Thankful.

I am a romantic in the centuries old sense. I like to believe that the world runs on politesse and that here is a regulated flow to our actions. For every action, etc. But what does that mean now?

I have been researching my great grandfather’s history. I enjoy imagining that I know how exciting his moment in time was – living in a post-Civil War Michigan, next to a blurry international border with Canada, reading about the news of the Boer War, and of the exploits of Sam Steele, real-time. How wonderful to be a part of the half pastoral and half industrial age. How hard life would have been on the farm, and then on the battlefields of WWI. How challenging to square a desire for adventure and exploration with the reality of living as a slave of the British Empire, low man on the totem of society, no money, no connections, no support. How romantic.

The truth is that I will never truly know what that was like. The truth is that I barely understand my own historical context, let alone his. The truth is that my world scares me, and I would rather bury myself in a search for the influences that guided his choices in life, the facts of his existence, and trying to make sense of these connections rather than examine my own.

The earth is getting warmer, the rains and droughts take turns lasting longer, the Arctic is getting smaller and pretty soon Florida will be under water, if I believe the folks I follow on Instagram, which I do. I now hate seeing orphaned elephants, landscapes changed forever by global warming, refugees of ethic cleansing living with mental health problems that may never be resolved. What started as a quest for a daily dose of shared photographic art has become a burden of conscience, the hopeless and nagging reminder of what am I not doing to help. But I still check my feed before heading to work, when I’m bored at work, after work, before bed. And the refugees are still tortured, the elephant keepers still need my dollar.  

I see my daughters struggle with normal, things that I imagine that might be the right look, the right weight, the right relationship, the right thing to say, the right type of work. I think they are happy, but I don’t really know if that’s true and I don’t know how to ask them without seeming nosy or appearing to have no confidence in their decision making skills. I love you, I tell them. What that means is, you are not alone in this crazy world, and I am here if you need me.

We collide on occasions like Thanksgiving, aunties and grandparents wanting to have dinner at their house, I’ll cook the turkey, you bring the buns. I drive around all weekend trying to make it happen, smiling and ferrying folks to help them connect, always wishing I could be home in my pyjamas, reading a book and drinking tea in social silence. There’s an oxymoron. But I do it because I have an idea that my job is to make sure those connections happen, and are reinforced, made stronger with practice. Because, as with all exercises, we lose our skills if we don’t practice; our smile muscles weaken if we don’t laugh and our hearts atrophy if we don’t love.

Enough. Day is finally breaking on what looks to be a rainy Saturday and I need to get cracking. I’m to try my hand at pie-caken, so we have something to laugh about over dinner together, practicing our love for each other. And I am very thankful for that.