Habits....

 July 31, 2024

It’s my favourite time of the biennial – time for the Olympic games! I am both delighted, and dismayed that the Olympics are here, and I am thus in equal measure.

Delighted, of course, because there are several sports that both David and I like to watch. And in this modern age of PVR and the twenty-four-hour news cycle, I can tape overnight and then we can “speed watch”, to a certain extent, the next day. To a certain extent, I say, because of course, that adapted adage: so many sports, so little time.

My only real dismay comes from the fact that I have been, for the last month and a half, determined to get to bed earlier each night than has been my usual and recent habit. My target, Sunday night through Thursday night, is to be in bed no later than 10:30 pm. Because I don’t sleep really long stretches at a time—a nine- or ten-hour block of sleep is simply never going to happen for me—this means that I will awaken and then arise between six-fifteen and six-forty-five in the morning.

There are advantages to getting up that early. I get to see my daughter before she heads off to work, and I get about two hours of relative peace, quiet, and solitude to begin my day. I need that quiet. I really, really do.

And in order for that whole new schedule thing to work, I must walk away from my television each evening no later that eight-thirty. I need nearly 2 hours to wind down my day, to check my social media, and complete my nightly routine before I hit the hay.

So far, in this Olympic season and after only what? Four days in? It’s not working out that well. Mind, I am allowing myself to stay up an extra hour on Friday and Saturday nights, because I’ve been a night owl now for nearly two decades. I really want those quiet mornings to get things going right, but I do like to stay up late.

As those of you who read my weekly essays no doubt know by now, I do not excel at cutting myself some slack—even though that is one thing I am always urging other people to do. The good news in all of this is that the Olympic Summer Games will close on August 11. That’s a short span of time, really, just over two weeks.

Of all the ways I could solve this momentary scheduling conflict, the easiest is to simply let that earlier bedtime go for the seventeen-day period. That’s probably what I’ll end up doing, but the earlier bedtime had already become a habit, and a good one at that. I hate breaking a good habit.

It’s funny, but between the summer games and the winter ones, we have more sports we feel we must watch of the latter than the former. Go figure. Winter is not my favorite time of year, nor is it David’s. And yet, between the skiing and the skating and the curling, and all the different variations thereof, we have so much more to watch when the days are shorter and colder than now, when the summer breezes are (allegedly) so sweetly blowing.

There has been a great deal of controversy over the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games, this year in Paris. Both my daughter and my husband really didn’t care for them—with one notable exception which, yes, I will get to in just a moment.

Of course, there was a hue and cry from those of whom it may be said, “the people doth protest too much, methinks”. Times may change, but some folks never do. Those I’ve just mentioned are one. The other, of course, are the French. The French people are proud to go their own way and do their own thing. They never bat an eye as those around them march to the beats of their own drummers. They are, after all, French. They have always been French. In a perfect world, one would simply acknowledge that fact, let them do them, and thus find their own lives less stress filled. I wish all those nay-sayers making so much racket would just heed my advice.

One more note about those opening ceremonies. In last week’s essay, I wrote about watching the documentary, “I am: Celine Dion”. But one theme of the film that I didn’t mention was Celine’s absolute, titanium-willed determination that she would not let the neurological condition of Stiff Person Syndrome define her.

With defiance on her face and conviction in her tone, she declared that she would return to the stage; she would sing again.

I am not ashamed to tell you that, while watching those opening ceremonies, right after the “cauldron” was lit, when I heard that voice, and when the camera then panned to that magnificent Canadian woman on the balcony of la tour Eiffel, I cried.

I cried to see and to hear the strength and the beauty of a hard-fought goal realized. And I understood, all things considered, that the Summer Games in Paris was the only stage worthy of such a truly Olympic achievement.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

What lies beyond the perception?

 July 24, 2024

I streamed a documentary this past weekend entitled “I Am: Celine Dion”. Beyond a doubt this was one of the most powerful films I have ever watched.

Years before, I found myself asking a question—not expecting any response—but more or less a question asked of the cosmos, wondering what the answer would be to: how would one even navigate such a circumstance? The question arose in the aftermath of the tragedy that befell another great singer, one who’d undergone what should have been a simple surgery to remove nodules from her vocal cords. The result of that surgery was the destruction of Julie Andrew’s amazing, four-octave singing voice.

Now here is another great singer, a woman whose voice I have loved since the first time I heard it, when she was a teenager coming into her own in the Canadian music scene. No surgery this time, but it turns out that hers is a one to three persons in a million disease—Stiff Person Syndrome. The spasming of muscles—all muscles can be susceptible—that, in her case, restricts the ability of her body to produce sound. As she said in the documentary, her lungs are working, but the muscles surrounding her lungs restrict what happens with them.

To have been given such a gift—a once in an infinity kind of a voice—and then to have it gone. Or if not gone, perhaps closed off? Like a brick wall suddenly appearing and preventing a voice from being fully reached, being fully used, being fully heard. What must it be like to suffer such a turn, such a change, such a loss? Even on top of the incredible physical pain that must be endured when one’s muscles suddenly spasm and lock. (I’m sure you’ve had a charley horse. Now imagine every muscle in legs, arms, chest having a charley horse at the same time.) Surely, it is a loss akin to the loss of a dear friend, or companion. Surely the grief, the bereavement must be close to unbearable.

I don’t know if I can think of a more apt description of hell than to have been given something precious, something that you loved beyond measure, and then to have that something so viciously torn away.

As I pondered all these things and as I watched that documentary, I understood how very much we as human beings truly have in common with each other. While we are going through the tough times, the emotions we experience, the kind of suffering that perhaps isn’t visible to the eye of others, is something with which we can all identify.

What happens to famous people isn’t any different than what happens to the rest of us. We are all human beings, and our individual stories are simply human stories. And if we allow it—if we will it—we can use our stories to bring us together.

No, I don’t know what it’s like to suddenly lose the ability to celebrate a God-given talent; but I do know what it’s like to lose a God-given child.

I may not have lost an ability that allowed me to do something I deeply loved, but I have lost a house to fire. Two houses, in fact, in my case.

If we strip things down to their most elemental core, we are all far more the same than we are different. I believe that the problem we have, as people who are so much the same, in getting along,  can be traced to our perceptions.

These days, it’s a common saying that perception is reality. And perhaps it is, in the way our emotions interpret them. Kind of like when you look at the weather report and it tells you, “It’s 80 but feels like 110.” The truth is, it’s 80. The perception is it feels like 110.

I wonder if it could be useful for us to take time, especially when we experience those emotions that unsettle us, to ask ourselves if we can get to the point where we can look beyond the “feels like” portion of the program.

When something is said to us that immediately spikes an emotion—especially a negative emotion—could we take a mental time out and ask, “Is what I heard exactly what was said?” The first few times, I’m thinking that is an exercise we will have to do, post-moment, as it were. It might depend on the speaker; or more probably, on our perception of the speaker.

But if we could manage it? If we could say to our emotions, yes, you have validity. Now, let’s take a moment and look beyond that.

In time, the result may be that we are able to bring down the temperature of our rhetoric. If we can learn to look beyond the emotions of the moment, perhaps we will be able to more clearly see how our fellow citizens truly are more like us than we have thought them to be.

We are all human. I hope that someday soon we can all realize that fact and get on to the more important challenges in life.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Ripple effects...

 July 17, 2024

It could be said that, in some ways, my life has been shaped by the ripple effects of trauma.

I’m a child of the 60s. I was 14 in 1968. That was the year I came to the conclusion that life was going to hell in the proverbial handbasket and we were all doomed.

Much like I feel at times in this ultra modern year of 2024.

By 1968 I was interested in American politics. My father had died in January of 1962. As my mother and I watched the news coverage of the assassination of JFK, the only thing I remember her saying to me at the time was that the late President was the same age as my daddy had been when he died. I was only 9 years old when JFK was murdered. It left a mark. I became fascinated by the family, likely because my mother had inadvertently given me a connection to them with her comment.

I submit to you that the nine-year-old in 1963 was a far more naïve creature than is the one in 2024.

I confess that I was into American politics probably more than a Canadian child had any right to be. I was appalled in April of 1968 by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I watched his funeral and felt a moment of gratitude that walking in that procession, clearly grieving himself, was the brother of the slain American president. That he showed his respect that way, and that he was in turn respected by all those grieving men and women, made an impact on me. I began to be aware of racism and I was further appalled.

I was only a child; I had never met a person of color until I was 14. But I knew my mother worked with nurses who were women of color. There was Miss Saunders, of whom I’d heard very positive accounts, and I knew that she was black—I had met her just after I began to volunteer as a candy striper in 1968 on the weekends at the hospital where my mother worked. And I also knew, from visiting my mother’s ward that there were nurses from the Philippines and even one from Jamaica.

After Dr. King’s assassination, and after seeing news coverage of the race riots following that tragedy, I asked Mother if she thought of them as being persons of colour. She told me no, she thought of them as being nurses. I found her response completely correct, and that became my attitude, too.

When RFK was assassinated just two months later, I was shattered. I remember going to my high school in the aftermath and telling one of my teachers, who asked why I looked so sad, that the world was just going to hell and was probably going to end at any minute now.

By the way, I didn’t ignore Canadian politics. In June of 1968, I volunteered to distribute fliers for the very first national heartthrob of my lifetime—Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was a candidate to be Prime Minister. I happened to live, at the time, very close to a race car track (they had stock car races once a week in the summer). It was my contribution to see to it that every single car parked in the parking lot bore a P.E.T. flier. That limited involvement was the only thing I could think to do in response to the death, earlier that same month, of RFK. My involvement was limited, because we lived in the sticks at the time, and there was no bus service, except for the school bus that took me into town each weekday.

All these years later, and I am still trying to understand how the traumatic events of my early years—the deaths of my own father, and three very prominent fathers of other children—determined my life’s course. Or if not its course, most surely its emotional underpinnings.

I have grown up believing that violence is never the answer to any problem. It’s a separate yet related problem all its own. And it sure as hell never truly solved anything. Changed things, oh most assuredly. Solved a problem? Made things better?

I am not convinced that, through the entirety of human history that such has ever been the case. And just to answer a question that may come to mind, no, Jesus Christ was not murdered.

He laid down His life for us all—which is what a True Savior does.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Green beans and cool air...

 July 10, 2024

This past week we enjoyed our first feast of green beans from our garden. That is always such a happy day for all three of us living in the Ashbury household. It didn’t matter that the balance of our supper was chilled salads, prepared ahead of time so as to avoid cooking in the heat of the day.

Preparing one large pot of green beans and then savoring their flavor was well worth the cost of the heat added to the kitchen in doing so.

David also reported that the beans we ate came from only one of the two dedicated-to-beans table gardens. The other garden only had a few beans nearing prime size—but it held a bounty of blossoms that promised future gastronomic happiness.

Of course, we pick the beans carefully, understanding that as we do so, we are ensuring even more beans for the season. And this is where the freezing of produce to enjoy in winter begins. The next time beans are picked, I’ll prepare them in two batches: one to enjoy at supper, and one to freeze.

But before we can do that, we of course have to rearrange our large freezer so that we indeed have room enough to add produce. I will tell you truly that having to do this task is vexing to me. I used to have the energy to keep an eye on the taking out and the putting in of stuff – not just where the freezer is concerned, but also the fridge and the two free-standing “pantry” shelving units in our kitchen and the one very large five-shelf wooden storage unit/aka pantry in my office.

Not having the energy to keep up with the chaos means it becomes a task to be done occasionally. But while I have regressed to the point that I really can’t keep up, I have progressed in that I keep my mouth shut and do not lecture the other household members equipped with opposable thumbs who have created this problem in the first place.

I think that is the very definition of that saying, “one step forward, two steps back”. Yes, I know, that implies that eventually I will have my behind pressed up against a wall. But that doesn’t matter to me nearly so much as does the principle of living each day in peace.

The heat of summer continues to bake everyone, doesn’t it? How anyone can deny the reality of climate change is completely beyond me. People, believe the evidence of your own eyes!

But I digress.

I am so very grateful that at this stage of my life, I have central air. Not boasting here, but I am recalling the years past when we didn’t, when we used to sleep upstairs, and we relied on a window fan we nick-named “big blue”. Every summer David would hoist that behemoth into place with a handful of screws. It covered the open window on the north side of the house. Our bed was a few feet from the window at the south side of the house. The area was simply one uninterrupted room in those days. The windows were house width apart. David would haul himself upstairs as soon as we got home to the sweatbox our that not well insulated attic/turned bedroom became each day and he would turn on that fan.

It had a steady, tenor-toned hum that could be heard throughout the entire house. No matter how warm the evenings remained in the summer, “big blue” ensured that when we trudged up to bed, we were able to sleep.

I miss that old re-purposed industrial fan. When we became empty nesters and moved our bedroom downstairs, that fan had already whirred its last, but we had a box fan in our bedroom. Not at all the same thing. And so we used the water of our shower to cool our bodies down at night just before bed, and would lay, still shower damp, in the breeze created by that box fan. Sometimes, it was so hot in the day we would use that same procedure but also place a plate of ice in front of the fan, first.

We bought a single window a/c unit about five or so years before my heart attack, and that was good enough to cool our bedroom at night, if we closed our door and turned it on an hour before bed. And occasionally it would cool in the daytime with the bedroom door open and strategically placed fans, the entire lower floor of our small house benefited from that one unit (if we sealed off the upstairs first).

Then a couple of years before David retired, when that a/c unit had been given to our daughter who had greater need of it and we were back to showers and the box fan, we finally got central air. We rented a new furnace to replace our aging owned one which was nearing death and received the a/c unit as a special promotional gift.

We may have to buy another central air unit, eventually, and are hopefully prepared to do just that. But for now, when it comes to the heat of summer, I simply give thanks that we are free to stay home and enjoy the relative coolness we’ve been granted.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

Love and patriotism...

 July 3, 2024

The first week of July is always a week for celebration, in both my country of Canada, and in the country on our southern border, the United States. Our national birthday is the first, and America’s is the fourth.

We became known as the Dominion of Canada ninety-one years after America declared themselves of nation. There are differences between us, to be sure, but for the most part they are not night-and-day differences, but differences of degree.

Our nation came into being through negotiation and an act of British Parliament. America, through a revolutionary war.

We more or less speak the same language, and we more or less have a similar national foundational principal—democracy. Canada is governed by a Parliamentary Government, and America by a Republic. At the very basis of both is the concept of our nations’ people going out and voting for those folks we want to represent us.

But here in the Ashbury household, this month of July has always been a month of more personal celebrations, too. My brother’s birthday was on the 1^st, and yes, you can be certain my older by ten years brother had me believe the national parade down Main Street was for him. Then, my mother’s birthday, and later, my second son’s was on the 5^th. Our youngest and our only girl’s birthday is the 13^th of July, and David and I celebrate our wedding anniversary the next day, on the 14^th. The last day of note for us in July, is my birthday, which is on the 21^st.

We used to call it “Christmas in July”, and there were times it really felt that way, especially when it came to our two children, who were born a year and eight days apart. And since 8 days separated son’s from daughters, it was interesting that 8 days also separated daughter’s birthday from mine.

Now, of course, this month is still one of celebration for us, but it is also one of commemoration. That will never change for me, and really, other than still having my lost loved ones alive (mother, brother and son), it never will. This is one of life’s lessons for us: just as there are days of sweetness, there are also days of sadness, and when those days are one and the same, they’re bittersweet.

Bittersweet is a descriptor that can be used to describe life in general, don’t you think? And because I am so very vexed when people lie—and even more so when those lies are celebrated—here are some truths that I embrace.

One cannot know grief without first knowing love, and it’s associated emotions like joy and elation and glee. One cannot know sadness without first knowing happiness. And one cannot know fear without first knowing peace. That is true, but what also is true, is those statements can also be said in reverse.

And that’s apt because anyway you look at a truth, it’s still the truth.

It could be argued that the positive and the negative are simply opposite sides of the same coins. It can also be argued that we need those negative experiences in our lives just as much as we need the positive ones.

When times are tough, we grow. Life has a purpose and that is to make us the best versions of ourselves that we can be. It’s not to make us perfect—for we know that only God is perfect. It’s to make us better. More compassionate, more understanding, more…. seasoned.

Older folk (like myself), and folk who’ve lost loved ones (also like myself) will tell you, and honestly and often, to hold your loved ones close, show them you love them every day, because you never know when they might be taken from you.

That same advice can, conceivably, be given with regard to the nations that we hold dear. For patriotism is, by definition, love of country. It is love. And one of the hardest lessons life teaches us—but also a lesson that once learned can be considered cautionary—is that what is loved can be taken from us. If not by fate, then by those of very ill intent.

This week, I hope we all do more than just wave our flags and sing our anthems. This week, I hope we all take a long, hard look at the world around us, and understand that just as love and kindness and generosity are real, so are hate and evil and greed.

We should all act accordingly.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury