Tag Archives: Inspiration

What’s Alive?

Last Monday I had minor surgery on my right hand.  For the first few days, the pain meant that no WordPress posts were forthcoming.  Since then, my dear hand has been feeling better and better, and here I am tapping away on my laptop.

My digital journey has been fascinating, from the strange sensation of cords being cut under local anaesthetic, to the freezing coming out, to trying to shave.  But sitting here right now, the story isn’t alive.  It isn’t juicy in my soul.  It feels like old news.  Oh, I could scribe about the last week with some level of proficiency but the writing wouldn’t bounce along, since I’m not living it now.  Sometimes on WordPress I’ve told you about events that happened before but they were also bubbling up in me as I sat down with my computer.  Not so for my recent hand adventures.

My last post was called “Hair Loss”.  It was accompanied by a shaggy photo of me, courtesy of Covid closing my hair salon.  I ended the piece looking forward to Amazon delivering a hair trimming kit.  There would have been much to tell here as well.  Trying (for a long time!) to remove the blade from the trimmer in anticipation of future cleaning, the same lengthy process of reattaching the blade, watching several YouTube videos about men cutting their own long hair, the first attempt at cutting, and today’s tweaking.  All of that was there … and I just don’t want to write about it.  The story isn’t singing to me.

What is alive to wanting to write again after an absence of nine days.  Right now, I’m being pulled forward to having my thoughts show up on screens.  I want my words to reach people, and to touch at least a few of them.  I want contact.

Will tomorrow offer me a topic that I can throw myself into?  I think so, without at the moment having an idea of what that topic will be.  The past has shown me that when my heart is revving, my fingers will find the keys.

Oh … and here’s a photo of the new me.

Moments Shared and Passed On

I went to a lovely concert last night at the Cuckoo’s Nest Folk Club in London. Singing and playing were Liv and Braden, better known as Tragedy Ann.

I had met this marvelous couple two years ago, as they graced the stage of the London Music Club. That evening I felt our conversation in my heart, and I’ve carried them with me ever since.

Yesterday I saw Braden and Liv in the hallway before the music started. There were hugs and many light words.

I sat in the front row, way to the side of the massed instruments and the two singers. Early on, Liv was introducing a song inspired by The Velveteen Rabbit, and by “a book we were given”. I smiled back two years. Within the walls of the London Music Club, I had given them a copy of Jodiette: My Lovely Wife, the book I had written about my dear wife Jody. She died of lung cancer in 2014. “Is she talking about Jody’s book? Nah … must be some other one.”

Except it wasn’t.

From the song Velveteen:

There’s a tree
Not too far from home
Waving leaves like it knows me

I know such a tree. I wrote about it, and about hearing Jody’s voice there, hours after she died. The bare branches trembled.

I’m waving to you, Bruce. I shelter you. I protect you. I’m here, husband. I will always be with you, cheering you on.

And from Tragedy Ann’s Facebook page just now:

We had been tweaking Velveteen for a long time before starting to perform it live. Inspired by a story read to us as children and a book given to us as adults, we wanted to touch on the nature of lifelong love, loss, and doubt.

Thank you, my friends. We move each other throughout our days and years … you and you and you and you and me.

Tiger

Tiger Woods won The Masters golf tournament yesterday.  Tears filled my eyes.  And I asked myself “Why?”

For me, The Masters is the important tournament in men’s golf.  It has a such a long history (1934), and it’s always held at the same venue – the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.  The course is extremely difficult, especially on the undulating greens.  It’s a classic test of golf.

Tiger won his first Masters in 1997, at the age of 21.  I was at the age of 48, already immersed in love for the sport.  As a teenager, I hit balls towards the far fence of a field on my grandpa’s farm, and then searched through the stubble so I’d have more shots to hit.  At home, the Don Valley Golf Course in Toronto was where I grew in the game, often playing alone with my thoughts.

Tiger became my hero in 1997.  He hit the ball so far.  He had charisma, something that I wanted.  And he was black, showing excellence to my context of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.  The truth is that Tiger helped me become a fuller person.  He was there on my journey to have far more of Bruce expressed in the world.  And when he hugged his ill father after walking off the 18th green at Augusta, I melted.  Here was a loving human being as well as an elite athlete.

Twenty-two years later, he bounces away from the 18th once more, arms aloft.  This time, his young son Charlie is rushing towards him, and the tender embrace is offered to a new generation.  It was just as sweet.

Much has happened since Tiger’s last major win in 2007.  We’ve heard of his affairs, his car accident, his aching back.  The “comeback” theme is heavy in the media.  I appreciate the man’s effort to return to the top of his sport but my damp eyes come from another source, I believe.  Tiger’s win yesterday allows me to revisit a younger Bruce – hitting balls toward that fence, trying to get over the creek in two on the 18th at Don Valley, walking fairways at the edge of sunset in search of a little white thing.  I get to celebrate the journey I’ve travelled.  I get to honour a younger version of me.

Thanks, Tiger, for pointing to a goodness that’s been inside me for a long time.

Ida

Last night Renato made me a welcome home dinner.  He’s been well trained as a “saucier” and the sauce which graced my chicken breast was beyond delicious.  And for an appetizer, he presented me with tomato slices and arugula greens adorned with smoked salmon.  Oh my.  And did I mention my two glasses of dry white wine?  Happy was me.

We talked and talked.  Renato told me about his mom Ida (pronounced Ee-da).  She died when he was 12.  She was in the water off an Italian beach with a girlfriend, both of them holding onto an air mattress.  The friend lost her grip and slipped below the surface.  Ida tried to save her.  They both died.

Ida owned a clothing shop and once welcomed a woman and her young son.  Her husband had died and she wanted her son to have a suit for his first communion.  Ida picked out her best suit for the boy and he tried it on.  Smashing!  She gave it to him … no dissent from mom allowed.

Another time, Ida was standing outside her shop, talking to a friend, when she saw a man chasing a young girl with a knife.  She raced towards him and tackled the fellow, most likely saving the girl’s life.

A life so richly lived.  Do you and I need to be similarly heroic in deed, or is it enough to be supremely kind?  Yes, kind.  I know in my heart that I would gladly risk my life to save another, but I don’t go there in my head.  Instead I choose to be kind, to look out for my fellow man and woman, to feel into what they need, and walk that journey with them.

I didn’t used to cry much at all.  Now I cry a lot.  I see people like Ida on my daily round and I’m moved by their humanity.  I want to be like them.  So many folks moisten my eyes.  Some friends start me coughing because I love them so much.

Thank you, Ida, for opening my lungs and my heart and my eyes.  Look what we give each other!