Daniela Ginta, Freelance Writer

Gratitude makes the journey better. Kindness, too.

Tag: gratefulness Page 7 of 10

The Sense That Is Never Lost

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On April 20, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Self-improvement

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.

Creepy you say? Not a tinge. Comforting and soothing, spring curled up at our sleep, succumbing to incessant and much needed rain. It’s the place where you hear birds and become aware of how little you know past that. Birds? Yes, but which kind? What’s the song about? Are you part of the landscape enough for them not to worry over you, or are you the intruder that rudely converts the sweet morning tunes into alarm sounds? Not that you’d notice…

To call it deafness would be inaccurate. It’s complicit ignorance… to the world that does not require us to know but what a gift towards becoming better versions of ourselves if we do. It is striking that the average person taking a stroll through the woods knows so little about what they see or hear.

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.

 

What then? Take a long enough breath to feel tingly all over and grateful beyond words for being able to so do. Make it so that you learn one thing on any given day, about the world so humbly laid at your feet you forget to give it thanks for providing the very ground you step on, a solid one. For the way it is mysteriously draped from the sky all over to where your lungs and eyes can be satiated without even you realizing it.

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?

A Basket Full of Easter Memories

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On April 17, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Learning, Life Stories, Self-improvement

Originally published as a column on CFJC Today and Armchair Mayor News on Monday, April 17, 2017. 

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.

Among many other things, Easter in Transylvania meant that we dyed eggs, often using onion peels, which gave the shells fascinating shades of dark red, brown, and purple. We’d gather handfuls of bright green grass and make a cosy fresh nest for all the dyed eggs in there. To this day, I manage to get a raised eyebrow or two when I step into a grocery store and ask for onion peels prior to Easter weekend. My explaining of why I need them leaves people with a smile and a sigh. Often time I hear ‘My grandmother used to do that…’

Chocolate was not a fixture at Easter when I was a kid. There was lots of good baking to be had, and wherever you went, everyone would have platefuls of goodies to indulge in for days after. A bit of a statement, if you will, that celebrations are never meant to be had by yourself.

Easter breakfast, which always followed the (very) early morning Easter sermon at the nearby Orthodox church, had a display of ‘firsts’: first green onions, first radishes, first fresh herbs. Those Easter eggs tasted different than any other boiled eggs. Subjective, you say? Of course, but that is both implied and necessary. There was a deep sense of reverence towards all that we shared on that day.

My sister and I would get something new, whether sandals or dresses, and I always treasured those items a whole lot more than any others I got on other occasions. If I had to venture into guessing why that was… I’d say that a colourful jolly dress matched the almost unmatchable feeling of renewal that filled the air, bursting through every leaf and flower bud.

That early Sunday morning when we’d be dressed anew and setting up the colourful breakfast table meant the culmination of a lengthy, sober and hopeful at the same time, process that contained the Easter lent, which my family observed, that early morning service that had us tired, yet never grumbling, and all the goodies my mom prepared for days in advance with us kids helping as much as we could.

It was part of it all, a completion of sorts, year after year, of a tradition that you find a good spot for in the basket of memories you balance on your arm as you walk along the path, only to access it years later and be grateful that it has become part of who you are today.

My maternal grandmother passed away when I was 6, and my maternal grandfather after my 9th birthday. I remember standing next to my mom during the following Easter service, holding a trembling candle in my hand, and wanting so much to believe that one day I will see my grandparents again. I missed them so.

The Easter chant that people united to sing in a chorus every year professed the very thing. Life and death are intertwined in ways that are impossible to understand when you’re a child, but those moments added a dimension of hope that helped with transitioning to accepting the reality of an everchanging surrounding world.

My paternal grandparents passed away a few years later, and recently, my parents too. Needless to say, no day, ordinary or celebratory, has been the same with my parents gone. Every day has its own joy and pain weaved into it, and gratefulness abounds. As they should.

Every spring when the first green onion shoots poke their heads out in the garden, my mind goes back to the days when I would gingerly pull a few out of the dirt in preparation for that breakfast that had joy, togetherness, sweetness, and more goodness than a child’s soul can embrace.

The smell of something I choose to cook or bake for my family in preparation for Easter brings back memories of the laughter my sister and I would have with my Mom over some failed pastries or another small kitchen disaster; memories of the bonanza of flavours our pantry held in anticipation of the day when the lent would be broken with that first bite that made up for all the waiting. Not a hint of instant gratification…

That our days now are hurried and the world has new crazy happenings just when you think one more would be too much, is true. That’s when is most important to hit the brakes allow ourselves to go back as far as we can remember, to where the magic of times past resides.

Reaching into that space that holds so many sunny Easter morning stories becomes the very pencil with which I draw the circle where I invite my boys to step in to listen to stories, to taste food, spring, and hope at the same time, and learn that perhaps one of the secrets of the big celebratory days such as Easter is hidden in how they help us weave an added armful of gratefulness into every ordinary day. Happy Easter!

A Tribute To Life And Gratefulness, And To Making The Most Of Each Day

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On March 13, 2017

In Armchair Mayor Column, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories

Originally published as a column in CFJC Kamloops Today and Armchair Mayor News on March, 13, 2017.

‘I wave bye bye
I pray God speed
I wish lovely weather
More luck than you need
You’ll only sail in circles
So there’s no need to cry
No, I’ll see you again one day
And then I waved bye bye…’ (Jesse Winchester, I Wave Bye Bye)

It was almost tangible, the first breath of spring. Almost. Yet Friday morning arrived dressed in a white coat draped over the thick one from the day before. Still winter then. Grumbling ensued. We’ve all had enough of shoveling, enough slipping, and wiping out. I miss warmth and sunny green days too, but over the years, through ups and downs, I’ve learned this one thing: make the most of the day you have. Snowy or not, it only comes once.

So I greeted the day the way I do every day: pup and I hit the trails. We’ve walked those trails at length, yet the feeling of being there is as crisp and fresh as the day itself. There’s a new song every day, the cacophony of life sounds jumping out of nowhere one second only to disappear the next. As if you’re witnessing the world breathing.

We made it up to the plateau. There was no sky; all was white, trees growing on the ground as they did in the sky. So much beauty it melts thoughts into one: gratefulness.

For our natural world that offers so much, every day, no matter how snowy. For the gift of seeing it all and have time stop for a bit, for that simple yet joyous feeling of walking through fresh snow and having yield under your feet, for the sweet memories of summers past, now present as graceful dry grasses balancing small clumps of snow on their heads. There’s no room to grumble here. There are no sidewalks to shovel, or patches of ice to slip on… Here you can be breathing winter in and letting it kiss your cheeks, and your steps are steady. No need to argue with it. For even a few minutes, you can be away from all that seems bothersome.

There were deer and coyote tracks and the pup’s nose was hard at work sniffing every swift air current that danced around its nose carrying bouquets of smells. Not to me. The scent world is mostly available to pups and their powerful noses. More to wonder at. More to be grateful for.

Somewhat reluctantly, we headed home, to warmth and boys waking up. Come midday, the sun pokes his face through clouds and sprinkles brightness all over. I take the boys and pup to the wonder place that stole my heart in early morning. ‘You got to see, it’s so beautiful it brings you to tears…’. Faces squint wrestling with sunshine, cheeks are red as we hike, and slippery downhills cause cascades of laughter as we try to avoid wipe-outs. Time together becomes yet another story unfolding on a bright winter day when we forgot to miss spring.

The evening brings the sad news of a dear friend’s passing. During his life, Richard Wagamese carried much grace and much pain, and most of all courage to balance both as he went on. He acknowledged his own lack of gracefulness at times, and that brought forth others’ courage to acknowledge theirs. He had an infectious laughter over the silliest of things that would come up in a conversation, and he had an immense love for music. He shared both heartfully.

He had gratefulness, but his demons cared for no such things. Life had not been kind to him and that left marks that showed. They showed in how he told not only his own story, but stories of old that would have you sit and listen. He drummed those stories and he talked of how they remind you of your mother’s heartbeat in the womb, if only you closed your eyes long enough to be able to listen and feel.

Gratefulness becomes the ribbon I now tie all those memories together.

There’s no room for grumbling in a day that reminds of so much. Reminds of life, of its increments of wonder we can choose to open our hearts to or let them fall on the ground only to step on them and say things should be better if we are to be grateful. It reminds of the short time we have to make it all count.

On a day when you see overwhelming beauty in snow-clad old pines, when children’s belly laughs and silly jokes add more precious pages to your life book, when you find yourself broken-hearted and in tears upon losing a friend… it all melts and becomes but ink in which you dip your pen in to keep on writing. Written words or not, relating our stories as we go, with gratefulness, sorrow, and a never-ending sense of wonder, that might just take away what we perceive as ugly bits.

Life is never about the dark clouds that crowd overhead every now and then, but about the light that stubbornly pushes its way through no matter what. Because it does.

Rest in peace, Richard, the stories will keep on rolling. Gratefulness abounds.

 ‘Oh, how many travelers get weary

Bearing both their burdens and their scars,

Don’t you think they’d love to start all over

And fly like eagles

Out among the stars…’ (Johnny Cash, Out Among The Stars)

Reminders To Be Grateful

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On November 26, 2016

In Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

20151004_173835There is nothing like a visit to the Emergency Room to remind one of the things to be grateful for. More so when the issue turns out to be rather minor compared to what could’ve been.

There is also the hidden message in the very happening that one should heed. Yes, I am ‘the one’ in this case. While arranging little boy’s room last night and multitasking as I do at times, I wrongly assessed the height of a staggered piece of furniture. The knee that took the brunt of it made a sound that told of my mistake. A crunch of sorts that didn’t bide well. Yes, it hurt.

The next logical step was the ER. It is never a jolly scene there. You wait, you see a lot of suffering, rushed and exhausted medical staff, and people from all walks of life humbled by various health issues. Sobering indeed. We were third in line.

My husband and I were planning on a date for last night. It became one, but we wrote none of the terms other than those pertaining to togetherness. In sickness and in health, for better or worse. Grateful? Of course. Our date came with neon lights, waiting rooms, more waiting rooms and some unsmiling faces. On the plus side, we got some good reading time. A mom’s life allows for little leisure time so if I have to break a bone or stretch a ligament for it, so be it, the wisdom from above concluded.

As I sunk into my book beautifully titled ‘The gardener and the carpenter’ by Alison Gopnik, I came across soulful bits that soothed both heart and knee: ‘Loving children doesn’t give them a destination; it gives them sustenance for the journey.’ yes, it is a book about children, parents, and the bond between them, the mysterious, larger than life self-sacrificial love that takes the latter to the ends of the earth and back. Sustenance for the journey… The very words bumped into the worry ripples that mothering and homeschooling create occasionally and peace settled. It will all work out somehow in the end.

The wait in the ER allowed for slowness, the kind I rarely get. I suddenly had time. Granted, it was spent in life’s monetarily tight pocket, along with other humans whose faces betrayed pain and worry. You’re alone when you hurt and then you’re not.

In the ER under those neon lights, the hurt ones share the small space where gratefulness gets a renewed license and a sudden return to the importance of basic needs is guaranteed. Pain takes you to a place where few things matter. You’re present but somehow you appear in a smaller size, as if shrunken by forces you will never understand fully but are willing to learn about, especially during the shrinking. Then you get better and you forget all about the crisis that made you feel small and vulnerable. Or perhaps you don’t.

20161107_120750The X-ray room is intimidatingly minimalistic. Everything glides. Bed, big X-ray machine, the technician’s shoes, reminders of the barely moving patients that pass through. So many broken parts… you slide the people ever so gently into the room and get the machines to hover over them so they can be put back together. Fragility redefined.

I tell myself I will not be slowed down for long. My mind allies with me to get the body to believe it can move fast soon enough. There’s boys and pup and so much life bubbling. Gratefulness abounds. Counting my blessings while the big X-ray machine whirs. Get back, get the better than expected news, hobble out the door not before pushing the big green button. Leaving a world of pain behind. Gratefulness and sadness for what lies behind. For what lies ahead. Life is to be grateful for. Every day, every bit of every day and every instant that renders us alive after churning our souls through the pain and fear machine.

20161107_120416I remember reading this a while ago… ‘Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses…’ (Alphonse Karr). It is true. Life is not about being happy regardless. It is about finding bits of happiness among the potholes in the road that may or may not have you break your leg as you fall into them. Because you were too busy counting the birds in the sky, or the stars, or you were watching for the approaching storm. Either way. Life happens.

The Things I Remember

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On December 22, 2015

In Life Stories

The small volcanoes my Dad would make in the front yard near the black currant bushes. He smoked these cigarettes that were pure tobacco. Short and no filter, so there was always a little bit of leaf bits falling off the ends as you pulled it out of its paper wrapping.

Somehow I loved that. As much as I hated how they affected his health in the end. But I was a kid then and volcanoes meant nothing but my Dad’s magic, his smell, his hands preparing yet another small mound of dirt to put a minuscule cigarette butt in, and my wonder at the sight of that small trail of smoke raising just like he predicted. I remember that.

My Dad smoked outside only, no exceptions. When I was old enough to want to match the breath of late summer nights with my own I would follow him outside as he smoked that last one of the day and we would listen to crickets and the sounds that spoke of beauty and presence in words that sounded like songs. My Dad loved telling stories. I remember that.

I remember my Mom’s hands tidying up the kitchen table, handing me a cup of tea in late evening, the steam rising like a whisper and dancing the night away as we talked. I remember her smile in the morning, her voice, the caring ways she’d wrap us in so we would always know which way is home. We did, my sister and I, until the day home stopped being there.

I remember mornings of brightness and small baskets to fill with strawberries, fresh eggs and curious chickens, their greediness to eat the handfuls of lush green I was throwing over the fence. Beady eyes, eager beaks and sounds of mornings that could not be translated into anything but an echo. Such is the fate of heart imprints, they stay within.

It is because they do that that I believed time can stand still. I sipped at times and other times I spilled some, I cherished and I wasted, some of what I should’ve learned I learned early enough and some I learned too late.

Coffee time, I remember that. Sometimes it came with straight faces, other times with silliness and laughter. My parents chatting, tidbits of life. Never a doubt in my mind that it will last. Before life stomped its ugly feet loudly and roared, before I knew of fear and words left unspoken. Forgiveness for innocence… does it exist?

I remember the day my Dad typed Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ and brought it home. The paper was thin, almost see-through (the irony…), each typed word a chubby critter linked to others to create a story. The meaning eluded me for many years. Today it all make sense.

I have lost so much since and gained so much too…

Tomorrow is Dad’s birthday. His first without him in the only world I know.

Mom’s was two weeks ago. Her ninth since it is only the echo of her voice that comes on that day. What is left then?

Summers with mornings too bright, evenings so wrapped up in flavours and sounds, stories left behind, laughter and tears, feet running on hot pavement to escape sun, cheating time with hugs and lengthy coffee time, everything exists as long as we remember it should.

If… the paper is even thinner now and words faded. I read it again and again. The poem becomes a story becomes a river of memories and stories told and untold, of wishes and dances where the music simply does not matter… it is but the willingness to dance, to live as if you hear the music, to know that it is there, to trust that one day you will hear it and it will all make sense.

I light candles, I say prayers, I cry. I love the lilac bush that towers over the grave and I hate that it can spend infinite time there, so near… Where to from here… I will read the poem, again, I will slow down to surround each word with reason, each seed of wisdom with gratefulness, I will do it so I will remember.

Not only for myself but for my sons, for whom I will one day type a poem. This or another. Just because. Because I want them to remember. Because I know they will. Because I know it is a path towards understanding the shadows, the light and darkness that time dresses in as we move along…

Take Time. An Invitation

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On September 25, 2015

In Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

‘Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.’  Jack Kerouac

Fast movingThere is no faster running river than life itself. Time waits on no one and makes no concessions. It’s truly a case of take what you can when you can. I can take today’s rainy morning, my gaze stolen by the golden leaves of the silver maple in the front yard. Kissed by water droplets, some of the leaves dance a last dance as they trail downwards to rest on the grass.

MoreResenting no day for being too sunny, too cloudy, too unfit for human consumption but taking each hour of every day with the ravishing hunger of the one knowing that food like that is scarce, and, at the same time, relishing the morsels to the last tinge of vanishing taste. The promise of more in each mouthful is an open-end invitation.

Leaf

 

In the fall, colours are on the menu. Yesterday the boys sketched the veins and contours of all the leaves in our yard. ‘When you take the time to draw leaves you see more of what they are,’ big boy says, not knowing that in saying that he stumbled upon one of the biggest secret of life: Lend your eyes, your ears, your hands, all your senses, lend your heart to the world around, stay long enough and you’ll understand more.Busy hands

TruthWhy do leaves turn yellow and red? Should we learn of magic in our school? Nothing short of miracles, leaves turning fiery colours point to the necessary amendments. It is so. Magic we shall call it. It calls for reverence, curiosity and joy.

More Yesterday the boys learned of leaves, of the miracle backwards breathing they do so they allow us to do ours. Gifts to live by. A mouthful of oxygen with every leafful branch, the gift of countless breaths waiting on us each day…

 

 

WorldsWhat happens to leaves as they fall? They follow the unwritten rules of the world unseen, they become food for life we see and often cringe at the sight of. Bugs of sorts, fungi and worms, factories of rottenness that clip molecules and spread them in the ground for next round of growth and wonder. Unassuming guardians of life.

 

 

SoftnessColoursTo see is to wonder. Stop long enough to see and you’ll see more… the boy said. We did so in late afternoon. We strolled on a path of dirt rolling through hills of yellow grass tied with sparkling golden braids of sun escaping from dark clouds every now and then.

 

 

ColoursColours to feed on. To walk silently is not to be a thought recluse of some sort but to let the rest of you soak the time and its flavours, colours and sounds. To walk silently is to bow to the uniqueness of being in a moment so rich you can only ask your thoughts to sit, quiet and humbled in that cathedral of beauty, waiting for the songs unfolding to quiet down, wishing they never will because the story they tell is so much better than any story you could say with words….

TwoThe dirt path leads to a patch of trees sheltering an old cattle water trough. Crickets took residence in nearby tall dry grasses, and their chirping is the summer-end gift that reminds of childhood moonlit fall nights when the grape-loaded vine draped low and fragrant over the green bench I would sit on, not ready, not ever, to say goodnight to days that seemed to dance away too fast. Even then…

 

sleepyLifeWe sit on rocks jutting out of the dirt, old and grey and covered with dry moss. The river runs down in the valley, there are hills that take the story of the horizon into where all becomes blue and spills into the sky, and the cars on faraway highways look like bugs. The buzz is not deafening like it is when in the city, a mere reminder with no loud stomping.

 

SilenceTo find places where no loud noises exist is to feed the hunger for wonder that allows us to see and mind time, its passing and understand the beauty of the temporary. To be in awe of it. To find yourself renewed is to find, yet again, the place from where you can start again.

To live. To learn to see. To keep on dancing, because the music never stops, no matter how quiet the moment we’re in…

Our School At Home And Beyond. A Glimpse

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On September 16, 2015

In Environment, Kamloops, Learning, Life Stories, Motherhood, Self-improvement

‘Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.’  Socrates

GrasslandsIt is not every day that I get to see a red-tail hawk swoop down for a midday meal in the grasslands. I had to stop for that one. And for the clouds that towered over the golden hills. It’s one of the most soothing landscapes I’ve even seen.

That is little boy’s classroom on the one day a week when he goes to Forest School. We sat in a circle in the middle of undulating dry grasses this morning, talked about snakes and owls and bugs, reviewed the things to do such as ‘wander far enough but not too far, know the number of whistles for this and that’, before the small feet peppered the dusty trail, following behind the teacher.

There is joy infusing our hug as I get ready to go on my way and little boy on his with the group.

20150915_105512Giggles, whispers, the trepidation of another day that brings learning through open eyes tasting the blue sky and the golden tall grasses that speak of dried-up lakes and hidden animal burrows. The land has stories to tell, it’s only fitting that we’d take ourselves and our children out here to listen.

It’s not in the books, not in the sitting upright and reminding your eyes to stay put on the word of the day. Not unless the word connects with the world you see with your eyes, the world you walk on and see transform from one day to the next, the smells that tell you learn to tell apart as you spend more time in places that you crawl through if need be to look at a bug, places you let crawl through you as reminders of life in its primal, must-see-or-else form.

worldsCome noon, I find my way back to the hills to pick up little boy. I stop a few times, it’s that beautiful. I breathe the place in: colours, smells, sun splashed lazily over velvety hills in the distance making them look like they are underwater. As if I am staring at algae-covered rocks in a stream. Two worlds in two. A world of many faces; ours.

This is what I want the boys to learn of in our school at home and in classrooms of hills and clouds.

That the world has mysteries we cannot see unless we bring ourselves close enough to it.

That everything has a key somewhere and as we get closer to understanding, we get closer to reverence, never away from it.

That we do not own the world, but are part of it. Conquering never works, gently prying the door open to knowledge, not vying for high marks and loud approval but the feeling of having understood a tinge more, that is what I dream for the boys.

Shelter to growThat they will learn reverence.

That they will be humbled by the richness of a handful of dirt and the secrets a leaf reveals as you hold it up against the sun.

That math and science are never the hated subjects, but keys to answering the whys we find as we go along.

That it is all a big picture with boundaries that keep on growing as our understanding of it grows.

Soft wallsThat the balance is fragile and our running to engage in rat races has nothing to do with balance but often leads to frantic days and connections lost, with ourselves first of all.

That school is never to be a place where we get farther away from ourselves so that we fit in, but a place where we get closer to knowing who we are, to affirming our thoughts and dreams, knowing as we go that the world has a place for each and every one of us, as we are. A place to be safe but bold, to wonder and let curiosity seep through. To help more thoughts grow.

Another hawk dances with the grasses. Another glimpse of life, death too, implied and not seen, and if seen, accepted as part of it all. Gracious, both side of it. The boys will learn this. They will learn that a glimpse is all. That we must take fully and give ourselves to it fully, that the glimpse is a gift repeating itself every day thousands of times.

skyThe side of the road is decorated in chicory flowers, as if the sky kissed the ground every now and then leaving marks of blue. Same fascinating colour, the reflection of the blue endless sky in small countless ones growing towards it, each holding the story of storms to come like delicate mysterious oracles. It is true.

The boys and I learned about it yesterday, and the amazement matched the mystery. Drawing blue petals on stalks on green, listening, asking questions, tilting their heads and blooming in almost incredulous smiles…

‘How do they do that, Mom? How do they know?’

DanceThat is what we will learn, and beyond. We will find ourselves privy to the conversation the earth has with the sky, we will have to be quiet enough to hear, keen-eyed to see, but mostly humbled enough to know that we are but another piece in the big puzzle called life, that we do not make sense without the other pieces.

That we are being given the opportunity to see it all, wonder and learn about it together is a gift as precious as life itself.

That is our dream school. We will only go as far as our gratefulness will take us.

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