Empty Nest

You know, I thought I was prepared. I knew it was coming, had indulged in a little weep, and set my face looking forward. Turns out I was fine until my son waved to me from the van containing his furniture. He knew I would be standing at the kitchen door waving, and he turned to wave back. It is one of those snapshots of an instant in time that will stay in your mind always. Then the flood waters rose.

It was one of those moments when you realize that a page in the book of life has turned in preparation for a new chapter. It is hard to explain to your sons sometimes, why it is that you are so emotional. I said that I wasn't unhappy, just sad, if that made sense. Son: Mom, I"ll still be close by. New daughter: Yes, totally. Bless.

The difference though, is that in this moment they are completely in the present and looking forward. For me, it is a kaleidoscope of millions of moments from the past.

 Holding children in your arms, carrying them in your body.

Watching your parents holding your babies.

Dr. Dentons and bedtimes and stories.

First days at school.

And suddenly here you are, in this moment; when this part of your work is finished, and your last chick leaves the nest, fully fledged, an adult (or reasonable facsimile of), and you just hope that you have been enough and done enough for them to be successful in this next step of their journey.  It is a big moment, a moment of mourning and joy, that is overwhelmingly emotional for a mother and may result in a few tears on the chest of said child. I think it is a deserved rite of passage to be allowed to a mother.

I just got a bit spoiled because my last child leaving home has been here a little longer than some. We passed beyond a mother to child relationship, into one between a mother and grown, mature son, who just happened to still live at home, and it gave me the added gift of time and proximity, the loss of which is acute. 

I always thought that at this somewhat advanced age, I would feel wise and confident in myself and abilities. Well...still waiting, and not at all assured that this will happen. I guess every generation feels like the world is changing too quickly and in ways that they don't understand. I am glad that I have wise and loving children that help me interpret our changing world and its technology. Who knew that you would need lessons to use a phone, write a letter or watch a movie without messing up the devices now used for these things. 

So now my sons have sailed the mine-filled seas of relationships and are settled and happy.  I can dry my tears, although chances are there will be more, and look not at the ones who have left, but at the ones who now will fill my nest in a different way; beloved new daughters and grandchildren.

And I guess maybe I don't have to know a lot of things, I just have to be here and love them. 

Looking for Balance

As November progresses, the brilliant colours of earlier weeks are now faded and on the ground. Bright hours have been replaced by days on end of lowering skies. It is dismal outside and I feel dismal inside. I struggle to find an emotional equilibrium, feeling just a moment away from the scales of my inner balance tipping. It doesn't seem to take much; a photo, a memory, a song or a word. 

In the spring we look forward with anticipation of light, shoots in the ground and buds on the trees, forgetting the cold and the dark. In the autumn I think we are more aware of the duality of the seasons. We are leaving a time of fullness and colour, light and plenty, to enter a time of death and cold and darkness. As I walk I am aware of the contrasts.

The trees now naked show the beauty of their form.

However the destruction by time, disease and weather is also revealed.

The floor of the wetland can now be seen through the dying reeds revealing turtle and muskrat paths, and white-throated sparrows feeding beneath the boardwalk.

It also reveals skeletons of trees lost to the wetland.

But other dead trees provide food and habitat and the opportunity for sightings such as this pileated woodpecker; exciting on a gloomy day.

Seasonal waterfowl are gone, but mallard duck remain and entertain.

Canada geese fly in formation preparing for migration, but also rest in unusual places like the roof of this factory by the canal.

Even the open canopy does not reveal a bright sky,

but below is exposed a glorious fall of bittersweet.

This extraordinary support system is revealed,

as well as the damage done by river and season.

The view at the dam is stark, yet beautiful; calm and serene, yet active and turbulent. A perfect duality.

The river manages to be both at the same time, but I can't seem to manage this. I feel a deep joy observing my grandson sleeping, and an equally deep sorrow as my brother succumbs to dementia. My heart is full to see my sons happy with the wonderful daughters they have brought into my life, but I feel an equal terror for their future when I watch the news. An eternal see-saw of emotion. The Japanese have a more balanced view and the phrase for this is, Mono no aware. It is an eighteenth century philosophy which accepts beauty in the awareness of the transience of things, but having a gentle kind of sadness at their passing. I am not there yet.

I read an interesting post on Facebook about having an anchor spot. What they described was a place in nature somewhere, where you went daily and just spent time being quiet. I realized that I had established several places like this already. While a slightly broader interpretation of the post, one anchor spot I have is my porch which is surrounded by the habitat that I have created there. I sit and watch the birds and animals and plants and it is peaceful. The path is another spot. While the locations may vary, I focus entirely on my environment and take in its details, and breathe. I also have an indoor spot, the couch. This may sound odd, but this elderly couch was my mom's, and it is comforting to sit on it. From there I can watch my yard and its inhabitants through the window. There is also in this room, a beautiful side table that was my grandma's and a loveseat that I made using chairs that were my great grandmother's. 

I guess it is a place of the present and the past, as well as warmth and safety. I realized too, that I have anchor moments;  like when I lay my head against the heart of one of my sons, when I hear my husband's voice, when my daughter holds my grandson or when another daughter gives me a hug. Anchor points; moments, places and people, where I can recover balance, even if it is short-lived, it is long enough to take a breath.

We Will Remember

My mom was born in 1917 in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Her father, Pte. Patrick Downey, was overseas. He never came home.

These are my grandparents Elma and Patrick Downey, and my aunt Marguerite. It is the only photo that my mother had of her parents, and I was an adult before I saw it. The war that took Patrick's life, also left his wife destitute and unable to care for her daughters. The temporary solution of parting with them to the care of someone else, ultimately became a permanent break in the family causing a fissure so deep, that my mother and aunt rarely spoke of it and never knew their extended family. After my mother died, I began to look into her family tree. This is what I now know about my grandfather Patrick.

According to his attestation form, Patrick was born at the end of the century in Brigus, NFLD. At this time Newfoundland was a Dominion, a self-governing state of the British Empire, and not a member of Confederation. He was married and a coal miner in March of 1916, and was attached to the 193rd Nova Scotia Highlanders and assigned the regimental number of 901442. The medical section of the form told me that my grandfather was 5'6", weighed 145 lbs., had a fair complexion, blue eyes and brown hair when he enlisted.

This postcard was mailed to my mom's aunt in June of 1916 from Camp Aldershot where four battalions of the Nova Scotia Highlander Brigade and the Royal School of Artillery were being trained in preparation for trench warfare overseas, at a time when casualty tolls were reaching unfathomable levels. All the Highlander troops wore a Balmoral Cap with feathers. Lady Borden, wife of the Premier of Canada, awarded regimental colours to each Battalion, and the 193rd's royal blue was displayed as a blue feather on their cap.

Sir Robert Borden, the Premier of Canada, visited Aldershot on Aug.9th to see the troops. September 26th brought orders to prepare for departure and all leaves were cancelled,meaning many final farewells were never able to be said.

The nominal roll of the 193rd showed that the battalion embarked on Oct. 12, 1916 in Halifax aboard the HMT Olympic, White Star's ocean liner turned troopship, and older sister of the Titanic. I read statistics that showed that this particular voyage transported the highest number of troops, almost 6,000, of the entire war. The troops disembarked in Liverpool on the 18th of October and immediately traveled to Witley Camp in Surrey Hills.

When a call came for the immediate draft of 800 troops, the Nova Scotia Highland Brigade was disbanded and its members spread to other battalions. Patrick was sent for active duty on the front with the 42nd Battalion in the immediate shadow of The Battle of the Somme which had incurred unprecedented loss of life. While Patrick stares life on the front in the face, his salary of $1.10/day with a Separation Allowance of $25.00/mo. was forwarded to his wife and children to survive on. 

Patrick's war records show some things about his war experience, like when he received a gun shot wound to the face. I know he was sent to the 35 General Hospital in Calais. I also know he was evacuated to the 2nd West General Hospital in Manchester, England and recuperated at the Military Convalescent Hospital in Woodcote Park, Epsom. 

I know from reading the War Diaries of the 42nd Bn. that Patrick fought as part of the 3rd Canadian Division CEF, in the 7th Canadian Brigade. In the 7th Brigade he fought alongside the Royal Canadian Regiment, the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry, the 49th Bn, Canadian Infantry (Edmonton), the 7th Canadian Machine Gun Company and the 7th Canadian Trench Mortar Battery. Patrick fought at Hill 154 and Vimy Ridge and he was at Passchendaele. It was a life of time spent away from the front training, and time at the front in mud and wire and terror while making sometimes only yards of progress forward.

These excerpts from the pages of the war diaries are for Sept. 29, 1918 and describe Patrick's last hours. It was the battle for the Canal du Nord and the war was only months from ending. The troops had encountered a belt of wire that they had not been found in reconnaissance. They became completely vulnerable and in a moment paid the ultimate price, Patrick among them.

Patrick is buried in Drummond Cemetery, Raillencourt, France. I will probably never stand at his grave but I was able to obtain a photo of his stone and a copy of his page from the Book of Remembrance in Ottawa. 

I am also grateful to have his Victory Medal engraved with his regimental number, name and battalion. A tangible reminder of my grandfather, but ironic because he never saw or touched it.

I have thought of my grandfather and the Great War in many contexts, probably most often in terms of loss. His personal loss was of course final and complete, but the ultimate scope was so wide. My grandmother not only her husband but her daughters; my mother, her parents and extended family. There are no stories and memories. My mother never heard his voice. There was, for my brothers and I, a lifetime of silence. 

This Remembrance Day however, my thoughts focused on the concept of  service which is integral to my grandfather's story. Patrick enlisted to serve his Queen and country. He died serving them. I have been wondering if "service" is becoming a lost virtue. Most families are a generation or two removed from family members who may have served our country, so the feeling of duty or giving service to our country is becoming diluted and less important. But even more, I feel like society as a whole is becoming less focused on serving in any context, and more on being served, in the sense of it being not only an expectation but a right. There seems to be a pervasive lack of respect for, and being shown to, those who serve us in large and small ways daily. Should we not be grateful for and to them? Should we not have a spirit of service to those we love or could help, whether in ways significant or less so? I guess too, it occurs to me that not only is this a disturbing trend as a society at large, but it also raises the possibility that the service that my grandfather has given may be diminished because it will not be seen as valuable, and respected. I hope this will never be true.

Thank you for your service Grandfather. I will remember.  

 

On the Sunny Side of the Street

This morning the sun was shining encouragingly, the dog was sound asleep in his basket and the housework assured me that it would still be here when I returned, so I felt released to venture out into the world. The spectre of great nastiness looms over the balance of the week courtesy of the weatherman, so the call of the wild feels urgent.

I decided to return to the Foulds Tract which is just across the road from the forest area that I walked yesterday. I drive past an unusual tree as I enter the parking area. Its leaves are down but it is covered in papery seed pods that look like little pine cones and individual pieces of which, litter the ground.

Each piece is shaped like a pumpkin seed and through its thin wall you can feel a small seed. These seed pods look similar to hops so this small understory tree is called Hop Hornbeam or Ironwood. It is a slow-growing tree which has the densest and hardest wood of any native species. Apparently "hornbeam" is a centuries old word and the "horn" is a reference to hardness, and "beam" is rooted in the German "baum" for tree. (It did seem important to know this.)

I had parked underneath another small deciduous tree, the Witch Hazel. When I was growing up, witch hazel was a bottle of clear liquid that my mom kept in the frig and dabbed on her face occasionally. I didn't know that it related to this  native tree that produces these unique flowers in the fall.

Those flowers become these seed pods, which after they dry, burst open and fling their contents some distance away. The branches of witch hazel have been used for centuries as the divining or dowsing rods to "water-witch", or locate water in an area. There is much speculation as to whether this is actually effective, but my husband remembers both his grandfather, and his uncle, doing this to find water for wells in rural Quebec. As to the mysterious bottle in my mother's refrigerator, the bark and leaves of witch hazel, when distilled, produce one of nature's oldest beauty products, a gentle and non-irritating astringent.

I turned my attention to the path which beckoned me to enter through a gentle archway of saplings to the sunlight beyond. It was astonishing how different this forest felt from the previous day's walk in the section of forest just across the road. It occurred to me that perhaps this lies in the difference in the composition of this tract. This forest area is primarily deciduous, so at this time of year it is open and spacious, whereas the other tract was more evenly balanced between conifers and hardwood trees, leaving large sections dark and hidden. 

The lower story of trees was mostly bare, while tall maples still glowed yellow above them, and towering oaks bloomed in gold well above the maples. It was the warmest of glows as the sun shone on the remaining leaves, suffusing the air with honeyed light and burnishing the carpet of fallen leaves below.

Every so often the expanse of tree trunks was broken by the presence of a  beech tree, that seemed to beam as though lit from within.

The pond reflected the blue of the sky while the leaves made the water at its edges seem as though it too had turned to gold.

In the midst of this deciduous domain is an Eastern Hemlock. One. It is a beautifully shaped tree with short almost delicate needles and tiny cones. It can evidently live for hundreds of years, and its boughs seem to reach out to cover one with a sense of with warmth and protection. I read that tea can be made with its needles, and should you feel so inclined, the the fresh shoots of its branches produced in the spring, are quite edible.You feel that this is a trunk that you can sit and lean against and ponder deep thoughts.

Amidst this reverie, I was also mindful of smaller details while I walked, like these puffballs, probably the largest number that I have seen on one trunk. 

and this fungus,

and these, which I believe are King Alfred's Cakes. These are so named because apparently King Alfred, whilst on the run from the Vikings, took refuge with a peasant woman, and she asked him to keep an eye on the bread that she was baking. His mind however, was on weightier matters, with the outcome being that the peasant woman's bread was burnt. Why one might connect these very small fungus balls with said "cakes" is a matter of conjecture.

This solitary wasp was climbing very slowly up this small sapling. If he hadn't been at eye-level I probably wouldn't have noticed him there. Although, since only the new queens survive winter, this might have been a she. The drones having, after mating, outlived their usefulness, die with the old queen and the new queens hibernate for the winter.

I was pretty sure that if I just waited long enough, somebody would pop out of this cavity. It was too high up to stick my nose in for a look, which might not have been a really good idea anyway. 

 I was completely alone in the forest on this glorious day, except for this little guy who came to see me off. It was silent and so completely peaceful, and while I always enjoy time spent in the woods, this walk, in this place, on this particular day, had an almost spiritual feeling. I came away renewed, cleansed of care and so blessed by the beauty of this place. I don't know why this specific time was different, but I think this is what Shirin Yuko is about. The forest bath; complete immersion in the place and the moment.

And I am grateful.