Grateful for K

I am grateful for Kampala. I was born there, and that fact taught me a lot about preconceptions, judgement, belonging, wandering, colonialism, love, subservience, race, heat, memory, and dogs.

Preconceptions are sometimes funny. When my son says his mother was born in Uganda, they look at him in a funny way, and the cartoon balloon springing from peoples' heads reads: "you don't look very dark".  Also, people have thought that my parents were missionaries. That's a laugh too, especially if you knew my parents!

Judgement is one of those things we all do. I have my prejudices, although I'm not going to air my dirty laundry here, I know that I am judged for many facets of my existence. Being born in Kampala gave me an early insight into people's prejudice and knee-jerk need to pigeonhole.

Belonging, ah! belonging! A thing I've never felt. I spent my first three years in a paradise that was, as most paradises are, a touch unreal. From there I was swept off to Calgary, the land of snow, cowboys and Dallas gas men. I felt like the only girl in the whole town with crooked teeth and frizzy hair, and a dad who thought "puck" was a swear word.

Colonialism, that bugbear of the 20th century. I have though long and deep for much of my life about how colonialism has transformed our world. Of course, every generation always thinks theirs is the first to experience big events. I know that colonialism is an ancient practice that springs from one human's need to dominate another.

Love.

Subservience. In Malawi, when I was a skinny traveller eating mangoes, an older woman called me "memsahib". That was sad, and struck me down.

Race. Another place we can hang our coats of distrust, hatred, otherness, prejudice.

Heat! I love feeling the air at 37 degrees, or blood temperature. I love feeling sweat on my face, I love the sun, I love a rainstorm at 4pm, I love never having to wear a jacket.

Memory: When I finally returned to Kampala when I was 23, twenty years after I had left, I emerged from the plane and smelled a smell that felt like home. Fruit, sweat, woodsmoke, an unidentifiable perfume that the tropics emit. I went to the market in the center of Kampala - that was after Idi Amin but before the Ruandan genocide and before Kampala grew into the huge city it is now. I remembered the market. Nothing else remains in my conscious memory.

Dogs: When my mother was pregnant with me, her neighbor had two German Shepherds that were trained to kill anyone who entered the grounds of his house unannounced (read black Africans looking for work or begging). One grabbed her arm with his large teeth and wouldn't let go. My lesson learned was that dogs are very loyal, obedient, and can be killers. Ditto people.

Wandering - the opposite of belonging. Cavafy speaks better than I do on this one:

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley

It's the Joy in Your Heart

Today I am grateful for the joy I've felt throughout my life on this planet.

I, the grace blocker

I've been stuck at the letter "i" since the 14th. This is three days I've been thinking about things I am grateful for that begin with "i". Ink, because I love books. Invisibility, because I love magic. Irises. 

So, today, I am grateful for "I". I am grateful that I am me, and that I am someone I can actually get along with. 

I'm grateful that I've always been me, from the time I first remember, right up to this very minute.

Grateful for Home

Home is where the heart is. Over the years, we have built a few homes here and there. I've had the pleasure of learning how to build, alongside my husband. I've knocked down stone walls, built them up, placed large chestnut beams, tiled floors, and watched him work wonders with plumbing, electricals and the less fun side of building, like drywall and plaster. I'm not so great at masonry but it just takes practice.

Home is also the smell of baked bread, laughter, the wood stove, everyone yelling at each other, music, babies crying, the silence when everyone is asleep except for a newborn and a suckling mother, the ringing of phones and excitement when a big family visit is planned.

We've had big fights at home. We've cried, been desperate, lost people, broken things, had bad things happen. But its still our home, and I am so grateful to have one.

G for Grace

Yes, G is for grace, goodness, god, garrulousness and granola. But today I am grateful for Geese. Growing up in Canada is pretty special. Although I was born in the tropics, I spent my childhood in view of the Rockies, but as soon as I could leave Cowtown I did and travelled all across this large country, marvelling at its distances and bare bones beauty. One place that always took forever to get through was Ontario, with its lakes, forests, dirty towns, space station landscapes, and those big old birds.

When you see the geese in March you know that the season that smells like dog shit is upon us. Spring in most of Canada is a tortuous affair, where small flowers creep out of the snowy ground and blind you with their bright determination to be alive. The geese have increased in population recently, but they still fly south in the fall and north in the spring.

When I had a farm, we had a filthy pond where the geese lived. Family myths among the kids grew in that pond, daring rescues from near-drowning. When we would argue, which was often back then, the geese would take up the spirit of the screaming match and they would start to holler too. The kids tell me now they were afraid of the geese, but I never was. They knew I had the upper hand, in the form of a rope and a sharp knife. Mama kills.

Our geese on the farm were big and white, with bright orange feet and beaks, not like the dark and smaller Canada geese of our home.

Grateful for F for Friends

I am very grateful today for my friends. I've had friends my whole life, but I remember the very first moment I made a friend. It was when I was four, and Pam Rothenberg lived two houses over. She became my best friend for a few years.

Just to spread the love, I will include some friend pictures. My best friend is in quite a few of the images - we've been friends for over thirty years. If any friend reads this blog and you don't see your picture - come by and visit and we will do selfies. I love you!

March Gratitude the Fifth Day

I am grateful for many things the begin with "e": elephants, eggs, eggplants, endings, energy, and so on. But today I am particularly grateful for Egypt.

In a metaphorical sense, Egypt was always the place of slavery that the chosen people escaped from. I feel very uncomfortable with the concept of "chosen people" so I don't really like to think that one through much. But I do like the idea of moving away from a place of slavery. And I love the story of the midwives who continued to accompany mothers through birth, and chose not to follow the law that required them to kill the male babies.

But in my own story, Egypt was a wonderful place. We landed up in Cairo after a rather disastrous "meet the family" episode in Israel. I realized that I might be forever entwined with a narcissist, but I didn't realize it consciously so I tried to be polite. Cairo was full, smoky, sweaty, smelly. It was lovely. It evoked everything. We were only there on our way south, but Sudan was proving difficult to go to, so we stayed in Egypt for six weeks while we waited for visas. We stayed in Cairo for a while, in an awful decrepit "guest house".  Poets, drug addicts and travellers hung out there, waiting for the next adventure.

We went to see the pyramids. Some women gave us fresh pita they'd cooked on the walls of their bread oven. Then we went into the Sahara. I remember at a truck stop, we sat on a bench and waited while the men prayed. The call to prayer was coming from a little transistor radio. A dog was chained to a tree. The sun was light blue.

We were dropped off at an intersection by a gravel pit. The truck left as the sun was setting. The old man who guarded the two huts gave my husband a big rock to put on the inside of our door, in case he tried to come in during the middle of the night after me.

We made some friends in Assiut, where we had to go because I had caught a terrible desert cold. We spent every day together, from early in the morning until very late at night.

I am grateful for the fact that I have those memories of travelling the world, together with my love, and that I can remember Egypt and the desert and the prayers and the minarets and the hash and the sun and the cold and the striped cucumbers and the sweet oranges.