The Rain Barrel and Me

I loved spending days and nights at my grandmother’s house.

Not because she let my sister and I get away with much. And not because she honestly thought food was the cure for everything. And definitely not because she scrubbed too hard behind my little ears with a washcloth and Ivory soap before bed every night. Yeah, the floating Ivory soap in the old yellow plastic washbin.
The thing that fascinated me most was the old rain barrel in her yard.
Right outside her back door, down the wooden stairs and below the long line where she hung the clothing, it was the first place I would always visit. It was the one mystery among all the places to explore and things to play with.
It leaned toward the sunset, just a bit. Never quite full on that one side, even when it was as full as it could be. I climbed up and looked into the dark water. There was never much of a reflection. A dark shadow on bright days. Nothing at all on cloudy days. I was rapt with the mystery.
The water was cold, no matter how warm the day was. I could reach into the dark, but not for long. It was too cold.
Nana used the captive rain to fill her watering cans to water her delicate flowers. Marigolds, pansies, snapdragons. The flowers were everywhere. And the mystery at the bottom of that big steel barrel never got any clearer as the level dropped lower and lower and lower into the shadow. It just became more of a mystery. What was at the bottom? I never saw it. And every time I returned to Nana’s house and ran down the wooden stairs and out the back door to inspect the big rain barrel, it was full.
It’s not there anymore. I don’t know what happened to it. One day, long before it disappeared, I just stopped looking in it. Then it was gone. Still a mystery.
I always had a job to do at Nana’s house. My job was to mow the large lawn. Her little house was right in the middle of three large city lots on a quiet street, just one house and a laneway away from the corner store where I would buy my FudgeSicles, winter or summer, but especially winter.
Two women owned the store and lived in the house attached to it. One of them was tall and had bright red hair. She looked a little like my grandfather on my Mom’s side when he took his teeth out. The other woman was shorter, plump and walked with a prominent limp. There were always family whispers about the two of them. No one ever said anything to them. And we went to their store all the time. The first day she met me, Red was the first one to call me a little girl. I was thrilled. I was always happy to see Red after that.
Our favourite game in the afternoon, my sister and I, was sitting at the top of the stairs between the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom and  ‘bumping’ all the way down on our bottoms, like two giggling Slinkys. It wasn’t something we were supposed to do. I remember being told that. We did it anyway.
In the evenings, my sister and I were always invited to the kitchen table to play cards with Nana. She loved to play card games. I loved the card games. Nana loved to win.
Bedtime was so familiar, so peaceful. Nana would say, “I love you just the same.” Just the same. She said that a lot. It was the old Scot in her. Hearing it was part of the experience.
I slept in the old iron bed her mother gave to her, in the upstairs bedroom, the one with the gabled roof and the “cubby” for my clothes and no door for privacy. It was impossible to sleep anywhere in the bed except in the middle of it, directly in the middle, where there seemed to be a dent in the mattress. Nana always put a high-back chair next to the bed to make sure I wouldn’t fall out. But once I was in the dent, I was there for the night.
Once in a while, she would sing to me, an old Scottish song. I don’t think it was a lullaby.. But it was comforting. And then she said, “Shut your een.” I still don’t really know what she meant. Doesn’t matter. I sometimes say it to my son.

When Nana left the room, she left the soft orange glow of my night light. A little disc, about the size of a 50-cent piece that sat directly in the wall socket, glowing like a harvest moon. For years, I fell asleep in the glow of that night light.
The old house is gone. So is the rain barrel and the iron bed and the flowers and the staircase and the card games. Even the night light is gone. And Nana left us two days after my son was born.
I love spending days and nights with my son.

-Meghan

Dear Lonely Blog...

Hey blog,

All right, so it's been a year. I've been busy.

Thinking about resolutions for the coming year, before January is in the can. I was hoping to join a fitness club, because I can't do it without a good club, apparently. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm not really in much of a mood, so maybe I'll write more later. Don't bet on it though.

-Meghan

The Water's Edge

There isn't much to dislike at the beach. Any beach. In Toronto, we call them "The Beaches" because there's more than one along the vast north shore of Lake Ontario and people do have their favourites.
I have my favourite thing about each of them. At Hammersmith Beach, it's the name I like. At Balmy Beach, I like just about everything. The texture of the sand on my bare feet, the volleyball courts, the deep shade the trees provide for the boardwalk just after midday.
I sat in that shade yesterday, feeling conflicted while I gently brushed the sand from my feet after that warm walk. I performed my ritual. I said hello to the lake as I stood in the beach break. I visited my hands upon the warmest part of the water and called out names of family, names of friends. All people who would have wished to have been with me. Well, people I wished were so.
I sat back in the shade with my bicycle at rest and the sand falling from my feet. And I thought about what the beach meant to me in that moment. I thought about the water's edge. The place that calls me, captures me like a dear friend in a dream.
I thought about the air and water and the place where they come together. I thought about sun and sky and the light and dark that defines the gentle ripples. I thought about the land and the people and the children and the games and the rest. And the laughter, quiet conversation and hands held together. And I thought about the fire that lights our minds.
It's the edge of the water where all of us come together. On a sunny day like this. And on every other day, with the right kind of love in our hearts.

-Meghan

I Still Dream of Flying

I just know there’s a jet pack with my name on it.
I’ve been thinking that thought for 40 years.
The space program, the only program on TV when I was a kid in 1969, promised me, promised everyone, a jet pack. You know, something you could strap to your back and ride the skies to work, or the corner store, or the playground. The only other thing I wanted out of the space program was glass after glass of yummy Tang. I drank the Tang. I’m still waiting to fly.
It tells me something about promises. And expectations. And all those articles in my Dad’s Popular Mechanics magazines that insisted I could do it myself. I could build my own jet pack.
But I sometimes wonder if flight is necessary. If it will be as pleasant as I dream it is. Or maybe it would be better to soar with the mind’s own wind rather than scream, jet-fuelled, across the sky.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I don’t allow myself to rest here.
Promises won’t get me where I need to be. Most promises are lies that haven’t been spoken. And most expectations are constructed of imagined promise and glasses of Tang.
Popular Mechanics told me everything I needed to know about these things. It said, I had to do it myself.

-Meghan

Intersections

I don’t enjoy spending a lot of time thinking about what might have been. I do it anyway.
I did it Saturday. I thought about how all of us move among ourselves.
All the pleasures and all the pain of life come from being connected to each other. Not just sharing the same space at the same moment. But having a real influence in each other’s lives.
I used to think of these as little things. But that’s because I wasn’t experiencing my own life. These things only seem small from a distance. But not when you’re in them.
I changed my Saturday plans for traveling to a beach party in Port Stanley with a dear friend to remain in Toronto. I wanted to attend a march to celebrate the unique gifts of psychiatric survivors. I met a friend there who might have walked alone if I hadn’t joined her. There was drumming and singing. I loaned my voice to an old Bob Marley song. I put my hands together and smiled at people I knew. And I smiled at the people I didn’t know. I was loud.
Many people recognized me, because I helped to open the Mad Pride celebration with a speech a few days earlier. I was still receiving love for the speech.
The moment I can feel from that day, the most important one, happened when a woman I met an hour earlier offered me a deep hug and whispered in my ear, using words from my own speech, assuring me that our pain, my pain, wasn’t just a cry in the wilderness.
When Saturday’s march was over and the musicians were seated, I stood and worked my way through the crowd of people, some of them dressed in hospital gowns. I touched my new friend on her painted shoulder and returned all the love in her hug from days ago. I offered her a gentle kiss on the cheek. I didn’t have a lot to say. Maybe I said it all. I thanked her for, everything. And she thanked me again for getting the week’s events started.
In that moment, I couldn’t help but feel that the things that brought me to experience those useless years of despair and profound loss were the same ones that guided me to so deeply touch a woman I don’t even know.
I spent the rest of the evening trying to shake the terrifying image of something I experienced as the afternoon began. I watched an elderly woman cross the street against the light and into the path of a large cube van. The screech of the van’s tires called my attention to what she was doing. She went down with such force that her tiny body was carried at least three metres into the intersection, like something was pulling her along the ground and away from the pain in the van. I grabbed my keys and ran out my door. I was the first one at her side. The distraught driver joined me in my helplessness. He repeatedly called out to God. He began to move the woman and I told him to stop. We were soon joined by others with cell phones and the intersection became filled with cars and people, all keeping some distance as they called for help. The driver and I just stood there, mouths too dry to speak, hearts strangled.
A nurse took over until an ambulance arrived. I stood at the corner watching the progress of something I’ve seen too many times before. A police officer took my statement. Then he apologized to me for having to witness the accident. I immediately dismissed it. I didn’t want to contribute any sorrow to what I saw. But I thought a lot about it. He was right. I needed that moment of kindness. I held onto it as I tried to escape the terrible image in my mind.
I realized something else. I wasn’t helpless. The driver was going to move her. It was life’s own gesture. He just wanted her to stand, to say something, to give us a sign of herself. He wanted to reverse the flow of life and death and try to do something differently. Anything. But he may have hurt her by moving her. I said no and he stopped. I wonder now if speaking for her made a difference. It was little enough. I wanted to do something too. Maybe I protected her. It was what had to be. I think of it now as a moment of love for someone I don’t even know.
There are so many intersections in my life. Little ones. Big ones. Sometimes I don't feel part of them.
But today, because of words and music and drumming and the healing power of hope, there's a little more joy in one kind woman's heart. And in mine.
Sadly, for another woman, there are flowers at the side of the road.

-Meghan

Tough girl

I often think you're tougher than I am.
People say I'm so strong and courageous. They say that all the time. And it means something.
But I'm fond of thinking that if I had an ounce of strength or courage I would have stayed where I was and done what was expected of me and been miserable all my life. Lots of people do that. I finally didn't have the strength.
So, are you tougher than I am or am I just weaker than you?
Not that I would mind either one of those. I just want to know.
Maybe I would be strong and courageous (or not) anyway, never mind the circumstances. But nobody ever told me that I was strong, or that I had courage before I started living my life as a female almost three years ago.
It's just another one of those things that seems to separate me. I mean yeah, it's a compliment. And I know I'm conducting a master class in gender studies here. But the last thing I want to feel is separated.
Strength and courage are probably some things that should be assigned a lot more to a lot more people. Then I might feel good about it being assigned to me.

-Meghan

Hiya!

Oh, not another one!
And please don't say you want me to write about it.
Uh, how am I doing so far?
I feel like I'm writing a ghost. Is it me? And I wonder why some of the things I say are of such interest to people. And why is writing so revered when most people don't read? And what becomes of my words when they are read? Do words have a destiny, a spirit? Do they create? Do they age? Are my words really any different than yours?
Well. We'll see.

Meghan