November 29, 2010

I remember as a very young child visiting my grandparents in Idaho. Every morning Grandma would fix breakfast while Grandpa sat in his big swivel armchair just outside the kitchen entry reading his daily devotions. ( I liked it when Grandpa would be out of the house and I would slip into his throne and delight in spinning around.) When the breakfast call went out I would have to pass Grandpa who would reach out and grab me with an arm or snare me with his bamboo cane and, once settled, ask me if I was up for all day.
Grandpa: “Are you up for all day?”
Jon: “Yes.”
Grandpa, chuckling: “ Unless you fall down!”
It was his attempt at humour. This same exact exchange would take place day after day after day.

Grandpa’s daughter, my 89 year old mother, and I have a similar experience these 50 some years later only it occurs in the evening hour before mom retires.
Mom: “What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
Jon: “I’m not sure, mom, we need to make it through this night first.”
Mom, pressing for more information to soothe her anxious mind: “Don’t you know what’s going to happen?”
Jon: “Well, I guess we can be fairly certain the sun is going to come up.”
Mom chuckles, not without a slight degree of frustration, and begins her journey into the night.
This same exact exchange takes place day after day after day.

I have come to savour this exchange. It has taken on the life of a ritual and, as is often the case with rituals, if one chooses to enter into them with reverence and expectation something begins to happen. I’m not sure what is going on with mom but I am aware of some of what is happening with me. I think of the certainty of the sun rising and setting. The certainty of the moon’s measured orbit around the earth and the stars in their courses. The certainty of my mother’s death….and my own. Within the parameters of cosmic certainty and the certainty of my mortality I live out the days granted. They are filled with much uncertainty, which, when I stop for a cup of tea and reflect on the day, usually fills me with gratitude….”unless”, like Grandpa warned, I fall down!”