Author and Inspired Writer

My mother, God rest her, was engaged in mortal combat with clutter for most of her life, and in spite of raising seven children, one special needs, several others chronically ill, she did remarkably well. The house might not have always been white glove clean, but it was presentable. After Dad died however, and she moved into her own apartment, she found she could still keep things tidy if she put stuff in her closets.

A lot of stuff.

During one visit, I decided to take matters into my own hands when I noticed that not only could I not put one more thing in her utility closet, but I could not even find enough free floor space to enter it. The Mister and I went to work, chucking stuff, organizing stuff, relocating stuff, and chucking stuff. I washed the floor and The Mister made a diagram to hang on the door informing any interested parties where everything was located. And areas that had nothing in them were designated “Space – the final frontier.” We chuckled over that. Mum rolled her eyes.

Some years later, Mum broke her hip after she tripped…in her closet. Bedroom closet this time. The Mister and I went up to take care of her and when I got my first look at her closet I may have uttered an exclamation of surprise and despair that was, shall we say, inappropriate for a good Christian girl. The Mister came running to my aid, glanced in the door, and uttered the same expression.

“There should be a sign over the door,” I told him, “‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.'”

“Want some help with it?”

“Mm, no. No room for both of us, so one man job, or woman. Tell you what though, make me something nice for supper.”

“You got it.”

A few years after that, we were cleaning out Mum’s closet to move her into a retirement home, and a few weeks after that we were cleaning out her closet at the retirement home to move her into the nursing home.

I could write a book – “Closets I have known.”

Then last week, a friend of ours who’s suffered several strokes in the past, developed an infection and needed to be admitted to hospital. When the infection cleared, the hospital wanted to send him home but we finally managed to convince them that he was no longer capable of living alone and needed twenty-four hour nursing care. An emergency bed at a nursing home became available at a facility about 20 miles away and he moved in on Thursday to stay until a bed becomes available in the Burg. Which means his apartment has to be cleared out so it can be rented out to a new tenant. Since he has no family, The Mister, our parish nurse, and I stepped up, the two of them calling dibs on the living room and kitchen, which left me the bedroom, starting with…

…the bedroom closet.

Again I caught my breath. Where do I even begin? Well, begin anywhere I guess. So I started my well-learned routine of chucking, organizing, relocating, and chucking. In the midst of this flurry of activity I muttered a prayer that went something like – “Divine, if it’s not asking too much, could you maybe explain why, oh why, do I always end up in someone’s cluttered dusty old closet? And me with my allergies! Amen.”

And a Voice replied, “Two reasons, actually.”

“Whoa! You were listening!”

“Always.”

“Good. So tell me, why I am cleaning another closet?”

“Well, for one thing, with all your past experience, you’re getting really good at this.”

“Oh please.”

“No, seriously. You are completely unsentimental when it comes to chucking out other people’s junk. Give you a box of garbage bags and a pair of latex gloves, and damn girl! you’re just a cleaning machine! You put your head down and don’t look up again until the job’s done.”

“Well,” I said, polishing a tiny circle on the closet shelf with my index finger, “I suppose we all have our special gifts.”

“Totally. And confess, you like the godlike sense of power that comes with imposing order on chaos.”

I smiled a little smile.

“That is a nice perk,” I admitted.

“Don’t have to tell me.”

“So what’s the second reason?”

“This will be the last nice thing you’ll ever do for your friend.”

That took me aback.

“It is?”

“Yup. All of his needs, comfort, safety, meals, meds, everything is being looked after by someone else, and will be from now on. Except for one thing.”

“His closet.”

“Correct. But it just so happened I knew an expert in the field who would be perfect for that job.”

I looked up tentatively.

“Me, right?”

“You.”

I took a minute to think about everything, then said, “I’ll do a good job for him.”

The Voice replied, “Of course you will. I have great faith in you.”

I laughed.

“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”

“It works both ways.”

And I felt something touch my cheek. Might have been a spider.

But I prefer to think it was a kiss.

At Chez Beaudoin the rule is The Mister goes and gets the mail, but I like to open it. It’s one of the simple pleasures of my day to see which charities have sent me address labels, greeting cards, and writing pads (I’m crazy about paper products of any kind, especially free ones!), what cheques have come in, and who’s dropped us a line. Even the bills are part of the ritual, since we like to give thanks for having the means to pay them. All the junk mail and adverts are then bundled up for recycling giving me the godlike sense of power bringing order from chaos. Kinda tingles.

A couple of weeks ago, The Mister brought in a weird-looking package.

“I don’t even have to look at the label to know who this is for. Gotta be you. I only get normal mail.”

I squinted up from my soup bowl.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think I’ve just been insulted.”

He smiled sweetly.

“It is hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it?” he replied with a patronizing pat to the top of my head.

“Ha ha. I will grant you though, it’s not the usual configuration for a package. I wonder who sent…oh! It’s from Heather!”

“Your Yaya sister?”

“Yeah. Well, technically, she’s the one who originally brought us all together, so I guess that makes her our Yaya Mama.”

The Mister tilted his head to one side and mouthed the name a couple of times.

“Catchy,” he said.

“I can’t imagine what it is,” I said, turning it over in my hands, testing the heft of it.

The Mister watched me for a few moments, then said, “I know of one sure-fire way to find out.”

“Oh, right,” I said and tried to unstick the seal with my butter knife. “Dang! They must use industrial strength glue on these things!”

The Mister folded his lips between his teeth as he watched me pry and stab at it, then, with a barely perceptible sigh, got up from the table and retrieved the scissors for me.

“I could have got those myself,” I said.

“The question wasn’t if you could,” he replied, “but if you ever would.”

I gave him a dark look, snatched the scissors from his hand, then snipped off the seal and pulled out the most unique coffee mug ever! Around the bottom edge was inscribed, “The YaYa Sisters, Creating a Positive Revolution.” And above it, a beautiful symbol of a spiral, or vortex, which is Heather’s special sign. On either side of that, two pictures of the Yayas from their Jib Jab animations – the first showing us at the beach dancing and singing, although I forget what the background song for that one was. And the second, has us showing off our best moves in Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass. In that particular number I got the chance to see myself as a blond. Not a look I plan on pursuing anytime soon.

The Mister smiled and took it from my hand. “Well if that don’t beat all! I’ll wash it up and you can start using it right away.”

“No,” I said, taking it back. “I won’t be drinking from this.”

“Because….?”

“Because it’s my ‘runneth over cup’.”

There was silence in the kitchen. Just the enormously loud tick of the clock above the sink.

“Well of course!” The Mister said at last. “Any fool can see that.”

I laughed. “Ever heard of the 23rd Psalm?”

He made a wry face. “Maybe a time or two.”

“I use it often for meditation. My favourite part is when it switches from the sheep-shepherd images to the guest-host idea. Especially these three lines – ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.’ I used to think that last bit meant I should be ‘running over’ with thanksgiving for God’s blessings. But now I see The Divine doesn’t just meet us in our worship, but also in our need. In the Bible, when people were in need, that was when the miracles really started to fly. Christ was always profligate in his generosity. He didn’t just change a cup of water to wine, but gallons of it. Joel Osteen pointed out that Christ didn’t provide just enough bread and fish for the crowd, but kept it coming until they couldn’t eat any more. And even then, there were baskets and baskets of leftovers! Florence Scovel Shinn says that prayer is preparation. When you ask for something, you should make an act of faith, something concrete to show you believe you have already received it. She gives the example of a woman who wanted a radio for her bedside, so she made a space for it on her bedside table and kept it dusted every day. Or the woman who was tired of living in a hotel and wanted a place of her own. She bought a carving knife, something she would have no need for in a hotel, and had Florence bless it. I will keep this cup for cheques, money orders, and cash, trusting to God’s providence to fill it again and again until it runneth over.”

The Mister smiled and patted my hand.

“Sounds like a grand idea,” he said.

I put it on the table in my office and within days a cheque I didn’t think I would get this year arrived and I rejoiced greatly to put it in my cup. I eventually had to cash it, but that very day, another cheque arrived for a book sale. And just a couple of days ago, still another cheque, for another book. Not exactly running over yet, but well on the way.

So thank you, Heather Ferdinand.

And thank you, Divine.

I am now what some people genteelly refer to as “a woman of a certain age.” It seems my salad days are over and I’m well into my entrée. On the upside, I qualify for Canada Pension this year, and to that end, I decided to go online and get the straight poop about how one goes about freeing up said funds. To my dismay, the web site wouldn’t accept my Social Insurance Number. I tried a number of times (never having believed in that particular definition of insanity) only to be denied each time.

“Government web sites,” I muttered. “Should have known better than to expect they’d actually want to give me my money.” Then I checked the error message: “This data does not correspond with the data we have on record.”

Huh. Weird.

So they have some data about me in their files, but it doesn’t mesh with what I just inputted. I was about to enter my number again when my eye just happened to drift down to the name on the card. Oh crimenie!

“Pa,” I said, grabbing my coat and heading for the back door, “hitch up the team. We’re going to the big city.”

“What for?” he asked, looking up from his crossword.

“I need a new SIN.”

He pondered that a mo.

“What’s wrong with your old sins?”

I took a moment to compose myself.

“Not ‘sins” but SIN, as in Social Insurance Number.”

“OK. What’s wrong with your old Social Insurance Number?”

I started fiddling with my buttons.

“Well, the name is wrong.”

“Whose name is on it?”

“Well…”

“Yeah, you said that already.”

“It’s my name, it’s just not my name now.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s still in my maiden name.”

He capped his pen and laid it across his book.

“Missus, how long we been married?”

“Oh, here we go!”

“How long?”

“Twenty-five years.”

He nodded. “Twenty-five year.” (I hate it when he starts dropping the ‘s’ from the end of words. Makes him sound like a ninety year old geezer spittin’ and whittlin’ while he rocks on the front porch.)

“Twenty-five year. And for all that time you’ve been pretending you’re still single.”

I nailed him with a steely glare.

“Don’t put ideas into my head, Pa. Besides, I didn’t set out to deceive anyone. I didn’t go back to work until five years after we were married and by then I’d forgotten about changing my SIN.”

He shook his head, gravely disappointed.

“And what a sin it is.”

“Oh stop! We can go into the city and get this taken care of today. And I’ll thank you to keep any further commentary to yourself.”

Unsure of the best route to City Hall, I googled the directions and checked into nearby parking. There apparently was no shortage of parking, for a fee. We filled our pockets with coins and off we went.

Gotta hand it to Google – they did an great job with the directions this time. We had no trouble finding the building and as we drove around to the side, a sign brightly proclaimed, “Public Parking.” We couldn’t believe our luck! We were expecting meters or some such, but we drove into an excellent space right in front of the sidewalk. We thanked the Divine, as we always do for awesome parking spaces, especially free ones, then The Mister dashed around to open my door, took me by the arm and together we scampered into the building as quickly as possible to get out of the cold. The Mister left me in line to go find a chair in the waiting room. “Don’t forget to tell them it took you a quarter of a century to remember you’re married,” he said over his shoulder.

“One stroke of the pen,” I replied in a fierce whisper, “and that can all be changed, you know!”

The receptionist congratulated me on having all the necessary documents, as did the counsellor I saw a few minutes later. But when she started inputting my numbers, it was clear she’d run into difficulty.

“Huh,” she said.

More inputting.

“Huh.” Again.

Thinking I was being helpful, I told her I had the same problem trying to get the web site to accept my SIN in my married name.

“No, it’s not that. It’s your birth certificate. It’s really old.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“No, no. The certificate is old. They don’t make them like this now and I’m not sure how to….” She leaned back in her chair and asked her colleague in the next cubicle if she had ever seen a birth certificate like mine. Her friend responded, “Yeah, during training, but I was like ‘This is too much information!’ you know?”

She turned back with an apologetic smile. “Do you mind if I call my supervisor?”

“Not at all.”

After several minutes conversation regarding vacation plans, she finally asked for some guidance. I could hear the supervisor’s voice on the phone, but couldn’t make out her words, kind of like the voice of the teacher in the old Charlie Brown cartoons – “Wah, wah, wah.” The counsellor punch a few keys and replied, “No. Nothing.” More “wah, wah, wah,” more punching, then “No. Nothing.” Still more “wah, wah, wah” and more punching, and I’m thinking “Let me guess…” Sure enough. “No. Nothing.”

Another apologetic smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, “you’ll have to fill out the written form. Your birth certificate is really, well, special.”

I returned to the waiting room, sat down beside The Mister and said, “It’s heartwarming when the government thinks you’re special.”

There was another something special waiting for us when we returned to the car – a ticket.

“What? What on earth for? We’re not in a handicapped space. We were so careful about that!”

The Mister scanned the paper. “Says here we didn’t pay.”

“Didn’t pay for what?”

He stared out the windshield. “Parking,” he said.

“But it’s a public lot! There’s no fee for…” I checked over my shoulder.

“Oh for crying out loud.”

“There’s something bad back there, right?”

“Yup,” I replied. “Take a look.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Pa…”

He turned around.

“Uh huh. A Pay and Display machine. How’d we miss it?”

“Well, we were in such a hurry to get inside for one thing, and, also, we thought ‘public’ meant…”

“…’free.'”

“We are such rubes.”

“Babes in the woods.”

“They should never have let us off the farm.”

“The farm? They should never have let us out of the cave.”

I took his hand. “Well, we made a mistake because we’re such innocents. We could be a lot worse things than that. And we learned a valuable lesson about the difference between public and free. So it cost us a few bucks…”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen! Geez Louise!” I caught my breath. “Aw, not to worry there, Pa. I’ll put that in the God box and the Divine will compensate us for it. She understands mistakes made in innocence. City Hall, on the other hand, not so much.”

Turns out, I never got a chance to put the ticket in the God box. The next day, thanks to The Mister’s savvy shopping skills, he came home with nearly thirty dollars in savings.

Compensated in full. And then some.

A while back I mentioned I wanted to write a little something about the lovely necklace given to me by one of my Yaya sisters, Cinda Willigar, and now seems as good a time as any. It is a picture jasper stone on a sterling silver chain. Picture jasper is a form of brown jasper that has picked up “inclusions” of iron and other minerals, giving it the appearance of a landscape. It was highly valued by the ancients who believed it connected them to the energies of Mother Earth and contained secret stories from the past. Oh my! When I read that, I had to smile. What better gift for a feminist storyteller?

When Cinda gave it to me, she said the brown and tan striations reminded her of a seascape, but the instant I saw it, I felt swept into the desert, the dunes and the barrenness.

The desert has a special place in my personal spirituality. I’ve never been to a desert, (although a trip to New Mexico is definitely at the top of my bucket list), but in my heart I think of it as a place of letting go everything but “the one needful thing”; of stripping away all pretense; of honest reflection; and of confrontation of the darkness within.

February 18th is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent wherein some Christian churches remember Christ’s sojourn in the desert for forty days before the beginning of his public ministry. In my Catholic days, I hated Lent. The fasts were strict (even for men like my father who worked in the mines), and the observances austere. We were made to remember our sinfulness, our mortality, and our part in the death of Jesus. We were expected to make some sort of sacrifice for the forty days, give something up. For smokers, it was often cigarettes. For kids, usually candy. It seemed endless, empty, and designed to instill guilt and fear in the faithful. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

So I am a bit surprised to find that this year I’m actually looking forward to Lent, and not just because the Presbyterian Church’s observance is far less rigorous. I think it has something to do with the necklace. Picture jasper was also prized and named by the ancients as “the rain bringer,” used in rituals during times of drought. When I took it out of the package, the silver chain poured into my hand, flowing out from the stone, like streams in the desert, another powerful biblical image of God’s presence, provision, and trustworthiness. I will go into the desert willingly this Lent, prepared, even anxious, to pare away those things that no longer serve. I will look at my darkness with openness, and if it cannot be removed (and I suspect it isn’t meant to be), then I will pray to carry it with grace in a way that will do no harm to me or others. And I will trust that even though it seems a barren land, my thirst will be met, streams will flow.

I intend to wear the jasper necklace every one of the forty days. Indeed, I think that’s one of the reasons it was given to me when it was. A sacramental. A reminder.

And an invitation.