Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. [Parker J. Palmer]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Ah, what to talk with you about today? There is (as there always is) so much hardship in the world. I don’t have an informed opinion on much of it, so I stay quiet, as I should, but at the risk of sounding tone-deaf when there’s so much pain – that hurts too. Can my two cents add anything, or change any minds? When the answer is obvious, I file it under N’s for “Nope” and move on.

In our own lives there is so much joy, so much fulfillment these days, weeks and months that – just as it did during the rising tally of Covid deaths, each of those numbers a person, a loved one – it’s making me feel even more out of step than usual with the “real world.”

But if you wanted that world, you’d go to your trusted news source, just as we do. So let me bring you into mine, once again, on this gentle Monday.

Our yard, as you’ve seen in pictures and do here, is blessed with an array of flowers and trees whose names I will likely never know. But on occasion we are visited by deer. And on Saturday, I squealed like a two-year-old watching The Wiggles meeting Sesame Street (yes, it’s a thing) as a mama deer walked through our yard with her brand new tiny spotted fawn. I don’t have a picture because I couldn’t pull myself away from the window. But you’ve seen Bambi, you get it.

Usually our views (and I) are more sedate. This statue is what I look out upon from our living room. She’s a resting Buddha that I rescued from my sister’s garbage trip when she was leaving BC for Mexico three years ago.

What’s special about this statue? Obviously, her repose, which to me is in sadness but with the smallest smile of gratitude – something to which I can completely relate.

But look at the back of her. 

This is why she was destined for the dump. And I told Cindy I wanted her. I didn’t know why or for where, but I brought her back to the island and now she has a place of honour on our deck, not looking out, as we do, but looking inward in, oh, so many ways.

Because, you see, she makes me do the same; I see myself in her. The rest, the quiet peaceful smile, but the hole, the brokenness that is there, too. It’s not what people see or know me – or her – for, but it’s there and is as much a part of who I am as the serene demeanour that she presents to those who see her.

Am I serene? Well, that depends on the moment, the day and whom you ask! Do I let that brokenness define who I am or what you see? Never. Those who look from afar can’t see the hole, perched where she is and away from close inspection, and that’s perfect. But that hole makes up wholly who and what she is, just as much as that which she presents. And I couldn’t ask for a better representation of me or, for that matter, the world – in my view – than this broken, perfect piece that graces our lives.

There’s a lot coming this week and I’ll keep you abreast daily at my Facebook page and, of course, here on Thursday. And at the risk of jinxing anything, from today’s vantage point, it is ALL good!

As I truly hope that yours is, too. Thank you for coming by.

Just a thought… Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. [Norman Cousins]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

I want to start by acknowledging here some of the best, most dedicated, hardest working heroes among us: nurses. You have kept us healthy, gone through horrific times, and when the rest of us have felt like giving up, you’ve had to mask up and do your job, day in and day out. This is Nurses’ Week and I am in awe and feel only the deepest gratitude for your sacrifices, your patience (and patients) and for the incredible toll this pandemic has to have taken on your lives. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You know I often say here that I’m the kid who’s digging through the pile of manure, thinking, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere, right? It’s never been truer than it was this week and I’ll tell you the story right after I lay a bit of background.

If Rob says, “I’m going out to the garage,” I immediately think, Oh, he’s planning a surprise. He’s going to bring in flowers. And, of course, that never happens, but I am never, ever disappointed in him. It’s just where my mind goes.

Seriously. When our daughter-in-law, who is coping with spells that could be associated with an epilepsy diagnosis, called last week and said, “I feel something coming on…” HONEST TO GOD my immediate response was, “A song?”

Of course, when she told me it was her health, I apologized immediately, but as I say, that’s where my mind goes! Someone is always about to break into a Broadway show tune and they have to call and tell me about it. (As it turns out, she was having a spell and was eventually fine, but we were grateful to be able to jump in the car to go over and make sure she was all right.)

But the clearest sign that I: a) need help, or b) am an incorrigible optimist, came the other morning when I heard a truck motor outside the house, presumably in the driveway.

I was in bed, Rob in his robe and I said, “I think we’re getting a delivery!”

He said, “It’s garbage day. That’s a pick-up.”

We both laughed. Classic ME.

And yes, there’s probably a cure for this, but I don’t want it.

You might think that the events that broke our lives apart in 2015 would have been the reality jolt that I needed to stop being so positive and, of course, for a time, it truly was. But as the months and years (now six) went on, we found ways to move forward. Writing Mourning Has Broken helped with that because I hoped it would help others and I’m still hearing on a weekly basis from people for whom it’s doing just that.

I turned the sadness that came from being away from radio and the people I loved connecting with – you – into video journals and two, soon to be three, different podcasts.

It does get better. For everyone, it’s not “every day and in every way,” as John Lennon sang in Beautiful Boy, but some days and in little ways.

I want to be like our beautiful boy, Colin, who reacts when he sees a key in the mailbox (that means there’s a parcel) with an exuberant fist pump and “Yess-uhhhhh!” We’re still laughing about that. He makes us close our eyes while he brings out our mail and then comments on everything, every flyer that looks interesting, every free pad of paper from a realtor.

I never want to lose that inner child – even when he no longer gets excited about the mail – that hope that no matter what we’re in right now, something better is around the corner. Because it has to be.

Like the rainbow picture I shot on my birthday in 2016 up north. I’ll never stop being that person who’s always chasing rainbows like the old song goes…or as the Beatles sang, “For tomorrow may rain so I’ll follow the sun.”

It’s there, you know. Sometimes the clouds obscure it, but all you have to do is rise above them or wait. It always gets better, because it has to.

And on that note, I’ll wish you a peaceful weekend and again a VERY happy Nurses’ Week. And (corny as it sounds) thank you for being my rainbow connection.

Just a thought… I’m absolutely convinced the missing socks turn into extra Tupperware lids. [author – clearly a genius – unknown]

As always, you can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Welcome to a new week and I hope that your weekend was a gentle one – especially if Mother’s Day carries a weight for you that not everyone knows or understands. And on we go.

Do you know what yesterday also was, though? I bet you don’t. It was Lost Sock Memorial Day. Yes, I know there are a lot more important things than missing socks, but bear with me. I have both what I hope is an analogy and a laugh. First, to the philosophy of it all.

You see, this Lost Sock Memorial Day (and please don’t ask me who came up with it – maybe it was Hanes or something) is paired, if you will, with the notion that we are just to give up on the missing sock and let its partner go. Stop collecting that one sad sock in hopes that somewhere there’s another just like it, hanging in and waiting to be found.

And is that a lesson in life, or what? We hold on, just thinking that it’s going to turn up. We know full well that the dryer has consumed it. After all, an appliance of that power and size and might demands sacrifices – lest it start spewing lint lava and villages are destroyed. It could happen. Let it have the darned sock. Then pull up your other ones, and move on.

It’s healthy to just let it go. It’s a sock. And socks are indeed important, and some are expensive, but unless you’re saving it for a puppet or to clean with, you just have to know when the Dryer Gods have won, brush yourself off (preferably with one of those sticky roller thingies) and move on. Let that surviving sock go the way of the earring, the favourite nail file, the pens. For me, it’s always the pens.

I do have to tell you, though, that I won a victory over the Dryer Gods just last week. I was getting my biannual mammogram and as I stood in the little change room and took off my hoodie, what should fall out of my pocket and tumble to the floor, but one of our grandson Colin’s socks! Obviously, the scared sock had sought refuge in my pocket, lest it, too, be sucked into the maw of the angry appliance, never to be seen again.

And it was not just any sock, either; oh, no. Because the Dryer Gods have a sense of humour (a dry one, naturally), it was this one, adorned with none other than pancakes. Exactly what my boobs were going to feel like in a matter of minutes.

All hail the Dryer Gods: you got me! You win this round (and around and around) but since you managed to make me laugh with your impeccable timing – and timer – before I got the girls squished, then I think perhaps I won, too.

Today, I’m excited for another reason: I’m rolling up my sleeve to get my first vaccine – the literal shot in the arm I needed this week.

Thanks for coming by and I’ll be back with you this Thursday.

Just a thought… My mom told me to always invest in two things: your bed and your shoes. That’s what you spend the most time in. [A mom quoted in a recent @TorontoLife tweet]

Don’t miss the video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Hey – sorry I missed doing a new journal here for you yesterday. I try really hard to keep it regular on Mondays and Thursdays because, even though things are sometimes a little too predictable for you, there should be a few things you can count on in life. I just couldn’t carve out a few extra hours and in a few weeks you’ll truly get why. But for now, thank you for being patient. Huh. Maybe there’s something to this Mental Health Week thing after all, eh?

With this Sunday being Mother’s Day, I asked my sisters to remind me of some of our mom’s advice, as I couldn’t remember any in particular. Well, it seems most had to do with men: “Love doesn’t pay the rent,” “It’s as easy to fall for a rich man as a poor man” and “Don’t rely on some man to support you.” Those were nuggets of wisdom she told at least two of my three sisters. (And where were these so-called “rich guys” anyway? Sure, now Bill Gates is available….)

As for advice to me, I remember my mom getting into her third glass of Dad’s homemade wine and telling my much older and more worldly boyfriend that he was nothing but a “gigolo.” While he laughed and I was mortified, she wasn’t wrong and I had the prescription receipts to prove it, not that I ever told her. STD TMI?

My mom was a wise woman in a great many ways and I learned a lot of my “suck-it-up-itude” from her. A combination of being born in the Dirty Thirties, having a sense of humour and a healthy but not overwhelming sense of skepticism, she helped make me who I am today. But while I’m definitely a “glass half full” person, Mom was always remembering the fact that the glass was going to be empty sooner or later – so you’d better prepare yourself.

I’d like to think that in partnership with Rob, I was able to instill in Lauren, not only a healthy optimism and the ability to look at situations in a positive way or foresee how they could turn out well, but also the lessons I learned through reading and therapy.

After Lauren died, one of her co-workers posted on her Facebook page that no matter how insane things got for him as a reporter in the field, he’d call back to the newsroom and Lauren would help him make sense of it; just had that calming maturity and I would love to think we had a hand in that. I’m not proud of everything I did as a mom, but we did a lot of things right and I hold on to every one of those.

Our daughter-in-law Brooke will attest that I’m always spouting quotes (hopefully at the right times), but when something resonates, I tend to commit it to heart and to bring it up when the situation calls for it. Lately it’s been “people who can’t communicate see everything as a fight” (definitely not aimed at her) and that Dr. Frankl quote I love about our ability to choose how we react to any given situation.

Ah, Brooke. I’m so grateful to have someone who asks and wants to hear my take on things; of course, it’s up to her what she takes to heart, what she doesn’t, and on we go. Free advice is worth what you pay for it, right? It’s been a joy as we get to know each other better now that she and her family – our family – live just a seven-minute drive away.

Of course, I’ll never be her mom, nor she my daughter – both of those positions are or were filled, especially in Brooke’s case, as her mom is alive and well. We’re both growing together and becoming completely comfortable in the mother/daughter-in-law relationship, although I kind of wish there was a warmer term, one so much less weighted with negativity than “Mother-in-Law.”

But it is what it is and how we want US to evolve and grow is completely in our control and is, fortunately, limitless. Kind of like the incredible view in this picture Brooke took the other day. She was on a rare outing from the house and I took her to a nearby beach. We sat on a log, talked and looked at the view, both hardly able to take in that this is our home now.

Surely you can’t wonder how I see the world as glass half-full, can you?

Have a lovely Mother’s Day – may the good memories outnumber the tears (and the fears) – and I’ll be back with you on Monday. Or I’ll do my very best. ‘Cause every week is Mental Health Week, my friend.

Just a thought… I never get bored. There isn’t enough time in the day for me. [Francoise Hardy]

On that note and with those words, I’ll beg your forgiveness. Everything happened all at once yesterday and I didn’t get a journal written (or shot for video). When my sleep stories podcast launches at the end of this month, you’ll get why I’m so slammed.

Instead, I came across a very sweet bit of video and you can find it on Twitter, if you link to my FB page at www.facebook.com/erindavispage or go straight to @erindavis on Twitter. I promise you it’s worth it and I’ll do my level best (and beyond) to get a journal for you tomorrow.

Thanks so much for understanding!

Erin