Thanks and See You In 2017

When Boxing Day rolls around this month I will have been posting to this blog for six months. Amazing! That's one post every week for six months, although to be honest I think I missed one week. Some posts have hit a chord with people and been read by many, others seem to fall on their faces and get kicked to the curb. I'm still trying to figure out what makes one post appealing and the other not and will be doing some homework over the holiday season on that topic. To everyone who reads a post of mine, thank you and to everyone who reposts or forwards a post or shares in any other way, a BIG thank you and a sloppy kiss to be collected on at a later date.
A very small group of people have managed to make comments on my blog site and I really appreciate that. Some have commented on Facebook when I repost my blog there. I love to get comments and hope that going forward I might receive more.  If there is a topic that you would like to see me write about please share that with me. I'm always looking for inspiration.  Anyone that knows me well knows that I like to talk and I have an opinion about everything, well, almost everything. Politics are not my strong point but I will still try to give it my best effort.  It can be difficult when sitting down at the computer to come up with an idea that I feel someone might want to hear about so shout it out if you have a suggestion.  You can send an email to me at whatfayesaid@gmail.com.

Special Delivery
by Jill Charuk

I write for my own enjoyment and as practise, leading to what, I'm not sure yet but the more readers I get the happier I am so please read and share as much as you want. Signing up on the blog site with your email is the easiest way to get my posts delivered to your inbox every Thursday evening.

Light Touch by Jill Charuk

Right now is a busy time for everyone so I am taking advantage of that and this will be my last post until the New Year. Now you have one less thing on your "to do" list, cross off  'read Faye's blog this week', and I can go get drunk! Happy Holidays to you and talk at you in 2017.

Christmas Magic Memories

There we are, two quintessential little girls of the Sixties. Drooping knee socks, scuffed Mary Janes, hair curled just for the occasion, sitting on Santa's lap. Oh, my. My  younger sister and I are maybe six and eight in this picture and we look pretty pleased with ourselves.  That was a big day, let me tell you. I have blurred memories of going to downtown Vancouver from our suburban home and standing in line at the Woodward's department store.  I think it may have involved a pancake breakfast, I'm not sure. A very big event for our family.  I remember the anticipation I felt in that line up, sucking on a candy cane to help the time go by. It was nerve wracking. Think of it...Santa! The jolly man himself.  I still believed in Santa at that time, I'm sure, so he was the real deal to me.   Some kids in line were crying, refusing to go near Santa. I think someone threw up. I was nervous but old enough to be over the fear of the red-suited gent. The expressions on the face of my sister and myself are ones of posed smiles without a shadow of panic. We were there to fulfill a purpose, getting our requests for Christmas presents across to Santa. It's all pretty bizarre when you think of it but when as a child you still believe it is so wonderful.  I think that's what makes us lie to our own children about the existence of Santa. We know there will be a hard fall when the truth comes out but we hate to deny them the wonder of that Christmas magic we remember.

Max and a buddy,
five years old.

I speak for myself here as I know not everyone shared the same Christmas magic that I did. Growing up, our family didn't have a lot of money for gifts but I have only good memories of Christmas, and I worked hard to pass along that experience to my own kids. We spoilt our children at Christmas because we could. Huge trees, lots of decorations, fat Christmas stockings and gifts. We had a big family meal on Christmas Day, with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents in attendance, often hosted at our home. The whole thing was a great deal of work but I loved the result. The magic of Christmas came back to me through the kids. I have a few pictures of my children on Santa's lap but I think that our youngest was never too happy about it so it wasn't forced. That event was probably my least favourite to orchestrate, the visit to Santa, so I was happy to drop it. I'd much rather be icing gingerbread men at home with my boys than waiting in line for an overpriced picture.

Now I am in between generations with Christmas. My children are grown but haven't any kids of their own. No little ones to lie to and spoil with presents, and there may not be. That's not my call.  I've scaled back the decorating and baking, doing just enough to make me feel it's Christmas. The tree is smaller, the stockings are gone, the gifts less. One year I gave up on gifts all together and just gave money to the kids, and told my husband not to buy anything for me but somehow that wasn't right, I had scaled it back too far. I'm trying to find the balance now in the new style of adult only Christmas that we celebrate. It certainly has its upside. No more shopping at Toy R Us (HUGE upside!), no late night gift wrapping sessions after everyone is in bed and I am exhausted. No more worrying if there are enough presents or the right presents or an equal amount between the kids.  No trying to put together complicated toy items while searching for the right batteries.  No dealing with at least one child who came down with a horrible cold or flu right before Christmas.

The motley Christmas crew, 1994

My sons, one of whom comes with a lovely girlfriend, and my nieces and nephews have grown into smart, funny and entertaining adults. I miss having Christmas with the parts of my family that I've lost through divorce and death but these young adults make up for it.  The families of my siblings are  growing through the addition of new partners, spouses and babies, and so my siblings and I can no longer all get together for one Christmas meal. Logistics won't allow.  This year as I decorate my tree and bake my gingerbread people I will think of them all. And I think also of the little girl I was in the red coat on Santa's knee, the bored teenager I became trying to get drunk at Christmas, the young wife trying hard to impress, the mother of two overdoing the whole business and the person I am this year at Christmas. I am so very grateful for the wonderful memories of Christmas that I have, the ones I have helped make and the ones yet to come, whatever they may be.

Gird Your Loins!

Stanley Tucci,
The Devil Wears Prada

A friend sent me a text the other day saying that she was about to gird her loins for a stressful upcoming event. I was delighted to see her use that particular phrase as it one of my favourites, probably makes my top twenty list, but it's rarely heard these days.  Growing up it was used around my house, introduced to me by my parents, but I doubt whether my children have ever used it or even know what the term means despite my usage of it. It has sadly fallen out of favour.  The phrase dates back from the bible when men were urged to gird themselves to get ready to run, fight or do heavy labour. This was usually achieved by a man pulling the front of his robe or tunic through his legs to the back and then wrapping two ends  around the front and tying them together in front of the hips. This also protected the manly bits, the loins, a tad more than the loose garment would.  Man up, get ready for battle! Gird your loins! Nowadays we are urged to put on our big girl panties and get the job done. Same idea but so much less oomph. I'd much rather gird my loins than put on some panties when I'm about to do battle, literally or metaphorically. Obviously gird is the root for  girdle, an undergarment that WOULD  provide loin protection in battle when you finally managed to get squeezed into it as opposed to the aforementioned panties!

Now this is protection!

The first time I can recall hearing the bible read aloud was in my public elementary school. I'm old enough to remember the days of the teacher reading a passage from the bible after the class had recited the Lord's Prayer. Every morning. My family is not religious and we didn't attend church so the reading of the bible was very exotic to me. I became fascinated with the language, not the actual stories or the intent but the language itself. I came across a bible at home when I was about ten or eleven and would stand in front of a mirror in private and practise reading the text aloud, playing teacher in my mind. All that "hath, thou and shalt" stuff, it was a foreign language that I could read! Fascinating. I would feel the same way much later, in high school when reading Shakespeare. The bible stories were so stern, so many admonishments, so much drama. The names were long, full of syllables that rolled off the tongue. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego are three that still spring to my lips whenever I want to summon them. I have no idea of their story, just the names remain.

My apologies to all that read and love the bible for its religious content, I mean no disrespect. But the language...it's so, well... biblical. An eye for an eye, the skin of my teeth, how the mighty have fallen,  they that take the sword shall perish by the sword, skin and bones. Awesome stuff.  At the same age I was reading the bible I was also reading novels voraciously, falling in love with the printed word and the worlds they created. My bible reading was short lived as I just couldn't get connected to the stories but my love of it's phrasing and vocabulary hasn't dimmed. And I know I'm not alone. One day years ago a friend was telling me about how angry she was with her husband over something. She was trying to find the right word to describe her emotion and she finally said that if she could have smote her husband on the spot she would have. Smote! Now there's a biblical word not used in everyday conversation anymore and I knew exactly what she meant. Her rage was so great she needed to reach back and find an Old Testament kind of feel to properly express herself.
The modern day evangelists are wonderful stage actors, in thrall to the dramatic language of the bible, it's rise and fall, it's thundering pronouncements, it's quiet beseeching. What actor wouldn't love these stories as their script?
So many phrases we use everyday have come from the bible, modernized to fit our speech patterns but the essential essence of them remains: forbidden fruit; go the extra mile; a drop in the bucket; a fly in the ointment; the blind leading the blind.  The list goes on. So though I am a heathen and my interest in the bible is strictly a selfish interest in its words and phrases I hope you won't judge me too harshly. If you do I shall have to gird my loins and prepare to defend myself.

Ageless

I have decided to become ageless from here on.  One of those big number birthdays is looming in the coming year for me and judging by the way friends and family have handled theirs I think it might be best to just skip this one.  What is it about the birthdays that end in a zero anyways?  We seem to make such a fuss about them. Are there birthday cards that say "Happy 59th!"?  No, but look for wishes for your 40th, 50th, or 60th and they abound. I had lunch with a long time friend the other day who has a sixtieth birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and when  I asked her about it she cringed and looked furtively around the restaurant. "Don't say that too loud" she whispered, concerned that someone who knew her might be within hearing. Hmm. It appears to be a thing to be dreaded so the best solution to the problem is to be ageless. If anyone asks me how old I am, and let's face it very few people do ask that question of me nowadays, I'll give them my year of birth and let them figure it out for themselves.
Many years ago I worked with a woman who belonged to the Kabalarians, the group that believes in numerology, mostly as it pertains to your name. Change your name, change your destiny is their philosophy. I asked her what her previous name had been and she told me she couldn't speak it. To say the name would be like putting a drop of black paint into a bucket of white, ruining the perfection of her life.  So that's the approach I am going to take, I cannot speak my age. It would be the drop of black in the beautiful white pool of my life.

Enigmatic....

My handsome husband is often taken for being ten years younger than he is so it is even more imperative for me to become ageless. I don't think I can peel ten years off my age but if I become ageless, it's simple, right?  I can hear it now..."Ted looks like he's fifty, how old do you think Faye is?" "Ageless." will be the response. I love it. It is said you are as old as you feel. Well, some days I wake up feeling thirty five, other days it's more like seventy or what I imagine seventy to feel like. So the concept of agelessness dovetails perfectly with that sentiment. My age will flow up and down with how I feel every day, never settling on any one number.  I'm going to have to work at a few things here, no dressing like my children's generation does, no dressing like my mother, just floating somewhere in between, careful not to chase the fads and trends. To be ageless I need to be able to be imagined in any era. I will listen to all kinds of music, get better at technology and read more classics, maybe try to rid myself of generational specific slang. Be enigmatic.
I feel better already about the coming year. When you are ageless you don't age.. obviously. I'm sure that's how it will work. I will just be perfectly myself everyday at whatever stage I am at. There will be some spoilsports, I know, people wanting to throw great globs of black paint into my bucketful of white but let them. We, the ageless are not bothered by such mean spirits. Birthdays can still be celebrated just without the counting of candles and the balloons with big numbers on them floating above my head. You are all welcome to join me in agelessness. As one of my yoga teachers often says, "experience what it's like to drop one of the labels that you carry around." I always think of the labels of mother, wife, daughter when he says that but dropping the label of age is even more liberating. Think of it. Ageless.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

The Wisdom of a Small Bear

"It was a blustery day in the Hundred Acre Woods". This is what  pops into my head as I lean into the wind, clutching at the collar of my coat to keep the cold air from forcing its way down inside. It pops into my head every time the wind starts to blow and hammer around the house like it did last night. It's from one of my favourite authors, A.A. Milne and his wonderful Winnie the Pooh books. I love Winnie the Pooh, not from the animated movies, as delightful as they are but from the books that I read as a child.  Those lovely, quiet books with their tales of friendship and adventure, and their simple pen and ink drawings by E.H. Shepard of the world of animal friends in the Hundred Acre Woods.

I was an avid reader early on in life and loved to get lost in worlds unlike my own, starting with Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat silliness, moving on to Winnie the Pooh and then to the Chronicles of Narnia. My trips to the library were some of my favourite times. My siblings and I were all readers, something my busy mother appreciated, so there were frequent trips to the library to stock up on the books that would keep us occupied and quiet.
The world of Pooh Bear was a perfect one, allowing Pooh to live in the present moment as we are always being told we should do. He had Piglet to worry for him, Eeyore to complain, Owl for wisdom, Rabbit keeping everyone in line,  Kanga to mother him and Tigger to be the wild child. All Pooh had to do was love everyone and be perfectly himself.  Christopher Robin, the little boy to whom Pooh belonged was the only real tie to the human world, a world viewed through the eyes of a child. He was the source of unconditional love for Pooh that I'm sure made Pooh the well-adjusted little bear he was despite being a bear of very little brain.

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it"
- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the Pooh

Now if that isn't a profound thought for a small bear, I don't know what is? How many times have you been carrying something inside that seemed so large and heavy but when you talked to someone about it it became quite a different thing, easier to manage, maybe really nothing at all. The world in the Hundred Acre Woods wasn't a childish and bratty world, it was one in which deep thoughts were expressed, the unknown was examined, answers sought and often there was no good resolution to a problem except to eat honey and drink tea until it passed. A good solid plan for most of our problems, I think.

"I am not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am might be lost."
-A.A. Milne, Winnie -the-Pooh

Many a yoga teacher or self help expert would be happy to have come up with that nugget of truth. Being lost doesn't bother Winnie the Pooh, he trusts in the world of the Hundred Acre Woods to help him find his way back. I need to remember that, it's not me, its just the situation I am in that has the problem.

Kanga and Roo

My lovely mother indulged me and made stuffed animals of some of the characters in the Winnie the Pooh stories. I received a bright yellow Pooh Bear in a small, red jacket, my younger sister got a shiny, pink Piglet, my older sister got the elegant Kanga and Roo, and Eeyore, well, he just hung out and bemoaned the situation. My brother was too old for stuffed animals at that point so Eeyore had to go it alone. But Eeyore understood, that had always been his lot in life.  Of all those stuffed toys only a moth-eaten and ratty Kanga and Roo has remained in my possession. I couldn't throw it away.

 Kanga sits on a shelf next to the animal friends of my sons, keeping up intellectual discussions with the ever thoughtful King Babar the Elephant.  Now there's a leader we could to look to for guidance right now!
And so, I am brought back to the problems of today, both in the world at large and in my own head. The wind continues to bluster, incomprehensible things continue to happen and answers don't seem right at hand but I think of  Pooh Bear and his friends and their simple wisdom and smile. Which on a miserable, wet and colourless day in November might just be the best thing I could do. That and have some tea with honey while I sit back and watch what unfolds.

"When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen."
- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh.

My thoughts exactly.

Sorry...

I noticed today that one of my recent blog posts had mysteriously disappeared from my site. I have republished it and in doing so it got sent out to my email subscribers again. Sorry to send a duplicate your way. Please ignore it if you have read it already or please enjoy if you haven't :-)  And if anyone knows why the disappearance might have happened I'd love to hear from you!  Thanks.

Who's Afraid?

Research has found that there is a gene for fearlessness. I don't have it.  There are people born to quake at the thought of climbing a stepladder and others who get excited about jumping off a mountain wearing a flying bat suit.  I'm the first kind and my husband is the second. Each side cannot understand the other. What my husband's type views as fun I can only view with dread and heart palpitations. I have never thought of myself as a very adventurous person. I am claustrophobic and I don't like heights which makes things like caving and rock climbing unappealing to me.  I am more the cerebral, bookworm, crossword doing type of person. My parents made sure I could swim, ride a bike and ice skate, but my hand eye coordination isn't great and I really don't trust the world to keep me safe so racquet sports and risky endeavours were out. I was okay with all that, safe and content in my small realm of non-adventurous things that I was good at and then I went and married an athletic, co-ordinated, thrill seeker. I've been out of my comfort zone ever since.
On our honeymoon, my husband and I were hiking through the Palm Canyons of Palm Springs on a beautiful sunny afternoon when Ted felt we should cross the stream and picnic on the other side.  He quickly leapt from rock to rock across the water, carrying our picnic basket and urging me to follow. Determined to impress my new husband I shook off my feeling of panic and leapt to the first rock. Success! By the third rock I landed poorly and plunged one leg thigh -deep into the water. Yup, that's the kind of gal I am. No mountain goat. Ted was good at hiding any dismay he may have had, it was our honeymoon after all.

Zip Lining in Mexico

When our two sons got old enough Ted finally had partners in crime for his adrenaline fuelled escapades. Dirt biking, downhill mountain biking, go kart racing, skiing, boogie boarding, roller coasters, scuba diving...all things I had no desire to participate in.  Events that involved either high speeds, confined spaces or heights were not on my bucket list. I'm not saying I didn't try, I did. I jumped off a three metre diving board holding my young son's hand but I wouldn't jump off the cliffs at the lake, I snorkelled but wouldn't scuba dive, I body surfed but couldn't boogie board, I aprés-skied but didn't ski. I squeezed myself into small helicopters and hung onto the seat as if it would save me but I wouldn't do the "doors off" helicopter trip. You get the picture.
 After going through cancer treatment at forty years of age my anxiety level was stuck on high for a few years and I couldn't bring myself to go very far outside my comfort zone. I was just happy to be alive and didn't feel the need for any adrenaline rush. Life calmed down as it does and I felt I could start to show my kids I wasn't a total scaredy-cat.  I rode my first roller coaster in my mid forties, I went tandem paragliding in Maui, zip-lining in Mexico where just viewing the amount of duct tape holding the equipment together was an adventure in itself. Hot air ballooning,  then challenge events involving climbing to the top of a telephone pole while harnessed and jumping off, trusting the belayers below to keep me safe. All of these things were small potatoes to my husband but he knew that for me each one was a big step and he was impressed that I tried.

On the Peak to Peak

After the kids left home it was up to me to be Ted's partner in adventure again just as in our earlier times.  So I continue to push myself out of my cozy nest and have recently gone whitewater river rafting (minimum age was 13 so I figured I could do it) and rode the Peak to Peak gondola at Whistler, which for someone who's feet tingle and sweat when faced with a balcony that is higher than ten floors up was an achievement. This past summer I agreed to get on the back of a motorcycle for a day so Ted could experience the fun of riding again.  Yes, he could have done it without me but he wanted me there and I went. It wasn't my idea of fun but I hung on and tried to trust in my husband to keep me safe and make a few marriage Brownie points while I was at it.

Get your motor runnin'...

 Ted recently blasted his way down the Sasquatch Zipline at Whistler, and that's never going to happen for me.  Nor will I be bungee jumping or sky diving, I don't have the gene, remember. Given the fear level I have to overcome to do what I do and the fact that Ted largely has no fear I think I am the braver one.  I still feel like a timid soul next to the daring of my husband but looking back on what I have managed to make myself do I am proud of my effort. Ted and my sons have pushed me to stretch myself and conquer my fears and I'm grateful for that. As they say, it's not the things you do in life that you regret, its the things you don't so I'm working on making the "don't" list a bit shorter. I still don't trust the world to keep me safe but I've come a long way from the little girl who took forever to learn to ride a bike because of a fear of falling.  So if you are like me and taking your first yoga class or guitar lesson or kayak trip gets your stomach in knots and your neck muscles feel like stone, have faith. You aren't less brave or less strong than the next person, you just don't have right gene and it's not your fault. But you can do it.

A Heart Breaking

He is sitting on a bench oblivious to the light rain coming down, he has no umbrella, not even a jacket. The bench he is on faces a small neighbourhood playground but there are no children in sight, the little park is empty.  He is a young man and he is alone. Suddenly his shoulders hunch and he drops his face to his hands, his body heaves with sobs. From where I sit in a warm dry car, a half a block away, the scene plays out in silence. My husband has pulled the car over to fiddle with something on his GPS  and is oblivious to the drama I am watching. 

We are in a very upscale neighbourhood of Vancouver, big expensive homes and tall, stately trees abound. The park is a triangular patch of green and I have often seen young children with their parents or nannies playing here. It's usually a happy place. Today in the rain I am watching a man's heart breaking. Every thirty seconds or so he grabs his phone, punches in a number, listens, speak a few words, most likely "call me" and hangs up. Then sobs anew. The cause of this distress could be many things, I know, but from where I sit and what I see it looks just like a breaking heart. The end of a romance, a young woman who will no longer take his calls.

My heartbreaks are long behind me. Over three decades of marriage have been put between me and this young man's kind of agony. That's more years than he has been alive I'm guessing but it's not hard to tap right back into what he is feeling. Once after the collapse of a romance I cried so hard in an elevator leaving the scene of the crime  that the people who got on the elevator with me were concerned enough to try and convince me to go home with them or let them call someone for me. I refused their good intentions and staggered out of the elevator to sit in my car and weep. It was just a heart breaking after all, nothing that required a hospital visit or a policeman. I could manage it alone. Just like the young man in the park, heartbreak seems best managed alone. Others just try to cheer you up or distract you from it. Some disparage the heartbreaker so as to make it seem for the best, and that's a difficult road to manoeuvre, that one. The fictional Bridget Jones sits home alone in her movie with a bottle of wine, her diary and her tears. I can identify with that. I rarely watch movies a second or third time but I have done so with Bridget Jones's Diary. I was Bridget Jones at times in my life and though it's a silly movie it has real moments that mirrored mine. And a happy ending which also mirrored mine. Thankfully.
Merriman Websters defines heartbreak as crushing grief, anguish or distress. But think of the word itself. Heartbreak. It's more than distress, it feels like the very centre of you is cracking apart. I think its a word that perfectly suits the feeling or event that it is describing. The good news is that hearts heal. I believe everyone needs some heartbreak in their life, it makes you resilient and compassionate. Its only when a person allows themselves to get overwhelmed by their anguish that nothing is learnt. Fear creeps in and the  heart shuts down. We all know someone who has sworn never to love again after a wrenching heartbreak. No one escapes the devastation , why would you want to? Heartbreak only comes from feeling something deeply and feeling its loss deeply as well. All those rich emotions are what make up a life well lived. It's not about the sights you've seen or the languages you've learned it's about the people in life that you've touched or been touched by. All our intense relationships with people, with pets, even with nature give us great pleasure, they round out our lives. They are what we are here for, to connect.  To avoid all that is to stay safe and keep heartbreak at bay but is that what you really want? We break, we heal, we live to love again.

Bridget Jones recovering from her heartbreak

The tear-stained Bridget Jones inside me raises her bottle of wine in salute to that young man on the damp bench. Feel the pain, cry the tears and pick yourself up and carry on. You're human, enjoy it.

A Tale of Two Cities

Memphis and Nashville, two cities in Tennessee both known for their musical roots. Memphis for the blues, Nashville for country.  They are only three hours apart by car on a major highway, similar in population but worlds apart in many other ways. I naively assumed before my recent visit there that they would be similar in feel just with different music. I did research on places to visit, hotels and restaurants and what to expect for weather but not on the demographics of the cities or their current state of affairs. I knew that Nashville was a huge tourist draw due to the popularity of country music, further enhanced by the popularity of the TV show Nashville but I knew very little about Memphis. My husband and I booked the trip and off we went to find out about Tennessee.

 We had a late night flight into Nashville and then rented a car the next day and drove to Memphis, arriving before dinnertime.  I had earlier looked into restaurants for dinner that Saturday night that might be on the cutting edge of the food scene in Memphis and couldn't find much right downtown so we headed to one about fifteen minutes away. The restaurant was quite new and funky, busy on a Saturday but not packed. When our waitress found out we were from Vancouver she stared at us in disbelief and asked sincerely why we would have come to Memphis. She lived there and didn't see its appeal. She went on to tell us that the neighbourhood we were in was on the edge of a revival but that it wasn't quite there yet. It was a gritty neighbourhood called Binghampton with a bad sense of self esteem but it was improving she assured us. Okay, then, no strolling the 'hood after dinner. We had already been warned by others who had lived in Memphis not to wander out of the tourist zone as it wasn't safe. Duly noted.

Beale Street at the corner of BB King Blvd,
Memphis

 Beale Street on a warm Saturday night is alive and kicking so we headed there. Three blocks of bars and restaurants downtown are turned into a pedestrian zone every evening with police cars parked at the ends and on the side streets. There is a strong and visible police presence in Memphis. The street scene was loud, busy, full of locals and tourists ambling up and down, dropping into bars to listen and drink, moving on and checking out the next one. Fun, crazy, entertaining.

The Civil Rights Museum was our main stop the next day. It is built around the preserved front of the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was shot and the room he stayed in is part of the museum tour. The museum is large, very well set up and sobering. It was information overload but we came out with a much better understanding of the Civil Rights movement and the role Memphis has played in it.  Memphis is about 64% black or African American and civil rights is an important part of the culture and history.... as is BBQ and fried chicken which we happily indulged in as antidote to the numbing story of slavery and oppression.

The following day we drove out to tour Graceland, Elvis's home. A ten minute drive away and another world apart. The visitors and staff there are largely white. It's billed as a "mansion" and I'd say that was overstating things. I'm not a huge Elvis fan but grew up with his music on the radio and his movies on TV so I could connect to what I was I seeing and hearing as I toured the house aided by the pre-programmed iPad and headphones I was given. The Elvis of Graceland is whitewashed and perfect and there is no mention of how he died and the toll his lifestyle and fame took on him. The bathroom where he died is obviously not on the tour, but he is a piece of Memphis history and it was worth seeing.

The Tiki style of the jungle room at
Graceland

Sunday and Monday evenings on Beale Street show another side the city. Some of the bars and clubs are closed, the crowds thin out, the tawdriness shows. We got treated to a young man projectile vomiting as he walked down the middle of the nearly empty street. He didn't miss a step but we on the sidewalk did! During the daytime the downtown core of Memphis feels empty, there is little traffic or pedestrians and some areas we walked through were filled with boarded up warehouses and buildings, weeds growing everywhere. The whole city felt depressed and struggling. It was time to move on.

We drove back to Nashville on the I-40 happy to have experienced Memphis but looking forward to something more upbeat. Nashville didn't disappoint. Compared to Memphis, Nashville was shockingly white. There are approx 28% black or African Americans in the city which makes perfect sense as blues music for which Memphis is famous has its roots in African American culture but country music is largely the domain of Caucasians. Quick, name five black country singers! 

Downtown Nashville was always crammed with people and vehicles, rush hour was busy every day and the honkytonks of Broadway provided live music every night. The musicians are mostly white, the crowd is mostly young and everything is incredibly loud.

Robert's Western World in
Nashville

Speakers  point out to the sidewalks on Broadway so the live music inside can compete with the live music being performed outside by the buskers.  One Uber driver told us there were eighty cranes operating in Nashville currently, putting up buildings as fast as they can to accommodate the steady daily increase in the population. Everyone wants to be a Nashville Cat, strumming a guitar and waiting for stardom. Another driver told us he had lived there a month and just signed a recording contract. Not giving up his day job just yet though.

 We toured the famous Ryman Auditorium, the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum and the Belle Meade Plantation among other things. We dined in upscale foods restaurants, stood in line for an hour for Hattie B's Hot Chicken and sipped red wine while watching country burlesque at Skull's Rainbow Room. On our last evening in Nashville we got tickets to a small club where most of the cast from the Nashville TV show were performing to raise money for a charity. All of that was great, informative, fun and tasty. I always felt safe and was impressed with Nashville. 

This is as close as I will get to being
on the stage at the Ryman.

When I look back at the week in Tennessee the two things that stood out for me belonged to Memphis. The Civil Rights Museum and Graceland. Two sides of a very odd coin but as Memphis as it gets. So while Nashville is like the big-breasted gal with the huge smile out to break as many hearts as she can, Memphis is the quiet, troubled one, staring off into the Mississippi River, sharing her stories with whomever will stop by to listen. 

Oh, the Horror!

The cute!

Why is Halloween such a monster event these days? Pun intended.  Halloweens of my childhood were one day affairs. A pumpkin was carved, mom taped a few decorations to the front window, a lame costume was thrown together and out you went. Back home, you dumped out your candy bag and began trading with the siblings for more of the good stuff. That was pretty much it. In a big year dad got a few fireworks and sparklers to set off in the yard. By the last year of elementary school it was all over. After that you got stuck with door duty unless you were a popular, cool kid and got invited to Halloween parties in your teens. Not me. I got door duty.
Once I left home I got invited to a few adult Halloween parties and they were always fraught with the stress of coming up with a costume. I'm fairly creative but costumes are not my thing. They ranged from the cute to the really bad.

The only thing worse than my
Minnie was the Gandolf next
to me.

I knew some people who planned all year for Halloween, trying to outdo their costumes of previous years, especially the couples. Gluing, sewing, building, painting, nothing was too much trouble to be the star of the party or event. I have to admit some of these costumes were pretty amazing but worth the effort? I don't know about that.
Then along came my children and Halloween in our house was a hugely popular event.  It was my youngest son's favourite day of the year. I have very creative children and they wanted their costumes to be unusual and individual. As long as they came up with the ideas, ( boy, did they) I could manage to pull the costumes together. I searched thrift stores with them, sewed superhero outfits, did elaborate hair and make-up, purchased grotesque masks, and more than made up for my own paltry efforts before they arrived in my life.Yes, I was indulgent.  I decorated with straw bales and pumpkins, cobwebs and candles. I baked 'witches fingers' cookies and helped out with the Spookfest event at their school. It was exhausting and my efforts were nowhere near the top of the heap in the overcharged atmosphere of suburban parenting. The demands got greater every year, Halloween was becoming out of control, fuelled by a plethora of cheap decorations at Costco and Walmart playing into the riotous imaginations of kids. Adults that loved Halloween turned their yards into graveyards, dressed in costume to answer the door and put out door mats that played spooky music when stepped on. Ack!

And turn into monsters!

They start our adorable....

The kids coming to the door got older and older. Teen-aged boys that shaved every day showed up on my doorstep dressed in their snowboarding outfits holding out a pillow case. Come on, dude, grow up, it's just candy! I told my boys that it ended with elementary school, after that they were on their own. If they wanted to embarrass themselves by trick or treating past grade seven, go for it, just count me out.  I still carved a pumpkin, hung a few decorations around the door and loaded up on candy for the kids. I was still on door duty. Slowly the fervour around Oct.31st waned around our house and then we moved into Vancouver where Halloween seems almost non-existent. It was like I had stopped banging my head against the wall.
Today we live a few blocks from an elementary school and on my walks I pass by houses with decorations on the lawn and cobwebs in the bushes.  It's obvious there are kids in the area so last Halloween I put out a lit plastic pumpkin by the front door and bought a bag of treats then sat back and ate them while watching TV. Not a princess or a Pokemon rang the bell. I'm sure they were getting their treat bags filled at community centres or private parties or wherever, just not door to door. Maybe their poor moms are being driven crazy by the nightmare that is Halloween but I don't feel it or see it.

A couple Gokus that mean
business.

So what fuels the mania for Halloween? And why the hell did I get so caught up in it? Sometimes raising kids feels like a twenty year brain fog. The Estrogen Veil as it is known. You just don't know why you do what you do sometimes. It's like waking up from a night of drinking and remembering the crazy stuff you did without the memory of WHY you did it. My memories of my childhood Halloweens are all good, I wasn't trying to compensate for what I didn't have. Was it just a collective hysteria in the neighbourhood fed by the love we have for our children? Or a bunch of stay-at-home moms with too much untapped creativity waiting for a project?  Or are we just children in adults bodies getting a chance to tap into fun again?  But I'm done with that, the hysteria that is, not the love and this coming Monday evening will find me with the porch lights out, the TV on and my hand in a bag of mini Oh Henry's thoroughly enjoying Halloween my way.

Let Me Give You Some Advice...

Advice. Some people like to give it, some people like to ask for it. Rarely does anyone take it. I read somewhere a few years ago that when people ask for advice what they are really asking for is for you to agree with the choice or position they have already decided upon. If you do agree it feels like they have taken your advice and if you don't agree they simply head off and find someone else to ask. Eventually someone will agree with them or they will give up asking and do what they wanted in the first place. An advice asker may seem confused about a situation and appear to sincerely want your help with the problem but if pressed will admit they are leaning a certain way. The role of the advice giver therefore is more to act as a sounding board than to really add anything to the conversation. I understand that is the technique many therapists use, they keep asking you questions until you figure it out yourself. They can't give you answers. 

Once I understood that concept I had a completely different point of view on the whole advice topic. I had been under the impression that people truly wanted my help when they asked for advice but I have no illusions about that anymore and it's made things so much easier. I no longer take any personal affront when someone doesn't take my advice. No more asking myself "why did I bother?". They don't actually want MY advice, they want me to ferret out their own answer and give them permission to go ahead.  I will still let someone run through all the facts and their feelings for me, then I'll offer up my wisdom and let it go. You can't make anybody do anything that they don't want to do. Let me repeat that, you can't make anybody do anything they don't want to do.  That's been another epiphany that has simplified my life. No one really wants your advice and no one will make the decision you want for them unless they want it already. Simple, right? 

I just like this picture and its courtesy
of my son, Nate Konyi

One of my friends has lived by the phrase "if you give someone the right information, they will make the right choice." Not true. She has been bedeviled by that one for a long time. It all depends on your idea of what the 'right information' is and what the 'right choice' is based on that. And so it goes with any advice, from something as simple as "do these pants make me look fat?" to "should I marry this person?".  My bet is that somewhere along the line Angelina Jolie asked a good friend if she and Brad should marry. That friend may very well have said no, sensing that perhaps things weren't too great in the relationship and the marriage card was being played to try to pull them together. Did she listen? No. And here they are headline fodder today. Angelina may have been given all the right information about her relationship with Brad and where it was headed but she made her own call. Did it for the kids or whatever. Often the asker is not asking the right question. When someone asks if the pants make them look fat perhaps what they should really be asking is "should I lose some weight before I wear these pants?".  A tougher question to ask and to answer. 

So I guess this is a long-winded way of saying, think before you ask for advice. Are you asking the right question? Are you simply looking for approval for a plan that might just be the easy way out, not the right solution? And understand that when you are asked for advice it may be flattering but any advice you offer will probably not be acted upon. Let go of that expectation, life will be better for it.  This doesn't mean that I don't wish to be asked for advice...ask away, I'll be happy to give it and won't expect you to follow it. Just don't come back complaining when your way didn't work out. 

Courtesy of Nate Konyi

Awash in a Pink October

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, always a tricky time for me. I had breast cancer twenty years ago and went through treatment from July 1996 through to mid-December, 1996. It was the whole nine yards, a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and five years of taking the prescription Tamoxifen. Some call it the "slash and burn" of cancer treatments but I was only thirty-nine years old, the mother of two young children and I had a stage two cancer. The doctors in charge wanted to do everything they could to keep me alive....and they did. I debated with them the necessity of each and every treatment, to their exasperation at times. I thought long and hard about my options and in hindsight I am glad I did what I did. It wasn't easy.

Happy to be in Maui with the family

Our medical system can be quite swift and effective when it wants to be. Though my diagnosis took too long because not one professional that I saw thought it was cancer, once it was found out to be so, everyone jumped into action. It was quite a ride from my surgery in July to the last radiation treatment in December, and with my doctors blessings I was on a plane to Maui for Christmas with my family about ten days after that last treatment. The trip had been planned for almost a year and when I asked the doctors at the start of my treatment if I could still go they did what they could to make it possible. I did my part by staying as healthy as I could throughout treatment. No small task.

Then along comes October, 1997. Breast Cancer Awareness Month, my first in my post-cancer world.  The papers and magazines were full of articles about women being diagnosed and treated. Some successfully, others not so much. Tales of recurrences of breast cancers, articles on the different kinds of breast cancers, statistics on cure rates and mortality rates and much, much talk about how common the disease was, what your chances of having it were and getting it again. It was overwhelming. I felt like I had post-traumatic stress syndrome. Pictures of women wearing scarves and wigs to cover their bald heads were everywhere. Pictures of mourning family members, too. The stores were full of pink -- pink bracelets and pins, pink labels on food and cosmetics...pink, pink, pink. The colour pink really has no connection to breast cancer in my mind, believe me, cancer is not pretty and soft and girly in any way. But no matter, I felt like I was drowning in a pink wave of breast cancer all over again.

Me in my headscarf on
 Labour Day

I understand that the painful stories of dying mothers, sisters and wives are meant to stir people to open their wallets and donate to the cause. And that cause has been very successful, breast cancer fund raising is a big business now.  I tried to write a letter to the paper to articulate what it felt like to be someone who had just been through the experience and to see it splashed about the paper every week for a month but I couldn't explain it properly and didn't want to insult all the women and their families working through their own situations.

The first few years after my treatment for cancer I would find myself getting anxious and emotional in June. When it happened the first time I didn't know why, but I soon realized that my unconscious was reliving the whole episode. I had lost my hair on the Labour Day weekend so that became an emotional touchstone as did various reminders throughout the fall.  As the years past and I continued to stay healthy those anxieties faded, the fear of recurrence dimming with every calendar change.

So now there is just October, the Pink month, and its tales of triumphs and sorrows. My heart goes out to each and every woman who gets a breast cancer diagnosis and to the people that surround her. I was fortunate to have such wonderful family and friends to help me through the experience and not every one has that. Others feel the need to go through it alone, telling only those who absolutely need to know. I don't understand that but I respect it.

We threw a party to thank everyone
who had helped me through it.

I think the huge success of the Pink campaign has allowed the media to tone down the coverage somewhat these days. I don't feel as bombarded in October with stories that make me cry but maybe it's me that has changed. My experience with breast cancer is in my distant past now, no longer a thing that haunts me on a daily basis. It is never forgotten, I have scars and other health issues as reminders of that time, but it is not a topic of discussion anymore. People I have known for years don't always know of my diagnosis, it just doesn't come up and that's a wonderful thing. I don't label myself a "survivor" of cancer, I'm just someone who had it and treated it with the help of the fantastic cancer care that BC has, care which I support with monthly donations. So it is now time for me to see October in shades of orange, again. Orange for the falling leaves and the pumpkins of Halloween. I don't need pink to remind me to care.

Much love to those going through any kind of cancer treatment right now, my thoughts are with you.

On A Technical Note

I feel I need to add a short note here about contacting me or commenting on my blog posts. Someone recently tried to email me by replying to the automated email by which they received my latest blog post. That is a "no reply" email service. I will not receive the message. If you would like to comment to me directly and privately, please email me at whatfayesaid@gmail.com.
If you would like to comment publicly on my post there is a place for comments at the very bottom of each post. You need not have a Google profile to do so, there is a drop down menu to allow you to post your comment various ways, including anonymously. I get the chance to read and censor any comments before they go on the site. I would love to hear your comments and will respond to them if warranted. Please feel free to leave something.
Since I also post my blog posts to Facebook  I usually get most of my comments there and so go ahead and continue to do that if you wish.
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Faye @ 50
Original artwork by Jill Charuk

Home

I am out for a walk today in my neighbourhood in Vancouver.  It is a perfect fall day in the city, blue sky, fresh breeze, about 16 degrees. As I stride along the sidewalks, scuffing at the smashed chestnuts that have fallen from the huge trees I pass under, I can't help but think about the city I live in and how much I love it.

Crushed chestnuts on the sidewalk

People say all the time that Vancouver has changed so much, citing the traffic, the expense,  the influx of immigrants, the old buildings being torn down, the new buildings going up...the bike lanes. But on a day like today, walking between West 22nd Avenue where I live and Broadway so much feels the same. 

My sister and I moved to Vancouver when I was fresh out of high school and she had just graduated college. We both had jobs in the downtown core and it made sense to leave our hometown of Richmond behind. To our delight we found ourselves in an apartment in Kitsilano. It was love at first sight. The beach, the funky shops of West 4th Ave, the bars and restaurants. What more could a couple of young, single women want? 

Richmond is flat, and when we lived there many of the areas were newly built, the trees spindly and held up with stakes, the houses an assortment of the five different plans that the builder allowed. But in Vancouver.... the trees were huge, the houses  old and unique, streets undulated up and down giving onto fabulous views of the mountains and ocean, and the beaches were full of people like us. Heaven.

I left the city almost a dozen years later to raise a family and then moved back with my husband and grown kids seven years ago. It felt like coming home. Even though I had grown up in Richmond, spent twenty years in Tsawwassen, the years that I lived in Vancouver had imprinted itself on me. It was where I truly grew up. My father spent part of his childhood in the West End, selling papers on the street corners and my mother went to UBC almost seventy years ago. I feel like there is a little bit of my family DNA here.

Forty-two years after I first moved into Kitsilano I am walking its streets again.  Going to the same library at MacDonald and West 8th Ave. where I used to check out books, renewing my drivers license at the same Motor Vehicle branch where I received my very first driver's license.

The sidewalk stamp at 14th and Stephens

As I walk, I look for the date stamped into the sidewalk below me that tells me when it was laid. Some say 2010, or 1992 but many read 1929 or 1931. Vancouver is not an old city and despite the feeling of some that it has been wiped clean like a white board and replaced, small signs like this remind me that some of the early days still remain. The sun filters through the same huge maples, chestnuts and oak trees that have been dumping their boatloads of leaves on these streets for decades.

Big, old chestnut tree

 Many of the funky old homes have been discreetly turned into triplexes and quadruplexes but they still stand. Yes, quite a few homes have been replaced but the unattractive boxes from the fifties and the horrible "Vancouver specials" from the sixties that went are no great loss as far as I am concerned.  Many of the new homes in my neighbourhood are a vast improvement. And their picture perfect  gardens are a delight. 

Broadway now holds Vietnamese and Thai restaurants where Greek and Chinese ones used to stand but the feel is the same. Pizza shops, bakeries, produce stores and banks line the street just as they did forty years ago. Change is inevitable, everything and everyone is in a constant state of change, but that is not a bad thing. I've changed a bit and I'm happy to see that Vancouver has, too. There are new places to explore, different cuisines to taste, more cultures to learn about. These are all good things.  When I'm strolling along Spanish Banks looking at the North Shore mountains or walking around Kits Point to the planetarium these changes all feel so small. They are just the spice that makes the dish. 

Avenue of Stars
Original artwork by Jill Charuk

When I first moved to Kits it was full of joggers, brown rice and people smoking pot, now it's yoga, quinoa and people smoking weed. The more things change the more they stay the same. So I embrace my Vancouver like an old friend, she has a new haircut, she's put on a few pounds and speaks a second language but her heart still welcomes me home.

Loving La Vida Lago

The water laps at the shore, a breeze causes the tendrils of the willow tree to gently sweep the rocky beach, a noisy group of geese fly overhead, lazily making their way into a great V. This is lake country, the Okanagan of BC and I am here for a week in the last gasp of summer. It's mid -September so the kids are back in school and the lake is largely quiet. Only the occasional boat goes by and I have yet to see one pulling a tube or a wake boarder. Summer fun is over in lake country. The sun is still warm mid-day but the nights and mornings are cool.
Sitting here on this dock with the sun in my face, the smell of the lake in the air, the stickiness of sunscreen on my skin, I could be any age, 7, 17 or 47.  For all that things have changed in the last fifty years some things are still so much the same. The lake is the lake is the lake. Especially now at this time of year when the Jet Skis and Sea Doos are silent.

Lots of tubing with our kids.

Coming here as a kid we played on canvas air mattresses that had to be dried in time to sleep on that night, and truck inner tubes inflated at the local gas station.  We slurped up overripe peaches and buried the pits in the sand, cooked wieners over campfires and went to bed sunburnt. It was heaven.  The sun was hot, the lake was cold, the skies brilliant blue. Some of my very best memories revolve around time spent at the lakes of the Okanagan.  We brought our kids to these lakes as well, dragging along boats and SeaDoos and staying in homes not campsites but the lake is the lake is the lake. We ate peaches, roasted wieners and tried not let the kids get so sunburnt. I hope their memories of those times are as savoured by them as mine are are by me.

Everyone enjoys the lake their way!

Without children at home to plan summer vacations around we don't get to the lake so often. For a few years now we've spent some time on the Sunshine Coast enjoying the ocean and hiking in the forest. Occasionally we take the plunge into the chilly ocean waters when the air gets hot enough. It's not the same as the lake though and I had missed it, so this year we chose Okanagan Lake for a week.
Trying to find a waterfront place at the last minute in the Okanagan is almost impossible so we booked for September when things open up. The weather is a bit more of a gamble but we got lucky and had sunshine for six out of seven days. The sun wasn't as hot, the water felt colder and there were lamb chops on the BBQ not wieners but, you know.....it's still the lake. We sat on the dock with friends, soaked up the sun and listened to the lap of the water.  My husband, Ted showed off his prowess on the diving board while others opted for a paddle in the canoe. Two of our group even indulged in a late night dare of a naked jump off the dock. I wasn't one of them and I'm not telling who it was! The point is, we had fun, even though we are older and not tipping each other out of inner tubes into the lake, it was fun. There is something about the water, the dock,  the swaying willows that brings out the kid in us. So as I sat there alone on the dock that first day, the sun on my face, the year's fell away. I didn't worry about how I  look in a bathing suit or if I was getting too much sun, I just breathed in the lake smell, listened to the sound of the water and wished someone would bring me a tomato and mayo sandwich to make the day complete. Sometimes life can be that simple.