Full Moon Lessons

The moon was incredibly bright last week, the brightest it's been in years, or so they said on the weather channel.  Whether it's true or not, the full moon always manages to entrance me. Perhaps because it is our closest celestial neighbour.  Or perhaps because it shines in the darkness, always seeming to guide my way when I'm not so sure where my path is leading me. For a few moments the other night, while I stood watching that brilliant moon, all my disappointments melted away and I only felt gratitude; what an incredible gift life is.  What a gift that the natural world, even with all our technology, still provides us with a sense of magic and wonder.  What a gift that my life has brought me into so many diverse circles of people from all walks of life.  This week I attended a gathering of Aboriginal artists and something one of the presenters said really stuck a chord with me. He was speaking on the role of art and he spoke of art as a "magic moment maker." He went on to say that "If I want to be a magic moment maker, I have to move any barriers that prevent me; anything that stands in the way of transforming".  As I heard him speak, I thought "yes".  And often those barriers are internal as well as external.  Sometimes those internal barriers are less obvious to the eye and so more dangerous.  Disappointment, if left to fester, leads to discouragement and discouragement, if left unattended, leads to depression, and so on.  After hearing this artist's talk, I am reminded that I need to recognize and root out my own internal (and external) barriers.  Life is too short.  We all need to shine. And the moon certainly set a fine example for us last week.

Lessons From a 92-year-old Neighbour

He gave up riding his bicycle a few years ago and now he walks everywhere. Seeing him from a distance, he looks like a fit 70-year old. But he's not 70. He's 92 and going strong. He exudes all the elements a person needs to live a fulfilled life; and apparently also a long life. He, like many Italian immigrants, makes a great neighbour; always on the lookout for what someone may need. (And he is as opinionated as he is generous). My mother and I live only a block from each other, so Satimio is a neighbour to us both. Last summer, while my husband and I were away on holidays, he noticed the wild rose bushes encroaching onto my mother's walkway. Rather than drastically snip back the bushes, he drove three mental stakes into the ground and pulled the rose stems away from the walkway. I must say, it gives me great piece of mind that my 82-year old mother has a 92-year old neighbour who keeps an eye on her.

The other night, I called Satimio on the phone to tell him that I was planning to drop off a jar of soup in his porch. The next morning, I received a call from him, inviting myself, my husband and my mother over for lunch. When we arrived, my soup was certainly not needed as he has made us home made spaghetti. Also on the table, he had set out salami, cheese, bread, wine and ginger ale. Wonderful. Simply wonderful... not just the food but also the conversation. We covered everything from war to politics to the gap between the rich and the poor. Satimio is a passionate pacifist. He takes great pride in the fact that, while fighting as an Italian solder against the Russians, he harmed no one. While he was there, he thought it an insane task that he should be asked to take the life of a young man, a man as young as himself.

Though we talk about serious issues, Satimio sometimes has a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He tells us that he had planned to live to a hundred. But his friend informed him that at one hundred, he would receive a letter from the Queen and the Pope. Well that settled it. Now he's decided he'd rather die at 99. When I return home from lunch, I begin to think of the life lessons Satimio has taught me over the years.

1. Be engaged and active about world issues

2. Cook for your friends.

3. Keep a garden. (He has already begun to sprout seeds in his front porch.)

4. Speak your mind.

5. Keep walking. Never stop walking, if you are fortunate enough to be able to walk.

6. Keep a sense of humour.

7. Be generous.

8. Consume only what you need.

9. Give sincere hugs and affection.

10. Fill a corner of your house with pictures of family.

Before I left Satimio's he pressed a small piece of amethyst into the palm of my hand. I've placed it beside my work station to remind myself of what's important in life. I hope Satimio is right and that he will live to 99. But whatever age he lives to, I know he will always have his seeds sprouting in his window, ready to plant his next garden.

Empty Nest and Tea Blends

All winter, I was thinking about making home made tea blends to give as gifts, but it took me until spring to actually complete the task. They were meant to be my cozy winter gifts but now they are, I suppose, my welcome spring gifts. And since I've been packaging them up, it seems I've become all the more aware of the gifts of spring itself.

No matter what mood I may be in, I do hope to be enchanted by one thing on this planet, each and every day. This doesn't necessarily happen naturally. You'd think that daily practice would eventually make this habit. But no, each day when I wake up, I need to remind myself to open my eyes; to open my heart; to expect a surprise. If I don't remind myself quickly enough and the day of obligation unfolds, worry or anxiety or both tend to work their way into a tangled mess. And then it becomes all the more challenging to unravel my thoughts.

I have a little story. Earlier this week, while out walking with a friend, I took note of two tell tale signs of spring. We have a wonderful custom in our city that if you discover a lost hat or mitt or glove on the ground, you put it up high in a tree branch where it can be easily spotted by the person who has lost it. In spring, people tend to lose their hats and mitts more often, probably because the weather is so changeable and we're constantly putting on or taking off our wintry layers.



First I spotted a blue mitt in a tree. Moments later, we came across a tiny little nest, at eye level, in a hedge. The hedge, of course, had no leaves and so the two-inch round nest was quite exposed. There were no eggs in it, so we supposed that the mother bird had moved on to build a new nest in hopefully a safer, less visible location.

The next day I found myself thinking about the nest and so entranced was I that I decided on my way to work, to pop by and see if the nest was still there. And this time, I brought my camera. First, I took a picture of the mitt in the tree, but when I went to snap a picture of the nest, my batteries died. Not having time to rush home to get new batteries, I instead headed off to work. That was on Wednesday. All day I thought about the nest and that evening, I went back to take a picture of it. But by then, the nest had disappeared. Gone. Nowhere to be found nearby. Today, which just happens to be a Saturday, I once again headed down the same street, only this time with a different friend. As we walked, we occasionally kept our eyes to the ground to avoid puddles of melting snow. I suddenly found myself pointing to the ground, saying “There's my nest!” It was, unquestionably, the same nest. Without a moment's hesitation my friend picked it up and offered it to me. I opened my purse and pulled out a little cloth bag and we placed the nest in the bag. All this fuss over an abandoned nest!

Of course later on in the day, it all became clear to me. This is, after all, the first spring without any of my children home. They've all flown away. I continue to make little nests here and there in the form of tea blends and hand-written letters. They're not practical nests and they never really amount to much. But it makes me feel good to make them all the same. And I was able to photograph the little nest, after all!

Arctic shadows, snow and sky

Arctic Snow, Shadow and Sky



As I take my evening walks in the mild winter snows of Thunder Bay, it’s hard to believe that only a few weeks ago, I was up in the Arctic. When I was little, I would close my eyes and try to imagine myself flying over the lake, across the waters, meeting up with the horizon and continuing on until I was flying over the snows of the Arctic. I don’t know why in my imagination I never flew south; always north. Now, as an adult, I still experience some of the thrill of flying to the edge of the world; that world of shadows and light.

While I was in Iqaluit, I attended the Pilriqatigiinniq Teachers Conference. It was an exciting week that included a talk from David Suzuki one night and a craft show on the following night. I was absolutely stunned at the level of excitement and energy that went into the craft show (and, of course, David Suzuki's talk). There was no shortage of vendors displaying everything from seal skin mitts to spices for Arctic char to beautifully embroidered and beaded wool hangings. It was the first time in my life that I’d seen people arrive an hour early to an arts and crafts fair. People were literally packed into the hall like sardines. I asked some of the city residents about this later and was informed that crowds always come out in droves for arts & crafts shows. So I can only conclude that hand-crafts are highly valued in this part of the world.

I love to make things with my hands. It always brings me relief from a technologically obsessed world to be able to pick up a needle and thread and hand stitch a quilt or sew on a button. To be in a space where the general community also celebrates handiwork, this was marvelous to me.



In our workshop, my co-presenter and I gave a workshop where we also created something with our hands and our imaginations; making shadow puppets one day and masks the next. We had brought in stories to adapt into simple tableau and shadow plays, but in the end, we invited the participants to share their own stories; in their own language. I felt truly honoured to hear the stories shared in Inuktitut. Even without the translations, I had a sense of what the storytellers were sharing, through their gestures and through their voices.

When I visited one of the shops later in the evening to look at the regional books, I wasn't surprised to see that many of the stories were illustrated in shadow or near-shadow images. Without trees to impede the view of the sky, there really are only a few noticeable elements to the landscape; shadow, shades of the many colours of snow, and sky.

The 'Places' of Creativity

My grandmother 'Fortunata' standing by her home.

Though most people think of place as a geographical location (and certainly geography has a huge impact on our lives), for me the definition is much broader. Recently, I have undertaken a project to make sense of dozens of little notes I wrote to myself following visits with my grandmother. (She passed away a number of years ago, at the age of 101.) How is it, that while patching together her stories, I feel an intense sense of ownership, as though I myself have lived through her realities? How is it that when I am reminded of her stories— the custom-made wooden yoke her father made for her to haul water; and how at fourteen years of age, she was sent to work full time at Woolworth's for ten cents an hour following her father's serious work accident; and how she resourcefully unpicked sugar bags to make shirts and collected the worn woolen rollers from the mill to make blankets— how is it that these stories resonate for me? And how I feel a powerful surge of belonging to those places she describes, when in actual fact, I have never known such places? I can only answer that place is not only an external reality, but also includes the internal geography of the mind and heart. And for every human being, that composite is something very unique.

For me, 'place' is where internal geography meets external geography. And I experience the external geography (my home; Northern Ontario and all its wonders), through the visceral experiences of ordinary day-to-day life. Today, 'place' is the frozen blanket I pull from the clothesline on a crisp January day; it is a cake recipe I follow that has been nibbled at the corners by mice; it is the sound of our 100-year old piano as I stumble through a new song. For me, 'place' is the combination of every place I have ever lived, every experience I have ever had, and every meaningful connection that I have ever shared. As a practicing artist, 'place' influences every work that is conceived and created. Without it, I would be left working in a vacuum. It is, I believe, what gives shape and meaning to all creative endeavors.



I would like to close this reflection on 'place' with one of my grandmother's stories I found on a scrap of paper. There is a tenuous moment here where a child is caught between one person's sense of place and another person's sense of place. In Fortunata's words— “I'll always remember Sister Gevita. Us girls liked her, but one day she shocked me. You see, my mother got a call from a neighbour whose baby was sick. 'Can you send your daughter over to interpret when the doctor gets here?' The neighbours were always calling on me to translate for them because I was fluent in Italian and English. Well, my mother would never turn anyone down so she kept me out of school for the day. The next day, Sister Gevita called me out into the hall and asked me where I'd been. After I told her, she said 'Your mother was wrong to keep you from school.' That shocked me, her saying that about my mother. I never did tell my mother about it. She probably would've pulled me from school permanently. I mean, doing charity, that was my education, as far as my mother was concerned.”

New Year's Goals and an Imperfect Mary

New Year's Goals and an Imperfect Mary

When I was a girl, we had a crib with all the Christmas story figurines. One of the shepherds had a lamb propped over his neck, like a woolen scarf. Two angels were propped up on top of the crib and a large silver star hung at the peak of the open creche. My father used to 'hide' the baby Jesus up high in the cabinet and surreptitiously place it in the manger before we got out of bed on Christmas morning. Over the years, with seven children playing with the ceramic figurines, they naturally got chipped and broken and lost. Some of the figures were so damaged with chunks of plaster gone so that we could see the wires at the centre of the figure. Eventually, the entire set dwindled down to only one sheep, one shepherd, one cow, two of the three wise men, one angel and of course Joseph, Mary and Jesus. But one year, we could not find Mary. I suppose she just couldn't sustain the wear and tear of our household. Baby Jesus still arrived on cue but it just wasn't the same without Mary.

The following Christmas, the creche was set up again but this time my mother had found a 'spare Mary' to complete the Christmas scene. However, because Mary had been scrounged from elsewhere and was not an original member of the set, she was quite a bit larger than the other figurines. In fact, Mary on her knees still managed to tower over Joseph who happened to be in a standing position. At the time, we were simply glad to have Mary back and it made no difference to us that she didn't 'match' the set.

Now, in retrospect, I am so grateful to have grown up in a family where things didn't match, where china was often chipped or cracked, where stairs creaked and windows rattled and where the gooseberry bushes overran the garden. I think our generation is obsessed with perfection. We want the best of everything. Few of us would glue up a broken figurine or replace a broken clasp on a bra or take apart a toaster to attempt to fix it. When we paint a room, we want things to match. There's even a name for these small items we place in the newly painted room: accents. When did 'accents' become something that everyday people had to worry themselves about? Personally, I love beautiful things. I am an artist, after all and aesthetics mean a lot to me. But do I love perfection too much? Is there some wisdom in the way I was raised? Where perfection was an ideal only to aspire to only in terms of developing character traits such as kindness and 'doing the right thing'.


This new year, I am going to sit down and write out my goals, as I always do. It's fun to think about what this next year might bring. But I am also going to include something different in my goals. That is, I'm going to include a “make-do” attitude. In certain areas in my life, I am going to be okay with imperfection. Not only am I going to be okay with it, I'm going to celebrate it. Why not? It's going to be a 'yes' kind of year: yes to hope, yes to kindness and yes to living in this imperfect world.

Salvation Army Kettle Drive and the Snow That Came to Stay

The Salvation Army Kettle Drive and the Snow That Came to Stay

Each year it's the same thing. In November, I resist digging out my winter clothes. I delay and delay until it's been minus zero for over a week, and then finally I relent and I open up the dreaded 'box'. This year, as I unearth my winter things, I notice the slightly musty smell of the wool, the coolness of the attic and the snow gently falling. All of this releases that valve of memory from previous winters in Northern Ontario. And suddenly, I see myself at sixteen in January, wandering into the “Famous Shoe Repair”on Simpson Street.

As teenagers, my best friend and I often promenaded along the sidewalks of Simpson Street frequenting 'The Ukrainian Book Store', 'The European Bakery' (with the most amazing poppy seed bread in the world), 'Cherry's Corner', 'Morrows' Pianos', 'The Venice Grill' and, of course 'The Famous Shoe Repair Shop'. I remember how Gerry, the shoemaker, hummed to himself while he worked and his fingers were permanently stained. I loved that Gerry named his shop “Famous” and that he took the time to chat with us. And even more wonderful that his shop doors remain open to this day, as does the European Bakery!

As I reminisce, I slowly dawn my winter clothes. I am about to volunteer for the Salvation Army kettle drive and realize I may be stationed outside or near a drafty doorway. As I gently ring the bells throughout the afternoon, I remember a line from a play by John Books‒“The snow that came to stay, fell this night.” I wonder if 'this night' will be the snow that comes to stay. As I watch the snow, dozens of people stop to talk with me. One woman tells me the story of losing her brother in an industrial accident just following the war. “He survived the war, only to die back here in Canada.” A woman drops a twenty into the kettle saying, “Salvation Army saved my life so many times. Literally. I don't mind giving. I don't mind.” I have no explanation for this surge of conversation with strangers, other than the fact that the Salvation Army makes our communities kinder, gentler places. And it's snowing. Perhaps snow is our common thread. And as the months of winter fly by, I discover that this November day was indeed “the snow that came to stay.”