I feel her, knitting our relatives together
The past coming forward, speeding to today / this moment
Eras of generations unfurl; we see you, they wave
We feel you; we’ve always been here
I feel her, still coordinating
Always a planner, a bridge to events
Our grandmothers and grandfathers are here with her
They’re all here for us, talk to them
I feel her
RL
She took her last breath at 6:30am on September 6, 2020. She was my little sister. Funny how we do that, no matter how close to seniors’ stage we are – little sisters will always be little sisters to the older.
Reva was beautiful; exceptionally beautiful. She certainly had no problem turning heads and often invoking envy. She was smart, a doer and a dancer and she was funny too. She held our family sense of humor, honed in the history of pain and endurance, in doing whatever it took. She wouldn’t have recognized how that humor and ability to persist was ingrained through many generations reduced to survival.
She didn’t much talk about our Indigeneity; it was not something we consciously talked about. We just were and mostly, we tried to forget about it. Mostly we had associated every awful and humiliating moment of our childhood with it.
We went through the fostering system together, until the day I ran away from it and she aged out of it. Even then, we weren’t really free. We still had the weight of all we’d gone through before, during and even after. In our own ways, we decided the only path out was to pursue the model of success that was firmly impressed on us throughout those years. We only had to just work hard; very hard. We only had to have a nice home and maybe husbands and kids and maybe a car too. We only had to be respectable.
My journey with that empty misconception ended with several years of help to undo those generations of trauma. She sought help where she most felt at home. I don’t know how stable or even healing that was for her. I think it mostly hurt her, really. Yes, she was beautiful and smart and so, so complicated.
It wasn’t always easy to love her. I suppose they would say that about me too. I just like to think all that therapy gave me some measure of genuine peace she didn’t have. It’s in that, as a big sister that I find most painful. It’s not much different really, from all those earnest wishes for happiness and safety we have for our babies.
We achieved those goals to similar degrees. In the end, it was our children and homes that mattered most, but the ugly monster that was our childhood never really left her. She never quite found the combination that would allow her to be, to just be, in ease and in the ability to admit failure. That sometimes made her a pretty tough judge and not everyone was interested in hearing the verdicts. Sometimes other events hardened hearts indefinitely. It’s one of the most miserable of human experiences to simultaneously love someone so deeply while fighting the soulful wish to feel only indifference. Hopeless dreams.
Still, she held out her hands, arms and whatever resources available to help anyone she could. Generosity was hers too. Her heart would melt at the sight of impersonal suffering. She was a force and it was a good feeling if she was on your side.
As a sister, there was plenty of special too; the way we knew what the other was thinking by locking eyes. Breaking into gut-busting laughter over things only we could understand. It was an indescribable comfort to know she was there when I was scared. It was gut-wrenching when her pain became mine.
I hadn’t been talking to her for some time when her boy found her on the floor. She’d been rushed into surgery to remove the discovered brain tumor that they said was going to take her in a matter of months, and that’s when I got the call.
It doesn’t seem real; not then and not now. One moment often replays in my mind. It was when I arrived at her home and saw her sitting in the corner of her couch, so small and quiet and beautiful, even with all those metal staples down one side of her head. She didn’t say anything, but I felt it all. I felt her fatigue and confusion; I felt her fear.
I could only go to her and take her in my arms and tell her that I loved her. In only a moment, all those years of trying to figure out life and our issues were done. One single, damned moment. One single, holy moment.
We had her for eight and a half more months; somewhat short of the 24 they told us was possible. I think we just knew, this time the possible was not an achievable goal. We were back to survival mode, where the practicality of what had to be dealt with in undoing an entire lifetime was paramount.
Her sons and I packed up boxes and tried to plan as best as possible for her youngest son’s eventual move to his father’s and her older son’s grappling with the baggage of the past and the infuriating circumstances of the present. Broken hearts can’t be boxed.
We spent the last few weeks just talking until she lost most of the ability. Then she would mostly just look at us as we’d try to regale her with any stories of normalcy.
Two days before she passed, I obsessed over the thought that I needed a sign when she was on the other side. I asked her to please show me something purple. “I don’t know why I picked purple, but will you”? I pleaded. She nodded, yes. She knew why I picked purple, but she wasn’t able to tell me. I didn’t even remember until she was gone, her birthstone is an amethyst. Anyway, when she nodded, I knew she would.
Eight and a half months to live what matters and even if she couldn’t say it often, I know she loved us hard and no one as much as her sons and grandson. I know this is mainly what she thought about in that time and if she could have made everyone’s wishes come true then, she would have. She had so many dreams…
In the end, she lived up to that final promise to me and I know she will for others. I can promise that. Another thing you could always count on her for was, keeping her word.
A couple weeks after she passed, I went for a walk. It was late September and the leaves were turning color. The wind that rustled fallen leaves was distinctly cooler. I plodded on, lost in thought until I was stopped in my <insert whatever cliché>.
Even if they had noticed, it might not have made much of an impression on anyone else. It was unusual to me though, and it happened to be one of my favorite flowers; a Lupin, a flower that blooms in spring. Of course, it was purple.
I didn’t have a thought. Not that I recall. I do remember the way it felt. It was like my entire being was suddenly filled with warmth that I find hard to describe. I instantly and absolutely knew my little sister was home and she was safe. That was all I really needed to know since I first got that call, and of course, she knew that…
Sisters know.
RL
So, I was reminded not too long ago that my predilection for profanity was especially evident lately. Lately? Where hath these innocents been?
Yes, OK, I have a mouth and it’s pretty potty at times, but I believe I’ve earned it honestly. I’m sorry, but I cannot apologize for it. According to even more recent studies than the ones that said swearing helps with pain, they now say my kind of swearing indicates genius level intelligence too. I wouldn’t lie about that…. I’d swear to it….
So, in that vein, I (re)present an updated story I published a few years ago about passing the gift down…
For about a millennium now it’s been said that kids say the damnedest darnedest things. I know this truth first-hand and I’ve kept a journal to capture a good number of eyebrow raising, head scratching and -are you for real- statements that my son has spouted since he started spouting.
I always encouraged free and open speech with him and I’ve always adored hearing what comes out of that new and unfettered brain. The only thing I’ve forbidden is swearing. It’s not that I’ve pretended that swearing doesn’t happen; we’re all aware of its worldwide domination, thus he’s heard such a word or two in the homeland.
He had attempted to copy those words, but only once, (that I know of), OK, technically twice, but the second time was just a noun change. It happened when he was two and a half. We were on holiday and his dad was desperately searching our vehicle for the camera before the beautiful tall ships we were watching passed by. While he was frantically throwing items left and right, he yelped, “Where’s my f*#kin’ camera”?
A couple of hours later, on our way home, I noticed my son frantically looking left and right. I asked him what was wrong and he plaintively asked, “Where’s my f*#kin’ camera”? To be fair, his toy camera did, in fact, appear to be a missing casualty of his father’s earlier desperation.
About two weeks later we were playing tea party and he came out of his room with most of his supplies except one. With hand on hip and grave consternation, he spoke. “Where’s my f*#kin’ teapot”? We had a little chat and I have to say he’s been pretty good at finding alternative words of satisfaction ever since.
Actually, he would eventually become a little too efficiently aware; he grew into the Soup Nazi of potty-mouth alternatives. Our self-proclaimed lord of language decency worked his moral indignance to a level that drove me to drink. He deployed a ‘swear jar’, a wretched vessel of confiscated loonies for every swear word he caught, thereby generously cutting into my own happy hour funding. Which also had me questioning my study-confirmed intelligence for having agreed to this insanity.
So, yes, I can swear like a drunken sailor. Actually, I feel that analogy is an insult; I’m certain my stupendous ability could teach a sailor a thing or two. Lest you accuse me of hypocrisy, I look at it like being an artist of abstract art who had to first prove that she can paint a real-life landscape before delving into free-flow style. My swearing is not a replacement for regular speaking skill, just occasional, as required, colorful enhancement. Certainly some days need more color than others.
Also, as a public service announcement, there have been recent studies that state hollering four letter words helps to alleviate pain. Think about that the next time you hammer your finger. No really, look it up.
OK, back to my son. What I’ve always told him is profanity is adult language; he’s free to swear when he is 18 or paying the bills, whichever comes first, (not gonna lie – secretly hoping it’s paying the bills).
No, I don’t really believe he will never swear again before he turns 18, but I’m pretty sure he’ll have learned to speak several appropriate adjectives first. After that, if he wants to add a little color now and then, fine, but more importantly, maybe then I can earn some #*@kin’ coins back.
RL
During a year of upheaval, reflection and even amazing rewards, a walk back to beginnings can help to return a sense of balance, to find an equilibrium that helps make life make sense again. I’ve been going back to some significant and poignant moments for me for that purpose. One of those periods was returning home after time spent in child foster care. This story was also published a few years ago, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it, maybe something in this will resonate for you too…
Sometimes old memories float up in need of
a little light…
A soul’s whisper to let it go.
I was 14 years old. My mother and I were living in an apartment on the 14th floor of a basic downtown high-rise. We were there because that’s where she was when I ran away from the last foster home I’d intended to live in.
I threatened to run away and never be found again if they made me go back to that home. The Department of Social Services, and my unprepared mother, gave in.
My mother had been struggling with escape from an abusive marriage, alcoholism, and no way to fully support her daughters. That’s how we ended up in foster care just after Christmas that year.
We were six girls, ages two to twelve years. I was twelve. They were my sisters, and because I was the oldest, they were also my beloved babies. There was no doubt that having already traversed a very rocky start together, we were a fiercely bonded ‘band of sisters’.
I was quite used to taking care of them, and the house as required, which it seemed was almost always. So, the demand to relinquish responsibility to the social workers who came to take us away or to the people who were to foster us was incomprehensible. It was shocking and infuriating and frustrating.
Many nights I’d lie awake planning our escape from that foster home and formulating the many ways I’d find our mom. I usually ended up crying myself to sleep immersed in the despondency of realizing how powerless I really was.
We were all together in that initial home, except the youngest who was instead taken to live with our father – another story for another time. I was eventually to move to two other homes within a year and a half. Only one sister was allowed to go with me; they gave me one day to choose between the four faces that pleaded to be taken. Despite everything that we’d already lived through to that point, it was then that I learned that a soul could feel fractured.
In short time, and with little choice, we adapted and carried on as kids are so able. Then two years later, suddenly we were all being taken to visit with our mom at her own new home. The visit went by as quickly as I’d dreaded. When it was time to say goodbye to her, it felt like the beginning of all the bad goodbyes again. I could not return to that pain; the next weekend I bolted for home, for her, for good.
So there I was, on the 14th floor in a small, sparse apartment, a temporary only child, but finally with my own mom. Life definitely took another turn in my day-to-day. I spent less time with my friends and more with my mother’s.
She had a friend on the 7th floor. Phyllis was one of those larger than life characters; a hard-drinking party girl, a queen bee who had great pride in being a full-time ‘player’. She seemed to take my mother under her wing. She was a louder than life distraction for a young woman bogged down with desperate problems.
Phyllis held court to an allotment of very proud and loud butch lesbians. They called themselves the girbols (girl boys, hard g). One of them was Margaret. She was pretty, a large woman, and very quiet. Though she liked to hang out with the crowd and indulged in the same drink and smoke, she alone remained quiet.
I came home from school one day, at the start of spring break, and went down to the gang. There was a brand new baby girl cuddled up in Margaret’s arms. I hadn’t even realized that she had been pregnant. The baby was so tiny and delicate, and wrapped in a pink blanket.
Spring Break began on a weekend and as on all weekends, it was time to get the girbol party started. I was immediately designated the girl baby’s guardian. I took baby, and all of her required possessions, up to my apartment.
The ‘weekend’ turned into nearly two weeks, during which I had full custody of baby night and day. It’s awesome, as in really awe-inspiring, how easily you fall in love with a child, even as a young girl, and you immediately wish to be everything it takes to nurture them to perfection.
She needed me for everything and I reveled in that. At night, I would wrap her next to me and listen to her breath and smell the top of her head until I drifted off in true peace. Every minute with her was another moment of reclaimed love. I was once again protector, friend, sister, mother. For awhile I was me again.
Spring break was over and I’d already missed two days of school, I had to go back. That morning, I reluctantly took her down to the 7th floor, gave her back to Margaret and left for school. When I came home, I dropped off my school things and grabbed one of her blankets to collect her. I sniffed her baby smell all the way to Phyllis’s apartment.
When I walked in, I saw Margaret sitting by the window, staring out with the curtains blowing around her. The girbol group was strangely quiet. I asked for the baby and no one said anything. I went to Margaret and asked. “Where’s the baby”? She wouldn’t answer, and then I saw her tears. I was instantly alarmed, even afraid that the baby had gone out the window.
“Where’s the baby Margaret”? I was ready to cry, but not sure why.
“They took her”, she said softly.
“Who took her”?
“Social Services. I phoned them today and they came to take her away”.
I know I asked her why, maybe a few times, but I don’t recall an answer. I doubt she gave one.
I turned from Margaret and I looked at everyone else. No one would look back at me; they kept their eyes on the floor or each other. I turned to Margaret again and watched her silently cry for a while. I walked to the door and quietly closed it behind me.
It was the last day I saw Margaret, or our baby. I went to sleep that night holding that baby blanket. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Somehow, I knew in my heart then, that no matter how much I dreamed, I was never going to get my family, my ‘band of sisters’, back in the same way again.
And, we didn’t, not ever in the same way again.
RL
So, I got a new camera for Christmas, and I played a little with selfies and timers, and a little fun… So this is me and my favorite son saying Happy Holidays! Yes, he is my only son, but as far as parents are concerned, that’s beside the point…
I extend that to Happy New Year and thank you all so, so very much, for being such wonderful supporters of my various efforts this year in expanding what I write. It has been a blast to try new things from haikus to expanding the details on Indigenous issues, to pouring out my soul. I really can’t thank you enough for that support, for all the encouragement, and for standing behind me in some of the challenges.
I can’t wait to see what you all have for 2016. Cheers, to you all!
RL
You have to be this young to believe that you are this much in charge of life; that destiny has already been completely met. To know that the only education you need to make your dreams come true is your own thoughts and a chat with your friends – to be so heartbreakingly unaware of the precariousness that will haunt even the babies to come.
She was a naive, pretty, eighteen year old small town girl who had no idea that so many of her dreams were going to turn into a lifetime of regrets. She picked out her dream man, 20 years old, so very handsome and tall, and who held out to her a bouquet of the loveliest promises.
Not long after meeting, she became pregnant and it probably wasn’t much longer after that, that the first flower from that fragile bouquet fell. The images her thoughts weaved for her future were simple, but meant everything – little home wrapped in the white picket fence of love, and lovely family dinners, family picnics and parties, and Christmas trees loaded with gifts.
She had intended so many occasions of wonderful for herself, and for me. We were supposed to be that family that she envied in the movies, the love stories that she placed herself into in her favorite books, and in those images in Norman Rockwell paintings that confirmed how life was supposed to be. Sweet dreams sweet intentions.
They were slapped away brutally. Literally. He wasn’t ready for that dream. Not at that time, not completely, maybe never. He was more drawn to the calls of a wild party. He had many more bottles to hoist up, and while he ‘owned’ her, he was nowhere near finished with his explorations of women. Her resistance to ‘his way’ led to her learning that promises were only his dreams in the moment and they were nowhere near as real as those first black eyes.
I don’t know when I first heard or saw him hit her; I can remember that only from about age four. I know that when it happened, I became very still as my heartbeat filled my ears. I must have learned by then to make myself invisible. The only way she could make herself invisible was to run away. Some might say she didn’t learn how to do that right soon enough.
She did leave, many times, but somehow he would find her. Us. Sometimes her friends would tell him where we were; sometimes even her own brothers would sell her out during drunken party conversation or under threat. Sometimes the loneliness and fear conquered her and she would call him herself. She finally left for good when I was thirteen.
She didn’t leave her dreams though. Not all of them anyway. She still thought she could find that one good man. That’s how life was supposed to be. Wasn’t that ever reinforced on every song on the radio, TV shows and magazine headlines? So that’s what she pursued, even while the rest of her life was floating in a jumbled mess around her.
She had her share of boyfriends for some years, but no one could last for long. They either owned their share of chaos and/or they couldn’t bear to deal with hers. It would take years for the stars to align for her. Maybe it was all the prayers she cried through to be delivered from that loneliness and to fill the need for someone to watch over her, because he came for her, finally.
It was not the typical script for a ‘let me rescue you’ love story. He was just as messed up as she was, but somehow, eventually, this one wanted to get it together, with her, at the same time that she had reached her breaking point.
Somehow, armed only with whatever bit of guidance that was to come their way, they pushed through all the debris of their lives and rebuilt everything. They did as best as they could, which turned out to be very well. Their turned-around lives are far richer, and have lasted three times longer, so far, than their early trek over those fiery, alcohol-fueled coals.
Now she prays, hard and often, that her lessons of recovery from hell have been seen by her children, and their children, who learned all too well the modeled example of her youth.
Dreams do come true, but not from behind the wall of recriminations, isolated introspection, and avoidance. The answers could be easy, but it’s still work to carve out the road to them. This can’t be any harder than it is to stay in pretension that all is well, to stay in hell.
I will pray that her prayers are answered for her. Again.
RL
Once in a while, my mother plays for me an old country song called, “Idol of the Band”. One of the chorus lines speaks to a brief bittersweet period of shining glory for a young woman from humble beginnings.
We always have a little laugh with it, but within the mirth is a little wistfulness too. I think that song reminds my mother of a funny moment or two from the bad old days. I share those feelings, but I also feel traces of poignancy that can’t quite be defined. They are flashes of the heartstrings that join us more by fate than by our blood.
I’d heard forever that I am my mother’s daughter. I look a lot like her, and I put her temperament on display now and then, but that was the absolute limit to the comparisons that I was determined to live out. I loved her, but I had every reason not to repeat every aspect of her life.
My mother was that young small town girl that did not dream of escape to the bright lights of the big city. Maybe she’d become a nurse, maybe even a nun, but in the end she longed only for a simple life of family, and hearth and home in the same little town. As it always is, it was about a boy.
Her dreams were devastatingly reshaped when step one of her plan led her into the arms of that handsome young man who soon became an abuser who drank too much. Step two in the unintended reality was giving life to me, and then pulling me along on the path to their hell.
By the time she left him, I’d already learned a lifetime of what not to be. There was no doubt that meant being everything my parents weren’t. What I had no way of knowing then was how deeply the sins of the father and mother had already been woven into the fabric of my future.
Like my mother, I was mostly raised in small towns or a very insular sensibility within a city. Maybe partly because of that I grew up craving the promise of anything but simplicity. I was going to be one of those bright lights in the city. I intended to be the people I saw on TV or read about in books about success. I used the same success examples my mother did, but unlike novels of romance, I was not going to depend on a man, or have babies anytime soon.
I was desperately eager to be in that new life. Desperation was probably mistaken for boldness and so, at almost sixteen I went off in search of those bright lights. I hugged my mother goodbye. She armed me with a little money, those lessons well learned, and a crock pot.
The years to follow were harder than I could ever have imagined. I began them by piling on loads of makeup and lying about my age to be able to work long days analogous to slave labor. When the realization grew that I could be stuck there forever, I added night school to the schedule. It took years, but eventually I got my business titles.
I succeeded at school, I succeeded in work, and I succeeded in social status. I was nothing like my mother’s life.
Not until I was. Not until I realized that there was just one thing missing for me, and I would wholly embrace the answer to that, and it would gut everything I’d worked for, including part of the spirit that had carried me away from small town nightmares.
I fell madly in love. He said that I was the smartest, most beautiful woman he’d ever known. He asked, “What can I do to make your life happier”? He said, “I promise, I will take care of you”.
He eased the deep thread of emptiness so common in the fabrics of my kind of past. It was really an unraveling, but I’d grown used to pretending that strand of vulnerability didn’t exist anyway. That was a necessary evil to confirm how much more ahead of my mother I was. So, I ignored the red flags that waved and I said, yes. Just like my mother did.
He swept me off my feet and back into hell.
It was a little over three years before I was able climb out. By then, almost all of my relationships with friends and family had deteriorated, along with all the other areas of my life. The only miracle within the madness was that I didn’t have children with him. Not that we didn’t try.
I moved from the immediate brutality of that time, but it turned out I wasn’t completely out of those woods yet. I was always a bit of a slow learner for anything that required my heart to assess what was not in my best interests, especially where love was concerned.
I hadn’t learned yet that honest trust for anyone else can only come from honest esteem for self. I still had to learn what that looked like. I still had to learn that betrayal hides in plain sight for the unwitting, and sometimes it’s disguised as your best friends and your closest confidants.
It would take another turn on that shaky dance floor before I could really see under the masks. This second teacher was far more subtle, but just as oppressive with his demand to control. That three year dance was a constant and chaotic struggle to change him/them, but it was clear that this one was about accepting that all the changes needed were mine. I accepted finally that it wasn’t my job to love someone enough to become a better person or to make them be better people.
Time moves every story along, and it became more of my friend this round. My bright future lay tarnished on the ground, but I was finished with the idea of gleam anyway. The only choice I could face was to go back to the beginning. A revisit to that place that gives you the so called strengths you depend on to survive, but really are old scars that need to be opened in order to be properly closed. I was taught that healing me was part of healing the whole of humanity, but it was the only part that I was, or could be, responsible for.
I reworked how I defined success and my revised ideals created the roads to more meaningful ways. I learned to accept that healing is never really over, but the lessons begin to bloom more in joy than the scrapes of sorrow. I worked my way to a life that is different, quieter, but true; to one that matters. Just like my mother did.
And every now and then, we sing together the words of an old country song that plays to our fated heartstrings and we smile at the notes that we more than survived.
RL
This story was partially published as a guest post for JT Weaver.net in September 2013. Revised May 15, 2014
Alright, my mother isn’t, and wasn’t ever, a nun. She grew up wanting to be one, but life has a way of trading dreams on people, and I was the first trade-off.
Her life wasn’t anywhere close to a serene cloistered order. I wrote a little about that in a post called ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’.
Her adult road didn’t include even following the tenets of her early faith. The closest to church involvement was the annual search for one that held summer camps for kids. That was her summer break and our free annual vacation.
What she ended up doing mostly was working 12 hour days in emergency first-aid and security detail. A few years into this industry, she’d re-found her faith, but it could never be used as any kind of vocation. Those 12 hour shifts were an economic necessity and there are few comparable offerings in the faith field.
So, it was long days until retirement at age 71. By then she wanted only to putter, and maybe volunteer a little. She’d already started going to church regularly again, and she helped the Reverend here and there. Their pleasant working relationship became true friendship. She had no idea this would cause her earliest reveries to swell again.
One day the Reverend made her an offer. Would she like to be a lay-reader? She would only have to study some, and practise the rituals in assistance for a while. She was instantly transported to places of long ago innocence. Her sixty something year old dream, a little re-shaped, finally got her to that place that was always meant to be.
Kicked the habit, made good in
vestments
My mother,
Lay-Reader
RL
Blogger and author JT Weaver posted a challenge to write stories in the 270 word range. For some of us, this is like requesting a brush-cut after we’ve been used to only a trim up to the hips. In the end though, it’s made me appreciate the less is more doctrine even more. JT’s challenge idea was inspired by the “Hemingway Challenge” and Abraham Lincoln’s succinct Gettysburg Address of 270 words:
jtweaver.net (2014 – 01 – 11- the-270)
P.S. This exercise also taught me that WordPress includes the captions on photos in their word count. I did not.
Andrea Hotomanie, Principal, Glenda Speight, Constable Erin McAvoy
As Remembrance Day approaches, I am reminded of how profoundly I was moved by the Remembrance Day assembly at my son’s school last year. I found it particularly poignant for two reasons.
What I found initially striking was that the ceremony was presided over by all women, something I’d never seen before. They were school Principal, Glenda Speight, RCMP Constable Erin McAvoy, impressive in her Red Serge, and Andrea Hotomanie, the district Aboriginal Support Worker.
Andrea Hotomanie was the second reason of note. She stood up in recognition of the First Nations who serve and have served in the Canadian Military. She wore a magnificent button blanket around her shoulders. It was the first time I had seen this kind of inclusion at any school remembrance assembly. It brought me to tears.
It moved me so deeply because it was the first time I felt my grandfather and uncles included in these remembrances in a way that they hadn’t before. It brought them, Cree warriors from Northern Alberta, faded from history for so many decades, up to the front too. I felt they were being honored for the first time as servicemen and not as guests in the back of my mind, while all the other heroes were noted up on the screens and in the speeches. Between Andrea’s presence and my son nearby, this acknowledgement brought it all fully home to my heart.
All those many years ago, there was never any doubt that at least three of my uncles would join the military from the time that, as young boys, they stared admiringly at the one photo of my grandfather in his uniform until they were all signed up and fitted into their own.
Along with pride of nation and reverence for the uniform, there was another underlying and stirring reason to join up. Uncle Philip finally expressed it after I asked him why he always declared that his favorite job was being in the Canadian forces. He said, “Respect”. While he wore that uniform, it was the first time in his life that he was treated with honest to God respect, and it didn’t matter where he was in the world. It was his greatest time of honor and pride. I can’t say so for my grandfather or the other uncles, but I suspect they felt much the same.
Their presence at the Remembrance Day assembly that day was palpable to me, and I have no doubt that they were all there in full uniform.
There is a lot of history about Indigenous participation in the military and the details are available more than ever. I would encourage anyone to look up that history sometime for some very interesting and enlightening reading.
For now, I would just like to say thank you to my family for their courage. We will always be proud. We will always remember.
In remembrance of:
Private John Joseph Baptiste Gray – WW1
Private Frank Joseph Gray – WW2
Private Philip Sanford Gray – Korea
Private Larry Alexander Gray – Canadian post, Quebec
To an old friend serving in Afghanistan, Deputy Chief of Staff, John Valtonen, as always, thank you, and stay safe.
RL
Our Home and Native Braves was published October 30, 2013 on the Reader’s Digest community website: http://www.readersdigest.ca/our-canada/community-blog/our-home-and-native-braves
Recommended link for Native military history:
A Commemorative History of Aboriginal People in the Canadian Military:
http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/pub/boo-bro/abo-aut/index-eng.asp
We all want to be nurtured. We all crave that caring sense of love me, pick me, have my back support. I’ve seen how trouble comes though, when we also expect that nurturing to be presented as we understand it. Because we are all unique representations of beings with unique expressions in need and gifts, it can be difficult to have those expectations met by others with equal fervor.
People who have already learned how to work around this, need not read further. For we average folk still treading through the minefields, I luckily have found Donna, a good friend who puts this expectation to bed with a much simpler approach. I think she’s onto something.
Troubles begin with a line of thought that goes something like this: If they really loved me, they would know what I want or need, and they would do everything they could to provide it!
I have seen this thought put to action in varying ways; the girl who is angry that her mother didn’t buy a Christmas present that met her interests (guilty), the girlfriend deeply disappointed in her boyfriend’s missed idea of what is a great Valentine’s Day plan (guilty again), the wife who is sad and furious that her husband still doesn’t know her after all these years (divorced, so yeah, kind of guilty).
In each of these cases, the result could have been quite different if one simple effort had been practised – talking with the object of those disappointments, (the person, not the gifts). I stress could have, I make no guarantees of would have success for reasons upcoming.
For example, I cannot believe how long it took me to realize that all of my loved ones – family & friends – were not psychics! I don’t claim to have had much of a well-adjusted background to begin with, so I had to learn that I had unfair expectations that they should be able to just know what would make me happy. Not just for gifts, but for when I was feeling low for whatever reason. Hey, they do it that way on TV all the time! To back-up that notion, I bolstered it with the fact that they were around me enough to know what I pointed out in varying degrees of hints and comment on what I liked, enjoyed, found beautiful, etc., etc., etc. They even sometimes acknowledged that they heard those comments. But, did they?
The thing is, I didn’t take into account that maybe they were having thoughts of their own at the same time. Maybe they were tuned into what was needed at work, or what they should have for dinner. Maybe they really couldn’t see the beauty in what I was pointing out. The what really doesn’t matter, the point is there has to be allowance for the fact that no two minds are on the same page all of the time. Maybe they are even more different than the same most of the time. Ugh, the heartache!
Much like most things in life, we need to simplify this meeting of the minds process as much as possible and/or the ways we can live with them.
For me, this starts with exercising a page from my own belief system in which I declare that I am (already) fully loved, nurtured and supported by the Universe. I believe something like this is a foundation for what is to follow in actual demonstration. Whatever you choose to do or say as a foundation is up to you, but as all guidelines have said since the beginning of therapies, it starts with what you believe.
We can’t be who we are not, and we cannot demand that someone else change to suit our needs. Change is a gift that we choose to give, it cannot be taken. I can guarantee that it will crumble if demanded. If you want to give the gift of changing something about yourself, then give it gladly, not in resentment. If a relationship, of any nature, doesn’t work out, it’s not a failure. I repeat, not a failure. It was what it was, and another course in life knowledge is under your belt. The grade you get depends only on how you apply what you’ve learned to the next one.
So it comes back to us. Starting to see the pattern here? It’s about us being more gentle with our friends, family and lovers. How? Dare I say it? By lowering our expectations, and letting go of any ‘what can I get out of this relationship’ thoughts. Instead of demanding superhuman relating abilities, how about expecting only what is absolutely and honestly vital to our sense of nurturing, (i.e. respect, honesty, integrity)?
Taking into account that basic compatibility needs are met, & that you actually like the person, what is really necessary beyond someone simply wanting to give you their love and their best, as they know it?
My friend genuinely lives this way and she has a list of genuine friends longer than the new pope frontrunners did. She and her man work to provide what is needed, but their true treasure is every moment of family time they share. No need of fulfillment from the biggest toys life can offer. She is married 20 years and counting; she couldn’t be more cherished or in love with her man, & family and vice-versa. I‘d trade the most extravagantly planned Valentine’s evenings for that.
Think about it, we can gratefully accept nurturing in the way our loved ones can give it, and in return, we can gracefully fill in any blank needs of our own by ourselves. Why couldn’t it be that simple, and why wouldn’t we want to, at least try to, practise it a little?
If someone is giving their love, then thank you Universe because really, how many of us have an over-abundance of people lining up to do that?
RL
(Um, quick note here to my loved ones: you’re still going to remember my birthday & Christmas, right?)
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