Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better and so does kindness

Month: August 2014

Tales Of Ponds And The Physics Principle We Cannot Escape

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On August 13, 2014

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Social issues

Originally published as a column in the AM News on Friday August 8, 2014.

The day was heavy…I woke up to a hazy sky and had my thoughts clumped under it the whole day. Tailings pond disasters, the humanitarian crisis in Irak, the Ebola outbreak… The list is longer than we care to admit or even know.

We cannot do much about many of the crises in the world other than sign petitions when needed, donate money or goods when possible, and hope.

As for the the tailings pond sad story at home, that is one we can deal with more directly. Some more than they ever bargained for.

Environmental disasters should not happen when there are warning signs to be heeded, not when there are ways to prevent them. Not only is this story not new, but there is a rather worrying precedent of having the disaster in the news for a while and then washed thoroughly in corporate crocodile tears promising cleanup and making amends, but really, much of the aftermath is left in the hands of those who are living with it every day, many of whom likely said no to a potentially risky project to begin with and end up with the worst of it when the proverbial fan gets hit.

The Mount Polley disaster is a sad and anger-causing occurrence, but also a nudge towards considering how our own back yard or part of it could change should something similar take place nearby. Yes, the Ajax mine tailings pond suddenly become more threatening than before.

The problem with environmental disasters like that (the word is harsh, I agree, but so is even a ladle-full of arsenic, let alone a few hundred thousand of them) is that they linger for a long time. It’s not like spilling milk on the kitchen floor.

There are 7 billion of us and growing, and the planet’s resources are dwindling as we speak. In an effort and rush to get the most profit over a short period of time, companies often forgo extra security measures or delay the process of making sure safety comes first. A double whammy if you will.

Then the unthinkable happens and the PR team gets busy. Ethical issues become as appealing as eating a handful of dirt and often they are pushed to the side in ways that are more surreptitious than they should be. That too is an art in itself.

Whether we’re dealing with mines, tar sands, or fracking, the question that comes back every time with more vengeance is this: what is happening to social conscience and to truly understanding and facing the consequences of our actions when we go that way?

What is driving us humans to put our own environment at risk, and why doesn’t the thought of a possible disaster make us all shudder knowing that should we sicken our environment, our own health is affected?

Here’s a thing I keep repeating: no matter how far or close one is from the actual site of a natural resource exploration site, the effects of such enterprises can leave a serious imprint on our world, let alone when disasters happen. We’re in it together.

The hazy sky over Kamloops today was not from any local wildfire but from down south.

We share the planet, we share the consequences of our collective actions. When people oppose mines and pipelines they do not do it because it’s trendy to do so but because they ask loudly ‘What if?’ and because the answer is a complex, often scary one. Even scarier when it becomes reality.

We are not disconnected from the natural world that keeps us alive, I choose to stubbornly believe that; we are just temporarily absorbed by a life that happens too fast and it dazzles us with too much.

We cannot be disconnected because we cannot afford to. There’s nothing remotely positive about the recent Mount Polley disaster but if we agree that knowledge is power, let’s use the power of having just learned that disasters can happen in preventing future ones.

How? That points to another recurrent theme: needs before wants. Nothing else will do. Not when there are so many of us and more coming. Not when we have one planet between all of us to share.

We are but part of the world we live in, and not its uncontested masters. The old physics principle of ‘for every action there is a reaction’ still applies, and recent happenings show that actions can sometimes trigger reactions we are not prepared to deal with or cannot fix any time soon. So why not do it better then?

Crepes For Breakfast

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On August 12, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood

FuzzyI wanted to go out for a morning ride, I had the itinerary in mind and was all dressed, but I could not get myself to leave the house before the boys woke up. I’d miss the first hug, the nestling of little boy on my lap, the hug from big boy, their hair every which way and eyes drowsily braving the morning light.

Early mornings work for sneaking out and coming back before the wild boys wake up, but late night reading often bites into earliness and leaves me hanging like this.

The day is cool, a relief after days of breathing hot air like we’re inhabiting an oven. It’s too hot, the boys often say; I cannot allow for summer hating though. Summer is the peach tree branches hanging low, heavy with fruit, and tomatoes that turn red and the bumblebees that are all confused about the disappearing of their favorite snack: tomato flower pollen. Everything becomes something before our eyes…

My ride today is short, I follow the river; its surface mirrors a sky that is unglamorous, but why would that matter. Thoughts bounce off the surface of my own rivers flowing relentlessly towards seas of life I have yet to discover. Rivers of thoughts, they need to be taken out each day, they synchronize their incessant dance with that of the real ones…

Summer is apricot jam made yesterday and laid inside hot crepes today, memories of my childhood when my great aunt would make platefuls of them in the outdoor oven, the smell of wood adding hotness to air already hot… I never complained because I knew what came next: tummies full of warmth, sweetness stuck to cheeks and the lazy afternoon to follow. The countryside I miss.

The boys eat with their mouths full, they ask for more and I remember my own eagerness to skip talking just so I could eat more. Funny how snippets of life past ask to be revived. The sharing I do with my boys, life in big yummy bites, life I can make them smile about. But there’s more sides to life. Life is never just smiles.

We talk about school, the topic just tumbled in the midst of another conversation about living in the wilderness… The boys tell how going to school makes many children unhappy for the time they’re there. Not unhappy with learning, but unhappy with other things. Rushed, impatient figures, playing power games with children. The boys see through much of it. My fault, for peeling eyes open and inviting to thinking.

We talk and daydream about schools to grow in. Stunted growth is what I often see instead. Why not schools where wide-eyed innocence breeds joy and curiosity is the very ground children step on? Wings unclipped. Could it be? Why not nowadays? We know so much about what makes the mind soar, why let children fall through the cracks?

The boys have insights that humble, they share as I share. This is not complaining but facing perspective as it presents itself to us and adjusting ourselves to have the courage to take unforeseen, unscheduled leaps, should the said perspective become too narrow for how we envision life.

Growing up is a together adventure, I never pictured my boys being in someone else’s care more than my own. Not when they’re shaken at times and becoming distrustful. Finding the way, the right way, the fair way, as a parent, that is the biggest challenge of all. It makes me both fearful and brave at the same time. What’s the next step? The together adventure is no joke.

Wild boys run into the back yard to play. There’s loud voices, whispers, hiding, laughter, sneaking around and some scraped knees.

Little boy runs up the stairs and hands over a tiny dandelion. ‘From us, the smallest one’ … Mop of sun-bleached hair dances as he runs back in the yard for more playing. Will I ever be able to define gratefulness the right way? It’ll never be enough. Some words will only live on the inside, padding the corners only I know about.

I sit down, check the day’s news and get reminded of a sad story. The ice cream store owner downtown told us about yesterday. ‘Oh, you don’t know? Robin Williams died today.’ I don’t get to ask why. He says it out loud: suicide. The boys’ eyes grow big. Too much information? Little boy frowns. How do people commit suicide? Why?

He was funny, they argued. He made people laugh. How did he with all the struggles he faced at times? The dance we can never enough of, the dance we’re sick of so often…Life. Unkind and monstrous at times, we are its pawns and ride good waves, but a few bad ones can make most people lose their way. People sometimes do that when they’re sad and discouraged and depressed, I tell the boys. Not just sad, but awfully sad. That makes loneliness darker than dark. No one knows, no one should be judged…

TearsIt’s a grip you let go of. In that moment of darkness, all is distorted. The boys listen, ponder… Do they understand? Do we?…

I take their lead; they live in the moment. More playing, getting hungry, eating peaches off the tree, asking for treats to be baked later in the day, arguing, finding common ground, trading sticks and Lego pieces. Life. They don’t think too much of it but live it fully. I do though. Too much is a side effect, enough is what I hope for just so I can have them live theirs with joy.

Crepes for breakfast? Why not?

Memories And Their Keepers

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On August 9, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood

I remember being very young and resting my head on a small pillow in my mom’s lap. My ears were hurting and all I can remember is the warmth of my mom’s hand on my head. That is my first memory.

I remember climbing the quince trees in my yard and finding a comfortable branch to sit on and I remember the feeling that nothing in my world was even remotely upsetting. I remember my sister trying to coax me to get down to play with her and the others. Nothing could make me. As I think of it, I hear laughter and loud children voices and if I close my eyes I can almost feel the rough surface of the branch I was sitting on.

I remember sitting under the grapevine with my dad, late in the evening when the moon was up and talking about life and its meanders; it was summer and the night breeze was gently warm and carrying my dad’s cigarette smoke into the dark night. I came to be very adverse to smoking but the ever so familiar smell of that particular brand my dad was smoking when I was little (always outside, never indoors) will forever be a reminder of my dad, his voice in the dark and the comfort I felt sitting next to him on nights like that on the green bench under the grapevine.

I remember that every time I went home from university my mom would be at the train station watching every train car carefully until she found me. Her face would light up and she would hurry to be there when I got off. Her hugs, her smiles and her ‘I am so happy you are home’ bear the strongest imprint in my heart. My mom passed away more than eight years ago. Pain never went away, it has dulled and made itself a home in my heart and it made me realize that I am the keeper of our common memories, and I will remain one until.

I remember my mom’s hands as she made coffee, or reaching out to caress my hair. I remember her touch.

I often wondered about the photos on my childhood. They mean so much to me. They mean the same to my sister. They meant the world to our parents. Beyond that… Hard to tell. There was a time when memories stayed with people because they were told as stories. Others stayed in writing, scribbles and drawings on walls. I envy that. My armfuls of photos, yours too, the many faces of us passing through life, they are as permanent as they are perishable. Armfuls of paper, easy to dispose of by others who cannot relate to them.

There is no solid surface to keep them alive more solid that my heart’s. My memories are alive because I am.

It startled me a few days ago when I was sent a link. It prompted me to create a memory. I did. After I did and ‘Finish’, I teared up watching the memory depart into an ocean of bright bits – other people memories. It is a site that reminds of Alzheimer’s disease and its dreadful toll on memory you see. Seeing the memory I wrote there disappear as a dot was humbling. Here it is. It struck me of how many dots I am carrying around not even aware of them, long lost from the conscious mind, settled forever in pockets of brain that may or may not reveal them.

Like play cards facing down on a table… I wonder if I will ever be able to turn them all face up and shuffle through one more time…

My sister has turned many of my forgotten cards face up. She is one of my precious keepers of memories. She would tell me of things I am too young to remember, and as she does, I see them contouring as memories, becoming mine, as they rightfully are.

My parents used to be the keepers of many of my memories as well. Voices, faces, bits of life, precious as life itself and so empowering when they happen, so easy to forget; not out of carelessness but because life keeps on happening.

I want to remember. Seeing the memory I created disappear into the sea of many made me think of all the ones I will never be able to pull back from the ocean of life past. I am slowly becoming the keeper of my own memories, I am the keeper of my boys’ memories. Just like it should.

I remember saying goodbye to my dad last time I visited. We hugged and cried; like never before, he let himself be seen by me and I did too. I did not realize that I was becoming, right then and there, the keeper of that memory. My dad’s health has been deteriorating since and he remembers very little now. Though they are with him, he does not remember the cigarette butt volcanoes he used to make for us as children, making our eyes grow wide with wonder, he does not remember the Sunday mornings of ‘true stories’ he would tell us as we were snuggled under warm blankets, and he does not remember the starry winter nights when he would take me and my sister for long sled rides, all wrapped in blankets and staring at a sky that was as infinite as my belief that nothing could change my world.

Everything did, many times since. Life did. It is what life does.

That’s how it makes us keepers of memories. Oceans of them.

The Day of Today

By

On August 1, 2014

In Life Stories, Motherhood

OursIt  is the early morning drive to Shumway Lake that makes the day right. Little boy learns to paddle kayaks, canoes, dragon boats and swims in the lake during a week-long camp that fits our idea of learning. Outside. The road is all ours in bright early morning, a shiny grey ribbon snaking its way among hills of dry grass and lazy cows, so still they look like they’re painted on.

Today we play Strauss’s waltzes ever so quietly, just enough to make happy thoughts bounce. We talk about life on a farm… Could we, little boy asks? I wish so too, maybe we could. We plan for a garden of yummies, and chickens for eggs and days that would start with walking barefoot in dewy grass and would end with sweet smells of fruit ripening and the alluring songs of crickets. Because we’d have many of those.

StepsWe see a hawk take of flying over the lake, I spot a cloud shaped like a big dandelion head and I make a wish… To have this, the morning, the joy of sharing time, forever.

I drive back and have breakfast with the big boy. He’s growing, his jokes are too and his understanding of the world is humbling. This summer has been coffee-free but tiredness obliges this morning so I make one. Can I have a bit? Almost tall enough to look me in the eyes, he gets a nod and a smile. So we sit and chat and nothing can pull me back from cloud nine where I take temporary residence. How did we get here? We started small, with sleepless nights and small hands reaching for the ever protective nest of my body. His hands, his face, his bright eyes and dreams building as he speaks. Today is a gift. Every day is.

The day unfolds, I drive on what is now a busy road to pick up little boy. We play near the lake first, it’s sweltering hot and little boy explodes in laughter as we play a silly hanging ball game. it’s like those times when I go in the garden to pick but a handful of ripe harvest for dinner but there’s so much I don’t know where to put it so I balance with my arms full, dropping some and feeling grateful for bounty. Here is the same. Boy, sun, laughter, the bounty I have so much of…

The day turns hot, so we hide from the sun. Boys play with trains and Lego. Loud laughter, whispers, jokes only they can hear, all the silliness you can fit in a house as small as ours and in a world as big as the one they build for me every day.

In late evening, with the sun lost behind the horizon, we take a walk. The park is a block away, and barefoot is the way to go. The boys roll in soft grass, there’s so much laughter it paints the whole park joyful and there’s nothing sweeter than seeing their eyes squinting with too much fun from behind shiny blades of grass. That’s a treat you cannot have every day, joy and laughter are often finicky with growing children, moods swing and feet stomp… Not now, not today, not during the summer that has been ours completely, every day, every sunset and every bucket of laughter.

There’s a recipe for saving summer you know… You collect joy, like a thread you’d roll up in a ball… to have later, to make warmth out of, shelter for the days when there the grass will be there but the boys too big to play… If you’re there, every day, it’ll take a while, they grow slower, they like to stay a little bit longer too… Here, now. That magic world I cannot have enough of.

Little boy is ready for bed, soft tummy and round arms, he invites to silly talking and chuckles. We chuckle, hug and I rub his small back… half sleepily and melting in the promise of dreams to come, he whispers ever so softly ‘I don’t want time to pass…’

I smile, we hug, I let no tears showing and I know that I will never forget this. Some things you just don’t.

ThemLater on, big boy stops by for a whispery chat. Growing boy chat about life and things he understands better… Adding steps to a story that’s just beginning to write itself. Hug goodnight, sweet dreams… I am still here, pulling the thread in, for later warmth, for memories, for all the magic I want to hold on to. On a day like today…

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