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.