"Bad Day" on a Good Day

 Yesterday Tessa and I went on a spontaneous day trip to Vancouver to play tourist and have a good day together. We started on Granville Island (and I bought a delightfully witchy home made broom from an artisan shop there - I've been coveting it for years and finally splurged), walked up and down Robson Street, had dinner at a location overlooking the water at English Bay. It was lovely. Tessa and I wore sundresses, chatted, saw the city, ate good food, bought books. Tessa even had her first cocktail in a North American bar - the drinking age in Canada is lower, so we had pre-dinner Aperol Spritzes. It was lighthearted, relaxing, and fun. My heart felt joyful.

Tessa and I have reached a peaceful place in our relationship that I'm loving thoroughly. We've been enjoying each others' time this summer, and a day telling stories and listening to Taylor Swift in the car on the way up, with a stop at Starbucks to fill our commuter mugs (coffee for me, lemonade for her), was almost as fun as the actual trip. Looking at the artisan items at the market - prints, jewelry, pottery, glass, and so much more - and enjoying them together with no intention of buying them was just as wonderful. She bought ketchup potato chips and Smarties and Coffee Crisp at London Drugs: such small pleasures - but such deep pleasures.

While we were in the bookstore Indigo on Robson Street, we separated (me to look at literary fiction and witchy books; her to look at books about female spies in WWII and murder mysteries), each happily browsing and lost in our own thoughts, and the song "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter  came on in the store.

"Bad Day" and I have a long history. It came out when I was newly diagnosed with breast cancer, and I'd sit in my chemo chair as the poison dripped into me, listening to it on repeat on my iPod shuffle. I'd play it over, and over, and over, reminding myself that this was just a bad day - not a life, just a bad day, and that it would pass. I don't even know why it gave me as much comfort as it did, but the idea that I could have a bad day to this degree (more frightened than I knew was possible, often lonely with an intensity that scared me) but still frame it as just a day that would pass, changed me and helped me to cope. I don't hear the song that often, and I don't choose to listen to it on my playlists anymore, but when I do hear it I'm instantly awash in those old feelings and memories.

So there I was, having a really, truly, deeply good day with my daughter, lingering in a bookstore in a beautiful city across the border on a hot sunny day, merely because I wanted to, my heart full and happy, and the song came on and hit me with an intense wave of remembering all of it.

I paused for a moment to take it in. The good days that I dreamed of back then, that seemed like a fantasy on Cinderella or lottery levels, had come to reality. My bad days were, miraculously, good.

It wasn't just the vacation day, it's everything that leads to that day being possible. It's having a job that gives me summers off, having a daughter who chooses to spend time with me, having work that not only pays the bills but is deeply enjoyable. It's about ending the relationships that made me feel lonely - because lonely and alone are NOT the same thing - so that I could pursue a life that made me feel joyful. It's about having a good therapist, and good health, and a million dreams. It's about having a calendar filled with lovely plans, and a phone buzzing with texts from my favorite people, and snapping selfies with Tessa. It's about feeling at home in bookstores, and about enjoying the fact that Tessa feels the same way (we aren't at all the same person, but having some overlaps to what we love is truly a gift).

I let the feelings wash over me, remembering the really truly bad days and reveling in this really truly good one... and then I went back to browsing. I felt peaceful.

Minutes after hearing the song and reflecting on it, my phone pinged, and I checked it, expecting a message from maybe Susan or Carolyn about our upcoming trip. It was my estranged brother, telling me that my mother (from whom I am also estranged) was just diagnosed with breast cancer.

For a moment, the world around me trembled, threatening to crumble. Time shimmered, this wonderful bookstore travel day warping into the old days of being in a family where boundaries are not understood or allowed, where yelling and name calling is commonplace, and where the hopes and dreams that make me who I am are mocked and disparaged. I felt the cool, teal plastic feeling of the chemo chair, the ache of my tender skin around the portacath. I felt the metallic nausea in the back of my teeth, where it always hit me first. I felt the pasted on smile of trying to be kind to the nurses while I longed to rip the tubes away and run to the forest. I felt the indescribable exhaustion of trying to parent a toddler through it all; I felt the brave terror of putting on a swimsuit over my mastectomy and taking my daughter to a pool, watching the whispers of "that poor woman" as the sun reflected off my bald head and I pretended not to care.

I felt the loneliness of my parents saying "you don't mind if we go on a road trip as you start treatment, do you?" and hearing my own voice say "of course not, you take care of yourselves" and realizing that I was entering a deeper loneliness than I knew possible.

And I felt that of course I love my mother, and long for reconciliation and wellness, and that I wish for a world in which she was deeply well in mind and body, and that I'd never wish this upon her, and that part of me wanted to show up with a lasagna and some distracting magazines and attend every doctor's appointment...

And all of those feelings collided together, the joy of today and the pain of yesterday and the wish for my mother and I to be well and the reality that brought us to estrangement and I felt dizzy, as if the world was blurring and shimmering like a mirage, and my legs weren't quite steady.

I found Tessa sitting at a table, engrossed in a book about a Parisian spy, her pink and black sundress a playful tribute to summer; her shiny long hair hanging down her back and draping around her face. I shared my phone with her, and saw her face as she absorbed the news, quickly looking up and examining my face for a response. She murmered, "I hope she's going to be okay..." and then she softly asked, "How are you?"

How am I? Do I know?

I do. I do know.

I am incredibly sad that my mother has to fight this stupid disease, but delighted that her single tumor is quite small, and that if I'm right, it looks like her prognosis is excellent, and that her treatment should be much less invasive than mine. I know for certain that I want her to be well, that I hope that her treatment goes smoothly, and that this will become a blip for her, not a life defining or ending moment. She's in her 70s, and I hope she still has decades to live.

I also know that I cannot change my boundaries because of this new information.

My boundary, at the most basic level, is "No yelling, no name calling, and no belittling." I've repeated that boundary in writing and verbally to my parents, and I'm clear about it. The estrangement started when my father yelled, "I'm ashamed to be your father! I'm ashamed you are my daughter!" and hung up the phone on me because he disagrees with my politics, and I realized in that moment, after many years of struggle and inability to hold boundaries, and his name calling and my placating and my mother excusing, that this was not okay, and that I could never change them, and that I couldn't be true to myself and in relationship with them at the same time.

A few years into estrangement, one of my best friends (who has known my parents since we were in high school), called my mother to try to set things right, believing that my mother could see reason. My mother responded with anger and tears, and told my friend "I gave her a perfect childhood!" and then my friend called me in tears and said, "It's worse than I imagined, and she's in denial, and she made it all about her..." and we agreed that NOBODY has a perfect childhood, but mine was remarkable in many ways that were so far from perfect that it's laughable. My friend said, "I realized in that call that it will never change, and I'm so sorry" and I actually felt relief that she saw what I saw.

My parents are products of their own upbringing. They had genuine struggles in their families of origin, then they married each other when they were just babies (19 and 21) because they were pregnant with me. They quite likely did the best they could, using the only tools they had. Unfortunately, though, they didn't have enough tools, and they doubled down and refused to look for more tools. Their relationship with one another is both loving and deeply dysfunctional and painful for me to watch: I knew from an early age that I didn't want what they had, and that my father's yelling and my mother's crying were both manipulative, scary, and unhealthy. Unsurprisingly, though I tried to find something different, my marriage was in too many ways a reflection of theirs.

But it's not what I want for myself, and it's not what I want for my daughter.

I don't want my mom to be sick, or lonely, or scared. I want her to be healthy, happy, and peaceful.

But that's what I want for myself too, and I do not know how to be healthy, happy, or peaceful with people who shame or belittle me, and it is not my job to try.

***

My life is - mostly - a series of really good days these days.

I'm single, but I'm not lonely.

I am proud of my relationship with my daughter, and of the way we talk to one another, and the structure of our relationship. She's not perfect, and I'm not perfect, but my love for her is immense and I feel her love in return. We enjoy each other's company - most of the time! I don't expect her to be like me, to like all the same things I do, and we certainly have our differences, but those differences make things interesting and I love the way we accept each other not despite the differences but often because of them.

I feel connected to my community. I have long term friends, and I make new friends, and I have work friends, and neighborhood friends, and I feel rooted in West Seattle.

I'm healthy. I walk, paddle board, do yoga, hike, and (rarely but I'm trying!) run. I eat pretty well. I do therapy, and I try to grow to be the best me that I can be. I often make changes, trying to find new exercise patterns or to change a way of thinking, and I challenge myself to be my best me. I often fail at this, but when I see a failure I try to make a correction (no blame, no shame, just growth).

I do work that is meaningful and important, and I love it, and I'm good at it. I think my work as a teacher makes the world a better place, and I'm always trying to learn more and to become a better teacher.

I am learning to be a traveler again, and whether it's Italy, Maine, or California, or just up the road to British Columbia, I love finding new ways to adventure.

I'm learning to be a writer, to follow that bliss, even when it's painful.

I'm learning to open my heart to romantic love.

I'm learning to love myself, and to accept that I'm imperfect with a lot of room to grow, but that doesn't stop me from being amazing and worthy of all of the goodness that life has to offer.

***

Yesterday was a very good day, with a memory of bad days, and the fear of more bad days. But while I can't control whether my own cancer returns, or whether I will find true love, or a million other things, I can control what I let into my life, and I can control my own boundary setting.

I hope my mom doesn't have deeply bad days. I wish her love, and health, and peace. I wish it could be different between us. But because I know what good days and bad days look like in my own life, I can't swoop in to help her. I can't make her bad days good again, and I won't unlearn all of my hard lessons about boundaries and their truths. I do not have the power to heal what is between us, and if I sacrifice my health and well being it will not actually make things better - it will only harm the years of growth I've worked so hard to achieve.

My days are mostly good days because I have boundaries. We teach people how to treat us, and we set boundaries over what we will and will not tolerate in our lives. We set boundaries about how we will live: about what time we will get up, about where we choose to work hard, and where we choose to celebrate, and about who joins us in the hard work and the celebrations. We set boundaries around the work we will or will not do. We set boundaries about how we will and will not live, what we will and will not tolerate, and about who gets to see our tender hearts and who doesn't.

***

The song "Bad Day" reminds me that some days really are rotten... but they're just a day. A day passes, and a new day comes to replace it. My life is filled with goodness - some of it gifted, and some of it hard earned. I have to work hard to keep the good days, and to fight off the bad ones. I'm never going back to a place in my life where I give anyone else power over me to dictate my good and bad days.

The boundaries stand, so that the good days can win.

I had a good day.

Summer: Phase Two

 Yesterday I hit the wall a bit. I had a lovely start to the day, got a few chores done, walked to meet a friend for brunch... and then, I just stopped. I didn't plan on stopping - I had a long list of things I could or should do - but, without my deciding to stop, inertia took over.

Welcome, phase two of summer.

Last year was tough at school. I can't quite put my finger on the why: it wasn't traumatic and insane like the quarantine year, or a huge adjustment like hybrid teaching (let's never do that again), or even an adjustment back to "regular" teaching. In some ways, it was a normal year... but it didn't feel normal. I'm still sorting out out, but I saw that my colleagues struggled more than usual, as did I; I saw that the kids were falling apart. And from about March onward, I was just holding on by my fingernails.

The first phase of summer is a joyous gasp - I made it! Delight rises up past the exhaustion, and the world feels hopeful again. There is reconnecting with friends, getting the house back in order, spending time outdoors, making fresh salads for lunch and delighting in the fact that I have the time to do so. There's paddle boarding, long walks and short runs, picnics. There's more gardening in a week than I did in the past ten months.

And now... the second phase, which I didn't plan, but has arrived right on time. Slowing down. Staring into space. Sleeping in a bit. (At 53, I find that 8am feels the way 2pm used to - insanely decadent and surprising and a bit disorienting.) Realizing that summer won't last forever, and feeling it slip away a bit. Starting to ponder what I need to do, what I long to do. It's tinged, strangely, with a bit of boredom and restlessness: my friends aren't available to play with me all the time, and my daughter is doing 20 year old things, and I feel a bit at loose ends. It's not horrible, but it's not that great, either. There is no exhilaration, there's more deflation.

But I wonder if this is where the good stuff starts? If this is where I can get real with myself, and now that I've rested a bit and burned off the frenetic energy of surviving what came before, if I can see if I can turn that boredom into some new creative energy? If instead of running to the sea, I can sit with my thoughts long enough to gently reshape some parts of my life? I think that phase two is about getting real with myself, taking on some chores - housework, yardwork, soul work, financial work - and making some real progress.

I'm working on the book. I get so scared, but I went back and re-read the first chapter of what I'd written, and I got excited. There's something there. And if I can only work past my fear, I will get there.

Phase two gets real. Let's hope that I can use it wisely, and start settling in to the real me - messy and hopeful, still yet productive.

And there's still time for summer. Today is the outdoor theater festival and I can't wait to sit in the sun and listen to Shakespeare. I'm doing this one solo - it's not easy finding Shakespeare friends! - but I don't mind. It's time to go and be myself.

But first... it's time to write. Phase two.

Forget and Remember

 I'm two weeks into summer and figuring out a few things, as I do every summer.

Every summer is a reset for me. I absolutely love being on the academic calendar, which seems so much more civilized than the grind of go-go-go all year round with only a week here or there to recover. What I've learned is that it actually takes me a full week to come down from the school year. The first week off is about recovering - outdoor time, sleeping in (although, at 53, my body thinks that 8am is wasting away the day, and I can rarely sleep past 7:30am, which my 20-something self would think was getting up at the crack of dawn), reading, spending time at the beach, catching up on laundry. The first week passes in a blur, even though there are times with friends and glasses of wine on the deck.

But the second week, I can start to think, and to plan, and to remember who I am, and to start to pull myself together for real.

Over the course of the school year, I forget who I am outside of teaching. In summer, I remember again.

Yesterday, I did so much gardening that my face dripped with sweat, and when I had a shower afterwards the water washed away brown. The weeds in my yard have grown atrocious and unfriendly, and they'd choked out the strawberry bed. Digging in the soil, yanking them out by their roots, and filling the yard waste bin is strangely satisfying. Adding compost and mulch, watering deeply, I could see the plants smiling in relief and gratitude and joy - or maybe that's just how I felt. It's too late for this year's crop of strawberries, but tending to the earth is its own joy, and it feels so darned good.

Today I'm going to tackle another part of the yard. Bending over, wrestling with thick roots, lifting the yard waste container is quite a workout. My body complains about it for sure - but I can feel the glow, too. My body is not made to hunch over a desk in florescent lighting. My body longs to be outside, to move, to bend and twist and lift, to take many steps. The soil in my yard longs for compost. The soil in my soul longs for it, too.

It's so easy to get caught up in the cycle of early alarms, students with never-ending needs, sitting in a car during the commute, struggling to figure out dinner again. During the school year, I often forget what feeds my soul.

Gardening isn't my answer - there's no one answer, and if anyone saw my yard they'd know that I'm not much of a gardener (yet - there is always time!). But it's a piece of the answer.

My body loves to move (even when I don't want to). And it loves the fresh salads I've been making myself, with farro and lentils and fresh tomatoes and greens from the farmer's market. It loved dinner the other night, verdure griglia - lovely eggplant and peppers and a zucchini from my friend's garden, brushed with a wonderful olive oil filled with herbs and garlic - with a side of polenta and grilled halloumi. It felt decadent, but the truth is that it was just so incredibly simple.

Or is it? Maybe it's the most complicated thing ever: to sit on a deck with a peekaboo view of the Sound, surrounded by trees, eating fresh food in the sunshine with my daughter... maybe that's the most complicated, best thing ever. To do so after a day well lived (books, music, yard work, friends, errands) makes it sweeter. To be aware that this is a season where I have time and energy not available all year round makes it even sweeter. That meal was the cumulation of of a year's work... of a lifetime's work.

It's taken me a lifetime to feel this good. To see my daughter thriving in college, to living in community surrounded by good people I call friends, to have enough in my bank balance to keep panic at bay, to have work that is right for me and to know that I'm good at it and adding value to the world - this is the best of life. That dinner on the deck wasn't just about throwing some veggies on the grill, it was the result of decades of hard work.

I'm trying to work even harder so that I can figure out the next joys, too. I'm trying to forget old messages given to me by people who, in their own hurt and confusion, hurt me. I'm trying to remember the truth of my soul, not just because it's summer, but because it feels like the summer of my life. I've made it through some dark times when firewood was scarce and I felt like the cold might do me in, and now the sun is on my skin and the water is sparkling and the meadows are sweet.

My birth family has some tragically unhealthy habits, and the hurts they carry seeped into my bones, too. I feel for them: their wounds are raw and visible, even though they pretend they're not. My marriage threatened to make that my life, too - my marriage rules were dangerous to my soul, threatened to drown me. (In service of what, I wonder? It didn't serve him, either.)

But here I am, a decade away from the end of my marriage, and six years from the end of my relationship with my parents, and the pruning and weeding I've done is starting to pay off. My field was fallow for a long time, trying to forget what hurt me, but now I feel myself coming into life in a new way, remembering what came before the hurt, the things that I've known all along, and calling them into my life.

I'm writing again, and - gasp! - I like what I'm writing. It doesn't hurt to write this story, it doesn't call on me to have a dark night of my soul, to reveal the wounds and debride them. I'm having fun with it, exploring and wondering and feeling a deep tug within myself.

I'm moving my body more, and whether it's yoga, running, walking, SUP, hiking, or gardening, my body is grateful. I avoid the scale - unlike Bridget Jones, I refuse to let it tell me how much I'm worth - but I can feel the gentle changes, and I know it's trying to remember what it's meant to be, also. I'm reading more than I have in years. I've filled 1.5 journals so far this year. My garden is filled with fresh herbs. My daughter is filled with stories. My calendar is filled with plans. My toes are painted a color called "Follow your bliss." My bookcase is filled with old friends, and new treats awaiting me. My car is loaded with beach chairs and paddle boards and picnic blankets.

This is what summer is for. Every summer, I think, "oh - yes, this is who I am!" and get closer to who I am meant to be. Every summer I get a little closer, back to the person I'm trying to be. It's a gift, to be given this time, and I hope to use it wisely (which is not always "productively" - there is such joy in sitting on a log at the beach, or reading a fun novel*, or having a glass of Aperol spritz with a friend, and those things are not to be foregone in order to be productive; productivity has its place but so does relaxation).

It's time to forget patterns that don't serve me, and to remember who I am, and who I'm meant to be.

I'm creative. I was made to love and be loved. I'm a nature girl. I'm part mermaid. I am light. Well - that's the goal, anyway, and the journey today feels really good.

Happy summer!

* Emily Henry's "Happy Place" is such a joy. I sent copies to my two oldest friends to enjoy, too. It's a great love story, but more than that it's about friendships, and about overcoming old patterns. Ahhh. Delight!

The Fourth

 I have a difficult relationship with the Fourth.

For one thing, it reminds me that I didn't start here: I'm a Canadian at heart, a transplant below the 49th parallel. My American roots are deeper than my Canadian ones because I moved here at 16, many more than 16 years ago. I've had my citizenship many years, and I've never voted in a Canadian election, only in American ones, and yet if I was a salmon, I'd migrate back to the Fraser River, or maybe Goldstream, a little lost but sure it's where I came from. The Duwamish is my adopted homeland and beloved, but though the landscape is familiar, the trees and flowers and seasons assuring me that I am at home where I belong, the politics will forever be foreign to me.

In America, there's the guns (and the fact that the first thing I do every day as I enter my classroom is prepare for a school shooting by relocking my classroom door and putting a magnet over it, so that if the active shooter is in the hall I can quickly pull the magnet and lock him out). And the lack of healthcare (I never, ever, ever forget that Emily - who did not have health insurance at her breast cancer diagnosis, almost identical to mine, died many years ago, and I'm still alive because I had great insurance). And the fact that instead of coming to some kind of agreement with the British, like the Canadians did, the Americans needed to grab those guns and fight in the revolutionary war. It seems like a good idea the way the Americans tell the story, creating a nation in which all men could be "equal under God," but the reality is much more complicated; many groups weren't even pretended to be included in that "equality." As a woman, I still am not equal in the eyes of the law in America, and I know how lucky I am to be born into white skin that grants me unearned privileges that my POC sisters do not receive.

It's not perfect in Canada, but...

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/

https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/the-gender-pay-gap/

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/14-28-0001/2020001/article/00003-eng.htm

In Canada, the average pay gap is 7% less than it is for American women. Furthermore, the gender pay gap in America has basically stalled out since the early 2000s, whereas it's fallen 7% since 1998 in Canada.

In Canada, I have a right to my body. In America, a woman loses that right with pregnancy. I am livid about that.

In Canada, we sing of our "home and native land" and "the true north, strong and free" but in America we sing of "the rockets red glare" and "bombs bursting in air."

To celebrate, Americans today will set off fireworks - bombs in the air, indeed. We are experiencing drought, and undoubtedly there will be fires. I'll go to my favorite little beach tomorrow with a trash sack, and pick up fireworks debris left there by those who don't care about my favorite seal who resides along the shoreline there (she's medium gray with darker gray markings, and she has the prettiest eyes, and she let her baby swim up to my paddle board once).

I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

And yet...

And yet, I have the right and the power to critique my government, and here I am, typing things that would surely land me in jail if I lived in Russia or Saudi Arabia. "The land of opportunity" has allowed me to get an education, to work for a living wage, to live in comfort in a home with more space than I need, with cupboards and a refrigerator bursting with food. The water that comes out of my tap is clean (clearly I don't live in Flint), and my connection to the power grid is stable (so clearly I don't live in Texas or California). I have a home filled with books, and music, and houseplants; it's often filled with friends. In the summer, my daughter comes home from college and fills the home with her laughter (and her messes!).

I love my life, and I love my adopted homeland. But love isn't permissive: a true and faithful love has strong boundaries, and calls out the best in the beloved. I need to rise up as a lover of America and fight to make her the nation she deserves to be; America needs to do a better job of figuring out the "equal" doesn't mean "equal for some." 

My relationship with the Fourth is complicated, indeed. But there is a rhubarb raspberry galette that just came out of the oven, and some juicy tomatoes just waiting to be turned into caprese salad, and a neighborhood party with kids running around. I'll go, and maybe nobody will notice that I left off the blue in my red, white and blue outfit.

Happy Fourth, everyone, whether or not you celebrate. I dream of an America where you may receive equality that grants you opportunities regardless of your gender, sexuality, race, or ethnicity; I dream of an America where we value our children more than guns; I dream of an America where my body is nobody else's business; I dream of an America where health insurance isn't an indicator of health outcomes. And because I'm an optimist, I still think we can get there. Slower than I want for sure, but I'm hopeful.

This Canadian American is hopeful.