What I'm leaving behind

Take, take, take. I've been spending a lot of my time thinking about what I'll take away from this place. Last night, I got an email from Nina. She said:

"This might sound silly, but I think you should bury something of yours there, to ensure your return. Maybe a lock of hair, or some small thing of yours that you love. "

Not silly, but a brilliant idea. Problem is, what to leave? The movers have already left. Other than my family, they took pretty much everything I care about. I can't really bury my kids, though there was this moment with the Chinese wonder girl yesterday.....no, no, no. I still have my fancy NHT speakers here, as I didn't trust them to the vagaries of temperature fluctuations in a big old tractor-trailer ambling around on the highways in Ontario. But that's a pretty big hole I'd have to dig.

And then, as I was climbing into bed, I turned to look at the chair beside me. I saw it. I thought that I had packed it. I meant to. This little rock doesn't look like much, but I picked it up from the shore of Walden Pond in October. On a rainy afternoon, I scooped up my son in my arms, somehow coaxed my preteen in training out of the car, and we walked along the beaches and trails until we found the original site of Thoreau's cabin. It was something I had always wanted to see. Reading about it when I was a teenager, I hadn't expected to see it with my own children. Now that we were here, I hadn't expected it to be so deeply affecting for us. Even my toddling little boy, though a bit disoriented by being dragged through sheets of rain to parts unknown, soon got into the spirit of the adventure and asked to walk by himself, muddy trail ooze welling up over the sides of his little sneakers. The whole episode was a signal event. At the time, I couldn't put its significance into words. I still can't.

As we left the pond, I picked up a small stone. I knew that I shouldn't. Take, take, take. If all the visitors to this site did the same thing, there'd be a mighty hole in the landscape. The rock stayed in my pocket for a few days, migrated to a windowsill in the bedroom where I knew it would be safely out of reach of curious toddler hands. And then, somehow, rather than getting to a packing box, it drifted onto an empty chair beside my bed.

Later today, I'll take it to a trail that runs along beside the beach. There's a pretty little Waldorf nature garden set up there on an old stump. It changes with the seasons. I've written about it before, imagining that it was some kind of spirit garden. It won't be buried. It may not stay there for very long. It may even go into someone else's pocket. But, even though I'll never see it again, I've got a feeling it will be sticking around.

It means a lot to me, that little stone. And it's staying here.

Going dark

I've made the call. Cable guy is coming tomorrow to cut the internet umbilical. Getting the phone cut off used to throw me into a vertiginous tailspin at moving time. Now, losing the phone means almost nothing. Losing the pixelworld -- that hurts. We have a roller coaster ahead of us. Our children have already started to cry about losing their friends. They've asked us to promise that next time we make a long-distance move, there will be no going back. We've promised. This will probably be my last post until we reach the other side, unless I borrow a little airtime from someone enroute. If not, see you early in July.

I feel as though we're circling the drain.

Tying up loose ends with the ancient one

A few days after we arrived here in paradise, our neighbours across the road appeared at the end of the driveway. She, a portly old woman with her grey hair tied in a tight, high bun walked towards the village, peering over at me from time to time as if to see whether I was paying attention to her. I thought that she was waiting for me to go over and speak to her, so I began to move in her direction. He, a tiny, wizened stick of a man, clattered along behind her as best he could on a pair of rusty old hips. As I approached, she turned to face him and yelled:

"What are you doing? Get back in the house and look after the jobs!" He stopped and then turned in a clumsy series of teetering steps, whining like a little boy:

"I just wanna see!"

In that ten second exchange, I wrote them off. I popped him into the mental spot I hold reserved for demented and broken old men. I popped her into the voluminous cranial shelf reserved for cruel old bitches. We never spoke.

Their driveway faces my study window. Often, as I was working, I would see the old man appear in the driveway with a dog. He would walk the dog to the end of the driveway and then return to the house. After a few minutes, he would appear with a small scoop to pick up the dog crap, and then he would disappear again.

Tonight, after a feast with good friends, we sent our daughter and her friend out on a mission: find some neighbours hungry enough to take some of the masses of leftover dessert off of our hands. Surprised, I watched them skip up the long driveway across the street. I couldn't banish the thought of Hansel and Gretel as they went out of sight. I almost ran after them, but I knew they could both run very quickly if need be.

My daughter, who had heard the story of my early non-exchange with the neighbours many times, appeared a few minutes later with a big bag of apples in her hand.

"Dad, you were wrong," she said. "They're both very nice. They thanked us and thanked us and said that it was the nicest thing that had happened to them for a long time. They gave us apples. It made us think of Snow White, but we took them anyway. Want one?" A few minutes later, the man appeared at our door to thank us again. And to tell us that he was a professor emeritus of economics and political science, long retired, who was busy poring through recently released archives of information from World War II. His wife, he said, had looked after 2 acres of magnificent gardens until she had been slowed by a heart condition (other friends we've made over the last few days told us that they had seen an 8 foot high Buddha in a beautiful grotto in these gardens. We weren't sure whether to believe them). We had a long discussion about his thoughts on Himmler and ended with a promise to lunch together soon to exchange ideas.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that in 60 hours we'd be loading up the van with the last of our stuff and driving away from this house for good.

By the way, he also mentioned that they had rescued two dogs from a breeding kennel whose owner had had a breakdown. These dogs had essentially coped by themselves for 4 years, with no other care than that given by a troubled woman who tossed a pile of food among a hungry pack of 70 dogs once a day. Eventually, some of them were rescued and, after several operations to repair the damage caused by neglect and fighting and a year of careful nurturing in the hands of the Ancient One, as he called himself, two of them were well on the road to recovery. He told us that they were almost at a point where they could be left alone without engaging in the mortal combat that had been their only means of survival before being adopted.

Later, as I lay in bed with my son, rubbing his back and soothing him to sleep, another little penny dropped:

"What are you doing? Get back in the house and look after the dogs." Her anxiety at the possibility that the dogs might kill one another in their absence had won out over his interest in his new neighbours. I had stood on the periphery, busily stuffing them into well-worn little sockets in my small mind.

Winding things up

We're down to our last three days here. I know they will pass in a flash. The phone calls are picking up in intensity and length. It's a funny thing when people call you at these critical life points, just when you are at your busiest, mostly to let you know that they know how busy you must be. Small farewell parties are being planned for our children and their friends. Piles of possessions that must not be left behind are appearing in strategic pockets of the house. Those who have land for sale and who know how badly we'd like to come back here have been putting out a few tentacles, handing over a business card or two. We're in an emotional vacuum at the moment. We're balanced on a knife edge, having ridden the crest of resistance to leaving up to its peak. Yet we're not ready to plunge into the downhill portion of the curve yet --- the one that will sweep us off the coast and back into central Canada. But we know it's coming. Appointments have been made. Lodgings have been booked for the days between our leaving here and our arriving there. And we know it will all be fine. We're leaving here with inestimable strength as a couple and as a family. We all know one another as well as we ever will, and we all love what we see. Most importantly, we have a better understanding of our mission in life, our shared goals and values, and a diamond pointed determination to be true to ourselves, each other, and our planet. I'm not sure how I write this up for the board of governors, but this was a brilliantly successful sabbatical.

Old man farm again

Our good friends at Old Man Farm have started a blog. I can think of few places (very few) where I'd rather spend time either virtually or, better yet, in the flesh.

Being and knowing

I'm spending my last reading hours here with Rachel Carson. I'd always wanted to read "Silent Spring."

As I discover one interesting thing after another from Carson -- the complexity of soil ecology, the perfect interlock between bird, fish and insect ecosystems, I find myself wanting to know more. When I read of the role of spindle fungi in soil, I become drunk with the desire to know a few more details and I resolve to find something good to read on soil. Same thing happens with fish toxicology. This is a very old pattern with me. I've always worried that my thirst to know, to catalog, to memorize was a desire to possess by understanding. Now, having had so many chances to stand in unmediated rapture of the greatness of the sea, the quiet wisdom of a saltmarsh, the brazen confidence of a tiny tidal pool, I wonder whether something else much more disturbing has been going on. Has my desire to relegate all of my experience to a carefully ordered bank of knowledge been an escape? Is this constant needling desire to 'know' an attempt to avert my gaze from the bright glare of life by scooping it up into a rack of books that I can line up on a shelf like a collection of tamed tigers? Is that what academics do? In collecting knowledge, are we spurning wisdom?

It is, perhaps, a wonderful thing to be able to generate a flow chart of the intricate interactions between bacteria, algae, fungi and insects on the floor of a forest. But to let that stand in the way of the feeling of your beating heart as you lie under a 400 year old hemlock tree, sifting a handful of cool, damp soil through your fingers, is a mistake I hope I've learned to avoid.

the bakery

There's a fantastic bakery located about a three minute walk from our house. It is one of the two businesses within our 2 km walkshed, which is only one of the reasons that it is significant enough to talk about. When we were considering renting this house, the owners tried to woo us by describing the scenic grandeur, the proximity to gorgeous beaches, the nice drive into the closest town containing essential services like grocery stores and liquor stores and hospitals (set up nicely in just that order), and the fact that there was a terrific bakery within an easy walk of the house. At the time, living where we did, surrounded by bakeries within, well, an easy minivan drive of our wretched suburban McHouse, this seemed an exceptional thing to have mentioned. Before we saw the area for the first time, friends of ours came to do some recon for us. Of the bakery, they said:
"You'll spend a lot of time there."
They were right. Not only does the bakery have every kind of delicious baked food you can imagine stacked up behind steamy glass windows all winter long, but it is the social hub of the village. At any time of the day, you can walk into the place and get the local news, the fishing report, freshly roasted and ground organic coffee, and the most fantastic buttertarts that have ever been made. We've spent a lot of time there.

As we wind down to our last few days here, we find ourselves at the bakery more and more often. Instead of it being the standard Wednesday afternoon treat with the kids, it is now the daily de rigueur lunch stop (pizza with thick chunks of spicy pepperoni whose source the owners won't reveal. We're thinking they're laced with some kind of habit forming narcotic).
Two randomly overheard snippets today.

"So I picked this guy up and I gave him a drive and I asked him where he was from. He said 'small village in Nova Scotia where colinsky lives' and I said 'No way! That's right near where I live' So I asked him what he had done there and he said that he'd worked for the CIA. The CIA? I said. What were the CIA doing in a dinky little place like that? They were running guns down to Central America, he said. I just kinda nodded and humoured him and then he pulled out the pictures. I don't know if it was CIA, but there were sure a lot of guns here."

Two workers were fixing some part of the old bakery building today. They appeared to have opened a small square hole in the wall (no idea why) and they were drilling. They had that dreamy, happy, dirty and unkempt look that I envy in people who do work with their hands. One turned to the other and, instead of asking for the 11 mm socket wrench, or the 1/8" burr bit, he said
"Yeah, I get the feeling that relationship is filled with a lot of oppressive politics."

Now that the tourists are beginning to invade the area, the bakery is a pretty busy place. On Sundays, they even offer a nice brunch (which some of my kids dragged me to on Father's Day, forcing me to choke down a beautiful omelet with huge chunks of freshly baked potato bread and great clots of fresh churned butter -- this is a very big deal living in a house in which eggs and dairy are banned because one of us has deathly allergies). My kids take no end of pleasure in a curious little caste distinction that is recognized by all of the bakery staff. Tourists pay when they order. Locals pay when they leave. They crow with delight as they sit and eat their unpaid-for treats, watching the lineup of people 'from away' forking over their money before they drool over their butter tarts.

They took our stuff

They came this morning. Four very nice men loaded 85 boxes, six bikes, and various other bits and pieces into this big truck. They're planning to meet us at our new house in a few days. A moving truck never choked me up before. Methinks there be some heavy intoxication in my immediate future.

Things to do while waiting for the moving truck to appear

Not that I'm thinking about joining an intentional community (yet) but I've been doing a bunch of the personality tests that are required to join an eco-reality community on the gulf islands in BC (one of the places I hope that I may end up). Seems I'm some kind of unique combination of Mahatma Gandhi and Genghis Khan, with perhaps a soupcon of Eleanor Roosevelt thrown in for good measure. As a psychologist, this doesn't surprise me. Also, as a psychologist, it suggests that I have somehow landed in the ideal profession by nothing but luck. Or was it luck? Given this, I'm not sure what role I would be suited for in such a community. Perhaps I could be in charge of exiling those who don't pull their weight, all the while providing calm counsel and graceful succour so they don't break back in and murder us all. One of my daughters is reading Sybil for a school project. She may have some insight.

walksheds

There's a post on WorldChanging about walksheds -- the idea is based on the planning/architectural idea of a viewshed -- whatever is visible from some location. In analogy, a walkshed is whatever is considered walkable from some location. There are different rules of thumb. I've read that some planners use 5 minutes as the walkshed cutoff. Others use one mile, which, to me, sounds more reasonable. There must be lots of other variables, though: aesthetics, safety, topography (one mile of near vertical slogging in a harbour town like Halifax or Lunenburg would be more daunting than one mile on flat ground). The type of location would make a difference as well. Psychological factors like the number of turns in the route, the density of points of interest along the way, would also probably influence the size of a person's walkshed.

Google maps has an interesting function in which you can plug in some type of business and get a listing, ordered by increasing distance from a point of interest. Though there's much more to a walkshed than physical distance, here is an interesting comparison, using a one mile walkshed:

Where we are now:

Bakeries - 1
Beaches - 1
Museums - 1
Bookstores - 0
Restaurants - 0
Coffee houses - 0
Universities - 0


Where we're going next week:

Bakeries - 0
Beaches - 0
Museums - 1
Bookstores - 6
Restaurants -51
Coffee houses - 5
Universities - 2

Another way to look at walkability is to do a raw count of the number of businesses of any kind within a given distance of a defined location. There's a great post and lots of ideas at the Cascadia blog. In Canada, I have to use this tool, which gives me a choice of 1 or 2 km for my defined walkshed boundary. Using 2 km, I'm going from an index of 2 to an index of 2827.

Life will be different.

Even the movers can't stand that we're leaving

We spent the day yesterday dashing around throwing all the stuff we don't really need into boxes. Exhausted, we collapsed into comfy chairs with tinkling Dark and Stormy's (dark rum, ginger beer, a squeeze of lime -- a spicy little seastorm in a glass) to survey the jumble of possessions. Our habits map out nicely in the arrangements of our boxes. One or two boxes of spices in the kitchen, a huge pile of heavy boxes filled with computers and books in the study, and many boxes in the upper rooms filled with clothes we never wore. What was I thinking in bringing six dress shirts? Working at home means sitting in your boxers until the sun goes down, if that's what you want. What was the love of my life thinking when she brought an entire suitcase full of shoes? Well. She was thinking that physicians normally wear business attire to the office and not jeans and sneakers. Now she knows better.

We couldn't find a box for my drum. I can't believe that I have a drum. Some other occupants of the house can't believe it either. The person who bought it for me can't believe it. That I have it or that she bought it.

And as we survey all of this mess and slide into the soft, dark happiness of our drinks, listening to the cooing of toddlers who show signs that they may soon fall asleep, the telephone rings. It's the moving company. They are based in Newfoundland. They could cross over to the mainland. Theoretically. The ferry is running. But the winds are high. It would be a rough 14 hour crossing. Do we mind if they wait for a couple of days?

We think not.

boiled down

Much of modern life's invention is designed to free our attention from the minutiae of existence. But what masquerades as liberation robs us of the exquisite particularity of life, in the service of a supposedly greater agenda.

Problem: how does one live the truth of this in one's bones and also carry on a life, earn a living, look after one's children and put food on the table?

Again boiled down: having achieved some small measure of enlightenment, how do I break the news to my bank manager?

Preserving my senses

The house is now completely filled with boxes and chaos. The movers arrive in the morning to cart away most of our possessions, but we stay on for a few more precious days to try to restore the house to some approximation of what we found when we arrived here. This makes the daily struggle to capture in words some of the things that this year has meant to me a bit more difficult to manage. We feel the urgency of the emails from employers, co-workers, and friends increase, as they look forward to our return and (in some cases) try to think of ways to help us re-assimilate. Again, I think of Star Trek. This time of Borg. I also feel sadness both for us -- it will be a struggle to hang onto everything we've learned, decided, and understood about how we want to live out our lives -- and for them -- we fear that their eager anticipation of us may be blunted when they see that we're not the same family who left town a year ago.

What has changed? My senses have heightened. I hear, feel, smell and taste more than at any other time in my life. What's more, I find it easier to reach the connections between sensations. I'll struggle if I try to explain this. It will take more work than I have time for today. Let me try to put it this way: how does one characterize an average day of life? We wake in the morning with a certain set of scripts -- the routines that sustain us. We groom ourselves, we eat and drink, care for our bodies in whatever ways they need to be nurtured, or at least sustained. We also have a certain set of plans -- goals that need to be achieved, even such minor things as shopping for groceries, finishing a task for our jobs, making contact with a family member, helping our children. For the most part, as our day unfolds, we are mostly only open to the sensations that are relevant to the work that needs to be done. When we consider ourselves to be working well, our focus is like a tightly focused beam on the tasks at hand. We are closed to the unexpected.

Though there is still much of that kind of pattern in my life, I feel as though I have many more moments when I'm open to the world. Subtleties that, a year ago, would have evaded my notice completely, can catch me by the throat somehow and overwhelm me completely. The hue of a cluster of leaves, the sound of bird call, the sensation of the wind on my skin. Not only do I notice these kinds of sensations, but their impact on me is much greater than at any other time I can remember. I find myself immobilized by the power of a sensation. I can be transfixed by a potent combination of sensory impressions to the extent that I simply can't carry on with whatever script I'm in the middle of. It is the most glorious feeling. I'd like to say that it's a kind of mindfulness, and perhaps it is, but I know that I'm also very attached to the state. But though I may not be a very good Buddhist, I have some conviction that this way of relating to the world is much healthier than my previous state of task-oriented, laser beam focused behaviour in which I took from the world only what I needed and discarded what I thought was superfluous. If I were to try to sum all of this up in just a few words, I might say that I now have the patience and unfocused regard to allow me to take what the world offers, rather than to lean into it, take control of it, and wrest from it what I think I might need. A long time ago, I was accused (in print, no less!) of treating nature as though it were some kind of grand smorgasbord from which I could feast on what I needed and discard the rest. I was incensed to the point of apoplexy when the accusing finger was raised, though, looking back, I see now that I was guilty as charged.

When I throw myself back into a busy urban setting with many more work responsibilities, detachment from natural settings, and all of the old habits and patterns waiting to eat my soul, will I be able to hold on to this hard won territory? I'm filled with resolve, but fear and doubt gnaw at me as well. It will be the battle of my life.

M-day approacheth

When the Buddha slips quietly under wraps (tucked inside my authentic Maritime Lumberjacket for safe travel), you know moving day is getting close. The truck will be here in a couple of days.

My father, the lover

It's one of those weird conjunctions that doesn't come up very often. Sunday is both Father's day and my wedding anniversary.

My father died in 2003, on Valentine's Day. Many foresaw this unfortunate coincidence as being the end of Valentine's Day celebrations at my house. Au contraire. It was the perfect day for him to go.

As the third son in a busy family that had to work hard to make ends meet, I didn't get a lot of attention from my dad when I was a child. I got what I needed. He came to parent's night. He came to my band and choir concerts. Whenever he had a chance, he let me know that he loved me. He had a hard time finding the words, but he let me know.

My dad and I became much closer on the day he was diagnosed with the cancer that killed him. We sat together in his hospital room. I perched at the end of his bed, holding his hand. He had known for some time that there was something seriously wrong with him, and he had put off mentioning it to anyone. Finally, a few details slipped out in conversation with my brother, who lived in the US. My brother called me, alarmed, and I drove Dad to emerg. The tests began immediately, but we both knew what was up. It was fear that had kept my Dad quiet through all of those months of suffering, but not fear of his own death. You see, my mother depended on him. A lifetime of struggles with diabetes, high blood pressure, and too great a love of proper English food had left my mom legally blind and incapable of standing after a series of small strokes. She and my father lived together in a regular apartment building. They went out every day, often just to the local shopping mall to sit and eat a hamburger and listen to the sounds. My father, not a large man, would literally carry my mother from her chair to his car and then to her wheelchair. On occasion, he'd call me when he got into trouble.
"I've dropped your mother. Can you come help me?"
"Where is she right now, dad?"
"She's ok. She's under the car in the parking garage."
"Where the hell were you going?"
"Oh, she just wanted to drive around a bit and feel the sun on her face."
"On my way, dad."
When he couldn't find me, he'd wander the halls of his building or wherever else he happened to be and he'd recruit a stranger. He always found someone to help him. My mother should have been in a nursing home, but my father knew that she would die quickly there, and he wouldn't consider it. But when he realized that he'd be facing surgery, radiation, and chemo, he saw the writing on the wall. So he said nothing for as long as he could continue to get through the days of wracking pain. He said nothing until it was almost too late to do anything to help him. When he went out of town for radiation treatment prior to his surgery, my mother was placed into respite care in a nursing home. After his third night away from home, he told me that this was the longest he'd been apart from my mother for over 50 years. Surgery followed. Dad moved in with me to recover. He and I spent hours and days and weeks together, catching up on everything. I learned for the first time about his war experiences. I learned about the bridges he had helped to build to support the Allied invasion of Nazi-held territory. I learned that my mother had been his first, only and true love. While he'd watched his drunken comrades in arms march off to French brothels to stave off their fear of death, he'd stayed in camp to write letters to my mother.

We applied to have Dad transferred to a double room in a nursing home, sharing with my mother. We were declined repeatedly. Dad was not sick enough for a nursing home, we were told. Mom continued to decline. She would call him dozens of times per day. She was barely able to speak, but they would just sit and listen to one another breathe. My mother kept a photograph of my father on her chest. It showed him at his last birthday party, wearing a sombrero and a silly grin. She refused to allow her attendants to touch it, even when the dyes began to melt into her skin. Then, just before Christmas in the year 2002, our appeals were heard and a room was found for the two gentle, old lovers. Three days later, surrounded by her extended family, my father's arms around her neck as he whispered a farewell in her ear, my mother died a beautiful, proper English death. I held my father's sobbing body in my arms. I wanted to lift him in the air and take the pain away as he'd done for me so many times in the ancient past. But I couldn't.

My father continued in the nursing home alone. He sat in his room, surrounded by photographs of his life with my mom -- party-goers wearing silly hats on a Caribbean cruise, wrestling lovers on a mossy carpet in the forest. Under his bed, he kept the bottle of Scotch that she had given him for his 80th birthday. He didn't know what kind of event warranted opening it. Neither do I. I still have it.

One day, early in February, we were talking about Valentine's Day. My father told me he hadn't spent Valentine's Day alone for well over 50 years and he didn't plan to do so this year. I wasn't sure what he meant. I reassured him we'd all be over for a visit. On February 11, complaining that he felt unwell, my father was taken to hospital. On the evening of February 13, he gave me a hug, told me I'd been a good son, and said goodnight. Early on the morning of February 14, alone in his hospital room, as I raced cursing through morning traffic to reach him, he succumbed to pneumonia. I spent the morning sitting beside him, holding his sad, cold, hand and thanking him silently for teaching me how to love.