Collected Moments

When we talk about our summer, we talk about big things. The first beach day. The family barbecue. The vacation everyone remembers years later. But that is not summer at all.

Summer is built from moments. Trying on a new bathing suit, discovering a new café, or returning to an old haunt. We remember fireflies and the sounds of a summer night with crickets and June bugs and, if you live in the right place, the bullfrogs' nightly song. That is what the last two weeks reminded me of: moments from my childhood remembered today.

The walk to the local beach, swimming, always swimming. I loved the water. The first ice cream cone from the local ice cream shop. As I grew older, it began to include the taste of new strawberries fresh from the plant and the vanilla iced coffee that became a fixture in my summer life. The first road trip to anywhere was also a treat. I've relived those moments every year, this year included.

Those moments may not seem important when they happen, but they are often the things we remember long after the larger events have faded. This has been my focus this week: Seeing, with a capital S, all the little things that make up summer.

Some of those moments have come through my camera lens. A rain-covered oak leaf caught my attention after a morning shower. The water droplets transformed something ordinary into something worth stopping for. It was only a leaf, but for a few minutes it became the entire focus of my attention. The many shades of green crowd around, asking to be noticed. The world is bursting with life if you take a moment to look beyond yourself and into the natural world around you.

Don't get me wrong, bad things happen too: careless fires, spoiled food, and sometimes something that sours the mood. But if you look up and out, you can always find something that brings you joy.

Other moments arrived through routine.

Aquafit has become one of the rhythms of my week. The class itself matters, but so do the pieces around it. The walk to the YMCA. The familiar faces. The relief of moving in water rather than fighting gravity on land. The few quiet minutes in the hot tub afterward.

 None of these moments would make a headline. Together, however, they tell the story of a summer that is unfolding one ordinary day at a time.

This week also included errands, appointments, and unexpected frustrations. A damaged birth certificate meant another round of paperwork. Appointments brought waiting rooms and uncertainty. There were moments when I felt tired, discouraged, or simply overwhelmed by the number of things demanding attention. Yet even within those days, there were small things worth keeping.

A successful photograph. I managed quite a collection of those, from the oak leaf to a dress I found at a yard sale to all the green of the world as it exists in summer. The purples and yellows of late spring flowers followed, or mingled with, the pinks and reds of summer blooms. The blue sky and drifting clouds are there too. They are all things I've collected with my camera.

Summer lives in our senses.

The sounds and songs of summer are there too. A shared laugh with my daughter. Crickets and June bugs. Children at play. Music blasting in the air. They are all sounds that surround me day and night. The rain on the windowpane is in there too, and everywhere the laughter of people simply enjoying the sun.

The taste of strawberries I savour. The iced coffee that is my everyday order from Tims and the ones I make myself. That is summer. Ice cream, all kinds of ice cream, and recently a place called Crumbl with the most delicious cookies I've ever tasted. Salads of all sorts blend flavours beyond compare. They too are part of summer.

The smell of newly cut grass and lilacs perfumes the air. Other flowers too; their scents mingle and linger, transformed and strengthened by the summer sun. Suntan oil and OFF are in there as well, but I prefer the perfumes from the flowers.

The velvety feel of peony petals. The tickle as I allow my hands to float through the leaves as I walk. The softness of grass beneath my feet is a favourite, but so too is the slight burning sensation of walking on hot pavement. Soft dresses comfort me, and the elasticity of my swimsuit always makes me smile because it means that soon I'll be in the water. Nothing compares to that feeling except maybe a cool shower after a long walk.

The older I get, the more I realize that collecting moments is a practice of attention. The moments are always there. The challenge is noticing them.

When I began this month's Summer Threads theme, I imagined gathering small signs of the season. What I am discovering instead is that I am gathering evidence of a life being lived, of days that are full of sensation and pleasure, and of moments spent with family too long ignored.

A life filled with appointments and errands, family worries and household chores, cups of coffee and photographs, pool visits and quiet evenings. A life that is made meaningful not by its grand achievements but by its accumulation of ordinary days.

 It is not a perfect life. It is not always an exciting life. There are difficult moments, like filling out forms that require me to put my mental pain on display, or days when worry and uncertainty take up more space than I would like. Yet it is also a life rich with small pleasures, familiar comforts, and the people I love. My gratitude knows no bounds for the bounty Mother Nature shares at this time of year and for the reminder that even ordinary days can hold moments worth collecting.

That is what my journal pages have been reflecting this month. Envelopes filled with scraps, photographs tucked between pages, notes written quickly before they are forgotten. None of it seems particularly significant on its own.

Together, however, they become a record. Proof that these days happened. Proof that I was here. Proof that even the quietest seasons leave traces behind, and proof that I am alive and living my best life within this season.

As summer continues, I hope to keep collecting these moments. Not because they are extraordinary, but because they are not. The small things matter. The ordinary things matter. Perhaps that is what a season really becomes in the end—not a collection of major events, but a gathering of moments we cared enough to notice.

First Signs of Summer

I am pondering the first signs of summer today.

June, for me, is all about the senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Summer never arrives all at once. It arrives in pieces and threads, in bright colours and beautiful scents, in small moments that quietly announce a change of season.

The sights are the things that tend to catch my attention first.

One of the earliest signs of summer is the appearance of dandelions. After them come the lilacs, and then the strawberries. Sadly, there will be no strawberries in the garden this year. They were choked out by a vine last season, and no one has reseeded them. Even so, there is no shortage of colour.

The tulips and daffodils of spring have faded, replaced by apple blossoms, peonies, catmint, and the soft purple of lilacs. Everywhere I look, something seems to be blooming. The greens are deepening too. There are shades of green I don't notice at any other time of year.

The sounds of summer arriving are just as familiar.

I hear children playing outside. I hear the soft buzz of neighbours' voices as they gather on back porches to enjoy the evening warmth. I hear the rush of the river at its fullest and the gentle patter of rain against the window.

Some sounds have not arrived yet. I haven't heard the crickets or the June bugs, but I know they are coming.

The scents of early summer are everywhere.

Lilacs are the first thing I notice, followed by the smell of wet earth and fresh growth after rain. Sometimes there is the scent of someone barbecuing supper nearby. Even the air seems greener somehow, carrying the smell of leaves, grass, and gardens waking up.

Touch is perhaps the easiest sense to overlook, yet it is woven through many of my favourite moments.

There is the warmth of the sun on my skin and the cool softness of leaves as I run my hand through them while walking past. There is the comfort of a hug from family while spending time together outdoors.

And then there are the tastes that belong to summer.

The first vanilla iced coffee of the season is always a treat. So are strawberries and apples fresh from the orchard. Some foods seem tied to a particular season, and they never taste quite the same at any other time of year.

All of these things tell me that summer has arrived as much as the heat or the longer days. There are a dozen shades of green outside my window and so many pinks and purples in bloom that sometimes it feels dreamlike when I am out wandering. 

Summer never arrives all at once.

It arrives in pieces—in flowers and rain, in laughter and birdsong, in the scent of lilacs and the taste of iced coffee. It arrives one small moment at a time until, before I realize it, the season is fully here.

May — Things I Don't Want to Forget

When I sat down to think about May, I wasn't trying to write a review. I was trying to make a list of things I didn't want to forget. I expected to find two or three standout moments. Instead, I found page after page of memories. There were a few rough days, as there always are, but what surprised me most was how many good days were hiding in the month when I looked back.

 

Physically, I am doing very well. My blood sugar and blood pressure both moved into the normal range, at least according to my doctor. Aquafit has become part of my life rather than something I'm trying to establish. This week I completed almost an entire class without using the wall for balance support. I have established a 5,000-step baseline and reached almost double that on several occasions. My weight has remained steady at 196 pounds all month. Perhaps the most visible reminder came when I tried on a medium dress that I was sure wouldn't fit. It did, and comfortably.

The numbers only tell part of the story, though. More than once this month I caught myself noticing something that hasn't come easily in a long time: I was happy. Not every day and not all day, but often enough to notice. There is a bounce in my step that has been missing for years. Music has started finding its way back into my days. I laugh more. I sing more. One of the things that made me happiest was watching Nessa ( my daughter) decide to try Aquafit herself. Part of me is proud that my example may have helped, but mostly I am proud that she wants to take steps toward better health too.

Creativity found its way back into my life as well. I continued writing this blog, creating Pinterest content, working in my daybook, and began retraining some long-neglected visual design skills. The skills were rusty, but not nearly as rusty as I feared. It felt less like learning something new and more like returning to something familiar. There were moments of frustration, but there were also moments when I remembered that I knew more than I thought I did.

Not everything was easy. There were worries about people I care about, difficult conversations, and reminders that compassion and responsibility are not the same thing. I spent time looking at old patterns and old stories. At times I slipped back into habits I thought I had left behind. The difference this time was that I didn't stay there. When I look back at May, I don't see a happy month or a difficult month. I see a month where movement returned. A month where life felt a little bigger than recovery. And that's something I don't want to forget.

So I am stepping into June with gratitude for what May gave me. Not because everything was perfect, but because it reminded me that life can be bigger than recovery. June's theme is Summer Threads, and over the coming weeks I hope to collect small pieces of summer the same way I collected small victories in May—one ordinary day at a time.

Looking Back, Not Staying

"I looked back, but I didn't move backward."

 
There are times I look back at my life and go what the hell? We are what we were raised to be even when we fight against the things we went through ourselves. We either emulate what we knew growing up or we do everything in our power to go in the opposite direction. Either way we are shaped by it. We carry pieces of it with us whether we want to or not.

For myself there are memories I keep and others I avoid as much as possible, but lately some things from my younger years have been making their way back into my thoughts. Certain decisions I made in my twenties have come back around and I have found myself responding to them differently than I did then. Some of that is simply lessons learned. Some of it is pain given and received without closure. Either way I have been looking back more than usual.

Part of that happened because my family and I have started looking seriously at leaving Peterborough and moving somewhere healthier for us mentally and physically. We have been looking toward the Niagara region and trying to think about what that might actually look like. Funny thing though, before we could really think about where we were going, I ended up looking at where I had been.

When my kids were little we lived in Housing for about a year and a half. There was damage to the kitchen after a pipe burst one winter and after that I seemed to get turned down every time I applied for housing. I never really knew why. I always assumed I owed money and I thought I had taken care of it years ago when I paid off old debts after my dad passed away. Still, I never checked. The denial simply became a fact in my head. It became one of those things I just accepted as true.

Now that I am sixty-five and considering another move I thought I would ask. It turns out I had paid the arrears and Housing had no record of me owing anything. There was a note saying money had once been owed but nothing outstanding. I was encouraged to apply again and I cannot even explain how much relief I felt hearing that.

What struck me afterwards was realizing that I had carried that around for years. I had accepted it without questioning it because I thought I already knew the answer. Looking back did not change the past, but it did change the story I had been telling myself.

I think I have been doing that in other areas too. I switched Pinterest to a business account because I was curious if anything I was doing was connecting with people and I discovered the Things I'm Learning series has been getting a lot more attention than I expected. I was surprised by that because while I enjoy creating pins, the truth is they are part of how I cope with things and work through them.

The poetry has been harder. Those poems came out of one of the most difficult periods of my life and sometimes working through them means revisiting things I would rather leave alone. Still, each time I finish a set of pins for one of the poems I feel a little lighter. I am dealing with difficult things, but they are reminders of what was, not what is.

I also found myself explaining some things to my granddaughter that I had never really explained before. Not because I wanted to excuse anyone, but because understanding where someone came from sometimes explains why I protect them so fiercely.

Even my weekend away ended up teaching me something. I realized how much I dislike feeling managed or directed around as though I cannot make my own choices. What surprised me wasn't that I felt irritated. It was realizing how strongly I felt it. Maybe that says something too. 

On the brighter side I spent time wandering through stationery stores and walking around a historical part of Toronto. I walked much more easily than I expected. My feet got tired and sore but nothing else did. I knew the YMCA classes were helping, but I had not realized just how much they were helping. I also got to share that time with family this week and it turned out to be unexpectedly fun.

So much happened this week that I kept trying to figure out how to put it into some kind of order, but maybe it is simpler than I thought. I looked back at routines that drifted, old doubts, family pain and old emotions. I kept the parts that helped and carried them forward.

I looked back, but I didn't stay there.

I continued moving.

I continued creating.

I continued showing up.

In Between Seasons

I'm somewhere in the middle of catching up with myself. The last few days have felt busy and full. I am home again now, but I don't feel fully settled yet. Some things are still moving through me while other things have stayed the same. Things are shifting, but not fully. I noticed how much can happen in a few ordinary days. I am still me. I still need rest. I still come back to familiar routines. But something feels a little different too.

Maybe that was the theme of the weekend without me realizing it at the time. Everything felt a little in-between. I was happy to get away, but happy to come home too. I was tired, excited, overwhelmed and interested all at once.

Of all the things I've gone through this month, one thing I'm certain of is that I like my home. Messy as it gets sometimes, I am always glad to get back here. Home feels familiar in a way that few other places do. It feels settled, even when I don't.

This weekend in the GTA with E and GD#1 was busy. We spent so much time in malls. Have you ever noticed that most malls have nearly double the amount of clothing stores as they have anything else? Every time I go to Dixie Outlet Mall in Mississauga I see acres of clothing stores, but then it is a discount mall. I saw so many things I wanted to buy. It's not like I don't have a lot of clothes already, but something about walking into that mall and seeing floral patterns everywhere made me very happy. Nearly every store I walked into had at least one item I liked, and sometimes three or four.

I could have spent a lot of money in them. I didn't though, because E over the years has instilled in me the desire to look at all the offerings before I buy a thing. So instead of coming out with a dozen new dresses, I only got one. It's a medium so I'm not sure how well it will fit, but I loved the pattern so much that I decided to get it anyway. Looking back now, I think that was another little in-between place. Wanting things, but being more careful. Loving something enough to bring it home, but still wondering if it will fit me the way I hope it will.

We went to Square One, but after spending a few hours at Dixie I decided to have a nap while GD#1 explored it for the first time with E. We ate at Mandarin. If you ever get the chance, go to a Mandarin. They have a buffet-style menu that caters to every taste from the most stringent vegan to the confirmed meatatarian. With everything you can eat for a fixed price, even the money isn't really an issue. You can get lunch for $25.99 and dinner for $35.99 most days, though holidays are a bit more expensive. Mind you, for holidays they also add holiday-specific foods to the menu so it's worth it.

It was a little strange this time, but it really proves the point about the value there. There was a baby shower happening in the room beside the one we were in. It was loud enough that you could almost feel like you were part of the celebration even if you weren't in the room. There had to be twenty or thirty people in there including kids. Like I said, if you ever get the chance, go to one.

The next day we went for a walk on Queen Street West. It is one of the oldest areas in the city and the architecture is fabulous. One of the iconic places on the stretch we walked was the Drake Hotel. I didn't get to have lunch there because it can be a bit pricey, but maybe next time. I went to two stationery stores (The Paper Place & Paper Plus Cloth) and picked up some scrapbook supplies. They really are one of my happy places. I could lose myself in one for hours, but E & GD#1 were with me, so I could only indulge a little. We had gelato after the first half of the walk. From Queen Street West we went to First Markham Place specifically to a shop called Oomomo, which had a stationery section that rivaled the other shops we visited, but with much better prices.

Not everything about the weekend sat as lightly as floral dresses and scrapbook supplies though.

The weekend had a couple of emotional incidents as well. I finally got around to telling GD#1 why I make excuses for my son and it made me cry. I don't want to go through it again; suffice it to say my boy got very sick when he was nine months old and it caused changes inside his brain, making him look normal but leaving him developmentally delayed. As he gets older the difference between his physical age and his mental age becomes more apparent.

It is another one of those things I don't usually tell because why? What difference would it make? Except now I feel like I don't really have a choice because people are becoming more aware of his differences, and I won't stand people being angry at him for something he can't help.

One other incident caused me to have a bit of a meltdown. E was being stupid and so was GD#1, steering me around and pulling me along as if I was a child. I move where I want and I don't go around people or wait for them to pass me. I own the path as much as they do, and perhaps a bit more since I am a senior. It irritated me to no end because it made me feel like a child on a leash, and I hate seeing that. Why would I want to be that?

Maybe being between seasons isn't really about weather at all. Maybe it is being considered old and frail when I'm not. Maybe it is about the stage of life as much as it is spring drifting into summer or, in my case, autumn fading into winter. Maybe it is that feeling that I have many years ahead and I want to make the best of them. Some things are changing. Some things are staying the same. I still need rest. I still come back home and feel relieved when I walk through the door. I am still learning to be myself, and that is okay.

The Small Days Count

This has been a good week in some ways and a lousy one in others.

On the plus side, I walked nearly 10,000 steps and did not collapse into a fibro flare afterward. In fact, this week has been harder mentally than physically.

 Thursday was nearly a perfect day aside from getting lost on the way back from getting my sugar checked. Even that turned into a positive because I ended up walking over 9,700 steps and used my bus pass for the first time in a long while. But that was also when the bad luck for the week seemed to begin. When I got home, my key would not work in the front door, so I had to use my phone to get into the building. I assumed it was a one-time problem and just sent a message to Ruth to let her know.

Friday I stayed home and did food prep using what I had left in the freezer. I managed to make enough dinners to get me through to Thursday, which felt like a small victory in itself. Other than being tired from all the walking the day before, it was not a bad day.

As the weekend went on, though, the front door still was not fixed. Each day I sent another message to the building manager, and tenants started stopping me to ask about the problem or tell me their own experiences with the door. I also sent an email to her and her boss because it was becoming clear this was no longer a minor issue.

Then on Sunday, when I went to do laundry, I found a broken crack pipe outside the laundry room. After that I checked the hallway connecting our wing to the other side of the building and found a pile of garbage blocking part of the fire door area. Again, I contacted the building manager.

 Later that same day I discovered someone had stuffed paper into the latch section of the outside door so people could come and go freely without needing a key or access code. That was the moment the situation stopped feeling frustrating and started feeling genuinely unsafe. I live in an area where there are a lot of crack houses nearby, and with the building now easily accessible, outsiders could come and go as they pleased. Many people in this building do not lock their apartment doors during the day. Suddenly the possibility of break-ins did not feel abstract anymore.

Sunday was also Mother’s Day, which always brings its own wave of dysthymia with it. Physically I was fine, but depression has a way of making everything feel heavier. Mother’s Day usually leaves me struggling for a few days because of my mother, now gone, and the complicated history between us.

By Monday the depression was still sitting heavily on me, so I stayed home from the Y and decided to work on my poetry instead. Unfortunately, the poem I chose to work on was one about living inside depression at its worst. Unsurprisingly, that did not exactly help.

Physically, aside from a stupid headache, I am okay. Mentally, not so much.

Which brings me to today and the pièce de résistance for the week. I tried to contact the Landlord and Tenant Board and instead ended up being scammed by a site pretending to be legal help. On top of everything else, I now need to replace my bank access card.

I know situations like this eventually pass, but sometimes when I am in the middle of them I have a hard time remembering that there is always a way around or through even difficult circumstances. “This too will pass” is something I have lived with for a long time now. Sometimes it is the only thing holding hope open long enough for things to begin easing again.

 And the small wins — walking nearly 10,000 steps, preparing meals for the week, continuing to show up for my life even while mentally struggling — they matter. They count.

Sometimes far more than the bad days do, even when the bad days temporarily seem louder.

What Stayed -What I Chose to Keep

 

The theme of May is nostalgia and memory. I chose it because Mother’s Day is this month, and while working through my poetry, my mother appeared once again, bringing with her something I had not fully realized before. A part of me that is also her.

We shared a history that women of neither generation openly acknowledged or talked about. I wish that silence had passed with time, but it hasn’t. There is a statistic I have remembered for years, one that still makes me terribly sad. One in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. It is called many things, but when it happens to a child, it is still violence. It is still a violation.

 I have five granddaughters. Statistically, two or three of them may experience or has experienced some form of that harm in their lives. That thought weighs heavily on me sometimes.

I am not entirely sure why this is where my mind went tonight. This week was supposed to be about “what stayed,” and at first all I could think about was mental pain. Maybe it is because this is Mental Health Month. Maybe it is because memory does not separate itself neatly into pleasant and unpleasant things. Our memories are often built from the moments that shaped us most deeply, and for many women those are not always happy memories.

What happened changes you. I know that now. It changed my mother. It changed me. It changed my daughter. Trauma leaves behind fear, anger, shame, and mistrust that can touch nearly every part of life if we let it.

For a long time I believed that was the only thing that stayed.

But as I kept writing, I realized something else stayed too.

Compassion stayed.

I often say that I do not know how to love properly, but people tell me I have a big heart. What I understand best is compassion — recognizing the pain in others because I know what pain feels like myself.

 I try to listen more than I speak. I try not to judge people too quickly because I know how much hidden suffering people carry. I give hugs instead of harsh words whenever I can. Sometimes my words still come out wrong, and when they do I think about it for hours afterward because I genuinely do not want to hurt anyone.

 My father used to call helping others because you can “being a good neighbour.” That stayed too.

So did determination.

People have called me stubborn all my life, but I think much of that stubbornness is really resilience. I decided long ago that I would never live only as a victim of what happened to me. Life has given me many setbacks, including cancer, but somehow I have continued moving forward through all of them.

And maybe that is part of what stayed as well — the refusal to let suffering make me cruel.

I remember when I told CAS about what had happened to my daughter. My mother was scandalized by it, but my daughter protected her own daughter fiercely from experiencing the same thing. That matters to me. The silence did not continue unchanged. Something shifted between generations, even if imperfectly.

That realization may be the most important thing I have learned.

We are not our history.

Our experiences shape us, yes. They leave marks. They influence how we move through the world. But history does not have to repeat itself forever, and pain does not have to consume every corner of our lives.

We still have choices.

 I may not always be able to prevent painful things from happening, but I can choose what I do afterward. I can seek counseling. I can learn coping strategies. I can remind myself that what happened was not my fault. I can remember that I am not alone in suffering and that I do not have to spend the rest of my life trapped inside old pain.

What stayed was not only hurt.

Compassion stayed.
Resilience stayed.
Choice stayed.

And after everything, I still want to be kind.