Five magics to remember
For my granddaughter Leila, written in 2019
1.) Decide how to string the colors of magic into your life story.
Things happen to us. These are events—they are not yet a story. For example, a 24-year-old woman gets pregnant in rural Alberta in the 1940s. The child’s father is unwilling or unable to marry the young woman. At this time and in this place, people are highly judgmental. Women who get pregnant without a marriage-minded partner have two choices: either they look for an illegal abortion or they go to a church-run home in a far town where they have the baby and give it up for adoption. The pregnant woman, whose country school only went up to Grade 8, decides she is going to have the child and bring it up on her own. But her family is highly conservative. How much help can she expect from them? None?
Thirty years ago, a prominent writer was kind enough to give advice to a young writer, me. What I took away from the evening was this man’s profound bitterness at the lack of recognition he’d received. He was good pals with all the big-name writers in Canada—called them by nicknames and had dinners with them—but he hadn’t achieved their sales or success. In talking with me, he slid in barbs at every single writing icon in the country. I laughed, but I was blinking too, in surprise that he would say such things. With a friend like that, who needs an enemy?
Two years before that advice night, when I was 24, I had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder with a genetic component. This challenge meant I dealt with a lot of on-going pain—and still do.
What is it to be lucky? A victim? Has life really not been fair? What kind of narrative, what story do we construct from the events that happen to us? It’s important to understand the story we tell ourselves at night becomes, to some extent, a choice. Once upon a time is a great start. But don’t leave out the good parts. Lots of small magics happen in everyone’s life; the bright beads of a child saying I love you, the colors of an orchid blooming on a windowsill, family laughing together over a shared meal. String the story-of-your-life together into a necklace with these bright stones as well as the noir we’re all given.
2.) Gratitude is magic, pure and simple. What can you find to be grateful for?
This morning I was walking around a lake near our house. The steep hills were getting to me and I was feeling about twenty years older than I do on any good day when I stride out. This morning I was exhausted. My bones were sore. Your granddad Garney’s had two operations within the last three months, and it’s taken it out of me, caring for him. It didn’t help that I’d had a Hep A and Hep B shot the day before in preparation for some very costly new medication that required multiple vaccinations.
I thought of that writer who had been so bitter. He’d taught me more than he knew. He’d taught me that other than working hard, we can’t control our success. What if rather than looking at our professional lives as a competition—there will always be friends more successful than we are—we practiced cooperation? In the past, I’ve even had friends who were applying for writing jobs tell me about them and encourage me to apply for the same gigs! To this day, I hold up those particular big-heartednesses like glowing beacons.
This morning, I caught myself starting to feel down. But hey, I wasn’t limping. Salal leaves glistened in the rain. The sword ferns that bordered the trail were picking themselves up after a bitterly dry summer. Seeing the tough evergreen sword ferns start to revive was a relief. The whole island I live on is breathing out gratitude for the rain. Even firs and cedars hold their fronds differently when they are well watered. The rain has also knocked the fire hazard down.
Kira, our Golden Doodle, leads the way, frolicking down to the beaver dam and into the water. She wades in up to her shoulders, stirring up clouds of silt, and slurping gulps of water. Then the dog leaps out and does spinnies on the trail. Spinnies: this is where she turns in a tight circle very fast. The correct response is for me to run at her. Then she circles and charges at me, swerving at the last moment. We continue this game until the human part of the equation runs out of energy or picks up a stick to change the game. On these walks, Kira expresses such joy I’m always humbled. I want to be as delighted by life as my dog. You do know god is just dog spelled backward?
3.) Love is magic. Be generous with it.
This morning, in the park, the September drizzle was lovely. I got wet with no hat, but not soaked. As Kira and I played tug up the very steepest hill to the back of the lake, I thought of the child of that courageous woman back in the 40s in rural Alberta. Diane and I met back when we both lived on boats, and she’s been a dear friend for decades. She’s never known who her father was, which hurt. But Di has never said to me, Wow, I had a hard life because I was illegitimate and kids made fun of me and my mom at school, as I’m sure happened.
Diane counts herself as a fortunate person. In spite of her mother’s fears, her whole extended family helped to raise her, all those so-conservative farming folks, many of whom were pretty fundamentalist. They were wonderfully kind. Diane’s grandparents and many aunties rotated her between them and looked after her while her mom was working. When there was a death or a sickness in the community, her mom was always the first over with a casserole or baked goods. Her single mother who cleaned houses for a living was going to hold her head up in the community; she always had enough to give.
4.) Friends are the most precious everyday magic I know. Cherish them.
I have spent time this summer humming the Beatles tune, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” Let’s see, there was Judy who came and cleaned for us at the cottage at our place when Garney was unable to and I was too exhausted. Judy is seventy, white-haired, with the build of a pixie. She cleans for other people, and I pay her, but still, she’s my friend, so it felt odd. “I feel really guilty about this. Would you prefer me to get someone else?” I asked the last time she was over. Judy swung around and fixed me with her beautiful blue eyes. “Not unless you’d like,” she said. I assured her that she was the Gold Standard, and we would much prefer her. The cottage pays for groceries; we need to have it ticking over.
One friend brought us soup and chili, two more walked Kira. Another woman, who abhors cleaning her own house, phoned up and offered to help me clean the cottage. My friend Joy offered to walk Kira but then got a call from the nursing home to inform her they were kicking her rambunctious father out. Joy’s husband offered to walk Kira. “What’s not to like?” he said, patting her ridiculously bald head while her tail waved.
5.) Humor is transformative magic. Find it wherever you can.
“Kira’s a little sensitive about her haircut,” I warned my friend Bunny after we’d tried a new groomer. When I let the dog out of the car, Bunny took one look and cracked up: “What did the groomer think she was doing, shearing a sheep?” Kira had ended up with a flat head and legs that looked like rats had been chewing on them. Well, fur grows back.
My buddy Joy has had a demanding summer caring for her father. She’s been back and forth from this island to Vancouver Island a dozen times, fixing plumbing leaks, selling his house, cleaning years worth of useless stuff out, then moving him into a nursing home where he immediately started to raise hell. Okay, so the man has had strokes, has dementia and paranoid delusions. But being kicked out after a month in a nursing home? That’s painful.
After much research, Joy went back to help her dad again. A recent text said, “I’m taking my dad for a tour of a complex care facility this afternoon. Wish me luck!” Later in the afternoon, “My dad is in tears. The complex care place is perfect but ‘it’s filled with old people!’ So says the 94-year-old.”
Obviously he didn’t find it funny, but we did.
The day our mom died, my brother Geoffrey flew from Calgary to Vancouver so I wouldn’t be alone at Mom’s place that night. We met at the front door and hugged. I was cold and couldn’t count how many cups of tea I’d drunk. I was so glad to see my brother I was almost in tears at his kindness; he taught at U of C and I had no idea how he’d got his classes covered so fast. The last time I’d seen him was the year before on the other side of the country at our dad’s funeral. We both loved our parents greatly. Now we stood facing one another in Mom’s hall with its green shag rug and the overhead glass ball lights straight from the sixties, and with a straight face, Geoffrey said, “We have to stop meeting like this.” When we’d picked ourselves off the floor—black humor is funniest to those who are in shock—he said, “I guess we’re orphans now.”
Laughter throws a temporary bridge between how things are at the moment, stark, and how we’d like them to be, which is a great deal more on the sunny side. Laughter takes us to a place where somehow, things are going to be okay. I’m deeply grateful for that kind of transformative magic.
1.) Decide how to string the colors of magic into your life story.
2.) Gratitude is magic, pure and simple. What can you find to be grateful for?
3.) Love is magic. Be generous with it.
4.) Friends are the most precious everyday magic I know. Cherish them.
5.) Humor transmutes a tough situation. Find it wherever you can.
How might you string the colors of magic into your own life story? I’d love to hear from you.
