Facing Old Age - forebodings about my grandmother

My mother, having lost both of her parents many years ago, gets very frustrated when she feels my father's family takes theirs for granted. My dad's dad passed 5 years ago, at a good age, in a good way. In spiritual terms, it was a powerful death - he went knowingly, and gracefully. That didn't make it much easier mind you, to lose someone as strong and influential to our family as he was.

My grandmother changed when he died. She had to, being on her own for the first time in her entire life. Over 80 years of living under her father and husband's rules. Now she lives according to her values. Since then, she has gathered her whole family around her twice (no easy feat, believe me), and has continued to go on yearly trips to Mexico with her four children. She is fiercely proud of her offspring - all 23 of us, and takes every possible opportunity to brag about us.

Up until now, she has continued to live in her condominium, on her own. Before they moved to Canada, in my father's footsteps, my grandparents were very active, socially and politically in their community. They were very respected, and always involved. When they came here, it was to a different life. They learned some English (more than they let on) and made some friends, but mostly lived within their four walls and a small community of Mexican ex-pats.

Creating Space for Anxiety

I was introduced to the idea of "holding a space" for someone else when I first began my internal explorations, and I found that I was already doing it quite naturally. Those of us who people call good listeners do it without even knowing we're doing it half the time. Things got more interesting for me when I started to learn to hold a space for myself. Have you ever tried this? It's quite amazing. During the course I was taking at the time, we were asked to "stay with our feelings" no matter how uncomfortable. We learned to be, and to give ourselves the time that nobody else can give us. And the amazing thing was to actually feel my emotions and feeling moving and shifting around, and to realize that they are not static, unless we make them that way.

That experience, of holding a space for myself, has stayed with me, and has become a regular personal practice. Most of the time, going about my day, worrying about lessons and assessment techniques, and what to make for dinner, I would forget about it. Life just gets lived sometimes. But, each time I have sought emotional support from another, it is a practice to which I have returned. And it has been invaluable during my illness.

In Montessori, as in chaos theory, we describe it as observing the observer. David Bohm, physicist and philosopher, calls it suspending a reaction, and in his book about dialogue he talks about literally suspending a thought or a reaction - to see it hanging there in front of you so you can better assess it before you respond to whatever triggered it. Whatever you call it, however you describe it, it's a powerful thing. It has been a powerful a tool that I use in order to help myself be more open and gentle in relationships of all kinds. Between friends, family, students... doesn't matter. In education, it's a tool to allow a clearer vision of the child.

No Soy de Aqui - farewell, Facundo

No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá
no tengo edad, ni porvenir
y ser feliz es mi color
de identidad 

His most famous words will live on.

I'm not from here, I'm not from there
I have no age, no future
And being happy, is my colour
Of Identity

Poignant. Simple. True.

The news of his death just got to me this morning, but it happened a few days ago. I can't call myself a fan perse, because his music was part of the landscape. As much as the Popocatepetl or the Bullfighting arena. It was just there. Part of the general culture that surrounded my early years. His voice followed us North, along with my father's passion for music and his country, where Facundo Cabral was exiled from his native Argentina; Mexico lindo y querido.

"I love life so much because it cost me so much to enjoy it," he told The Associated Press in an interview in 2008.
"From the cradle to the grave is a school, so if what we call problems are lessons, we see life differently," he said. (from the CBC report on his murder)

Cabral, writer, musician, exile, widow, survivor, wrote so clearly and simply that his words became part of the tapestry of life throughout Latin America and rippled outwards to the rest of the world. I never realized how much of the background music of my life was written by him until today, when I looked him up. So many voices took up his words, and his words are so easy to own.

Altered Relationships - keeping isolation at bay

I met my rehabilitation case worker from the insurance last week, and she echoed what all my doctors are telling me. Getting out of the house and keeping social connections is extremely important to my recovery.

Relationships are crucial to our lives because we are inherently social beings, and I have to alter my relationships so that they still work and work to support my health rather than deplete it. This is a tricky thing.

I see everything in life as an opportunity and a series of choices. I therefore see this illness, in relation to relationships, as a great opportunity to really live according to my own priorities. I have a limited amount of energy, so how I choose to spend it is crucial to my emotional well-being. Coffee with a friend trumps doing the dishes. But I can't go out for coffee every day. Every other day should suffice... :)

The self-help course I'm taking is focusing on relationships this week, and how we of limited energy and horrifically sensitive nervous systems find that they can be a source of tremendous support or tremendous stress, depending on various factors. Negative relationships are a real drain of energy, and aggravate all our symptoms. The leaders of the course suggest a few things to make sure our relationships are supportive. I want to share them, because I think they are really important and valuable, and make so much sense. Plus, they got me thinking... this is really good advice for everyone, not just the chronically ill!

1 - Triage - cull the relationships which are not necessary and are not rewarding, cultivate those which are. So hard at first, but gets really easy once you get used to it.

2 - Changing how socialization occurs - perfectly logical, but not so easy to do, changing one's habits. Good thing I'm adaptable :)

3 - Acknowledge, accept responsibility and show appreciation - I think you will agree I'm pretty good with this.

Cars 2 - Big Rant

Warning: Ranting and spoilers below! 
If you are seeking peaceful thoughts and insight, stop here. Really. I'm pretty pissed, and I'm letting it out here so I don't have to hold it in with my son around. Also, if you don't want to know about what happens in Cars 2, don't read on.

First off, the movie theater is in a mall. Malls are not so good for me. Between the lights, the people, the noise, and everything that is painstakingly designed to attract your attention so you'll buy it, malls are like my own personal hell.

Secondly, seriously people, it's a movie theater, not a nightclub. Why the flashing lights and loud music? If I wanted flashing lights and loud music, I'd be down at the... oh wait... I don't even know what nightclubs exist anymore... because I don't go to nightclubs anymore! And I don't think I would, even if I wasn't sick. But apparently, now all one needs to do to get their fix of crazy dizzying lights, huge excitable crowds (although it wasn't so bad at the time we went) and really bad deafening music, one need only go so far as the nearest neighbourhood movie theater.

So on to the movie. We love Cars. My whole family does. My parents, my son, my nephews - even my niece tolerates it. It's a great family movie. My son does not often want to go to the movies, so my mom and I were really excited to go with him. Thank goodness I had a bit of warning when his friend's Mom told me this afternoon that it didn't feel like a children's movie to her, and that it is very different from the first one. Boy was she right.

What exactly does Cars 2 have to do with Cars? Not much. There is some continuation of characters. And that's about it. The rest is more like Mission Impossible or the Bourne movies, or any James Bond movie than any children's movie I have ever seen in my life - and I've seen plenty.

As my son said, it's really weird how they open the movie in the middle of the ocean with cars we don't know. The opening reminded me of the Bourne Identity: close-ups of crashing waves in the middle of the ocean on a dark night, the camera tight into the water so you can almost feel the motion, especially in 3D. And then as it went on, it was just like the beginning of every James Bond movie where the spy we are not familiar with makes a major discovery and is promptly killed by the bad guys in a deliberate and torturous way. That's right. In the first scenes of the movie, a spy car is killed by bad cars. Not only killed, but ambushed and then crushed - his shell put on display for all to see. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!  WHY?!?!?!?!?!?

Me, Disabled?

I told my son's stepmom I got a handicap parking pass. She laughed. I laughed with her. The very thought of me, in my cute little blue car, looking as young and healthy as I do pulling into a handicap spot was just funny. Really really funny (perspective: I've been carded 3 times in the last 6 months).

But here's the thing. I do need the permit. And I do use it, when I need to. I don't keep it on the dash - it's hidden away in my purse - and I don't pull it out if there are alternatives. But there are times when using the handicap spot makes the difference between making it home to preemptively rest, and making it home to crash. Which in turn makes the difference between a good couple of days, and a couple of days of immobility.

I may laugh at the fact that I have it, and that I use it, but I have come to understand that there is no shame in seeking any support society is able to offer, even if it is in this form.

It took me about 6 months of this illness to finally ask my doctor to fill out the necessary forms, even though the first book I read recommended getting one as soon as possible. That's how long it took me to accept that I needed the assurance of being able to park reasonably close to my destinations. It took many incomplete trips to the library and a few really difficult afternoons following extra long walks. It took a great big swallow full of pride. I had to change the way I see myself and the seriousness of my illness in order to give in and apply for the pass.

Back Home and Recovering

Well, I did it. I went camping. I packed up all the stuff, and with lots of help loaded everything into the car.

The family we go with every year are some of my oldest friends - she was one of my best friends when he became my first boyfriend, and I was one of their bridesmaids when they got married close to 15 years ago. My son falls between their elder daughter and son in age, and gets along really nicely with both of them. We may not see each other all that often, but they are definitely the kind of people I could call on at any given moment, and on whom I can count for unconditional support, and I'm pretty sure they feel the same way about me.

We started camping together again 5 years ago, with a 4 year old and a 3 year old. Since then, every year in different combinations with different groups of people, we have gone out to the same lake, and it's something my son and I look forward to and enjoy tremendously.

This year was the first year we've had no rain. Lots of sunshine, and stars. No rain. It was amazing.

We go to a place on the Canadian Shield, so we get rocky crags, mixed forests, and marshes. It's gorgeous. It's a land-locked lake, small enough to canoe across the longest part in a couple of hours, and there are no motor boats allowed - except for park staff emergency and maintenance vehicles, which we rarely see or hear. We also stay in the walk-in sites, so we are away from car traffic as well. For three or four days, we use our feet and canoes to get around, and a children's wagon to transport all the gear around. Every year we have encountered the usual mix of "domestisized" Canadian wildlife - racoons, loons, chipmunks and loads of bugs.