off TV.

When I look at my childhood pictures I see a child, smiling, because I was always smiling, no matter what’s happening (story for another day), wearing ill-fitted, dull clothes.

It sucked, there, I said it.

What I enjoyed least was when I could remember how something arrived in the garbage bag, was worn by one sister, then the other, and then it came to me.

Uuuuuuh, by then, it was so washed out, stained, stretched, pilled. I could have been wearing a potatoe sack, which might have looked better.

The nice clothes we had, the very few, they were saved for church on Sundays and special occasions.

Man, I got the shit end of the stick as the youngest daughter. After me were the boys, and much younger, so they didn’t have to worry about being the millionth person to wear something.   

The other way we got clothes, and these sometimes looked better and were better fitted, was on our birthdays. My mom would take us to Value Village and we’d get $5. We could buy anything we wanted. Remember, this was a long time ago, long before Value Village was chic and had the audacity to sell used jeans for $10, seriously.

If however the $5 was spent on toys, my wardrobe would stay as it was. I actually didn’t really care, I was still in elementary and not at all self-conscious. I looked like a lot of the kids I suppose, except the few whose parents could afford better.

But this was hard my older sisters, teenagers, desperate to belong to some peer group. As soon as they could they got part time jobs and started buying clothes. Or they’d get hand-me-downs from friends which were always nicer than the garbage bag clothes.

I can remember the first piece of new clothing I got, that I got to choose from a store. I was about 14 or 15 years old. It was a pair of Levi jeans. They were beautiful and they were no one else’s but mine.

 My mom bought them for me.

If I remember correctly, they cost a fortune. Every time I think of those jeans now I am deeply, deeply ashamed of myself. I can’t begin to understand what they cost my mother. I don’t just mean financially. She was so happy to see me so happy, but there’s no way, no way, she bought those jeans (I hope my memory is wrong, but that is rare, I think they were like $70, I’m nauseous just thinking about that) without foregoing the most basic things for herself.

I’ve wondered over the years too, if she knew already she was sick and might die. Or if she knew she was dying. If that visit to the mall, to Polo Park on the second floor, close to the centre escalators, for me to pick those jeans, the way I thought other teenagers did, if that one moment was her way of giving me a glimpse of life outside of poverty.

To light a fire under me, so when the time came, I’d remember that feeling of having enough to make a choice.

Was it a lesson?

Maybe it was. Maybe it was her way of saying to me, ‘remember, it won’t always be this way, it doesn’t have to be. If you fight, if the stars align, if you find people along the way that life you up, if you match your efforts to the goodwill of the universe, if you invite and allow others to help you, if you are courageous enough to bend, but never break, things might be different.’

That is after all ‘the dream’ newcomers are sold on.

I don’t much care for clothes now. I mean I try to dress nicely, to be clean and well kept, but I don’t obsess and I almost never go to the mall.

Last summer I went for a walk with my cousin. We were chit chatting as always, two peas in a pod since we were very little. Out of nowhere she says to me…

“Those sandals aren’t the right size for you.”

“What do you mean, they fit just fine.” I looked down.

“No, they’re too large. Look, push your foot forward where your big toe is supposed to be. See, you have too much space in the heel.” She was very matter of fact about it.

“No, they’re the right size, they’re comfortable.” I disagreed.

“I don’t think you’ve ever wore shoes that were the right size.”

“Hey, there’s room in case my foot grows.”

“Are your feet still growing?” she laughed.

“I suppose not.”

“You know you can afford proper fitting shoes.” She was right, I could.

“Yah, yah, I like these, it’s easier to slide my feet in, to kick them off. What does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. But wouldn’t it be nice if they fit properly.”

“I don’t know. Not sure I’d notice the difference. I honestly don’t care.” I changed the subject and we kept walking.

What can I say; I almost have an aversion to spending money on myself, for anything new and anything expensive. Good shoes are expensive.

I recently told a friend, ‘you can take the girl out of the North End, but you can’t take the North End out of the girl’.

The North End is one of the purest places in our community.

It is where my life in Canada began.

I can’t help but think that some parts of its simplicity stem from poverty and the hardships. Suffering rids us of our fake-ness, our arrogance, the stupidity of our ego. It’s not so easy being pompous and proud when you are poor. For one, you’re far too busy surviving to indulge in yourself. And if you’re fortunate to be doing relatively well, you’re likely to be busy helping others make ends meet.

Where people need people, there is community.

Where hardship is real, people are often real.

Where people are real, anything is possible.

Off to make breakfast and get dressed. Every day the sun rises earlier, even if by just a minute or two. It’s wonderful really, the lengthening days.

Oh, sorry for the crap formatting of the blog. Listen, it took me hours to figure out how to post, I can do it now, and I know there are many fancy features, so many nice things one could do. I’ve added it to my to-do list to watch some videos on editing WordPress websites – ha – I secretly chuckle, I always say…. “If it makes it to my to-do list, it goes there to die.” Ha ha ha ha. I’ll try, I promise, to improve your ‘user experience’ but I sincerely hope the content is enough to bring you back, versus catchy fonts, indentations, properly aligned paragraphs. That’s just pretty packaging, the real gift is inside.  

I lost track of time and had to run to the bridge. Made it for sunrise. Day 3, awesome.

As before, I walked home along the river as far as I could. I had an imaginary conversation with my eldest daughter.

‘I walked on the river again.’ I said to her.

‘Nice’, I imagined she’d say, not taking her eyes off the screen. Morning TV time on the weekends is precious.

‘What will I do when the ice melts?’ I asked my imaginary friend.

‘It’s easy, just get a boat mama.’ That’s exactly what she would have said. The simplest possible answer.

I smiled ear to ear, beaming with pride. My clever child, she’s already so strong, so resilient. It wasn’t a real conversation I know that, but I’ve had many with her that went exactly like that.

I waved to someone on the other side of the river, standing on the bank. It was clear they were trying to figure out how to climb down but then changed their mind and walked away. I eyed a good spot and kicked my boot into the wall of frozen earth and prairie wheat grass. My boot slipped, instinctively my hands flew forward and I caught myself inches before a possible face plant into the snow. I laughed.

I managed it on the second try and made my way through the deep snow back onto the path.

My imaginary friend was so wise.

When the ‘ground’ you walk on disappears, you really have two choices. If the path you’ve travelled is one that’s given you a unique perspective, one that’s felt impossible and yet here you were conquering this feat, you can either leave it for something easier, or, you can choose to find a different way to keep moving forward.