A Celebration of Spirit

I love this old photo of my dad, my aunts and my uncle. My dad is the oldest one in blue. Look how serious they all look! I think that was typical of the times because you usually don't see such serious expressions in today's photos. It is a sharp contrast to the more recent picture of them all together in front of the tree at my aunt's where they are all smiling happily. My dad was usually smiling the widest in family photos. Nothing made him more proud than his family.

I am missing dad something fierce lately. He loved this time of year. He found so much joy in the simple things. He loved his trees- he had multiple! (I wonder where I get my obsessive love for my Christmas tree from!?) He loved to decorate. One of my favourite childhood memories is when we would spend the night at my grandma's at Christmas time and on our way home, dad would drive us all through the neighbourhood to look at the Christmas lights on all the houses. Family traditions were so important to him.

When his health was failing he urged me to carry on our family's Christmas traditions. I'm sure my response was something along the lines of "obviously, dad" (more like "ooooobbbvvviioouusssslllyyy daaaad!!!" -complete with an eye roll, I'm sure). I didn't like him talking about life after his death. I didn't want to hear it. But I knew in my heart what I had to face. Last year as I shopped for his Christmas present, I had a sinking feeling that it would be his last. I paid for his gift with tears in my eyes.

This year my sisters and I plan on putting his tree up in his memory and decorating the basement as he would have done. It brings me comfort to know that we will be keeping the Christmas spirit alive in his honour. The truth, is that his essence is still here... and in a sense, he hasn't gone far. We will celebrate with him in spirit and although it's not quite the same, dad would have wanted the season to remain merry and bright. I can almost hear him whispering "Merry Christmas, sweetheart."

Merry Christmas, dad. 

"and when the sun

descends the clouds,

the light of stars

shall keep"

Love,

Lindsay

Yule Tree

The spirit of the season
is a glowing altar
in the corner of our living room.

A temple of folk-art and fir

and fragrant body.

A tangible heart, adorned.

Hawk's Scream

It's patio hot now in early November, or early summer? You wouldn't know. I'm tank top clad and stuffy with cough/cold, I can't even name the illness for the season: summer cold, fall cold...you just don't know. I look down on our neighborhood: bustling hive under the bleached-out sun. Artificial period. If you don't have to work today, you're having your coffee outside beside the construction site. It's heavy with dust and the noise assaults my senses- yet still they sit. Oblivious is bliss. I go out for groceries and walk by the work. I'm almost offended. The mid-day sun is too high and too hot for construction. In the summer it wouldn't matter, but this isn't summer. At work there is construction too, for months now the entire perimeter of the school has been ripped apart and now they use a massive drill, like they are extracting oil from the church. What ARE they doing? The children are so accustomed to playing in the sounds; sirens and diggers excite them, and they never know what to wear. Ragamuffins in the yard dressed in mismatched seasonal clothing shouting: "I'm too hot, can I take off my coat!?" At home, the restaurant across the street has a patio that has been packed every night since April with fire pits a blaze and the rockin' band til 11. From our apartment, it has become a silly masquerade...for the costumers, it's a great first time show. Business is booming. It has been the same line-up of songs for 8 months now. They are still out there, huddled around the fire. They will be out there until winter, I swear. I want to move to the country. I wait. I wait for hibernation. For the first time in my life, I'm settled into a nest of domesticated dreams and I agree with the cold. The muted colours comfort me. I love the muffled blankets of leaves and the soft-edged scenes. The air is too brisk to linger long and the snow will force us still. But now. Beautiful day, anyway, I suppose and it won't last long. Tune-in. Look around. Look at our paper-crisp, spring-potted grass and the bare-naked trees clinging to the last of their burnt-out leaves. Look up. Expansive blue beach-like sky. Listen. A cry? A hawk flies overhead, and swoops down so low I can see the opening of it's hard-beaked mouth. Fire engine-red calls over me and the scream echoes down the street.

I welcome its noise.

Lindsay Ronald

Verses In Season

January birds are babbling impressions of a new spring.
Their voices come in waves between the drops.
First the pour, and then,
the announcement of it's passing.

They are celebrating the verses in season,
because for them, it is always a joyful response.
There is no rehearsal or memory for this,
no sorrow in the tale of an ending.

Artwork by Alaya McGill - age 11

(my niece)

Lindsay Ronald

Plateau

In armoured shade,
the iced plateau stands still.

It's desolate paths followed,
by vivid ghosts lingering.

In the wake of a spring-shared tide,
a torrent of rain, abashed by grave skies.

Lindsay Ronald

Those Words

Those words that turn simple lovers into prophets,
they speak for the first time
and dawn breaks beneath the tongue,
like a communion wafer.

Honeyed breath falls in a cascade around them,
...and thus their cathedral is built.

Those words, like stone as old as age,
lay dormant within broken castles,
waiting for kings and queens to resurrect,
the fruit of every promise.

As morning is promised to every day,
dawn waits to break inside.

Lindsay Ronald

Sand and Stone

It wears her down, like the earth
ruled by her tides:
moon and sun, wind and season.

Waves rushing toward the shore,
of delicate shell and bone.
Turning in and pulling away,
in somersault dance.

And you: my land, my star and everything,
resent this old exchange
resisting and failing,
to remain unchanged
as stone becomes sand.

I Was Here

For the first time ever, I saw these pennies in the foundation of my parent's yard. I've walked over them thousands of times and my mom just pointed them out to me the other day. They were left by the previous owners and each penny is dated with the year they were born (mom, dad and kids). I've been thinking about my parents house and how much of our families history is there because soon we will have to wrap it all up and move on. The basement is exactly as my dad left it and my brother-in-law is going to have to rip it apart and make it new, as he so skillfully and artfully did in dad's room to give him a better send-off. My dad's legacy is literally written on the walls in the basement. He wanted to leave his mark when he knew he was leaving us. I didn't even know my dad was a writer until he was gone but when we leave our creative mark on this world, there it is... and there it remains for future discovery.

I'm so glad he did. Someday i'll have the heart to read it all but for now, it's enough just knowing it's there. I think my dad was inspired by the legacy that the home owners left before him. Clearly they were also sentimental. They left their kids recorded heights on the walls- the same 4 walls my dad wrote on. When I was a kid we moved so often that I became accustomed to ripping up some corner of the carpet to write "Lindsay was here" and the date, before the moving truck took us away.

My grandma's basement is filled with our entire extended families scribbles and eventually it will all come to pass, too. It will become a part of someone else's history and you can only hope that the next owners have a sentimental heart and want to preserve a piece of your past. People can tear down walls but these pennies are forever. 

Sisters

This picture made me cry when it popped into my feed this morning. I love when a picture so perfectly encapsulates the emotion you are feeling. We spent hours on the phone talking last night, about how we both have such a strong calling on our lives to love and protect the world's children. Universal Mothers. My sister has been protecting me and calming me since day one.

My earliest memories of us are in our shared room where I climbed into her bed night after night and she would tirelessly put me to sleep for hours after my mom thought she had. Tickling my back, telling me stories, making me laugh and sushhhhing my fears. About the war that wasn't even happening. About the war that was only inside my head. She would distract me with stories of my brother "Sendai" who would visit our bedroom window at night on his flying carpet (and would take me away if I was bad). We spoke nonsense into the dark, in a pretend language that only we knew. I watched as she woke up with our baby sister and would drag her crying from her crib and into our bed, effortlessly and instinctively when our mom couldn't hear. When I was afraid of the "ghosts" I saw in our room, she didn't skip a beat. "It's only angels" she said... "you are lucky," she promised.

My first playmate, my pen-pal, my most creative friend and my teacher, writing letters to the characters inside of my head and urging me to "keep writing both silly and beautiful things." Today she is still the first person I want when I am scared and the only person who has ever made me feel normal. The one who fought tooth and nail for our dad, loving him passionately and fiercely in a way that only a daughter could. The one I have to share with our First Nations people because they need her more than me. Even though I weep in fear, selfishly and bitterly when she goes, I know she has no choice. It is already written. "Where you are called, you go," she says. You go and be the hand and heart for people. You go not as your privilege, not as your job and not as separate. You go as a mother and as a wife. You go as a sister.

Time

Verses in Season began not as a blog, but as the title for a collection of poetry I wrote. Last fall I took a poetry course and our first assignment was to write in the style of Kahlil Gibran's classic, 'The Prophet.' I know his work well and I knew it would be a challenge. I wasn't anywhere near comfortable trying to emulate his style. His work is far too superb for us amateurs to compare with! Nonetheless, I was excited and I gave it my best shot.

*****

 

Time is the primordial promise.

Universal oath.

Sun and moon in cosmic union,
painting the sky in definitive tones: fever red and ocean blue; its fragrance is the air.

 

Time passes on the wings of our days and the breaths of our nights.
Pages turned in ancient story,
a map etched in our earthly bodies,
a traveler shrouded in season and skin.

 

Time is the language of the earth.
The morning songbird and nighttime orchestra
summon us to attend time's sacred show.

It is the infant's cry, released from the womb and delivered into the hands of fate—

a journey full of quiet promise, though it beckons with a deafening call 

and its voice is never far from our dreams.

 

Time is the impermanent stone; a treasure to hold,
though it escapes through our memory, like sand through curled palm.

Time rushes like a wave to the shore,

bathing us in ghostly tide and restless storm.
As wind and rain move through ancestral bones,
ashes and mist are left in its wake.

 

For time is the breath of life,
the stillness of death,
and the memory of love.

 

And just as time wears the cloak of today,

By: Lindsay Ronald