A WOMAN'S BRIEFS #3 -- NOVEMBER

Below, a journal’s page I wrote many Novembers ago; so long ago that in typed form, two spaces were still punched between sentences. Why have I found this single page on the Desktop of my computer? Mystery. While residences, family pets, favorite mugs, and my body have changed, some drastically, this reflection has not. I could have written it yesterday. I’m posting it today.

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November 25

Friday, following Thanksgiving Thursday which followed Wednesday, the anniversary of my birth.

This is the thought I woke with on my birthday: “It’s been nice to pop into life for a while, to visit this place.”  What I knew was this – out of the billions of people who have peopled this place, out of the thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years that our wet planet has been spinning in space, many things and people have been stopping in for a brief stay and I’ve gotten to be one of them.  Nice. 

Well, not altogether nice, this world, I mean.  The atmosphere itself has been a bit brutal at times, the required food chain makes it a bit of a short stay for many living things, animate or not, and people?  Well, the choices of people play havoc on the long-range plans of some, for sure.  But, still, the opportunity to be here at all is according to my calculations, a privilege.  Naturally, I must think so since I so readily contributed three more people to the process and they have, in turn, added three more.  

I would like to know how it all came about, how long it took, what transpired in the meanwhile and the answers about other life forms and you know, what IS on the other side of the edge of space.  I mean, I’m hoping that life after physical death is filled with questions being answered.  Religious questions are not important; nor is the idea of spending forever in some sort of church service attractive.  Honoring God, finding out exactly what that word represents, that interests me but what really interests me is finally hearing a duck talk, knowing what a dog pictures in his head, mind, brain, senses, when he cocks his head this way or that or when while dreaming, she vigorously wags her tail.

But wishes and regrets aside, I realize I’ve come to visit life in a place and a time that has proven fairly safe for me.  I am among those strategically settled where benefits abound.  I eat regularly, I live in what is considered a civilized country, I have religion and education and opportunity enough to erase from my mind any ideas but that, what I experience is what ought to be experienced by human beings. I can call a doctor, I can call a friend, I can cover my body with a raincoat or a wool coat, I can take cover from rain or heat.  

I spend very little time, in fact I manage to avoid spending much time at all, thinking about the animals and bugs and humans that are presently gobbling up one another, torturing or trapping or training an eye on some object with the purpose of malice or mischief.  For years now, I’ve been damned lucky.  [I’m surprised that I included a swear word – I can, obviously, I did; but I seldom use them]

And on this day, this day after Thanksgiving, the day when shops of American opened their doors at 5am in order to invite the “Holiday” shopping frenzy in, the day after we were meant to think of giving thanks, and two days beyond the morning I woke glad to have dropped in for a while, on this day I’ve brewed Starbuck’s Christmas Blend Coffee (when will they change the name to “Holiday Blend”?), I’ve noticed that one of the dogs reached the bag of sour cream pound cake and consumed it sometime between my putting it on the chopping block last night when Dave and I had a late night slice for a  snack, I’ve tossed the morning paper on the dining table, choosing to write rather than read, I’ve fed said dogs, brushed them and moved my laptop to the living room where I write now and listen to rain fall and car tires sluice sound from Rosedale Street as they slip by.  Carrying shoppers, I presume.

‘I think I might get tired of the Christmas music,’ said Dave who is on hold on the phone with some company that makes small toy cars. ‘Better not,’ say I.  ‘Not while I’m writing in here my journal about the joy of being alive.’   

My thought is this.  Not that we must, but best that we enjoy the music.”

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