Variety Packed Days
10/31/2004 03:38 p.m.
These have been very full days recently. Rich in friendship and family. Last Thursday night my neighborhood girlfriends who’ve been a blessing to me for years, since our children were small, and I treated ourselves to going to see “Shall We Dance.” It was well worth seeing, entertaining, funny, relaxing. A little sad for me in places because I’m well familiar with the dance studio life, since my mom was an award-winning ball room dancer in her 70's and 80's, and still has the gorgeous dresses etc. and loved it so, but can’t do it anymore. Still, she reaps the awards of that fitness as it helps her now with balance, agility etc. at 86 and her doctor is amazed at her health.

She wants to see it on video, and watched Richard Gere on Biography and enjoyed that immensely.

Last evening my husband and I were guests, with several other of his work friends, at a co-workers’, an annual get-together where his beautiful wife who loves to try all the culinary arts, on us, and takes frequent cooking courses etc. and is becoming a connoisseur of things like kosher salt, and other varieties of salt, etc. puts on a delicious and aesthetic dinner party. We all sit back and chat and laugh, and catch up on the non-office parts of their lives, plus a little of office life. And travel experiences. But mostly we got into fun debates about fruits and vegetables, what things are fruit vs. vegetable. I think of a cucumber as vegetable but Carmen got out her book to prove it’s considered at least in the Larousse gastro....something encyclopedia, a fruit, because it has flowers. We went through many, the tomato, the green pepper, etc. and also looked at language, old French, many diversive topics.

Carmen has the gift of decorating touches, cooking, etc. but also is very well-versed and bright in politics and all aspects of life. Another couple I’d not met before, are from Taiwan but thus also very exposed to Japanese, which proved interesting as I’m trying for a job involving Japanese diplomacy (for which I’m studying a bit of Economics before Tuesday’s appointment).

On Friday I caught the main library here in Ottawa’s Canada Council Grant reading of Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces, and several poetry books and she read from her latest work-in-progress about Egypt and the taking down of the ancient temples, and the Aswan damn, coincidentally as I’d just researched parts of this for my recent poem about Isis. (Ode to Isis on the Night of the Eclipse...) Michaels is amazingly devoted to her projects, her years of painstaking historical and geographical research, and a family woman who doesn’t give very many readings. But she signed our books and talked with us after her reading, (introduced by Gary Geddes, who used to give Concordia University courses on the poet’s novel, since he admired how she, Ondaatje, and several others write their novels from a poetic influence, having been poets first.

He is very warm-spirited and passionate, and also our Writer-in--Residence at University of Ottawa until winter this year. Since I’m working on the novels as well, and was mainly a poet first, I hope to gather up some of my manuscript and go see him for discussion while he’s in that post.

So it’s very busy, and the undercurrent of our lives here in the family is my brother-in-law and his wife, my sister, as they fight the horrors of his advanced multiple myeloma, (bone cancer) and the complications, sudden let-downs, then new attempts, and yet fostered by their and our faith in God, and prayers for the doctors’ guidance under God. Everyone goes through trials at one time or another that are tremendously oppressive and daunting, no-one corners the market on this for sure. The key is to have friends and loved ones who listen empathatically, and for you to be one of those types of friends to them, and open focus to others' needs and challenges, pains and fears, as well, in a reciprocal, unself-centred manner. It's the best way for everyone to get through and be strengthened by their best relationships. Those that are equally reciprocated and devoted. That let slide for the necessary moments their own stresses, to be there for the other's and also it's healthier to not focus on our own so much. Rare, perhaps, though I hope not too rare, such friendships or loves. I'm blessed with this, particularly with my sister, my girlfriends, on this site and in town, but also family members, and some other friends, and with faith, and our minister, as well. A very key ingredient that tops my list of requirements to get me through, and hopefully I warrant all the help from above I get.
Anyway, back to my Economics text I guess, plus pumpkin set-up and all that fun stuff.
I laughed while in my cubby hole room for the annual dig-out of decorations and Hallowe’en stuff, all of a sudden I heard Xmas music coming from my son’s train set he’s left here, the kind that goes around a Christmas Tree. I guess I knocked it into a different position as I brushed against it, and set it off. A little while later my daughter, carving the pumpkin, called out, Mom, something’s playing again in the cubby hole.

Earlier I had been working in my bedroom closet looking for clothes to discard to charity, as it’s groaning, that pole that holds my clothes, and afterward shut the sliding door and was on the bed reading and listening to the wind and rain. Suddenly the door started shaking and large noises were sounding from inside, and I thought wow, it must be a strong wind. But then it slid open a bit and out popped Penny Lane, our large cat. I didn’t know she’d even gone in there earlier, she’s so quiet.

Not ghosts but a few fun, strange experiences to remind me to lighten up and enjoy the season.




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