First Snow--The Woods Transformed

As I write this we are experiencing the first snowfall of the season.  My sister Julie, her sweet three month old baby, my kids and I have just returned from a delightful walk at MacPhail Woods in Orwell. It was raining when we arrived and the air had a welcome briskness to it that we expect in mid November on Prince Edward Island. We walked past the ever beautiful old MacPhail homestead which incidentally, was still open for lunch from noon until 1:30pm this late in their season. Down through the old roadway covered with a thick blanket of wet oak leaves we traipsed with Julie's puppy running ahead, excited as the rest of us to be walking in such a beautiful locale.

Past the two towering hauntingly ancient stone drive markers and across the dirt and gravel side road to the wooden stairs that lead to the trail of three wooden foot bridges we walked. By the time we made it down to the river's edge the rain had turned to large wet snowflakes adding to the magical appeal of the still mossy green and fern fragrant quiet of the woods. We walked further than usual along the riverbank with Julie leading the way beyond where we usually turn to a place where a small stream feeds into the larger river. We came upon a little waterfall chortling as it made its way over the debris which created it. The sound of rushing water amid the hush of the snowy wood lent itself to a tranquil pause for us.

There is something about the first snowfall that is utterly trans-formative to my kids and I. Walking along watching as big wet splotches of snow descend upon the forest floor already slick with fallen leaves is mesmerizing. It reminded me that those banks of snow in later winter months are composed entirely of millions and millions of accumulated individual flakes. Just as a lifetime is composed entirely of individual moments, breaths that accumulate into stories, years. With this first snow you can see the little flakes sitting lonely on the ground, some resting in wet clumps, many melting as soon as they hit the still warm soil. We are part of this story that is unfolding. This was my sweet little nephew's first snowfall.

As we walked along my sister and I talked about how grateful we are to live in a part of the world that bears witness to the changing of seasons. Yes, admittedly, November and March are seasons of complaint here on the Island with their dull, wet barrenness, but they are necessary to the changeover and without them we could not fully appreciate the shifting nature of the land as it moves into and out of its requisite seasons of slumber and rebirth. We thought about how much more appreciative we are of the fragile and ever changing beauty of what each season uniquely offers us. And despite witnessing the changeover for many years we never tire of the wonder the first snowfall provides while slooshing through the wet leaves underfoot and pausing to watch the flakes descend through the now bare canopy of deciduous trees along the river. 

Life is constantly unfolding, and impermanence is part of the circle as it cycles onward.

My kids and I needed this today. We are at home on the Island while their dear father is on another Island; Cape Breton to be precise. He is there to bid farewell to and bury his ninety- nine year old grandmother. She was born in Big Pond, Cape Breton at seven months gestation, 99 years ago last spring. Weighing only two pounds, she was not expected to live the night and was placed in a shoe box in the warming oven of the wood stove. A fighter, she survived against all odds and went on to have ten children and live a full and honest life in Sydney. All of her  children and a great many of her descendants are gathered there today to pay their respects. I can see her resemblance in my oldest daughter's eyes.

Time moves onward, people grow old and pass away, seasons change and in doing so share many gentle lessons for us if we are willing students.

Today we bathed in the healing power of a woods we love. We watched as it was transformed by the soft glitter of the first snow, and breathed deeply as it transformed us as well.

Looking out to the snow right now it is difficult to believe that  it was only yesterday that we planted bulbs in our front bed in hopes that they will offer up to us their flowers in the springtime when we are all feeling more winter weary than today.

We are all humble, wondrous creatures of this Earth and to the Earth we shall someday all return. In the meantime, may we all share in the joys and sorrows of this world, receiving each equally as they come our way. 

In warmth,
Jill

Dancing with Bats- Sunday June 25th, 1995--When Will We Dance Again?

In my late teens/early twenties my mother bought a push button accordion at an antique shop because she thought it was too beautiful to leave there. She didn't know how to play but over the course of many a summer's evening she taught herself the basics out on the back deck. Perhaps this was to the neighbour's chagrin, but certainly to my own delight. 


On warm evenings I would join her to sit in the dark and listen to the crooning of her accordion. It often matched how I felt--melodramatic and a little off key. We would sit and rock on the rocking bench and watch as the bats, beloved night sky dancers of my childhood, swooped swallow- like from tree to eave. There was a rhythm to those evenings of my late youth that I have yet to match in adulthood.

This morning, while sorting through old plastic bins in my garage to donate (for worm composters ) to a fantastic gardening research project my oldest daughter is involved in  I discovered an old journal with a brief entry about one such summer night.

The entry went like this:

Sunday June 25th /95

(Tonight) Just now I danced with the graceful bats to the melodious music of the wind in the trees. And not just any wind, but the warm wind of a beautiful June night.

At first I just sat and watched the bats, a glorious summer's eve pastime, but then I was beckoned to dance in the cool dew.

The dusky blue sky growing darker as I danced- such a perfect, perfect feeling- such a perfect, perfect evening. I know days and sights such as these are good for the soul but tonight I really truly felt it- in  my soul- 

Just run and dance with the bats and the wind but do not dance it away- no, please let these summer evening's stay alive in me forever.

I am trying to recall the last time I saw a bat in my parent's yard, or anywhere but I can't. It has been years. Little did I know when I wrote the entry in '95 that bats on the East Coast would soon become decimated by a fungal infection called  White Nose Syndrome. Nor did I know then that for  many years I would forget how to dance in the dew. 

This past summer, I for a fleeting instant thought I saw one of those dark angels flit across my path. I can only hope that we shall one day meet again and share another dance. In the meantime I will put up a bat box in my yard as a hopeful measure and I will try to pay attention when I feel beckoned by the wind to dance.

Jill

Why Stealing Tomorrow?
This morning in my living room my three kids (14, 11 and 9 years old) were figuring out together how to sing and  play this song on the guitar and piano. When I heard them it made me want to dance again barefoot in the dew.

Dear World: Inaction is Not an Option

Below is essentially what I said at the two Global Chorus book launches I was invited by book editor Todd MacLean to speak at earlier this week:

Since having my submission to Global Chorus accepted two years ago I've struggled with the thought  "is my contribution worthy?" given that a great many of the contributors are internationally known inspiring leaders in social and environmental change.

Perhaps that's part of the reason I've come to Global Chorus. Believing that our contributions are not  worthy or significant is a huge stumbling block in the process of change. With thoughts such as these we are defeated even before we have begun. And everyone here today knows that we are not living in an age where the word defeated should be part of our vocabulary. 

We also know that it is far easier to choose to avoid difficult situations than to face them head on. But that doesn't mean inaction is a good choice for our world either. The forces we are reckoning with both socially and environmentally are not small forces but they are driven by a human element. We are not without fault, nor are we without recourse so long as  we urgently act with thoughtful consideration. 

And although it is wonderful to know that there are a great many people considering the difficult question Todd has posed as the basis of this book, it doesn't let any of us off the hook from making important changes in how we live our lives. We are all utterly dependent on nature and each other for our survival. Moving towards lives of greater social connection and environmental awareness as well as working towards the reduction of our carbon footprint is a fantastic starting point.

I strongly urge you to consider changes you can make in your own life. Look to the voices of Todd's book for inspiration but also trust your own instincts. We all need to do our part to help bring this, our wonderful and complicated world, to a place of greater healing for all.

Thank you!                                                                        

Jill MacCormack

There is so much to do: A review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Jean-Dominique Bauby was in the prime of his life working as editor-in-chief of internationally read French fashion magazine Elle when he suffered a catastrophic brain event while driving alone with his young son. The stroke, which in another time and place would have killed him, left him in a coma from which he emerged weeks later with what doctors term "locked-in syndrome". 

"Locked-in syndrome" was something I first learned of as a young child volunteering with my grandmother at the Provincial Sanatorium down the street from her house. She had nursed there for years and in her retirement she loved to visit the people she helped care for through her career. As a child, I recall feeling unsure of how I should act when walking into the rooms of people with such grave illnesses and conditions. "Don't stare, they didn't ask for their suffering." was the only advice I was given. As a young child it was very hard not to. Certainly, my smiles were welcome and returned by those patients who were able.

 I vividly remember my nanny speaking about a woman there who had lead a normal life until she had a stroke in her early forties and was left entirely unable to move or communicate with others. I never understood how, but they claimed that her brain was intact and she was fully aware of everything just as she had been prior to the brain incident. "She is trapped in her own body", I overheard the grownups say. 

This to me seemed a fate worse than death.

"What if her nose gets itchy or she needs to pee?" was the extent of where I went with my questioning to the adults in my life. How can she tell anybody how she's feeling? I achingly thought to myself.

So, it was with a  strange sense of relief that I read Bauby's post- stroke memoir entitled The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,  astonishingly written with the help of an aide and a letter board, one blink of his eye at a time. I say relief because his memoir gave me a glimpse into the mind of someone who as a quadriplegic in his forties was strapped into a wheelchair in a convalescent home called Berck-sur-Mer on the French Channel Coast. So like the "trapped in her body" woman of my childhood. His physical appearance was a shadow of his former vibrant self, but, and this is where the mercy of his words brings us to, he reveals to us a man whose brilliant mind is fully intact in both intellect and imagination. His is truly an instance where his body has become specter; a mere shell which carries the force of his indomitable spirit into the external world. 

"To fight off stiffness I instinctively stretch, my arms and legs moving only a fraction of an inch. It is often enough to bring relief to a painful limb.

My cocoon becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do." says Bauby in the prologue of the book.

There is so much to do? What could he possibly mean?  The woman "trapped in her own body" from my childhood sanatorium visits could do nothing without the help of nurses and aides, or so I naively thought. The heartbreak of that moment of realization for me was the cracking open of a soul to empathy. Perhaps the trapped woman in my childhood memory really did have a fiercely intact intellect as well? Besides, how much are any of us trapped by at any given point in our own lives?

There is so much to do. And Bauby has done much for opening up hearts and minds through the writing of this touching and lyrical memoir.

As Bauby proves through his apt descriptions of daily events in the naval hospital, the "unfortunates" who have landed in this place share the common bond of unasked for illness and infirmity--something which any of us are endlessly vulnerable to throughout our lives.

 In his chapter entitled Tourists, he describes those in  his neurology unit as "broken-winged birds, voiceless parrots, ravens of doom". Not an uplifting picture for sure. But what is uplifting and enduring throughout the short book (essentially a collection of touching and sometimes hilarious vignettes) is the dramatic ability of Bauby to articulate both his greatest depths of despair (the metaphor of the diving bell a perfect description of how he is constantly at the mercy of his physical limitations) as well as the soaring heights he reaches when his mind is free to roam beyond the confines of room 119, or the hospital hallways, or the beach outside the hospital walls (as butterfly). 

 The Bauby of this book may be a man confined by the ravages of stroke, but he most definitively is not a man defined only by those same ravages.

I read the book twice in a matter of days. I tend to be a fast reader and at times worry that I might miss something by moving through text too quickly. With this book I lingered. My sister-in-law who loaned me the book likened her read of it to eating good chocolate; she savoured and took her time with it recognizing the uncommon beauty of the scenes Bauby painted with his words. I liken my  own read to sipping a hot mug of tea while watching in wonder as the steam rises, and swirls into new shapes, new forms which all too soon dissolve. 

In reading this book I felt as though I was in a time warp of Bauby's creation. As though, with each new word I read I was edging along on the precipice of his borrowed time while my own sense of time no longer existed. I entered his strange new world entirely- a world where the very construction of meaning takes on new meaning. The ability of Bauby's post-stroke writing to so poignantly enliven and enlarge his new world to include us, the nameless and faceless readers, is a  true testament to the way the human spirit can prevail against the greatest of odds.

Not being given to reading fashion magazines Jean-Dominique Bauby pre-stroke, was a man I would never have known. Yet the stroke, while debilitating him physically, gave him a unique avenue for self exploration that few of us achieve while going about  the business of our everyday lives.

 How many unknown selves do we possess?

Jill MacCormack