Today I was in a bit of a rush between my math class and getting home, and then off to work so I was very quick at the till at Safeway.
As I was putting my groceries through I realized it was give to the food bank day, so I asked the clerk to please add in the $10 food pack. Then at the end of the transaction she informed me that I had $10 off for reward points . I said I’ll gladly take the $10 off which she quickly punched in. But then I asked if she could put in another $10 food pack, because this was just good karma saying that hey you got an extra free $10 that means buy an extra food pack for the food bank. Unfortunately the transaction had already gone through so she couldn’t add it on but she just was so excited that I would do that and how nice that was and I said well I’ll do it again later at another time but I just can’t because I’m in such a rush right now. I’m out the door and it just warms my heart to know that people notice acts of kindness. When you are being a nice person people notice.
Regrets, happiness, and my depression had a very huge battle. As a teenager I was full of regrets and too depressed to try to fix anything so I just cried about everything that I had done that I wish I hadn’t.
I started dating at 12. It was not the greatest thing that all of my friends and the first boys that I dated were all 3 to 4 years older than I was. And that began some of my most regretted days. I met my children’s father when I was 14. By the time I was 15 he had bought our engagement and wedding rings. That fall I didn’t go back to school and by Christmas we were engaged. By the time I got married in the spring I was expecting so that added to a little bit of the excitement. As the years passed the one thing I never regretted was having my children. They were wonderful babies and I love them to death and I would never ever ever change that.
Within a 10 year time period, my parents passed away, two weeks apart from each other, with lung cancer. My nephew drowned at my home which devastated everyone. My great uncle, passed away Easter morning. I was losing everyone that knew me as a child. And my marriage of 17 years to an alcoholic came to an end. My divorce lead to a horrible separation from my boys who were forced to pick a side. This led to seven years of being estranged from two of the most important people in my life. So when I had to start living my life again, and seeking counseling, I decided that I would not ever have any regrets. I’d watched my mother and father struggle with regrets when they knew their time was near. Regretting past hurts of friends and relatives and siblings that they had never gotten a chance to resolve. I never wanted that to happen to me.
So when I got a small inheritance I didn’t safely put it away for old age , I booked a European tour first class. I had never even been on a plane before. That was in 2002 and I’ve had some really lean income days since then but I have never regretted spending that money. I have made peace with old hates. Finding happy often means letting go of the past. Letting go of the things that we can’t change. Happiness is the ability to be thankful and grateful for everything you have. And if you are grateful and you do acknowledge all the wonderful things you have in your life, whether they are huge or very small, then you can go on and have no regrets at all. But I guess I have to go back and say that there is one thing I do regret. Being sexually abused as a child I didn’t have the ability or the support to have it stopped. And as I got older it was harder and harder to think about, so nothing got resolved. And then as I got to be a young parent and I found out these men had gone into personal care homes or passed away, I regretted not being able to face them as an adult, as a woman, and say, “How could you have treated me like that! How could you have done that just for your own gratification!” But almost sixty years has passed and I am at peace with me. I like me. I like the life I have chosen. And next spring I will graduate high school!! That was one of my last regrets that is being resolved. Tomorrow morning is Mathematics Grade 12 class. Graduation here I come!!
Sunshine makes me think. Sunshine has always had the ability to open up my mind , my eyes, and my heart to see what’s beautiful out there. I could never ever survive if I had lived either on the East Coast or the West Coast of Canada because I’d have to deal with all the cloudy rainy foggy days.
I grew up on Main Street which kind of makes you really wonder because our street was not the main thorough fare of the little village. But it was called Main Street. It had 25 houses and, to just put it into perspective, the last house on the street was a farm. And at the top of our street was Tyndall school.
One Christmas when I was 10 years old my mom and dad got me a Kodak camera. Christmas morning was a beautiful day. The sun was shining bright and there was frost on every branch and every tree and it was just a maze of sparkles. So out I went dressed up warm. I put on some mitts and took my camera to capture the beauty. I used my entire roll of film on frost, the beautiful beautiful hoarfrost on every tree branch. It was one of the happiest moments in my life. My mom was good enough to get the pictures all developed and of course they were all in black-and-white but it was the first time I was able to capture the sunshine and the magic. I continue to this day loving the time that I can spend out in nature or just wandering and taking pictures.
It wasn’t until last year that I finally got myself a really nice Canon camera with lots of accessories. I could take pictures again when I wanted to. I could edit them and smile with every change. The only difference now is I can enjoy this artistic side. I never gave myself credit for being able to capture beauty. It wasn’t until others started seeing my photos that I started to accept that I was good at this. And it wasn’t until I started to like myself that I believed them. And to also accept that of 100 photos, I might delete 100 of them. That is reality of life and honesty with myself. Just like some people can hear perfect pitch, I see beauty. If all the elements and exact lighting are there, wow. Sunshine makes me very very happy. I make me very happy.
In our little village of, oh I don’t know, 400 people, we had one school built in 1957. The year I was born. The old school had burned to the ground. This new school had a auditorium and everything. In a small town, gossip is one of the most evil things that can happen. In those days there was no Internet so misinformation went from phone calls on party lines (yes six houses using the same phone line) and neighbours talking at the post office, the store, or over the back fence. (Oh now that I think of it not many houses had fences but anyway they talked.)
So one day our teacher Mrs. Downey was going to make a point of how statements can change very quickly from one person to the next. So she lined us up, grade 1 to grade 3, down a long hallway in the school. (One classroom. Don’t get excited. About 25 kids.) The first child was whispered a message by our teacher. In turn that child had to take three steps and tell the next child the message. This continued until it got to the last child. We all went back into the classroom and my teacher asked the last child that heard the message what the message was. The response was “Joey eats soup”. Our teacher wrote the original message on the chalkboard. It was “Joey went to Darlene’s house where he made chicken soup”. The most important thing I learned that day was that we all hear, see and remember differently. What I think I heard or what I think I seen, becomes memories and if I’m asked to recall what happened I pull from those memories. I have observed in my own family and friends that we all remember things differently. We may have all been at the same place at the same time but for some reason our brains don’t want to take a perfect picture of that moment. Sometimes, especially during stressful times, I can remember trying to retell a horrible moment in my life. The telling of the story brings back the fear and distress. In the room with me are four others listening to my story. One of them was a witness to this horrific event. Suddenly he declares, “That’s not how it happened!! Are you nuts!! I was there! This is what happened!!” So over the years I have concluded that my memories are how I processed the situation. Sometimes I made ugly things beautiful. Sometimes I made beautiful things ugly. We all do that because we are individuals. We each see and remember a story differently. Especially in those days when we didn’t have instant media. We couldn’t instantly record a conversation or take a picture. If you wanted to be factual you had to start writing as soon as possible. If you wanted photographic evidence of the memory you better hope a camera was near and filled with a roll of film. Then finish the roll and get it to the store. They would send it away to be developed. A week or so and you have a picture. It might be a very blurry picture. It was a whole different world. So during those moments where you sit there and listen to your mother tell a story, or your brother tell a story, or your best friend tell a story, and you want to scream, “No that’s not what happened!” Take a breath. Remember that we all remember in different ways. We’re not lying. We’re not exaggerating. We just see and feel and remember the moments differently. 99.9% of our memories will never be used in a court as evidence. So be kind. Be forgiving. Be tolerant. Be a nice human.
As a child I was intrigued by religion and I think I still am in many ways. It started with my grandfather. He was an old Swedish man that looked like Santa Claus. Big long white beard and a big round belly. He used to always play solitaire and when he played solitaire he told me that he played the devil. He had to beat the devil so I asked what this devil was and he told me the devil is what makes people do bad things. He loves for people to do bad things. “Well then who makes people do good things?” I asked. Ahhh, that is the story of God that lives far up in the sky and watches everything you do. Some wise men (and women) apparently were told by God to keep telling these stories. Many of the stories were about hoping to go to the place in the sky. But no one had actually seen God and it took a long time for God to send his son to straighten it all out. But then he died, went to heaven, then came back. That got a little too complicated for a five-year-old. That summer my grandpa died, I seen my mother cry from sadness for the first time. It only lasted a minute or two. There was a funeral, kind of, because he donated his body to science. This was a long long time ago so it wasn’t something that everybody did. It was my grandfather’s choice. Grown ups kept saying things like, “It is okay little one. He’s in heaven. He’s with God now.”
That July was super hot. We had a big picture window in our living room and this wonderful beautiful robin flew right into the picture window. I ran outside. Oh no, that bird was dead. There was no doubt that bird was dead. That poor bird did not move. It’s little neck all floppy like. So I decided that this bird should have a funeral and I would bury it. And like everyone said, the bird should go up to heaven by the third day. I could prove this now because now I had something to bury. So I buried the bird alongside the house and I waited. I counted three sleeps and on the third day I dug up the grave. I was finally going to be able to understand how grandpa went to heaven. As I started to dig up the bird, a part of the bird came out with the dirt. And then a lot of worms, and then a lot of screams, and then a lot of bad bad bad thoughts about heaven. My mother, who was really quite logical about most things and not very emotional about anything (like I said I only seen her cry once in sadness). She just looked at me and said, “Carol things die. When they die they go into the ground. When they go into the ground they rot and become part of the earth. Their souls, the part we can’t see, is what goes to heaven.” Okay then. Really it’s just hoping you go to heaven. It’s not knowing. No way to prove it. No way to prove that the imaginary being is up in the sky. For most of my life I couldn’t hope it was or wasn’t. I could not imagine it ever happening. Ever finding happiness, even in death. Other people were happy. Other kids were happy. I was never happy. I never felt joyful. Today I truly know joy. I love each day and my life, and death, are both bursting with hope. I have a Mandevilla plant that I absolutely love. I buy them every year and someone said I should bring it in as a houseplant. Well of course I procrastinated until the first frost and it just turned brown. But I had hope so I cut it down and brought it in. That was in September. I kept it watered. Added some plant food. Told it to please grow. And now here it is mid November and the first green shoot. If it didn’t grow, I would be okay. Hope is my ability to see the possibilities and accept the failures. Hope can lead to ecstatic joy. Failure leads to knowledge. Maybe there is this wonderful heaven place or maybe I just become part of the earth, but either way I’ll be happy.
It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Manitoba. Little chilly, little bit of snow, but all in all not a bad relaxing day. Now sadly part of trying to stay happy is keeping myself healthy. I’ll tell you about more of it later but I didn’t really plan on living past 60 and here I am 65. Still working part time and still enjoying a good amount of physical activities. So part of having to be healthy and not have cancer like my immediate family all died of, is to do some shitty work. One of tasks I completed this weekend, and I’m very proud of myself for doing so. It is the horrific, totally insane, oh my god, event of picking at my shit with a stick and putting it into a little container envelope thingy and sending it away so they can make sure I don’t have colon cancer. So yeah, you take the stinky shit that fell out of your ass. You proceed to pick at it with the stick. (Yes they provide little mini tongue depressor sticks.) Next you have to smear a piece of shit onto this little envelope thing. You must take shit samples from each of two “sections” of your shit. Now do this each day for three days. Seal it up and send it away. Postage paid because no one wants to go to the post office and buy a stamp for shit. In a little while ColonCheck Manitoba will contact my doctor with the results.
When I wasn’t happy I didn’t really care if I got sick because in a lot of ways I didn’t care if I was here or not. Now I wanna be here for the important things. Things like my kids getting older and my grandkids falling in love, graduations, great grandchildren. And the world just being so beautiful and being able to see as much of it as I can! So to have that, I must pick at my shit with a dip stick. It’s worth it.
Being curly blonde, blue eyed, with dimples made me the cutest kid. And if I smiled and was quiet people wanted me to sit on their lap. Some hugged me lots. Some gave me treats. Some were not as gentle and breathed funny. Some smelled bad, talked weird, and hugged too hard. Some hugs made me feel loved and protected. But I never remember my Mom ever hugging me. Or my Dad. I knew they loved me but no hugs to be found. Maybe only Happy gives hugs.
For as long as I can remember happiness was something that other people had, other children, other adults, even animals seemed to be happy but I never felt that way and I didn’t know why. If I pretended to be happy it seemed to make other people happy. So that became my goal. To make everybody happy. It almost killed me. Literally.
Happy!!! Where Are You??? 