Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Really time is your soul mate. [Bob Dylan]

Well hello, Friday. This has been a week. If the tone of my journals has been a little less than cheery, I thank for you putting up with me. Like so many of us, I’m feeling the daily ups and downs – sometimes in the same day, several times over – as we wait, watch, wonder and worry.

Of course, the days of Sunday and Monday were especially cruel, and I had put my hopes in a big sign from Lauren. You see, I heard from a NYC agency on Friday that I’d been chosen (just by sending an audition for another product – I didn’t even get the option to read their script) for a big national job.

The product was milk, a word that Lauren would say in a funny voice to Colin. The agent was Brooke. This had to be, right? They even asked what days I was available for a directed session over the phone. So yes, all signs pointed to good things. A real morale booster and something to look forward to.

Until…Monday. That’s when I wrote to the person who’d first contacted me and I asked if I should still be reserving some time for the next day and they gave me the phrase every performer dreads: “The client has decided to go in another direction.” I won’t lie – I cried, which isn’t typical of me.

I cried tears of disappointment, but mostly anger at myself for believing and for setting my sights on something. It’s hard to get your hopes up for anything these days as cancellation upon cancellation clears your calendar, but I had gone ahead and crossed my fingers. I even excitedly told a friend about it. She understands this business better than anyone, and she knew how disappointing it was. She’s been there.

Instead of wallowing (a word I hate), I guess for a little bit I was channeling those feelings into something akin to anger. Frustration. Fed up-edness.

None of this is important in the big picture when so many people are battling for their lives or helping to fight to keep others alive. I try not to let images of a full bar of unmasked partiers in Wisconsin on a Wednesday night get me down, as people just throw any caution to the wind so they can get together; I remember the Serenity Prayer and the wisdom in knowing what I can affect, what I can change, what I can’t.

But I can change my attitude. I can find the joy in a daily dog walk among lilac blossoms that I check for bees, then bury my face in to inhale their sweetness. I can seek the company of a wonderful group of women via Zoom, whose book club meeting I invited myself to (since they were discussing my Mourning Has Broken) and rejoice in the laughter, the frank and open discussion and the connection that we have all been missing so very much lo these past two months. Thanks, Sue, and everyone who made me feel so welcome!

(And I am totally up to doing these for your group, too – just email me. I’ll check my, er, schedule…yep. Wide open.)

I can be grateful for a full fridge, friends in my inbox and texts, an elective but necessary girl-stuff surgery that’s been rescheduled for June 11, just three weeks after it was initially slated, and for the knowledge that my family here in BC and in Ottawa are safe.

And I can also let my heart leap with happiness at being able to watch via FaceTime as our sweet Colin said good-bye to his first baby tooth.

Brooke let us be a part of that and Colin was brave – no tears – and wonderful. He is such a good kid. He’s understandably rambunctious these days, itching to get out and play and burn off some of that energy. But he’s also knee-deep in Toy Story and we’re loving watching that from afar, from donning his Woody cowboy hat to flying his Buzz Lightyear that Grama and Grandad Banana (us) sent him this week.

There’s so much to focus on when we can see through the clouds. As Oprah said in a clip I shared on Twitter this week to a graduating student, she loves flying because as the plane takes off through the clouds, in just moments, you see the blue skies above them – the sky that was always there.

Don’t forget that tomorrow at 8 pm ET all major US networks are airing President Barack Obama’s new graduation address to those whose ceremonies have been cancelled or postponed by COVID-19. I know I’ll be watching. And feeling terribly wistful. And yet…optimistic. There are actually three speeches being delivered (and with special guests). Details are below. Check your local listings for tomorrow’s broadcast, if that interests you.

Sometimes we forget that above the gloom there is sunshine. It’s always there in our days, even if we can’t see it. And that life is good.

We can do this.

I’ll be back with you Victoria Day Monday. I’m going to keep posting on Facebook on Saturdays and Sundays, but I’m cutting back from 7-days-a-week journals if that’s okay with you, as life returns, just the slightest bit, to normal. I hope you’ll understand.

Just a thought… When arguing with fools, don’t answer their foolish arguments or you will become as foolish as they are. [Proverbs 26:4 NLT]

Thank you for your feedback on yesterday’s journal on my Facebook page. I got one tweet from a woman in the US who told me my message “wasn’t very Christian.”

Do not get me started on how completely lacking in brotherly love the whole “me me me” movement is in the time of a pandemic. But to cut her some slack, clearly she had me confused with the Erin Davis who is a Christian author. Goodness, girl, don’t come for me if you don’t even know who you’re actually writing to.

For the record, I’m not Miles Davis’s son, Erin Davis, either.

It makes me grateful not to share my name with a serial killer. I can’t imagine how someone who is unfortunate enough to have the same name as someone famous, infamous or notorious puts up with the grief or teasing they get. (Hands up, all of you Tom Joneses out there.)

Actually, I can imagine, since our dear friend Helen’s grandson is named Mike Harris, and he was teased mercilessly at school (including by one of his teachers) during the years that his namesake was Premier of Ontario. 

When I was growing up, there wasn’t an Erin for miles around. My grandfather, who had Irish roots (as opposed to my dark ones these days), heard the name Erin on the radio and suggested it to my parents. I like to joke that, being their third kid, they were out of inspiration.

But I’ve grown to be grateful for a fairly unusual name that actually increased in popularity in the 80s thanks to Erin Moran (Happy Days) and Erin Gray (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century). And who can forget Erin Murphy, who played Tabitha on Betwitched in the 60s? Oh, you did? Okay. Moving on then….

Many of us grew up with the consistent disappointment of not getting to buy placemats, key chains or door signs with our names on them. Then, with the popularity of names with a variety of spellings (how many times has my niece Meaghan had her named spelled Megan, Meghan, Meghann or any of the myriad other ways that lovely name can be conjured), that ship sailed, big time.

But there’s a name today that has been besmirched (yes! I said besmirched!) by some very negative associations: Karen.

The name has been around officially since 1881, but became popular in the 1940s. It continued to rise into the top 10 names list for the next two decades. In fact, in 1965 the name Karen was third most popular in the US.

But here we are 55 years later and Karen has come to mean something completely different. The woman caught on camera having an absolute meltdown about her wait at a Red Lobster in the US, which trended yesterday, was nicknamed a “Karen” even though, if you watch the clip, she gives a completely different name. Ah, but that doesn’t matter anymore.

Someone who calls the cops because she sees people she deems suspicious (of a different skin colour, always) doing something completely innocuous is called a Karen. A meme that arose from entitled white women. 

The person with the severe hairdo who demands to speak to the manager and is a Facebook-posting antivaxxer? Same.

(NOTE: I feel bad if you’re reading this for the first time and hadn’t had the experience of seeing the whole Karen thing going around. You’re probably lucky; as is so often the case on social media, it may not be worth your time or effort to look into it and you were possibly better off not hearing about it. But there’s a very good chance you will now notice it as a poke or a punchline somewhere. Here’s a link to a story in The Atlantic, if you’d like to read more.)

It bugs me that the name is being thrown around in the worst ways, the way #OKBoomer was meant just to say, “Your opinion doesn’t count, so just sit down” to anyone who might be, like, older than they are.

#OKBoomer doesn’t bother me. I couldn’t care less what someone who can’t use his or her words thinks.

But Karen? That’s a different ballgame. It’s not fair.

Sure, it’s not the first time that a person’s name has become a punchline. Just ask any Dick. It’s been going on for decades (likely centuries – a little digging into Shakespeare would probably bear that out).

But I’m peeved about it because a very sweet and dear cousin, who’s only in her thirties, is named Karen. And she couldn’t possibly be a better person. She is none of those things that her name has been associated with. She’s lovely and level-headed, smart and kind and, with two little ones and another on the way, I know that our Karen has many more important concerns than her name as a meme in 2020. Plus, she’d laugh and say, “Whatever.”

And let’s face it, so do we all.

Yes, YES, YES!!! there are a lot more things to worry about today than some pop cultural slights that are happening, but with any kind of luck, this will soon fade back into the troll cave these things come from. But that doesn’t make me wrong for carin’ about Karen.

And here’s a mean twist: the aforementioned grandson Mike Harris? His mother’s name? Karen. 

Back with you here tomorrow.

Just a thought… Nursing is not for everyone. It takes a very strong, intelligent and compassionate person to take on the ills of the world with passion and purpose and work to maintain the health and well-being of the planet. No wonder we’re exhausted at the end of the day! [Donna Wilk Cardillo]

Here we are, smack-dab in the middle of Nurses’ Week in Canada, and one day after International Nurses’ Day. Sorry I missed yesterday as an opportunity to tip my cap (which I remember mom wearing, that starched, velvet-banded nurse’s cap) to those women and men who are working tirelessly – I won’t say fearlessly – for the health of us all these days. And a huge hug to their families for the sacrifices and the worry they endure every single day.

I can only begin to imagine the fury and tears that were felt by healthcare workers locked behind the windows of a Vancouver hospital Monday as a group of COVIDiots stood outside in the ambulance bay, loudly protesting closures and isolation due to this virus that, so far, has claimed over 5,000 lives in Canada and some 290,000 worldwide.

The misinformation that is rampant among the foil-and-MAGA-hatted morons on our side of the border, as well as theirs, is just unbelievable. They swallow in one gulp absurd theories just because someone posted a video. They call Bill Gates a monster because he’s trying to help humanity. Shame on a billionaire for doing that! Vaccines? He’s Hitler!

This man has done more to help the planet through his work to eradicate polio than anyone I can think of in this century. Yet those people, who, in earlier days, would be locked inside rooms with padded walls, are intent on convincing us all that he’s evil. We’re all being injected with tracking devices or worse. I mean…I can’t even fathom what kind of a mind invents this insanity, never mind follows, retweets and shares it.

I’m fed up with so much these days – and I know you probably are, too – including the uncertainty of when to get out, what to do, why people aren’t wearing masks and the myriad questions that are swirling through our heads every single day. But I have no time and zero tolerance for people who are actively putting others at risk.

Children have been relatively unscathed by COVID-19, but now there are bizarre manifestations of the disease in younger people (and this isn’t from some website that makes the National Enquirer look like the New England Journal of Medicine).

There’s so much about this virus that we just don’t know and yet people are screaming about getting their hair cut. Damn it, I’m at the point where I want to shave my head, but I’m not going to picket and protest and show the world just how little I care about the well-being of other people.

I’m sorry, this was supposed to be about nurses. I guess, in a way, it is: these men and women who have upended their lives – and given them, in some cases – so that we can be helped and protected from a virus for which there is no vaccine, no timeline and no certainty.

My own mom lived with hepatitis after getting a needle stick during her career as an RN; she never talked about it. The only time I ever heard her say anything that even sounded like a complaint was at the end of a long shift at a nursing home, when her back ached from lifting patients.

That was who she was: keep calm and carry on and just do your job.

But I know if she was here today she, like me, would be wearing a mask but no filters when it comes those who call us “fearful grannies” as they take up the anonymity-cloaked weapons of their crumb-covered keyboards or greasy smart (pfffft – yeah, smart) phones from deep in the safety of mom’s basement.

Those intrepid ferrets who are out there with their big, scary weapons strapped to their concave chests, who are in reality white terrorists led in spirit by a mealy-mouthed cotton candy-haired liar who is calling on Americans to be “warriors” when he himself had five deferments from military service due to the bone spurs which – you can look it up – seemed to hit an alarming number of privileged young men in the 1960s.

In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m fed up. And I know with every fibre of my being that my mother would be, too.

We could do all nurses a big favour and follow what the grownups in charge tell us to do. Our feelings and some idiot politicians’ “instincts” don’t supersede or overpower a deadly virus, no matter how worried they are about their “numbers.”

There will be a second round of deadly infections (in my opinion) and it appears that everyone who is demanding that other people get back to work – whether it’s to cram into deadly meat-processing plants or return to a factory that makes luxury cars in California – should be denied the compassionate and dedicated care of the nurses we salute this week.

They won’t be; that’s not who nurses are.

Just add that to the long list of reasons why I don’t have the right stuff to be a nurse. And if you do, you amaze me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Just a thought… I will love the light for it shows me the way yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. [Og Mandino]

Well, we’ve made it. I’d like to say that the last few days passed without tears, but I’d be lying. Saturday was hardest, though; as often happens with grief, it’s the day or days leading up to the darkest ones on the calendar that take you out at the knees.

I spent the entire afternoon in bed, until Rob turned it around with “breakfast” at 5 pm. Sometimes, even though you’re surrounded by kindness – flowers, beautiful notes and poems, cards and calls, it’s the tiniest gesture out of the blue that can change things on a dime.

I didn’t find a dime yesterday, but I did see a sign. More on that in a moment.

We took a top-down drive in 27 C sunshine Mother’s Day (sorry for the temperature mention, but it was such a gift, that I had to…) and walked by the ocean near Sooke. A seal popped his head out of the water to snort at us and, other than the shimmering beauty of our surroundings (which was more than enough), that was the highlight.

Sure, it was not like the hummingbird that visited us two years ago on May 11 (which inspired the art for my book cover) or the deer that came right up to Rob’s car window on that trip to Washington State’s San Juan Island.

But we’ll take it.

Yesterday we visited “our” bench in Sidney’s Iroquois Park and, under cloudy skies, sat wrapped in our late friend Debbie Cooper’s shawl and just talked and listened. We love that they’ve even planted a new little dogwood tree nearby.

It was here that the picture you see on my website banner was shot. But it was only a few weeks ago that I noticed something very special in that picture (and it ain’t me). Here’s the shot, which shows up on the back cover of the book.

And here’s what’s on that tree on the tiny island in the park. Do you see that rainbow, or prism? I hadn’t noticed it until one day when I had my journal page open and those colours caught my eye. Wow.

So yesterday – as I am wont to do – I looked for a sign that Lauren was with us. A dime? No. A deer with full antlers? Nope. But I did see this sign at a car dealership near our house as we were on our way to our bench.

I’ve always loved variations on the old “when one door closes, another one opens.” A couple more that make me laugh: “…’cause that’s how doors work.” Or, “…that’s what my grandfather would always say. He was a great man, but a terrible carpenter.”

But the one above – from a used car dealer? Perfect.

Sometimes the signs we hope for don’t appear, and you take what you can get. Even if it’s a laugh thanks to a literal sign.

Have a good day and I’ll be back with you tomorrow.

Just a thought… My heart still looks for you and my mind still talks to you. But my soul knows you’re at peace. [author unknown]

This is a Thank-You Note

I’m expressing my gratitude to you for coming and sharing these journals since I started writing them daily again about seven weeks ago, when the pandemic had us all feeling so off-balance and lost. Your being here has given me a reason to think outside of the box (in this case, our house) and concentrate on the blessings, the connections – real and virtual – that keep us tethered to the earth even when the winds are swirling at their strongest all around us.

But, with your understanding, after today I’ll take a little breather and be back on Tuesday. This has been a hard few days leading up to Mother’s Day and Monday, the fifth anniversary of Lauren’s leaving us. As it was in 2015, they pack a one-two punch and I just need to lie low for a little bit.

To be very honest, I didn’t know whether to post about Lauren or her passing or anything more about this for now; with last Sunday’s Facebook post about Bereaved Mother’s Day, the outpouring of kindness, as people offered sympathy and other mothers shared stories of their own loss, was more than I expected.

It is not for that reason that I mention our daughter; I can assure you that we’ve been showered with more compassion than I could ever have hoped – a lifetime’s worth, both hers and ours combined. Every day I am reminded of the suffering that goes on in the hearts of others – today more than ever – as people long for those who make their lives so worth living.

Believe me, I know we’re not the only people who are going through grief. And it’s okay to call it that: we are all grieving the loss of so many things in our lives. And I’ll remind you of a site I subscribe to (for free) that offers thoughts unique and common, wise and grounded. It’s WhatsYourGrief.com and is well worth your time, I promise.

And yet, if I don’t post about our dear girl on the day of her passing, does that mean she doesn’t matter anymore? What are the rules on socially grieving, anyway? (Rhetorical questions; we know the answers are that there are no rules. No timeline. No roadmap. I’d say I could write a book about it, but I already did.)

My hope is that you have even a fraction of the immense support and love that Rob and I have been so privileged to receive, no matter what challenges you face every day. And again, I know everyone faces them in all ways, at all or various times. We need only think of the families of those Canadian Armed Forces men and woman who were repatriated at CFB Trenton on Wednesday. Such heartache.

As we take this time to reflect and to mourn, I wanted you to know that I don’t take for granted the kindness that has come our way. I wish you a peaceful heart and, if appropriate, a Happy Mother’s Day.

We will remember, always.

I’ll be back with you Tuesday.