Sunday, October 26, 2014

Bonnie's Last Cheesecake


 It’s strange cooking for someone who used to eat your food.
It’s not that I haven’t been through death before. I have. Several times. I think I’ve even gone to a funeral for someone who’s eaten something I brought in for a pot luck. I know that my late husband ate my cooking. I’ve been cooking for a while. But I don’t think of myself of having come into my own as far as cooking, baking, and/or preserving goes until after he passed away, and even moreso after the birth of my son, the one who gave me a valid reason to learn to do these things.

This time it's different. My BFF lost her stepmother, Bonnie, this week. Bonnie was a great lady. She was full of life. I know Bonnie used to like cheesecake, and she’s had several of my desserts. So that’s what makes this weird.

The first thing we do as a world culture is make sure the family of the deceased eats. In certain cultures, you don’t even let the grieving family go near the kitchen – you bring food, you send food, you order catering – but they are the survivors, and they have to survive. We need food and water and oxygen to survive.

There’s been a lot of grieving this week in my life, but in the life of my country as well. It’s been hard being a Canadian this week. And when I say that I don’t mean being Canadian – it’s been easier to be Canadian this week than it was during the Winter Olympics earlier this year. It’s just been hard here. We as a collective have been through the gamut. We had our collective hearts broken and torn out by senseless acts of violence. We’ve had our hope restored through people whom we had come to regard as figureheads. And we have come together as a nation – for the most part – to help each other survive this mess and keep going forward.

And in the middle of all of this, before it even began, my BFF lost someone she loved and cared for. In the middle of her family’s private grief, there was this very public loss and grief.

And that’s the day she reached out to ask for help.

So I decided to make something I haven’t made in a while. A cheesecake. I’m not sure why that’s the first thing I thought of, since I have apples and it’s pie season. It’s a helluvalot easier to bake a pie than to make a cheesecake. But I think it was because I hadn’t made one for a while. And it just seemed like the right time to make one.

So Rest In Peace, Bonnie Smith. Thank you for being you, and for being kind to me at a time when I felt like a stranger in my own land. I really wish you were here to have a piece of this apple cinnamon cheesecake I’m making for you. You take care, and rest well until we meet again. Hopefully you will be there to guide me through another place where I’m going to feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

NaNoWriMo 2014 - waiting with antici...


So NaNoWriMo is next month. In fact, it starts 2 weeks today.
I have this really cool idea for it. But I feel like I’m not allowed to write about it. This seems ludicrous because, well, last year I finished a manuscript I had set aside. But this year I feel like I would be cheating if I started 14 days out.

So I don’t know what to do. I should just go ahead and start and then continue the project over the course of the 30 days.
But then again, I kinda like the anticipation of waiting to write something special. I like the feeling of anticipation overall. I just worry that once the starting pistol goes off I won’t be able to write a word. Or a coherent sentence.

And even though I’ve been writing every day, by hand, in a book, because I haven’t sat down at a computer, I feel like I haven’t written in ages. It was an effort to type this blog, and it’s going to be very short. I just wanted to hear the sound of the clacking keys again. It comforts me. Makes me feel like I might even know what I’m doing.
But I am still stuck with my idea. I have never plotted a story before. I’ve thought about where I want things to go and I’ve gone to sleep dreaming of ideas and where I want my stories to end up. But I’ve never not written it down before on purpose. I’ve procrastinated with ideas because I like to see where the dreams of the stories end up. But as for not sitting down to start because of a deadline? This would be the first time this has happened.

In NaNoWriMo 2012, I had an idea that I had been thinking about for weeks and had tried to imagine in my mind for weeks before I started. That novel is still sitting on my hard drive and I wasn’t happy with it.
I don’t want to be disappointed with this idea. But I’m not spending weeks dwelling this time. Just three weeks.

I might love anticipation but I really don’t have the patience for it.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Broken Hearts and Bravery


My heart broke today. 
Or, it might be more apt to say I allowed my heart to break today.

By definition, heartbreak is when something you care for, love, and treasure ends up disappointing you. Is a façade. An untruth. Even if it’s one you created in your mind – people have their hearts broken on a weekly basis playing the lottery.

Heartbreak happens when something you try to control is beyond your control yet you still try to drive the destiny vehicle. Even if you try to try to avoid it (think of trying not to tell your kids that there is no Santa), circumstances that are fated to occur will happen. When you hold onto these things tightly, or you’re not ready for them to happen, the heart breaks. Shatters. Like an iPhone dropped on concrete.

Once you start to discuss your broken heart, people try to console you, relate to you with platitudes, empty words, niceties. “It’s going to be okay.” “You’ll find someone else.” “Be strong.” “Be Brave.”

Bravery. There’s an interesting concept. Many things that people believe take courage are the same things that lead us to heartbreak. Circumstances beyond our control.

I went away last weekend to New York City on my own. People continually said to me both before and after my trip, “Oh my, that was brave.”

Why?

“I couldn’t do that on my own.”

Why not?

“Oh, big city, crime, need people…”

Living life requires no courage. It requires oxygen, water, sustenance. We do what we have to do to survive. That isn’t courageous. That’s what we have been doing since we took our first breath outside of the womb.

Helping others so that they can continue to exist – that’s courageous. Whether you’re a first-line EMS responder, a soldier sent to battle to protect the innocent, someone who runs into a burning house to rescue a pet, or someone who consoles a crying child who is lost, those are courageous acts. Putting your needs before the needs of others. Taking the fork in your predestined route because you want to help a fellow human being requires a certain type of bravery that not everyone possesses.

Doing things for yourself is far from courageous. It’s just necessary. It’s not always easy. Sometimes it breaks your heart when you have to do something for yourself at the expense of others, like go on vacation to New York City alone because the thought of being around people you know makes you want to jump out of your skin and leave it in a pile at the bottom of the stairs for others to find. But you know if you don’t do it, your ability to be courageous and put the needs of others before those of your own becomes compromised.

And sometimes your heart breaks when you have to be courageous. Like giving someone the right to their happiness at the expense of yours, instead of holding onto something that is no longer there that could or will end up destroying the both of you. I don’t just mean romantic relationships. Any relationship  – friendships, parent/child, familial – can become destructive to the people involved if they try to control the wills of others. Your child will leave you, even if it’s only metaphorically. Your friends will grow apart and find new friends, even if they still talk to you every day. Romantic partners will have their heads turned by others they may find attractive. But it’s not up to you to make any of those people return or stay with you. The decision lies with them and them only. These things do not require your courage to survive nor need your heart to break over their occurrences. They will simply happen. You just need to let them.

We do what we have to do to live. But before you call people who contemplate and/or commit suicide cowards, think about this. Sometimes people don’t call for help because they believe they’re doing what’s best to save their loved ones from going through their suffering. When you are ill, sometimes you have the strength to fight the illness. Sometimes, you have fought long enough for others that you have left no strength for yourself. Sometimes people just need the courage of others for the strength to be brave.

My cousin who is queen of the calligraphic inspirational sayings on her Facebook page posted something today that I would have normally ignored, but my fingers were bleeding from the shards of my heart I’d spent all day picking up off the floor.

“Love is always right. Love is always meant. We are here to Love. So the more we Love, the more we remember our reason for being.”

It takes courage to give your love to someone, because it’s something that can help them to live, whether or not that love is returned. (If you are a parent of teenagers or you have a celebrity boyfriend/girlfriend, you know exactly what I mean.) If we simply live, we can avoid heartbreak through wisdom and understanding, while retaining our courage for love.