Yesterday evening at a café with my friend Ron, while talking over lemon mousse trifle about bills and the challenge of finding more writing jobs, I grew briefly morose and cynical. He tried to cheer me up, but I didn't budge.
Today over the phone, he told me he didn't sleep well last night and woke up feeling awful: "You were on my mind," he said.
"I'm sorry," I told him.
"But I feel better now," he replied. "It must have been the walk to work. There's a nice light level outside. You should go for a walk, Van. It will do you good."
All morning I watched the sunshine move across my bedroom floor, then into the hallway, finally washing across the door of the living room where I work at my computer. It beckoned like the glow of angels.
I've done better this year about braving the elements for that daily
time of exercise and reflection. Yet now several weeks have gone by,
and I haven't bothered to go see how winter is passing through the
park and along the Eramosa River.
So today I took my friend's advice and went for a walk. It is mild for Ontario in February. The drifts along the sidewalk have been melting, but a dusting of fresh snow fell last night to brighten my way.
This is a dark time of year for me in more ways than one. It was in January of 1996 that deteriorating mental health forced me to leave an unhappy marriage and accept that I was gay. Things started to turn for the better, but not until after I had lost my church, all my friends and in some ways my family, and had to fight through lawyers to maintain contact with my children. I had left a public relations job to start freelancing fulltime the year before, but in the midst of personal turmoil and severe depression my ambitions foundered. It has taken me years to relearn the skills of concentration and structuring my time. In 1998 my daughters and their mother moved away. Marian and Brenna still spend long weekends and summers here, but the previous two winters have proven very difficult for me.
I promised myself I'd keep my chin up this year, above the swell of loneliness and bitterness. Two of the biggest helps have been writing and walking.
So today for half an hour I left behind the worries of bills to pay, work to find, the growing emotional distance between me and my parents, and the physical distance between me and my girls. I walked down Kingsmill Street with its tall maples and one great elm, passed into the park and followed the line of trees to a gap opening onto the riverbank.
In the top of a small Manitoba maple, a black squirrel gathered keys, dangling from his mouth like a big glob of spaghetti. Perhaps they taste good, but the soft maple is so common and weedy that the meal seemed austere and pathetic to me. Still, there he sat grabbing them greedily.
The river ice had softened, and water from a storm sewer had opened a dark, winding channel along the bank. Graceful rivulets stirred over smooth, frozen edges. Winter looked to be easing its hold tentatively. The depths, dark and unfathomable, whispered soundless messages to me, tales of long and balmy afternoons to come, when I will return to lie and read on the bank of my dear Eramosa.
Turning reluctantly away, I followed the path hardened by the slip of skis, the tramp of boots and the padding of canine paws. This is such a marvelous city, to keep all its riversides devoted to parkland so people can follow their traditional paths, lines of spiritual energy preserved since hidden reaches of time when forests filled the valleys among Guelph's seven hills.
A family of chickadees chattered and scolded across my path and into a big black willow. Researchers are perplexed by the complexity of sounds these birds use, and by their keen memory for the places where they have stashed food by lodging it on twigs. Their intelligence is remarkable, and science has not yet decoded the meaning of their communications.
Further down I heard a different, richer sound from some small birds in a thicket. Goldfinches perhaps. But without my binoculars I couldn't see them clearly. I edged closer over the soft snow, not wanting to startle them. But their bland winter plumage betrayed no markings in muted sunlight against the bright sky.
Then suddenly one of them uttered the burbling, wheezing, cheery song of a house finch. These are not native, but a parasite has decimated them in the past few years, so I was surprised to find some. They are colourful, tuneful little birds, and this music delighted me on a day in the dead of winter.
Before turning again toward home, I stopped to absorb the light of the afternoon sky: patches of pale gold and mounds of blue-grey edged in silver. It was an aspect grander than any painting conceived by human hands.
I remembered Jesus' words to the worrying heart, from the Sermon on the Mount, a passage I once treasured: "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them." (Matthew 5:26).
The world often chides us when we complain or worry. "Don't be ungrateful," they scold. But this guilt is false medicine, poisonous to the aching soul, telling us we are unworthy of such goodness.
No one else creates our attitudes, but they can try to feed us, and if we dine on misery we become miserable. We must reject the food which is unfit. It is better to search for the good, because we get what we look for.
Ron reminded me of that last night. I had been moaning how overwhelmed I felt about the challenge of finding more work, but he pointed out how much I've already accomplished this past month.
"The same way you did it before," he said. "You'll do it."
I just grumbled at that time, but woke up today feeling gratefully optimistic.
There is more to be thankful for: beauty, and the refreshment of this afternoon. I have a few true friends to replace the many false ones. I've only known Ron since September, but he is new to the city with the same need for companionship. It's good to know there's someone with time for a coffee after work, who is concerned for me.
And I have clothes, a bed, and food. And a spirit that will not be defeated.
All written material and images are ©1997-2001 Van Waffle. This page updated Mar. 6, 2002.
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