Going deeper

Photo: Danny and Marian at Kensington Market yesterday.

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Many thoughts streaming across my mind this morning. People I care about. Things I want to do. At the top of Danny's bedroom window, above the curtain, a little rectangle of sky reveals dark scrawling branches, a few yellow maple leaves still clinging to them.

This morning I made French toast for the five of us: Bill, Marian, Danny and Daniel around the table. Last night it was shrimp scampi with white rice, green beans and mushrooms, and a side plate of garlic-olive bread assembled by danthered. I don't normally have this culinary motivation. It's something my daughters bring out in me; my mother brought up in me. That was how she brought the family together, setting a table of food. Sometimes it bothered me that we had no other reason to sit down together, although that perspective was skewed: honestly I have much in common with my parents. The problem was we went through some years in which we didn't know how to talk to one another, so Mom's meals felt like forced intimacy.

Here it isn't forced, and yet I wonder why Marian's presence brings out this unfiltered energy to look after other people. I wonder whether it's substitution for something else I should be doing. I worry too much.

The other thing that happened this morning is Jon sent me an email with the news that Waterloo-Wellington Rainbow Chorus was chosen, based on its performance at the GALA Festival in Montreal, to perform with select choirs from around the world at Carnegie Hall in February 2006. Jon encouraged me to return to the choir for our winter session. The news sent a tingle down my spine.

I probably will return. It's not that I don't have enough to do at home, and taking a break from the choir was a good choice for the time, but I'm losing my sense of community in Guelph. It should be easy to stay in touch with my friends like Jon and Sylvie, but missing Wednesday night rehearsals means I have hardly seen them this fall.

It has led me to consider moving to Toronto in the not-distant future. But every time I think about it, my instincts say: wrong. Maybe that's my overcautious nature. But I believe in the value of setting down roots, nourishing them. Ever since my life fell to pieces and started over in 1996, I've had a hard time sticking with anything. I imagine someday I will leave Guelph, but frustration with my social life is not a good enough reason. I have a problem with isolating myself. Moving will not solve it. In Toronto you can be surrounded with people all the time, and still isolated.

There's no good reason for me to throw up my hands and give up on certain friends. Jon and Sylvie are good people. This email reminded me that although Jon can be ambiguous and aloof at times, I'm probably his best friend, too, and when we don't see each other he misses me.

Being wanted. Meh, the feeling swells inside. I'm reaching a truly blessed point in my life. Now is not a good time for starting over, but for strengthening what I have.

Seeking peace, I feel my mind descending deep into an empty cave. This image keeps appearing in my mind's eye recently, week after week. I'm going into this cave filled with a lake, and I hear nothing but water dripping, echoing off the walls. I'm carrying a lantern and it sheds a dim glow across the still face of water. Rippling reflections come back at me from distant walls. I step onto a wooden raft, set down the lantern, and use a pole to push away from shore.

I'm not sure where I'm going. Maybe I'm discovering a new cave of serenity. It's good to have safe inward places to turn when life gets confusing. If I keep drifting, pushing the raft along, I wonder what I'll find on these private shores.