by Sandy Bassie

Letter to a Friend

Dear Helen, I want to write, I really do. Why is it hard today? I have two courses and one podcast digesting slowly. Each brought elements of familiar in the story I’ve lived. Even the bits that I don’t understand well linguistically remind me of what I want and need to share; places from childhood, places raising Jacob. The stories all sit somewhere in my computer waiting for memoir to come together and take off. Maybe I tell them here, allowing disjoined or otherwise  connected thoughts.

The podcast this morning is Going Deeper into Integral Theory | with Bruce Alderman, Nick Hedlund, & Brendan Graham Dempsey

What grabs me about it is familiarity, understanding, some kind of connection. It’s not a topic familiar to me in the context given, but it reminds so much of life.

I was a first child with a grandmother and mother who invented learning games to teach me letters and numbers, who read to me and teached* me to read. I had colouring books and puzzles. Four years I lived in a shared household of parents and grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins two or three houses down, another set of grandparents a few streets over. When my younger sister was born three years and four months into my young life, my parents looked for a house of their own. We moved to slightly more in between the grandparents; a small three bedroom purchased, I’m sure, with some help. We still spent lots of time with the grandparents, my mother often taking her mother out shopping with us and continuing the car games that I loved. Alphabet and numbers were fed to me, not only in songs, but also invented anticipation games where at the youngest age, they began ABC … close to one of at least five different signals they chose. I only remember a few. Over the train tracks, the letters extended, a little further, a little further and finally yelling ‘bumpety bump, bumpety bump” as we went over the tracks. Numbers or letters (knew up to 100 and the whole alphabet by the time I went to kindergarden) again taking longer and longer to reach the “woooo wooo, wooo wooo” of entering a tunnel. I had little idea this was anything more than fun.

My father talked history, stories of Scotland, read articles, books, and the regular Readers Digest magazine that came. He had a sharp memory and deep love of people and facts, at work, he did title searches and shared details about Toronto with us regularly. My family, having gone through two wars and carrying memories of other places and people alongside their growing up, some active service, some home front, and stories from both sides of emigration and reasons why. My dad would make my sister and me read the magazine articles when small, and always ask us to turn first with him to the back where there was a page of words set with possible matches below and a rule not to turn the pages to check until we had each made our choice which we thought matched best. I generally got a better result being older, but not just that; it was a kind of instinct I felt, a connection to the words, something I never did manage to say why, or turn to grammatical tests properly through the grades. I could see a kind of connection between the given word and the choices. If I didn’t get the top answer, I’d often get the second. I still have some of that going for me, but just like I couldn’t master a satisfactory map of different grammatical structures by simply memorizing the words teachers gave me, I struggle to put them in place now, even though there is a place inside that wants them to come alive there.

Ask me to define a preposition or give you a list. I can’t. What blocks me is unclear. My teacher in grades 12 and 13 expressed her aggravation with me that while I seemed to use sentence structure and the grammatical components well, I remained unable to get more than a passing grade on tests she gave asking me to match or fill in answers around grammar and it’s vocabulary.

The podcast above reminds me of that place, as do many conversations in online chats and face to face ones. It all moves a little too quick. I ask the same question three or four times in a row, month after month, at conferences, at meetings, in phone calls. You name it, I can ask more time than you’d think possible, “I’m sorry, tell me again, what is ontology? What’s the other word that goes with it? Is this religion or philosophy? We’re discussing semantics and semiotics. I know, I just need a reminder to keep on track.” Oh the patience of people who welcome me to the conversations, who anticipate my stories and the ways I pull words together to make a question a comment and ignite things in their conversation where I still ask, “what’s that word again?”

One sleep. Another day.

I listened to the podcast in a quiet attention. My thoughts at times drifting to ways it reminded me of raising Jacob, things I have shared again and again in conversations with family, friends, strangers, connections made through church and community groups where I raised my children. People met in the last years since moving away from that area after divorce, and having my adult children move in their own directions, ten years processing, learning, struggling through old and new, giving, receiving, accepting good and facing losses, several, hard ones. Things that could have destroyed me, and in some ways almost did. But God, the world, the natural and spiritual places I’d walked through the first half of life, kept coals alive, provided the people, the places, the moment by moment reasons to do something unfinished, to keep doing it.

This year, I have collected more courses than are practical. I slowed a bit, but press on learning, not just facts or skills, but the movement I feel throughout my life; childhood telling me stories of instinct, attention, games and repetition, motherhood (most of my adulthood) reversing it, bringing the mother and grandmother games into adult places, running them constantly in the background of watching my children grow. Mismatched patterns. Opposites. Moveable parts that kept me on my toes, kept my curiosity on high alert. Allowing the jumble of pieces I couldn’t quite fit and had to navigate, acknowledging that I brought an interesting combination of brokenness and strength to the puzzles I was sorting.

People and relationships, church, school and other institutional … expectations, plans, programs, rules, flow set in contrasting, and at times conflicting, ways to each other. My church came with school and social networks that were not our networks. We had Provincial School for the Deaf, its history, patterns, and cultural shifts just as my eldest began kindergarden. Parallel agencies and entities, people, both hearing and deaf, hard of hearing, with or without hearing devices in their day to day, with and without ASL (American Sign Language). Some who grew up in Deaf families (very few 10%), most from hearing families (90% and many of those with other medical and learning conditions that brought deafness along with them). Public schools built on different patterns and rules, some of which confused home rules in little things like teacher names, Mr. Mrs, Ms. in the years my youngest went through. A five year old who got reprimanded without understanding why. We’d been using ASL sign names (built on first names) since Jacob was a baby, for home-visiting teachers, and age five when we put him and later his little brother into the preschool at Bob Rumball Centre for the Deaf in Toronto. Navigating my children’s lives. Navigating. Always off centre, always pointing to other places, people, and references in our lives. Life out the box to the people in immediate conversation with me.

Like an old telephone system, wires and connectors, constant movement, in, out, around, over, under, keeping track of what’s coming in, what’s transferring between, what needs interplay, when to disconnect. Rest. Telling hearing teachers that my youngest was not being disrespectful calling them by their first name; he had five and more years calling people in his life by their first name.

We were surrounded by others: not just home-visiting teachers, also hospital staff , physio and occupational therapy, audiology, speech and language, child development services and resources, family, friends, playgroups, eventually both off to preschool (the shock of separation and no overlap in services for hearing children (even ones who went through with ‘hearing impairment’ on their student file every year due to central auditory processing differences) and Deaf children in the more culturally adjusting provincial school, where first names were more common than the occasional last name lettered variant of older teachers who arrived in the older system.

I look at these words. I’m basically tracing out systems and maps here, showing the layers and ways they did not just sit in a stack, but had to slide, adjust, reconnect. I became a bit more fluent at shuffling cards than I was when we began, and realizing how many decks I had at play. I learned exhaustion and poor self care, too much time making sure everyone else was okay. This isn’t just me being negative about it; it’s willingness to repeat it from those who told me again and again. Many in the last ten years at work, in community groups, some friends I’d known a long time who had been saying it into the storm of all the protections I had up in the pre-divorce years. It’s good to repeat things we need to remember, to let define themselves in new ways, sifting trauma from day to day cycles of eating, washing, dressing, cleaning up, alarms to wake up, work to do, and people to learn to trust who were slowly given permission to call me out when they noticed something off. It takes a long time for an overwrought system to slow down, to learn to listen, not just with my ears, not just with my hands, and my eyes, but with my whole body which was a language I have only recently (the last five years) felt I could hear with more clarity.

The video above (I want to ask friends what they hear) and the one this morning Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (already nine years old – and a whole lot of other ones between then and now that I still want to catch up) along with the ones from The Lectern this year. I think what I’m sitting with this week are the patterns I tried to sketch above, and the listening that went with them, and still does. The bits and pieces I pick up that apply – Seeing God Again from the Lectern at one point referencing the importance of self talk to cognitive processes. I’ve watched Jacob in the car the last year; short and long trips, sitting with his tablet playing games, his hands flying on and off the screen, talking to himself about what, I couldn’t catch (eyes on the road), but one day, I did ask him, “do you talk to yourself playing games? Sometimes you talk to me, maps, distances, but I think you are also just talking to yourself about what’s going on in your game.” Yes. I watched it in slow motion, the pattern shift. Where scattered and intermittent words and phrases, many repetitive, checking his lists – real/pretend, true/false (the same hand movement but context), home (my home/his home), grandma/joshua annual trips but not in the same towns.

I’ve stopped being mad at myself not keeping up lists, for not participating in studies, for not catching every program, for not writing more, or more consistently or filing it better, or ….. it’s too much for one person. It’s beyond too much, and still I did it, and earned the lectures on self-care, and picking up the pieces of things I had dropped to open up time, availability for Jacob, and others, and myself – his mobile office I’d say.

This is more than enough to untangle today. I sit at a cross-roads I thought would take me away from some of the discord groups, cutting work down to manageable in a slow sequence of steps, allowing the patience and help that work gave. Stepping into and out of local meetings and groups on poetry and memoir, art meet ups and workshops, coffees with friends – surrounded by creatives – talking music and art, writing and open mics, theatre and concerts. Places I began, places I’ll end. Surprised stepping back, taking notice of what interested me, poetry leading to Versed, questions on Jacob’s language and growth prompting courses in cognitive science, psychology, religion; the courses I took in undergrad years. I’ve stepped back, but not out. Perspective and words taking time for long view. This summer I slowed, digested, let my system relax, talk over, around.

I have so many questions. How do I share this level of my learning with Jacob? We’re back at the beginning, no vocabulary for this place. I share a video with captions, 2 minutes or less, a comment for category, emotion, interest, thinking about, remembering to keep it on me as a weight, a reference for him, sharing, including, welcoming him in. Something my mother-in-law said his first year of life. “I’ve raised twelve children, and I grew up with a deaf girl in Holland. The language is easier there, it’s structure. English is so hard. I married her youngest, the only one born here, five years speaking Dutch, then every other year English. She was a wise woman, talked of culture and languages, honest with both. “Jacob can’t come into your world, Sandy. You will have to go into his.” I know, some will say, not true, and if you’re lucky enough to have that work and work well, I’m glad.

What interests me here, in the sharing of videos, and the telling of story, is what do you do with the things you don’t know. Vocabulary, grammars, systems and cultures. What do you do? I’ve watched over forty years of it in real time; different reactions and answers depending on the people, the situation, the need. “Your son is deaf? Oh he’ll have to learn to read braille.” Adamant and helpful. I let it pass. File it. Move on.

I’ll go back to listening, making notes, lists, journal. Wondering where conversations from listening will go, have gone in the years I was not up to speed. I may ask a few a people I know somewhat well, what they do with these videos if they watch them, how they fit in their lives, in their stories, in their curiosity and need. Those are important, more important than most know. Forty years for side journeys to get me through school, through life, through healing, still a long way to go.

Journey and journeys, weaving backwards and forth. I love the journeys, conversations, discoveries, surprise. Curiosity fills a big place in my heart where overlap lingers, then chooses a route. They all come back home eventually, and better when I learn how to move with intent, with listening and lingering, trusting time walks to beat, and the beat is my own, and I’m not doing it alone.

by Sandy Bassie

Something Borrowed

May is halfway gone, the long weekend just ended, a short note to Facebook on the anniversary of my mother’s passing four years ago got posted rather than a paragraph or two intended for here. I worked this weekend – normally given to a trip north for mother’s day and two birthdays, but I called in sick one day and saw the doctor instead; blood pressure and pain again that is actually fibromyalgia overextended, and perhaps lingering trauma to trying too hard and what that represents in body memory.

I’ve been through several courses this year in poetry, memoir, and lyric essay (a repeat of the one last fall). I’ve had conversations on these and on ways my love of words engage the many things that come to mind as I lean into learning more on the technical aspects of how  to write, and how I naturally write, in different genres. I love learning new things. I get aggravated with myself not retaining them in ways I want through in the moment recall. I write so much down, and then struggle to research what I’ve written, each year trying to improve my filing system for easier access to a topic, idea, notes I’ve saved for later use in any genre. There is no point being angry with myself for what I lack, and yet I am all too often. Angry. Frustrated. Easily distracted into grabbing hold of any interesting words I find and letting them play, only to file them again and hope they won’t be lost.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I write here, sharing some of the simple to significant things I think about and live through in the day to day, workday and general life places. Something about a memory shared, an opportunity to rehash it at some later point, even being able to point to what I write and let others recall it with me, or to me, in different ways. It helps.

So, it’s 11pm and I am no closer to hitting send on homework for a Thursday review of lyric essay in one of the studied forms. We are to share our work and critique others. It won’t happen if I don’t submit, and I’m still wallowing in indecision on what to send. Too many words, too little form. And the air wafting in smells from open window reminding me of summer visits to cottages long gone with the family who lived there. What is it about a smell I have not yet written down in words trying to capture the memory? Instead, I head back to notes from three other days that may become essay before morning, pointing at family, inheritance, cups and saucers, and ways memory forms.

Something will come of the words, and I will acknowledge they are borrowed and shared from within other things I intend to write, but for this week, they can be homework exploring things together.

by Sandy Bassie

patterns and gaps

Reading back, more than twelve days since my last post. Why? What have I been doing that didn’t include writing, or maybe didn’t include sharing things here?

I know I’ve been tired; several appointments (physio and a B12 shot) confirm this, as do too long sleep hours a few running nights. I’m practicing taking naps when I feel my body shutting down. You’d think that would be logical, but it’s had a hard time negotiating with my system and life patterns to get a place. I don’t understand all of the signals my body gives, but at the same time, I have a terrible habit of pushing through because being sick was a judgement place for so long. That shows up at times in writing that’s going into the memoir I started a few years back. In courses and among writing friends with whom I’ve shared, my ability to describe the moods, feelings, emotions, sensations are described as well written, able to give a picture of the experience. The compliment is nice, but what is needed at the moment is a better grip on the message the sensations are trying to convey. Do I need water, food, sleep? Am I getting too little exercise? Am I tracking basic needs or have I suppressed them? It’s not always easy for me to tell. One counselor told me I am far too good at dissociating. It’s a short-term coping skill our bodies have for emergencies. It’s not meant to be a way of life.

I know all these things. Knowledge and application need a better conversation.

Journal notes suggest I’ve been busy. Besides work, I have sat in on several discord conversations around semiotics, signs, memes, historic poetry and Latin. Where does my brain find time for this – it’s not like any of these are personal areas of study or expertise. Several conversations with local friends, laughter and nonsense. Volunteering at a community brunch that happens twice a month. Yes, I’m beginning to weave in the tangible health where slowing work has opened spaces. I am learning healthy choices.

The essay I started on January 9th has seen some attention. I’ve read it through several times and played with editing suggestions I got from my writing group. Layout as well as word choices. It’s time to write another or go back to the first, the one I did during my course last fall and add to a list written there.

Poetry is still my go-to writing, but I am beginning to also love lyric essay.

Learning patterns I follow now forming retirement is interesting. I’ve always been curious about things I could learn. When Jacob was small: ASL, Deaf Culture, elements of learning, and how to teach reading. My filing cabinets were full of different things then. Words and language are still of interest, but the context shifts. I still encourage my son with reading English, I have apps to practice French and Spanish, and recently Hebrew. One of the YouTube channels I follow teach biblical Hebrew and Greek, and now the discord group have added Latin. There is no way I am going to learn all of the things I’ve put on my plate.

Hopefully, I’m doing better tracking my interests and learning to balance it all against health.

This will be a good year.

by Sandy Bassie

Identity expressed in names

I hope I’m not wrong messing with my identity by writing under my maiden name from this point forward. I don’t dislike my everyday name, but the majority of things I have written with it come from connections with a lot of trauma growing up, married, divorced, losing the love of my life I met late and had only a short while. I’m still Sandy to a few thousand people I love and see regularly. Inside, there is still a part of me that never quite was the person who hid below the chaos and didn’t follow an art degree, or a writing degree. She’s still in there. How do I let her take a role in what I do?

My question, today, do I leave my current blog under this name and just write certain thoughts here. Do I move it with the shift to ‘writer’s name’? A lot of what has been here the last five years is me processing grief losing Jack. I am 90% done the poetry chapbook I did the last two years on our relationship; grief, but also joy. I’m 40-50 thousand words into the memoir written around marriage and divorce I left in 2016 and start writing 2019. I can’t escape the sensitive places my children flinch over things written there, but one wanted me to go back to my maiden name at the time, and the other tenses over his part in some of the trauma. It’s complicated. But life is complicated and I never quite leaned hard enough into the name given me at birth. I’m curious.

So the question is what does a smooth transition look like? I have a few things written years back in allpoetry.com and have played with my name off and on there. It’s an easy first step. What next? Is it better to make a new email and website? I’ve been doing the blog here in WordPress since 2008 without letting myself get too deep in the weeds of writing beyond just whatever is on my mind. I have been checking the bottom of websites of people I know here and few other writing groups (as I follow WP in YouTube and learned you can use the program but host it elsewhere).

I don’t want to pay much yet to build a site. As I lean into retirement, I have several books and some art that I want to tie to a central location from the other apps. I am suffering quite a bit from oversleep and pain the last year. I don’t feel very productive. I write about and work within categories coming from abuse, trauma, mental health places in life that have me seeking identity and joy through a sensitive register. Will this shift or is this my field?

I’m asking others’ advice. Other than that, it’s take tiny steps and discover.

by Sandy Bassie

The Long Road

Two days ago, the decision, yes, I’m going. Weather has been distraction, playing over in my mind, pushing the word logic to the forefront, making me question it’s purpose and use. Of course there is logic to safety concerns, changes in plans during weather events. I followed online news and updates, official and off the cuff, called on friends and family to report back what they saw, but even so, weather shifts.

Is there really a way to align potential and definite? In the moment, maybe so, but time and distance give a lot of leeway. As much potential for error as success, and travel allows opportunity for distant factors. Life was like that so many years. One day’s promise becoming another’s remorse. If only there was a little remorse on the other’s part; or so I wished. Being the only one carrying the weight of decision and remorse is wearying. Those days are longer than the promise days, so much longer.

I learned this the hard way, through years of days given to promises often ignored, left unfulfilled.

Driving is much like any other relationship. There is promise, fulfillment, communication too fuzzy to be clear, silence turned into action, swift changes you didn’t see coming. Of the two, marital or vehicle, I tend to find the second more relaxing, more predictable, more defined. Even with similar flaws in communication, patterns are navigated on visual evidence for the most part. There is ability to see and predict, plan how to react, and given the worst, a certainty you will react in most situations. By the time marriage gets to needing to react to the visible dangers (because that is what I think of saying reaction to certainty) too much has been internalized as complaint, an excess of words we are told don’t do damage, knowing full-well that they do. Reaction becomes harder. Back bite, not movement. Questioning self as much as other, assuming fault will be assigned, and I’ll get the short end of the stick.

On the road, I had enough early practice to create certainty around my skill. The tests were designed to show comprehension and application, not tricks to undefine and unmake who you are. Driving, even with a punch to head or gut, gave me focus outside of the rage. Eyes still on the grey line ahead, defining space and purpose, a sense of composure I managed to maintain.

So deciding to go on an actual trip, with defined designation, stated purpose and plan, against this and the weather; I knew my skill and really only had weather and other drivers to anticipate. Taking a break, slowing the journey, having needed necessities and contact list, were all calm outcomes for issues that could come up. Snow, freezing rain, slushy roads, these things I knew and had navigated before. That left only the extra attention given to how others navigated the same conditions and whether anything I saw changed any of my own decisions.

Eight hours, two stops, an hour given to body recovery and basic needs. I was good. In a few days I repeat it all in reverse and hope it goes as well as the drive up. I know the road, the length of time, the conditions of this season, and my skills.

I wish I’d been as well prepared for the journey long ago I began and then ended abruptly when danger hit an indefensible state and divorce finally framed the outcome. Winter. Travel. It expresses itself in many ways.

by Sandy Bassie

5 X 5 and see it goes

I have the link to the photo prompt I mentioned in the last post. I meant to write on it yesterday after work, but somehow the hours between 12 noon and supper ceased to exist, at least from conscious memory. I’m learning that energy and its connection to both health and activity runs on automatic or maybe just autonomic. Every nerve has weight to it, pitches into things, like the keys on a piano. Low feels heavier than higher tone, and sound moves sleep and wake patterns like my foot on the pedal. I’m yawning again already when I’ve only been active since 9am today.

I wrote a poem to a group conversation around a YouTube stream. Playing with each other as we watched for patterns and expectations, all the usual happenings the group enjoys. The video was a discussion on Trinity; doctrine, not movie character. People of different viewpoints agreeing to disagree. I had fun watching for key words and opinions while playing my own game with words in poetry. The draft is done and shared with the friends in question. I may also read it to my writer’s group this coming weekend. I’ve promised them something to read.

Between listening and typing, I vacuumed two spaces, sorted clothes for keep or give away. And all that remains now is find art supplies and ask if I can trust myself to nap 10 minutes only before I log into the virtual class. It’s that or face down into pencil sketch. Even telling myself do things in 5 minute increments, I have a suspicion I’m taking on too much somehow. More than fibromyalgia and pain are coping with while trying to stay awake.

Better set two alarms and turn them up. Two peaceful hours of art, and see if I need more rest, or can continue the 5 by 5 minute game.

by Sandy Bassie

Yesterday, today

A note to a post in Canada Writes, the writers group in Facebook that I joined the one or two times I submitted to CBC. A photo prompt of a girl in a tree, laying along a branch. Time and timing of a thing that they did.

I didn’t participate in your contest during Covid. To me, Covid was a 30×60 foot fence made of self-check-out terminals, a wall of gum and chocolate, random interest items forming a laneway in, and the trapped emotions of rules and loss. It still sits like a snapshot of all that’s hard in my life. Wonder at how losing something good threw me back into trying to leave what came before, and how I dangle between the sanity provided playing in writing prompts and all the trauma that fills the broken frames that litter my memoir attempts. I’m copying this and adding it to my January blog days where I hope to put enough words to soothe the flow. The little things along the way that prod me along, working hard to convince me that sharing is not the end of the world. I’ve been telling myself a story my whole life and I’m still here. Yes, I need pills for my thyroid, where I held too many emotions, and my blood pressure that peaked 200 too many times, fibromyalgia and anxiety that hold hands with PTSD, coaxing it to try one more day. So I cry when I write. big deal. I cry when I don’t write too. And days like today, which are many, give me reasons to add words to a page, and like something that happened in the night that had me putting notes in my current journal, questions that pull reasons and thoughts already written in places in my memoir notes, one more approach to the stories I tell myself about what and when and how, the too many words and fractured lenses through which I see my life. The layers that get me in trouble with family who cope in different ways. It’s probably stupid writing all these things. It’s ok. People who want me to write have convinced me it’s good to share the things I share. It’s brave, not stupid, and it has opened me up to a lot of the brave things that keep me going. Talking about it gives reasons for others to look at their lives and challenges in hopeful ways, or at least to know they are not alone. So here I am, a photo prompt that isn’t what I wrote, but did contribute to what will go to my blog, and lets me one number past where I started on the clock the day, and one breathe past what went into my journal about head, gut and shakes. Hello day.

by Sandy Bassie

Another year, another start.

First day of January 2026. The morning is half done and that’s about all that is done. Time.

By afternoon, I did accomplish a few things. I visited the neighbours and when home, I dug deep into clearing out my bedroom. It’s been story boxes of papers, books and other things, but I’ve been saying for a few months that I need to clear them out and make it possible to remove the queen bed. In November I bought a twin frame and mattress knowing the smaller bed would allow me to use the space better for some of the art things I want to do. I need a place to set up an easel and be more consistent in creative pursuits.

I’m still struggling with exhaustion, whether from injuries that are not quite done healing, fibromyalgia symptoms, or winter patterns with plows in the night, this has been a difficult year for energy. The rotator injury I picked up in the summer, and the cut that had two stitches removed last Friday, are improving. I decided I will only work in five minute increments, resting as needed, and approaching the bedroom that way is seeing more movement than just trying to tell myself, push through all at once. I’m also allowing naps when I start to yawn; setting the alarm for 20 – 30 minutes. Just enough to let energy reset. It doesn’t feel like I’m achieving enough, but I am too hard on myself and if I’m going to survive retirement, I need to pace myself and be kind.

So, I’ll try notes the same way. Short and medium writing bursts. Let myself use prompts. Allow myself to stop and lay out as I feel my body start to swirl, circle the drain. Energy drains quickly now, and the challenge for the last third of life will be to learn new ways to navigate it. That being the case, I’m circling now and leg muscles are twitching. These signs have told me sleep since I was 30, and they say the same now.

I’ll be back with another note soon. If do well practicing this, maybe each day with the short ones. And see how I do with longer projects as I go.

by Sandy Bassie

October 2, 2025

Placeholder title. Write in my journal. Let my mind drift, hover over the things I did this morning. I did exercises for my neck, worked through a Drops lesson on Hebrew (boy am I slow), watched a video on how to learn, watched another. While listening, I took a shower, thought back to childhood and the I brought to adulthood. I miss the cat picture I made from torn magazines. Greys, blacks, I think I think I used more light greys than whites. I wish I had a photo. I have no idea where it went, who threw it out and when. This has bothered me for decades. It comes up frequently in thoughts about other things. How I taught Jacob. How I took and dropped out of university half way through Teacher’s College, right after getting married. That bothers me too.

It shows up in a variety of ways in the memoir that’s half finished on divorce and leaving. Why does it have a place here, where I’m thinking about skills I have and grew? It usually makes me think back to my first Teacher’s College placement, a grade 2-3 split where my primary assignment was to work with the lowest reading group: what I learned was how much I already knew, and the importance of observation and instinct. Following my gut. Jacob.

In the shower I thought back to the birth of my children: with Joshua, waking in the night, telling the nurses that he needed to see me, knowing that it didn’t match their schedule, but understanding how it connected to what we had been through during his birth. It was rough, and this night visit mattered to whether and how we started our connection. With Jacob separation was by necessity, a week in controlled oxygen, things inserted between us, incubator, gloves and gowns. Doctors and surgeries, calendar dates filled with tests for him and us, so much to learn and do; I learned to watch intently.

Jacob’s first day home, I noticed his anxiety, withdrawal, overwhelmed. We went to upstairs to rest and as I placed him in the yellow bassinette we’d been given as a gift, I took one of the baby blankets, tiny layette thing, smaller even than a crib. I draped it over the top of the bassinette and pulled it open just a few inches. Placing my hand down gently on his back, I stroked him, just my thumb. I felt words flow between us, tiny bursts of air. I let our eyes meet, opened and closed mine, like my thumb across his back. “It’s okay. You don’t need to be afraid. We can go slow. Let’s start with the bassinette, one room, one place at a time. We’ll get there.”

Why did I do that? Why did I even think he’s understand? Like the girl in grade 2, it was something I saw and couldn’t place, a look, a movement; a difference from the boys. Explaining reading and language, I could see she was lost in a different way. Jacob was the same. Something too many, too much, I felt it in his look. And like with the students, I started with smiles, with reassurance. I’d seen how it worked and applied it again. I knew what it was to be afraid, I too withdrew in school, at home, and for a long time, hid in silence. “I can do this”, I thought, “This is our place, we can do this”, and gradually, we did.

*** *** *** ***

I write short pieces. I’m patient.

Reading through long works is hard.

I did well in school, but it was effort.

Even art scared me, essays too.

I learned to be afraid at home.

Mixed messages, abuse, subtle meanings,

misunderstood. I learned that right answers

had nothing to do with being correct,

though I was corrected often.

I learned to hide.

*** *** *** ***

Jacob woke me from this place. He walked me through a thousand fears. My mother said my life was over the second I had him, and I knew that though her words were right in many respects, in much bigger ways, Jacob saved me from hiding and taught me to become myself. Writing his story is writing my story. I’ve been asked many questions about what I did, what it was like raising him, what I learned and could teach others; his teachers, 1:1 workers, his and my friends. I’ve told and retold those things many ways through the years; stories into the moment where a need arose. This may be different, though the stories are the same. Writing and telling have their own rhythm, they bubble like springs, but they move in different ways. I want to enjoy this, I want to learn as I go, like I did in living it.

One day, this may be a book with a title and cover. I hope my fingers on the keys and things I say while typing tell me what they are and how I will know when find the right ones.

by Sandy Bassie

Slowing down is hard

Lately, I talk more of retirement, exhaustion, pain. I can laugh at myself writing these words, knowing how many decades I’ve talked about pain in different forms and situations; mental, emotional, physical. In ways the physical is worse because it inserts itself so tangibly into every moment of every day. But that doesn’t negate the other types of pain. They cause their own distractions, and have become far too good at it over years. The one thing I appreciate is that I’m learning to distinguish between them and the ways they speak of themselves and among themselves.

This change of paragraph is an example. I look at the last sentence above and realize I sensed a change of topic or pace. But when I landed in the empty space here below, it was very empty. Inside and out. Too present in it’s form to express what the form is, or was, or felt like; and so I sat. My body tangible and aware of the couch on which I sit, the places that touch with various points of pressure, the shape of my body on the couch, not upright, but stretched out, one heel one and the other hanging over. More distressing is the internal awareness, almost a form of pain, where food in the gut, but emptiness in my chest and a slight wobble of head where I can’t tell if there is actual weight or simply a pause in thought staring at what’s going on below.

I’m not a fan. Not of the tightness in my shoulders, the burbling in my gut the clench in my lower abdomen or the way my brain or thoughts have begun flipping through pages; topic, last night’s dream. I’ve had a series of dreams this week. They share a similarity, some form of danger, shared venue for work or accommodations, and a call to determine what they mean. On waking, I am very certain I am supposed to know what they mean. They aren’t quite like the ones I had back in Acton, pre-divorce. But they do involves houses and backyards, people hiding or needing to hide. I’ve started to yawn, to float just above falling back asleep. I can’t. I have no time for more sleep. I start work in an hour. My body would choose to ignore that and push me back under the covers of dreams, make me take another look, another run at understand, at knowing the something I am to decide. Yesterday, I wrote long notes. Today, none.

Whether this is important or not, I do not know. I just need to finish this note, to dress for work, and to walk out the day, and let things wind down how they will. I’m looking into retirement, and a bit afraid that I’m going too slowly for the realities at work. Will I find myself without work soon than I’m ready? My system is humming, not with anticipation, but nerves, fear, disjointedness. I waste more energy on navigating this place. I’m fighting the fail, the fall into sleep, perhaps late again to work, and struggling against this all day.

I put water in the sink, dishes in the water. I came and sat down, just for moment, half an hour ago. I’m swimming in the thought, in the yawn, in the dream. Why do my dreams not go away when I wake? Why do they linger the next hour or so, hovering?

Tonight I will finish the dishes. I will make the same meal I’ve eaten all week. Two bowls of salad (cereal bowls) and three strips of chicken. A cup tea, coffee, or milk. Poke at some words, watch a YouTube, and allow myself to drift away. I’m sorry words, it’s time to get up. Put my feet on the ground, hold onto the wall if I need it, get out the door and into the air. Slow walk across the street and into the building where work waits for me. How brave am I this week? Will I make it official? Shift to part time? Next step on the journey? I don’t know, but again, I don’tr know what I want, when I want and how. I wish I had time to think out more words, but I really am almost falling asleep. I’ll stop for coffee on the way, and come back later and maybe get this done.

For now, slow steps. Repeat after me, I must retire. Slowly ease my way out, and ease my way into art and other things. Take the pencils to work. Draw.