Originally published as a column in the CFJC Today Kamloops and Armchair Mayor News on Monday November 6, 2017.
It was almost midnight, almost Friday, when I started writing this. The house was quiet and warm and outside sudden wind gushes were throwing snow up in the air creating white ghosts that seemed unable to make up their minds which way to go. The heavy snow that started the night before draped thick over the city and surroundings.
It’s winter wonderland around us for sure, and I love the quiet I get immersed in during my morning hikes with the dog, and I love the swirls I see dancing through the window on a windy night. But I know all this joy would be obliterated, should I not have a warm abode to come back to when I am done.
Which is why the opening of the homeless shelter by the Kamloops Branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association on November 1 is a timely, welcome event. I dropped in during the open house held last Monday in what used to be the gym of Stuart Wood Elementary School. It had been a while since I was there last, when the boys were still in school and my husband and I would go see the plays, usually held in the gym. It looked different now. Mattresses were arranged neatly in rows, dressed, and each with a blanket; waiting.
Staff members showed me around. ‘Here’s the kitchen, the laundry area which the staff will operate, the extra sleeping room for those who snore or have pets…’ There was a sense of accomplishment in the air. No one will be turned away, I am told. The shelter has a 50-person capacity but if need be, rearranging the space will make room for more. No one will be left in the cold… I go back to playing that sentence in my head. It is humbling to realize how lucky we are, all of us who never had to worry about a warm bed at the end of the day, more so in winter.
I cannot think of a better use for the old Stuart Wood school building. It is after all a building that sits empty at a time when temperatures are dropping to painfully cold. Once again, Kamloops shows its heart, and I know it will continue to do so with every opportunity.
Then came the weekend. If you happened by the Superstore on Summit Drive or the Independent Grocer on the North Shore on Saturday, you might’ve noticed some big army trucks and people in uniforms. The Rocky Mountain Rangers in collaboration with the Food Bank did a food drive which brought in 1,200 pounds of food and other needed items. More is always needed.
Truth is, our society sees a lot of stuff, perishable or non-perishable food items, and many other objects, go to waste. Many of us have long lost items that are in perfectly good shape yet lost among other objects in our home. We often see food end up in the garbage in our own home and in food stores too, and yet hunger is still a reality for many. There are initiatives that show the opposite is possible though and that’s where hope lies. The foodSHARE program by the Kamloops Food Bank helped divert 9 million pounds of food from the landfill and use it for food programs and, if expired, as animal feed.
I’ve heard some say that this time a year you cannot go anywhere without being asked for donations and it can become too much. There is even a name for it: compassion fatigue. Yet I encourage you to not give that thought too much room to grow. There are many people at the receiving end who count on our compassion to get a meal, the bare necessities for life, or a warm bed to sleep in. Many of them may be fatigued by life and its trials, yet they cannot step away from it just by looking the other way.
The Poppy Campaign conducted by the Canadian Legion (all funds go to veterans and their dependents) has volunteers stand many hours no matter the weather conditions, because every little bit helps, and they believe in it to brave the elements. There’s the Christmas Cheer Fund (all funds go to those in need), more food drives still, and hospital charity campaign. Then there is the stuff that comes in the mailbox or via petitions online.
Also, some argue that if money is donated, not enough goes to those in need but it is diverted towards administrative funds and such. That in itself is a whole conversation, yet if too much energy and time is put into in bashing some of the fundraising campaigns, there is a risk of not leaving enough consideration for those in need who are at the receiving end.
If that is a troubling thought, I encourage you to look for opportunities to help right in our own backyard. Whether it is food donated to the Food Bank, or items needed by shelters such as the newly opened CMHA shelter (twin fitted sheets and quilts, pillows, pillow cases, towels, changes of clothes, for example) or time you could set aside to help as a volunteer, please welcome the opportunity.
I’d argue that compassion is the most significant gesture that can make a difference in one’s life. For those who give, aware of the hardship people endure, and for those who receive the help in any form or shape, the bond of compassion is one that holds society together and puts one’s faith in humanity back into place. People in Kamloops have proved it many times and that is something to be fiercely proud of.
I sit at the top of the stairs with a plateful of Italian plums after working in the garden. The harvest so far includes four squashes of variable sizes, one gigantic zucchini, a bucket of red and orange tomatoes, and a bowl of shelled beans, red and white. The red ones are plumper, according to lil’ boy, whom I half-buried in a dry pile of bean bushes for the purpose of shelling.
I pulled out bunches of overgrown red and golden dry grasses, disturbing the marigolds and causing a storm of fragrance to clutch to my nose. Their smell is strongly pushing its way into my memory, stomping on everything, leaving but my dad’s slender figure, crouched over weeds and marigolds in our garden. He would work and tell stories, or joke about this or that, or answer many of my many questions about the garden.
I sit at the top of the stairs realizing, plum after plum, that I ache for those times of gardening with my parents. My sister is the only other keeper of these precious times… I sit and remember, plum by plum. It’s no use to get teary but I do. I miss fall gardening with faint smells of leaf smoke from the piles everyone gathered at the end of September.
It’s a progression of sorts, I know that much. Summer to fall to winter and spring again. This is where you get to try again next season. People transition to memories and to more memories. That is the part that leads to the inelegance of my gaze, all teary and bending under the weight of all that cannot be again. It’s the part I process by sitting at the top of our back stairs, looking over the dry hills poking into the blue, and, eating plum after plum, dusty hands and all, I make peace, once again, with the fall, the garden where my parents visit only as memories and my stubbornness to let go.
The afternoon air hugs me warm and fragrant. I walk through short, stubby grass back to the garden. There are still the thick, dark kale bushes to care for and a whole bunch of green tomatoes to ripen. There’s the rosemary and lavender bushes; they will survive the winter. As for marigolds… I’ll plant some again next spring.
I grew up with books. Our living room had tomes lined up in tall bookcases covering entire walls, floor to the ceiling almost. When you’re a kid, that is as close to infinity as it gets. I loved climbing to some of the highest shelves and reaching to the back row where old books hid both enticing adventures and that smell of old paper that to this day is one of the most comforting smells there is.
If light could be song, this morning’s bright appearance was a symphony, loud and overwhelming. The green is exploding everywhere, soft and decidedly stubborn, hijacking the desert’s brownish, dry demeanour for a few weeks from now.
That is the feeling of plenty that awaits on the side of the trail every morning. That the dog jumps in the creek and then runs up the hill with all her might only helps with the fine touches.
Today is the mouse, yesterday her uphill playing took us to a patch of newly blossomed shooting stars. I lingered more over the flowers than I do over the mouse, which is where our interests part ways. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Mouse gone, friend gone home too, we follow the trail towards ours. Above us, the resident hawk flies above a magpie. There’s air tumbles, black and white feathers swooping under the wide-winged brown hunter, then above, stumbling in a desperate attempt to escape. The high-speed pursuit is enveloped in sunshine so bright it hurts my eyes. I’ll never know who prevailed. So it is. There’s as much mystery to life as there is clarity.
‘Mom, should I leave the dandelion patch standing? They are so pretty…’ Yes please, thanks for asking. Half of the yard will be, for now, bumblebee and butterfly playground. I can hear the sun laughing.
It was as if someone lowered pup and I into a glass of milk. We were walking on the dirt trail up on the ranch in the rain. It was foggy but it became so dense the trees were but ghosts guarding a world of chirping and dripping.
Delicate stems of grasses that might as well be invisible for how little we know of what they are and why they’re there, wildflowers so pretty that we perhaps take photos of but do not take the thought far enough to learn their names… Trees with lives so mysteriously and beautifully intertwined with ours; trees that many (most?) of us call but trees, and go maybe as far as divide them into coniferous and deciduous, leaving way too much into the realm of ‘one day I will know more…’ because really, the day is today. That is all we have.
Save your sense of wonder. Save it from the daily rush, save it from careless gazing upon things you might not even notice after all, and save it from becoming uprooted in any way. We’re born with a sense of wonder; when we first touch the world our senses are steeped into all that the world has to offer, and then at some point – you’d be right to ask why and where, therein lies the trouble – we steer away from it.
Truth is, it’s still within, all of it. All it takes is silence punctuated with bird songs, rain dripping cold and soothing on your face, slipping on a patch of mud just enough to almost step on a delicate ring of flowers you then go and learn the name of… it’s all there. Pup and I keep finding that out. You do it too, why not?
I must’ve been 10 or so when I got that orange plaid dress for Easter. It had delicate lace around the pockets and a set of nice white buttons down the front. It had spring written all over it. The sun seemed to shine a tad brighter when I stepped outside wearing it.