Author: MaggyMac

First published at 6 years old (The Daily Gleaner, Fredericton, NB, Canada). Have written something every single day of my life, if only a To-Do list. Bearing down on writing THAT book for me and myself alone. If it resonates, reaches, inspires, disgusts, bores, or otherwise affects external readers, I have achieved all I wished to achieve on this planet.

Letting Go

It is among the most common things a healing person hears as they work to move on in life.

“Just let it go.”

That phrase used to infuriate me.

It smacked of absolving the perpetrators of their misdeeds. It meant giving up control over how I believed the story should end.

The evildoers should collapse on their knees in front of me and beg for my forgiveness. They should admit all the wrongs they committed. They should express their repentance for the hurt they caused me.

A person could wait around for a really, really long time for that to happen.

There is something comforting in the belief that evildoers may eventually be “hoist on their own petard.” That maybe karma will have its way with them. The hope that one day they would suffer as much as they made us suffer.

All of that is profound wishful thinking that merely gives us an illusion of control.

In the end, there is nothing we can do to shape or alter another’s behavior. Not really. Sure, we can dole out favors and dispense punishments to control those who depend on us.

But serious harm rarely takes place in that type of situation. Keeping children or employees in line is fairly straightforward. One cannot confuse the mindless actions of dependents with the evil intent of those who actually mean us harm.

Healing from harm eventually all comes back to us. We can whine and complain and “woe is me” as long as we like. It will change nothing. It will only keep the pain fresh and alive in us. It will only frustrate and diminish us.

To heal and grow, we must move on. A friend swindled you out of money or position? Unfriend him or her and move on. Your fiance cheated on you? It is up to you to explore your heart and mind to determine if that act can be forgiven or ends the relationship. Someone treats you badly, maybe even assaults you? Get as far away from that person as is humanly possible.

I watch lawyer’s ads on television and they repel me. One lawyer consistently gets high dollar awards for their clients who have been wronged or injured in some kind of accident. The satisfied customers express undying gratitude to the lawyer. They are grateful for their awards as if the lawyer was their savior and the dollar outcome was their due.

It is not their due. It is a game. It is luck of the draw. It is the strength of the fact pattern and narrative. Life owes us nothing.

It is only when that penny drops can we begin to take concrete steps to define what we want and what we can and cannot control. We can control our reactions. We can control our actions. We can decide how to move forward and move on in life.

This is the importance of taking personal responsibility. We are the only ones who can decide that degree to which external events affect us and shape us. Blaming others – the perpetrator, our parents, the system, god, “bad luck” – is a common reaction and revenge tactic when we have been badly hurt.

The problem is that it is ultimately unsatisfying and out of our control.

By taking full and absolute personal responsibility for the impact of our injuries, only then can we devise strong coping strategies and learn to call on the inner strength we all possess in our core.

An injured wild animal will slink off into the woods and find a safe place to hunker down and heal. I have had to do that a few times in my life When the threat was large and my options limited, absenting myself was often the only healthy solution.

None of this is to say that healthy solutions are easy or don’t generate their own type of pain. Turning your back on unhealed family members, for example, is not without its own hard feelings and complications.

But like the fox who chews off its’ own foot to escape the trap, it is sometimes the difficult choices is the only way out. The fox evaluates its options and makes its decision based on what it can or cannot do. The fox who chooses to accept the trap usually pay with their lives. Many people do the same thing.

So I am in a phase of letting go of some things and feelings I should have let go of years ago. So what? Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

If we believe that each day is a new beginning (and in my world, it is), we can choose to start anew. We can turn our backs on the past and plot a path forward.

It likely won’t be easy, I’ve learned. And it is not a perfect science.

But I’ve also learned that letting go is so worth it.

Conversation Cafes

“Come up with a crazy business idea.”

That was the WordPress prompt today.

So here goes. Conversation cafes. This would be a Starbucks-like franchise (Tim Hortons-like for any Canadian readers).

You could even set up one of those “mug walls” where regular customers come in, grab a mug and a coffee. Like the good old days.

You could still get your long, tall, short, skinny, grande, cappuccino or moccaccino with or without whipped cream and cinnamon. The choices would be as generous as they would be in any urban coffee bar burning through mounds of ground coffee hour after hour for a grateful paying public.

Now, here’s the wrinkle. My conversation cafes would not allow any technological devices to darken its doors.

No cellphones or any other kind of communications technology. No iPads. No laptops.

The speed at which technology has become central to our lives to the point of absolute necessity is astonishing. So much so, it is hard to remember what life was like before technology.

Rectangular paper maps to get directions to go somewhere? Unwieldy and messy. I could never refold the blasted things the right way.

A busy signal on the other end of the phone line? “Oh. S/he is talking to someone else. I’ll call him or her back later.”

Remember coffee dates or dinner dates where getting together to have a conversation was the main idea? Neither do I. Not well anyway.

Like many Boomers, I grieve the loss of conversation as much as I grieve the loss of cursive writing. I am glad my adult children were exposed to it and can sign checks when and if needed. Oh wait. Checks. Also an out-of-date twentieth century business practice.

So my conversation cafes would have a nostalgic vibe, obviously. Big hair. Hoop earrings. High heels. The women would dress retro, too.

The conversationalists might either know, or not know, each other. And if they didn’t know each other, they would not be allowed to look up their profile picture and bio on Facebook, LinkedIn or X account. (For the uninformed, Twitter recently became known only as “X.” High marks for originality there, Elon Musk.)

Imagine the thrill of sitting down with a near stranger and not really knowing whether he (or she – no gender bias) was a potential axe murderer.

We’d go by the old cues. Through conversation. What do you do for a living? Who do we know in common? Where did we grow up? What school or schools did we go to? Not bad for a first conversation cafe “getting to know you” date script.

These days, the strength (or even possibility) of a first meeting depends on how closely your profile pic matches what you really look like.

If you look wildly off the mark in person, you can be ghosted before the connection is even made. Not bad in terms of efficiency. Kinda lame in terms of real human connection.

So this is an admittedly desperate attempt to steer our society back to the exchange of pleasantries that were so vital at a different time in history.

It is a call to insert humanity back into every day social discourse. An impractical attempt to hold apart the walls of technology’s inevitable march before it utterly engulfs all of collective humanity.

So my solution is conversation cafes. A place to talk. Hang out. Chill. People watching. Remember that? Conversation cafes is a wild, and probably impractical, business solution to an evolving social problem.

I admit it is hard to conceive of a world now where technology isn’t front and center in our lives. Our secretaries. Our pals. Our lifeline. Our dictionaries, encyclopedia and old wives’ tales all rolled up in one tidy and portable package.

So a conversation cafe where no technology is allowed is a stretch. And likely, if I’m being completely realistic, no business either.

I’ll admit even the notion of promoting human connection sounds old-fashioned and irrelevant these days. Which is seriously sad.

The Nature of Things

There is a pivotal scene at the end of Orson Welles’ cinematic masterpiece, Citizen Kane.

This rich and powerful man has destroyed many people’s lives in pursuing his ruthless ambitions. Now he is on his deathbed.

The only word Citizen Kane utters is, “Rosebud.” SPOILER ALERT: Rosebud is the name of his snow sled. In the scene that follows, we see workmen tossing it into a blast furnace along with a lot of other seemingly useless stuff.

Here we see that on the brink of his impending death, the protagonist Citizen Kane goes back in his mind to the freedom and joy he once had and enjoyed in the simpler time of his childhood.

I, too, had items of deep sentimental value that were my constant companions when I was a child. I clung to them then as children seeking security often do. Much like Linus and his famous blue blanket, my “pinkie blanket” was my constant companion when I was a toddler.

This cuddly soft blanket was a 100% wool Kenworth in a light shade of pink. It had been given as a Christmas present from my paternal grandmother in the year I was born.

There was a darker backstory behind that gift. For reasons known only to her, my grandmother refused to see me when I was taken to visit her shortly after my birth. Who knows why? She was pretty crazy best of times.

My father – the youngest of three boys who came late to fatherhood – was devastated by her rejection. And as terrible sadness often presents in hurt people, Dad was deeply angry.

When a gift box arrived a few days before Christmas, it was all my mother could do to keep Dad from taking it to his mother’s house and throwing it on her front porch.

But he was talked out of it and didn’t. It turned out to be a lucky call. My grandmother dropped dead of a heart attack a few days later on December 23rd in the same year I was born.

Had that gift been angrily rejected and returned, my mother worried Dad would have taken on all of the guilt for causing his mother’s death. As it was, he seemed guilty enough for just breathing the same air as she did.

It is more than a bit ironic, then, that the pinkie blanket became my constant companion and primary source of comfort as I grew a little older. I now wonder how Dad must have felt seeing me drag it around all the time after the drama surrounding its origins.

I had a white toy dog, too, who was very important to me, too. He was most reminiscent of some breed of schnauzer or terrier. He walked forward shakily on his four stiff legs when you pressed a button in his neck. Though the name on the sales tag said, “Knee High,” I called him “Highknee.”

The perceptive and Yiddish speakers among you will note his name is pronounced and so might easily have been spelled “h-e-i-n-i-e.” Which could have been pretty accurate as that is about how tall he was in relation to my backside back then.

After years of upheaval, both Highknee and my pinkie blanket were lost in the mists of many, many moves. Yet, the comfort and companionship and pleasure they afforded me when I most needed them still lingers in the recesses of my childhood memories.

Come to think of it, I have cycled through various artifacts and icons of comfort over time. They varied. I toted around a huge pink elephant with neon bright psychedelic patterned ears a teenage boyfriend gave me until it fell apart.

The same boyfriend gave me a blue and cherry pink reversible satin comforter. It also eventually succumbed to the vagaries of age and a cannibalistic washing machine.

These days, I take comfort from a variety of beautiful things. A sitting Buddha statue sits serenely in my bespoke mango Asian room.

Articles of my children’s clothing from when they were infants and toddlers are socked away in dresser drawers and fawned over occasionally. To be taken out and used again, perhaps, when my children have little ones of their own. If wishes were horses ….

I have a multitude of candles I keep stored away. When I want to bring light and spirit into a room, I bring them out and light them.

Certain artworks I’ve collected evokes special memories. The art has not always come from a place I’ve been to except in my mind’s eye. Still those pieces comfort me by emotional and geographic association.

I treasure a few other special artifacts for the positive memories they bring up, too. But I know I don’t need them. They are luxuries.

I have lived long periods of my life keeping no reminders of my past lives on display around me. The artifacts of my material life was often put in storage, for example, if I was moving around the country for a contract or some other work engagement.

Most of these desirable “things” are “wants” in my life, not “needs.” As if on cue, some material item often comes up or comes back to me when I most need comfort. Not necessarily the same item or in the same form as the original.

But close enough in shape or form to evoke the memories of comfort I needed when I was younger and more vulnerable. Those memories often rise again to comfort me in adulthood.

I have white Kenmore wool blankets now. Highknee has been replaced by a tortoiseshell cat named Nalita.

I am as grateful for the memories of comfort I had in childhood as I was for the items themselves. I am more than grateful for the living breathing things that give me comfort now.

My husband. My friends. My daughter. My cat. My house plants.

If we are lucky, we eventually learn that things – no matter how luxurious or expensive or rare or treasured – are, after all, just things. If we are very lucky, we learn to comfort ourselves in the midst of having nothing material at all.

Resolution

I’m not crazy about problems but I do like resolving them.

Depends a lot on the problem, of course.

I like little problems like unwashed dishes in the sink. The solution is pretty easy. Wash ‘em by hand or throw them in the dishwasher. The resolution is the same.

Then there are the big problems. A marriage on a precipitous downhill slide. A job that started out fine but has been tangled up and thwarted by an atmosphere of pettiness. A cancer diagnosis. A child sliding farther away from you into a serious drug habit.

No quick fixes to any of these situations. Each problem demands its’ own unique approach. Each demands a different level of engagement and attention.

We sometimes have enough control over a certain situation to see a positive outcome. But at other times, we simply don’t. The worst is, sometimes we have no idea whatsoever how things will go or how they will turn out. We just have to grit our teeth and press on.

Uncertainty is a bugbear for me. And yet, uncertainty is what life is. I don’t think I am alone here. We all struggle to impose order on chaos whatever sphere of life we are operating in. Career. Education. Home environment. Family. Gardens. And sometimes, we even try to impose order on our love relationships with questionable results.

But we impose order to achieve results. Order can create the conditions for a positive outcome. The wrinkle is we are led to believe that the order we have learned to impose is the only way to achieve something.

I used to be sensitive to keeping up with the chronological order of living life with my peers. I was aghast at those who delayed formal schooling after high school. “They’ll never catch up,” I believed. I couldn’t imagine parents going to university. “How could they possibly attend courses and raise kids at the same time?”

An out-of-wedlock pregnancy before university was tantamount to career and romantic suicide. I was a very narrow-minded young person. I was a product of my time. I learned those beliefs. I did not come up with them on my own.

When I read a story the other day about a 100-year-old woman who graduated from university with her first degree, I celebrated her achievement and her gutsiness. As I read somewhere else, but for Rosa parks, blacks might still be riding in the back of city buses.

Nature has its own order and rules. But it does not necessarily approximate the order rigidly imposed on our social systems.

If that were so, apartheid would never have been upended. The civil rights movement would never have had traction. Most women would still be supporting male colleagues in secretarial pools and strictly administrative staff roles.

There are benchmarks in the scripts of social change that mark the resolution of certain social problems and inequities. It is far from perfect science. Getting to a place of resolution can be gappy and inconsistent. The trick is to keep moving forward.

The problem must be identified and brought to light before it can be addressed. Otherwise, we likely wouldn’t even be aware there was an issue. A new order is often born out of chaos and disruption. Revolution often leads to resolution. And still, any resolution will never be a perfect solution.

Challenging problems is much like living life. A start-stop process of learning and relearning and failing and getting up and starting over again. Once we get that, then we can rest easier in the knowledge that “the world is unfolding as it should.”

We learn that life is a journey and not a destination. So it is with the problems in our lives and their ultimate resolution. Our job is to face problems squarely and work on them to resolve them in aid of our own growth.

Looked at in that way, problems are not only inevitable but opportunities for learning and growth. And yes. Even in the face of a child’s heartbreaking life choices or a cancer diagnosis. We must accept what is and move forward from that point. Few life problems are solved by ostriches with their heads in the sand.

Enough for Today

I am sharing this poem.

Short on length but long on wisdom.

Loves me some (or any) Mary Oliver, I does.

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it.

I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway it’s the same old story
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

Mary Oliver, from Dogfish

Rain On

It is pouring rain outside. Pouring with the kind of intensity that would keep you off the roads and safe at home if it were snow. But it isn’t snow. TBTg.

I used to hate rain. Destroyer of picnic plans. Ruination of spring weddings (though rain on a wedding day is supposed to be good luck. Heaven knows why. Certainly not for the bride’s wedding dress.)

A random rain shower for which you are unprepared can leave you cold and damp. Then the rain adds insult to injury and utterly abandons any semblance of comfort once you go inside.

You might have to sit on a hard wooden seat in the damp and cold while suffering through a less than scintillating lecture. The cold and damp do nothing to elevate the subject matter. Quite the opposite. They mirror it a little too precisely.

At home, at least, you get to strip down, throw the outerwear in the dryer, get into some cozy dry clothes and start the day over.

In point of fact, rainy days have not always been doom and gloom for me. I’ve had magical experiences in rain. Years ago, I was preparing to trek the Pokhara to Jomsom route in Nepal. The crude hotel rooms were a bit makeshift by our standards. They were really nothing more than cinder blocks stacked on top of one another.

Set on the four corners of the block walls, the roof was simple sheets of corrugated metal, held down by fairly hefty rocks. This flimsy arrangement held together well enough most of the time. Until monsoon season.

if you have ever been caught in a monsoon downpour, you are unlikely to forget it. The nearest analogy I can come up with is standing directly under a waterfall with an industrial fan blowing at you.

The corrugated sheets of the roof were no match for the monsoon. I was both dazzled and distressed by its power. When the roof of your hotel room blows off and flies away into the distance, it creates some intense feelings.

My primary concern was for my precious Canon 35 mm SLR camera left in my hotel room. It would not survive, I was sure. I dove into the room, fished it out from under the bed covers where I’d stowed it for safety and tucked it under my clothes. Hugging the lens toward my chest, waiting for the deluge to die down.

In a similar monsoon season in Sri Lanka, another downpour aforded a unique personal care experience. The rain shower was so intense and lasted so long I was able to go out into the hotel courtyard to wash my hair. Not only wash it but condition and rinse it with plenty of time to spare.

They say that into every life, a little rain must fall. That is not necessarily always a bad thing.

More and more, I see rain more as a gift of nourishment. For the earth and the plants and for us. It refreshes everything. It washes the plants and softens the earth. It quenches their thirst. We recently planted fruit trees and a hedge around our house which are still being established.

The frequent rains are not only life-enhancing for the plants, but they let me off the watering hook when they come.

I am more than grateful for this frequent, if unbidden, gardening assistance. Rain on, say I.

300 Posts and Counting

My 300th post in a row today. Only 65 more to go to reach my goal of writing a daily blog post for a full year.

Starting out on March 14th of last year (2023 for any of you who are just shaking off the trauma of whatever last year was), I wondered what the year would bring when I started out. I wondered if my goal of writing a book would be enhanced by this discipline. I wondered what I would learn about life. I wondered what I would learn about myself.

I’ve learned a few things. Among them, I have valued the feedback and support of fellow travelers. People in my life who may have only known me superficially before have stuck with me. They’ve read my posts, liked them and made valuable comments. I am grateful for you Diane and Gary. And Katie, too.

I have connected with other blog authors who are doing their bit to share their voice and insights with the world. Eclectic and interesting.

I’ve gleaned a few faithful readers and commentators along the way. I’ve signed up for their blogs and have learned from and enjoyed their writing. Thank you, Frank and Tony and Patti and Mangus and Kris. I see you too, ThatScaredLittleGirl. If I’ve missed any other regulars, please forgive me.

In the past, I have both applauded and decried the onslaught of technology and the power it has over most of us today. I’m just waiting for the internet to crash one day to see what kind of blind panic that triggers across the world. I don’t really wish that to happen, but admit I find it a fascinating prospect to contemplate.

I have discovered the memoir I originally set out to write is not as compelling a goal for me as it once was. I believe I was driven by a need to be validated and to share my learnings and survival strategies from the challenges of my childhood. How I overcame those challenges might be of help to others facing the same situations, I believed.

Part of me still believes that. Yet my life has evolved from a “survivalist” mindset and into a place of stability and contentment. I don’t have the same fire in my belly as I once had to share the atrocities I suffered in my childhood with the world. My solutions of choice come out in my blog writing practice anyway.

My deep-seated beliefs in spirituality over religion, self-care, meditation, yoga, healthy eating all inform my daily writing. Love over hatred. Kindness and compassion as a starting point for any new connections with others. When others disappoint or hurt me, I simply withdraw. I now believe it is their loss as much as mine for what we might have co-created together.

Like a wise farmer, I need to choose where I sow my seeds and try to pick fertile and welcoming soil. I spent too many years not doing that and have the results (or lack thereof) to prove it. I quote the wisdom of the late Maya Angelou who said: “When people show you who they are, believe them … the first time.”

That is such an important and hard-won lesson. My late mother destroyed her life by ignoring this truth. When she met my father, he was a firmly established drunkard and womanizer with a hair trigger temper. My mother believed that her love would change him. If it were not so sad and the consequences so tragic, I would laugh at that presumption.

Her misguided belief underscores a fundamental learning we all eventually come to. We can’t change anyone. It is difficult enough to change ourselves. Any of you who have successfully quit drinking, smoking, overspending, procrastination or other self-sabotaging behaviors know that truth intimately.

I have learned the hard lesson that you cannot push a string. People are as they are as you meet them in the present moment. What you hope and dream they will become one day, may or may not happen. Deal with them in the present, not in the someday you imagine.

If the present person you encounter proves to be a bad fit with where you are in your evolution, the only solution may be to walk away. You may wish them love and healing.

You do not have to expose yourself to the threat of being pulled under or back into the undertow of their unsettled and unresolved issues. That’s their job, not yours.

That was a tough learning for me. We are all tightly sewed into fraught expectations around family and friend relationships. Abandoning them may be seen and felt as disinterest or cruelty.

In my life, I have made those choices as an action of self-care and, yes, an act of love. It is often only in solitude and isolation that people learn the lessons they need to learn in their life.

Like people we lose through death, they are not gone from us. They are simply elsewhere.

I have learned lots over these past 300 days. I have much more to learn. I will always have much more to learn. It is an immutable truth that the more we know, the less we know we know.

I’m closing in on the final leg of this one year marathon. At the moment, I have no idea whatsoever what I will do on the 366th day. Carry on with daily posts or change direction? I do know this for sure.

Writing is not just a vocation but an avocation. It is an exercise in exploring the depths of the soul and spirit as much as it is a tangible product that others can ingest and ponder. It has given structure to my days, even when some of those days were very rocky and unpredictable.

I am finding my voice. I know her better now. I feel there is still much more to learn. So we’ll see. As we used to say regularly in the news business, the outcome “remains to be seen.” At any rate, you can safely assume there will be one even if I don’t yet know what that will be.

Susannah Says

Anyone who has lost touch with old friends and then circled back with them years later is often taken aback. Not necessarily at how they have aged but at how grown up and mature their kids have become.

This is a nod to Susannah (nee Margison) Everett. A fraternal twin to Gordon and born within a few weeks of my own son, Cameron in 1986. Her parents Jennifer and Douglas are longtime friends.

Lest I bury the lead (and pretty much already have), Susannah switched tracks after law school and decided not to pursue law as a lifetime career.

She opened her own business as a coach to other professional women advising them on how to manifest their dreams. I can think of no-one better suited to that calling.

I’m sharing this post that she recently published. I often do that when I come across someone else’s words that I wish I had written.

The words and sentiments Susannah shares are strong both in vulnerability and wisdom. Similar to Susannah, I left a law career “to do my own thing.” The parameters for women to ascend in the profession of law are tight and restrictive (especially for older women as I was when I was called to the bar).

To me, it meant the road ahead in law was fated to be nothing else if not dull and predictable and not terribly satisfying. The cachet and status of a law career often reads better on paper than it plays out in reality, except for a favored few.

Susannah left law awhile back and married a doctor. She is a beautiful and happy young woman doing her own thing.

And she is clearly wise beyond her years. As you will glean from her words below. Not a bad outcome for Doug and Jenny’s kid. 🙂 The same kid I last saw when she was wearing diapers and a onesie.

She done growed.

A few years ago, I felt rejected and that rejection felt MONUMENTAL.

I was wallowing in what I’d lost. The fun I would have had. The experience I would have gained. The lost financial upside.

Then someone said something to me that felt like the pick-me-up my heart (and ego) really needed. Want to know what it was?

“Susannah, this is the BEST thing that could have happened to you”.

You know what? That comment became like an omen. It lit up something in me that was determined to get over the pain of the rejection and capitalize on the opportunity it presented.

The reality was that (now lost) opportunity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when I sat down and thought about it.

I was settling.

I had been “playing small”

Better things were not only out there, but attainable.

And the longer I was focused on the lost opportunity and tried to get it back, the less space I had for something better.

As soon as I started playing with the ideas that “rejection is just redirection” and “if it’s not this it’s something better” and that “life doesn’t happen TO you, it happens FOR you”, magic (it felt like magic) started happening.

The bigger, better, more perfectly suited opportunities started showing up.

While it’s important to honour the feelings that come with rejection, it’s also important to keep them and the situation into perspective.

What if being rejected was the best thing that could have happened? What would be possible?

You owe it to yourself to find out.

Vellichor

Isn’t that a beautiful word? Want to know what it means? Do you think you know how to pronounce it?

Pronunciation is easy: velly – core. And it means this:

“The pensive nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper.”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vellichor

This word and its definition triggered a thousand pleasant memories. Of the library at the University of New Brunswick – my first alma mater. Of wonderful old bookstores I would saunter through in Toronto or London, England. There were many smaller and obscure bookstores I would happen upon in my travels that evoked similar feelings.

The feelings evoked by the ambience and smell were always the same. Comfort. Coziness. Class and certainty. Books that were old enough to emit that odor had obviously been around a while. That spoke to their longevity and value.

Vellichor is as much an emotional response as much as anything else. It evokes the Zeitgeist of a slower and simpler time. I could spend a full afternoon wandering from one section to another in a bookstore or library in search of nothing in particular.

Bookstores and libraries are designed for browsing and browse I did. For hours on end. I fear its’ passing.

“Big box” bookstores have subsumed countless numbers of small “Mom and Pop” bookstores. Indeed, that very phenomenon was the plot line (along with the eventual romantic hookup between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks) in the 90s hit movie, You’ve Got Mail.

Ryan owned a small children’s bookstore she inherited from her mother called The Shop Around the Corner. Hanks played the “villain” Joe Fox whose family owned business was mega bookstores. (Think Chapters, and Barnes & Noble, etc.) The two unbeknown to each other business rivals meet online and strike up a romance not knowing each other’s true identities.

And that is the plot wrinkle that the movie revolves around. Two business rivals with widely divergent business philosophies. Spoiler alert: Ryan finally decides to sell the shop as the new Fox Bookstore crushes her sales. Love wins out in the end. (Why else make the movie?)

But I bet Fox Books didn’t have the vellichor of The Shop Around the Corner. That quality cannot be bought or sold. Like fine wine or delicate soft cheeses, the aroma of fusty old books must gestate and develop slowly.

Another wonderful book turned movie along the same lines was 84, Charing Cross Road. That plot centers around a twenty year correspondence between US author Helene Hanff and UK resident Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London, England.

The film featured Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins with a sweet and simple tale of a long friendship that unfolds in letters based on the writers’ mutual love and respect for books.

A reviewer notes how much The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel comprised of only letters between the characters, owes to 84, Charing Cross Road. Each book (which later became movies) ooze simplicity and charm for what I fear is becoming a bygone era.

I’m not sure anyone even has the time and patience for that type of correspondence anymore. In a world where children are no longer even taught cursive writing, it is hard to imagine that era will come again. It is a great cultural and experiential loss.

Musty libraries and bookstores account for some on my happiest memories. I didn’t have a word to describe what it was about them that I loved so much before. Now I do. Vellichor.

Wherever and whenever I find it still exists, I shall deliberately seek it out. Like a muzzled wild boar seeking out truffles. The comparison may not be particularly flattering at first glance but the urgency and intensity of the hunt is completely in synch.

Books are an addiction I have for which I have no intention of seeking a cure.

Fun At Funerals

Funerals. Bad word. Right up there with shingles, scabies, dog poop and malaria as unwanted life events. Ew.

Yet, they are inevitable. People we love will die. People we don’t love will die. Lots of people we don’t know will die. And we will die.

Here I am borrowing loosely from the LGBTQ anthem: “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” I say: “We’re here. We’re mortal. Get used to it.” Admittedly not anywhere near as mellifluous.

But are funerals the absolutely worst occasions we have to take part in? That pretty much depends on the above associations. Did you love the deceased? Did you hate the deceased while s/he was living? Did you even know him or her?

The answer to these questions will definitely inform the tone and your emotional response to the funeral you are attending. Although it begs the question, if you didn’t even know the person, what were you doing at their funeral anyway?

My mother used to regularly visit funeral homes in her home town whether she knew the deceased or not. She always stayed afterwards for the free food and baked goodies.

A nutritional mainstay of her diet for a good number of her later years actually. But this is not about my mother so I won’t go there. Not directly at any rate.

I am trying to say that not all funerals are bad. Some engender relief. Some engender gratitude for the release from pain and suffering. Some have unwelcome but noteworthy comic elements.

I have the worst funny story about my great-uncle’s funeral back in the last century. To say Great Uncle Leigh was not a religious man would have been a dramatic understatement.

He worked nearly his whole life as a logger in the backwoods of provincial New Brunswick, Canada and later as a carpenter and house builder. Leigh deftly managed to dodge the marriage and kids trap as a young man. However, as old age and decrepitude started to set in, he apparently felt it wise to give up his bachelor status.

He tossed his single lifestyle in favor of a comely widow hovering in about his age range. A comely widow whose baking and cooking skills were locally renowned. It could be said Uncle Leigh knew exactly which side his bread was buttered on.

The only gaping and discernible gap between them was Millie’s feverish commitment to God, and the Baptist church and Uncle Leigh’s religious avoidance of all of it. Not only did he avoid church as an attendee but he also avoided any of its teachings. Uncle Leigh was a proudly devout heathen through and through.

So he and the widow did the deed. Got married, I mean. Some years and many, many apple pies later, Millie passed. In due course, Leigh got older and sick and soon followed Millie on the path into Heaven’s kitchen. (Though, heathen that he was, that point is certainly debatable.)

A funeral was arranged. Without a church to call home and no preacher who knew him personally, there was no religious eulogist familiar enough with him to summarize his life and character. The pastor of Millie’s church was summoned.

Now as an audience member in the family pew, it certainly seemed to me that the ad hoc preacher did not know anything at all about what – or more precisely – who he was talking about.

Then the preacher man’s eulogy launched into a passionate anecdote about sitting – for a time – beside Uncle Leigh on his deathbed. The preacher fairly swooned as he shared his ecstatic news with the assembled gathering.

According to him, our beloved Uncle Leigh, “in his waning hours,” “had accepted salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.” Apparently this happened just as Uncle Leigh was hovering on the brink of passing over to his “final reward.”

Sitting amongst other relatives in the family pew, including my mother, I did not take this news well. The image of sweet but tough and resolute old heathen Uncle Leigh accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into his house, let alone into his bedroom and heart, hit me entirely the wrong way.

I struggled to suppress a chuckle. As the preacher droned on about the salvation of dear Uncle Leigh’s immortal soul, the rising chuckle gained momentum.

It was everything I could do not guffaw out loud, in what I knew would have been a most inappropriate and shameful outburst.

Still I was doubled over in my seat in the pew, holding my sides, rocking quietly, in an attempt to regain some self-control. At a point, I just jumped up and fled the sanctuary. The laughter exploded out of me once I was safely out of anyone’s hearing in the hall outside.

If you had actually known Uncle Leigh, the absurdity of the preacher’s announcement was too ridiculous for words. It took me several minutes to compose myself.

But compose myself I finally did. I slithered quietly back into the sanctuary and settled into my seat in the family pew – once again, the very model of grief and decorum.

The little break I took meant the funeral had moved on to another speaker, blessedly. My composure and the family’s dignity were intact.

Then, on my shoulder, I felt a gentle tap. I looked around and saw a white glove covered hand and behind that the sweetest and most compassionate-looking elderly lady with tightly curled blue hair and a tender expression of sympathy.

“There, there, dear,” she comforted me. “I know that grief can be overwhelming when you lose a dear one.” I should have been happy she completely misread the reason I fled the sanctuary.

As it happened, her overture had the unfortunate effect of forcing me to once again repress laughter bubbling up within me. Admittedly, I was pretty emotional. But in the entirely wrong way for the occasion at hand.

I smiled broadly, patted her gloved hand still on my shoulder, and whispered sincere thanks for her kindness and concern.

It may have been Uncle Leigh we gathered to bury that day and whose life we celebrated, but, in retrospect, I feel I dodged a bullet.

At the very least, I managed to save the family’s dignity and my own on that sad and sombre and august occasion.

Seriously close call.