Month: April 2024

Thank you, Samantha

Yesterday I spent several hours trying to work out my printer problems. I finally gave up and called the company HP Smart for technical support. The technician who I was hooked up with was called Samantha. Now, normally these calls can be hours long (which it was) and can be full of frustration and annoyance (which it wasn’t).

Because a variety of attempts to clear up my problem were needed, we both acknowledged that this was going to take a long time and some of the downloading processes were going to be very slow. We both settled in for the long haul.

For the next two or three hours, Samantha and I worked together to try and solve my problems. Meanwhile, we got to know each other as two human people with much in common. Even though we were separated by half a world (she was in India, I was in Canada), she seemed much younger than me (that’s an assumption), and we were two complete strangers, we connected.

She initiated the conversation and we quickly found out that we both had a love of writing, I a published author/a memoirist and she a daily journal writer and poet. We shared our losses in life of those close to us, including our beloved pets. We told stories about our loved ones. We shared our favourite poets and some of their work. We both love Mary Oliver. We laughed and cried and found common ground in our zest for life.

Slowly she helped me work out my printer problem and slowly we go to know each other as new friends. We both acknowledged that wouldn’t it be wonderful if we should meet some day face-to-face. When all was finally cleared and my printer was working again, it was time to say goodbye. “I’m having trouble saying goodbye,” she said. “Me, too,” I said. “Thank you for all you did for me and shared with me. You were wonderful.”

Will I ever talk with Samantha again? That would be unlikely for you know that when you call these companies, you are given a random agent, whoever is free at the time. But I am thankful for the time spent with Samantha. We had a very special connection.

Reach out to others. Despite distance and age and circumstances, we are all human. Thank you, Samantha. I enjoyed getting to know you. You made my day very special. In honour of you let me share your favourite Mary Oliver poem with others as you shared with me.

“When Death Comes.”

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

—Mary Oliver

The Solar Eclipse – A Celestial Wonder

Photo by Bill Adam, Guelph, ON

“We are all finally settled in with our folding chairs and blankets, ready to view this celestial wonder that I’ve been looking forward to with anticipation for months. As I put on my special solar eclipse glasses for the first time, I can see that it has already begun. Without my glasses, the sun is a dazzling orb that cannot be viewed with the naked eye. With the glasses on, the sun looks like a golden ball with a small black nibble taken out of it.

I sit and just enjoy the whole experience which is going to take about 2 ½ hours from beginning to end, checking the moon’s progress intermittently as it gobbles up the sun slowly over the next hour or so. Each time I look, a big and bigger bite is eaten out of the sun. Meanwhile, I chat with the friends and family around me (there are 22 of us, children and adults), enjoy the children’s giggles and antics as they run and play in the green grassy field surrounding us, munch on a few snacks and relish the clear blue sky and tall trees around me.

I marvel at how lucky we are to have clear skies above us, as for the whole day leading up to the eclipse, the sky was thick with clouds that threatened rain. Just before 2 p.m. they began to dissipate and big and bigger patches of blue began to surround us leaving the sun high and fully visible in the sky. I text my daughters, brother, sister and niece who are spread throughout Ontario in Cobourg, Bancroft, Vaughn, Toronto, and Oro Station north of Barrie. All of them are looking at thick cloud cover and even, at times, rain. None of them are getting a satisfactory eclipse experience. What a miracle we have been granted!

The countdown begins . . . twenty minutes to totality . . . ten minutes . . . four minutes . . . two minutes . . . and my excitement is building. The sun is disappearing from the sky looking like a shrinking golden crescent as the black ball of the moon creeps across its surface. Soon it begins to look like a round toenail in the sky. The shadows around us are darkening and lengthening. It’s as if a dimmer switch is being slowly turned down. Like an exhaled breath, the temperature drops and I can feel the chill in the air. The sky is slowly darkening, the street lights are turning on and a flock of seagulls flies over us looking for their nightly roost. The air around us is strange, not like anything I have ever experienced. This is not a typical dusk. The colour is odd, muted, heavy, dark. It’s actually an eerie feeling, other-worldly, and I feel a little uneasy.

As the sliver of light shrinks, I can see beads of light flickering on the edges of the crescent. Scientists say it is the diminishing sunlight bounding off the valleys of the moon. These beads are called Bailey’s Beads, named after the scientist Francis Bailey who first documented them in 1836.

We are seconds away from totality when the moon will be completely covering the sun’s light. Everyone around me is getting excited and whoops and hollers of delight are being called out. People’s arms are shooting into the air, children are jumping, the whole park becomes energized and active. Ooo’s and ahhhh’s surround me as the view through my glasses goes completely black. We are in totality. Twilight is upon us.

Enveloped in complete darkness, I lower my glasses and look at the cosmic wonder in front of me high in the sky. It’s now safe to look at it with the naked eye. I see a black ball surrounded by a thin glimmering halo of light, a golden corona. Oh!! What a sight. The sky is black enough to see the stars and planets glowing as if it is nighttime. I can’t hold back my reaction of awe and wonder and I feel like a small child standing in front of a new world. It’s as if a portal to the universe has opened up before me and it invites me in to marvel at its uniqueness. For 1 minute and 18 seconds I can look at it unaided, without special glasses. I sit in amazement, held, suspended in its magic, unable to stop watching that giant black ball in the sky.

The moon is on the move, however, and thin shots of light begin to appear as the sun moves out of totality and begins the return to its normal view. Just before I slip my eclipse glasses back on, a shot of light flashes out at about 2 o’clock on the surface of the black orb and the edge of the golden circle. The diamond ring effect! It flashes and then, once again, with a full explosion of light, it does it again. It’s a golden ring with a large twinkling diamond on it that suddenly catches a direct beam of light that sends beams of sparkling rays shooting out into space.

As I watch, the sun continues its return. The dusk begins to disappear, daylight builds, the world is becoming normal again. But I know, I will never be the same. I was granted a front row seat to a celestial wonder that won’t happen in my area again for over one hundred years. I am truly blessed.

“It Doesn’t Taste Like Yours”

(Photo by Deborah Rainford)

“I followed your recipe and it didn’t taste like yours.”

This Easter weekend at our family gathering Gerri, Maegan’s mother-in-law, was telling my daughter Brittany that she had tried Brittany’s famous-in-our-family’s Kale Salad and it didn’t turn out as good as Brittany’s. Brittany laughed and said, “It always tastes better when someone else makes it.”

Why does that happen? You think you are following a recipe carefully and perfectly and yet the final product doesn’t taste as good as that prepared by the original cook.

There are a lot of factors. It has happened to me too as I try to duplicate Grandma’s Cucumber Salad or that delicious Spinach Avocado Dip I had in the restaurant the other day. The availability of fresh-off-the-farm ingredients, the age of your spices and pantry items, the cooking pans and utensils you use or the variable heat from oven to oven, it didn’t cook long enough, you stirred it too much or too little, can all be factors that change the taste of something from cook to cook.

All we can do is not give up and keep trying. Practice makes perfect. Use the best of ingredients, vary your techniques, taste as you go, and enjoy the process.

And perhaps what Brittany said is true. It’s always better to be the recipient of someone’s else meal made with loving hands.