Being spaces #SOL2021

I was there. Again.

Showering quickly, I knew the day ahead was closed. It would not be open to the possibilities characteristic of summers for teachers. Instead, today I would be bound to a headset, confined to a computer, in a virtual space with colleagues where I would be visible. Unscheduled days gave me space to disappear into grasses and the river, into the peeping of small birds and chirping of crickets.

Stepping into my shorts I noticed the sunlight reflecting from the hardwood floor and thought, only the shirt matters – that’s all they will see.

The workshop had not even begun. But I went there, to that same space, as I have many times before sliding easily into what I call the “shrinking space”. I think other women might understand this; sometimes we go alone and sometimes in pairs or groups.

Afterwards, she texted, “Do you have a minute to talk because I want to listen.” My house is old with a foundation built in 1900. Much of it has been rebuilt, renovated with an addition. Yet, this ancient place is still standing with a grand total of 1500 square feet. Our bedroom bathroom is really small and when I’m moving quickly, it’s infuriating, but when I’m moving slowly, it’s comforting, so that is where I went. Pausing, I remembered a line from Rumi: “Do you make regular visits to yourself?” I texted her back thanking her, but not just now. I needed a small space.

I woke very early the next day with a memory of a threaded metaphor from a book. Mary Lawson used the motif of surface tension on water in her novel, Crow Lake. I remembered the experience of reading that book, the connection I had to the lake, the landscape, the love of science, curiosity, and water spiders. I believed the protagonist and her version of the story wholeheartedly as I read eagerly nodding with the knowing. Until I got to the later end of the novel. The voice of her brother broke the trance and revealed another perspective on that tension, that surface tension which exists in families, relationships. I’ll always remember that moment of transformation, the narrative on the page rippling in me. Inner space transmuted by a book.

I walked through their dawn filaments again this morning. They always weave their webs in the same places where we will walk, breaking them, completely ignorant of the incredible energy and optimism spun with each thread. Once these gossamer filaments were broken, I stopped to notice and thought about the spiders who persist ever hopeful that a space will sustain them.

The abscess #SOL2021

The face cloth was moist and warm, folded so a flat spot could be pressed over the open draining wound. We were walking him when he noticed blood dripping down his back leg. Dogs rarely complain – being natural Buddhists choosing delight in the moment over a focus on their own suffering. He didn’t seem to be limping so we kept walking agreeing to check it later.

Once home, we shifted his frame to expose the underside of his belly and found a weeping hole on the inside of one leg. He was frightened and a bit jumpy, but he let us investigate perhaps using past experience to inform his sense of trust. It was warm and clearly painful – an oblong segment of raised skin had been licked raw and a hole exposed yellow liquid. Pressing gently nearby more yellow puss squeezed out which confirmed it as some kind of infection. Yet, with love, any quiet doubt needs attention.

“We need to call the vet. Let’s take him today.”

I heard the tension in his voice, but I had a hint of what it might be. I grabbed my phone and searched for images of abscesses. Squares of red and yellow, black and brown, skin and hair filled the screen. All manner of shapes appeared and it was difficult to decide if these represented the wound that we discovered on Duke, our three year old Standard Poodle. I read some descriptions from veterinarians on how to treat the area quickly grabbing some rubbing alcohol, gauze, and an antibiotic cream. I thought, he’ll just lick it off, but I put it on anyway thinking a moment of disinfection is better than nothing. Any quiet doubt needs action.

“When this happens in the wild, they just lick it to clean it, so maybe we should just leave it.”

I watched and listened to George’s voice as he swung back and forth between doing and not doing. He didn’t have dogs growing up so despite the past 20 years of experience, he still feels ill-equipped as an owner. Yet, then there is love. He loves Duke. And Duke loves him. His quiet doubt temporarily attended.

“

Tree Planting #SOL2021

It had taken a month to find it, but the local nursery finally had a new shipment of flowering cherry trees; there were only four left when we called and three when we got there. We bought it in the rain and planted it in the sun.

Sitting at dinner, looking out the front window, it struck me. This was not the first, but the second tree that I have planted which is intimately connected to some former students. One tree planted for loss. Another tree planted for memories. One tree of a life that was, another of what lives may be.

He was in my grade 9 English class and I knew his mother, a former fellow English teacher, and his ability to gently navigate the world was evident early. He knew and cared about animal rights, took actions to raise money and awareness on Indigenous issues, climate change, but he got headaches often. One cold day, they called me down to the office and sat me around a table with three or four other teachers and the principal told us. There is no way to understand the news of a student’s death – not then, and not now, some four years later when I had hoped to see him graduate. The school community buckled under grief and the curriculum became life.

His friends decided to plant a tree just outside the windows of my ground floor classroom – something strong and hardy and Canadian – a maple. They called it the Dylan Tree Project and we had a ceremony with the planting. The family came – his two younger brothers hovering close to the legs of mum and dad. I have the pictures snapped shakingly, but have never looked at them. The images exist within replayed in memory. One tree planted to remember a life.

Four years later another group of students are planted in my heart. After school had ended, they gathered under a mature cluster of trees at the park down the street for an end of year celebration mixed with an eighteenth birthday, this group of eight students, myself and another teacher. She opened gifts, they ate pizza, and prepared for cake and games. They asked about my university days; I shared anecdotes, joking about age, and they asked me what was my favourite. Twenty-four marked my sense of self, and emerged as one which often hovers in my imagination. But that is so far in the past now, that numerical age has lost this resting sense. Instead, age feels both apart and separate from the self. They hand me an envelope with cherry blossoms and a gift card for a cherry tree. They know I’ve wanted one, couldn’t find one at a greenhouse, but want me to buy one eventually. They wanted to give me something meaningful and lasting and they know I love trees.

We discovered the perfect location on the front lawn, a sloping spot of ground near the verge of our street, Elmgrove Avenue, visible from the front window. Each move in the planting process was considered – a ritual to prepare the ground with mulch and bone meal, nutrients to feed the tender young roots. A constriction formed and grew in my throat throughout the process and I was grateful for sunglasses. Another tree planted to remember a time that was and what lives may be.