Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and it seems that the older I get, the more I miss my mother. My children did not have the opportunity to really know her since she died when my oldest daughter was nine and she had been very sick and not herself, for more than a decade. She was very different in temperament and personality from me, but her influence on me was profound.

Esther Johnson was the 12th child of John Peter Johnson and Solrun (Lula) Gudmundsson on November 13, 1913. Her Mother had just turned 48 years old. I was born four months before she turned 40. My Father said that it had taken him 6 months to convince her to have another baby.

She was a wonderful balance to my father. Dad said that she made him feel calm and peaceful. Quiet and gentle, she brought a feeling of safety and security to him and others. She was shy and put little or no pressure on others to be different than they were. I never felt "not okay" in her presence. There was never a negative judgment. She had the great ability to just accept people as they were. This was not overt but just the way she was. I doubt that there was ever anyone who was hurt or offended in any way by my mother.

She was sensitive and it was hard for me to see her be hurt by things that my Father would sometimes say or by her children's bad choices. Her, "Oh Esther" when I had done something I shouldn't, would cut me to the quick. When events/actions of some of my older siblings caused her to cry, I made a covenant with myself to never do those things and never be responsible for causing her that kind of pain.

She was also a great teacher to me. Again it was not in a didactic way. In a very quiet, humble and obedient way she was able to nurture my testimony. In our small rural branch of the church (in Rainier), we would have primary opening exercises on Sunday and then our mothers would teach us the lessons at home. I don't think I every missed a lesson. She would come to my bedroom - a very small attic room and sit on the end of my bed and we would have the lesson. She helped me learn all of my scriptures (12 a year) and complete all of my requirements for my bandlo. This included teaching me how to cross stitch and crochet - things that were very hard for her. This demonstrated to me the importance of consistency and obedience in attending and participating in church. From time to time we would have little Primary activities and there was never a question about whether we would make the effort and go. It was just what we did. It is important to note that all the time I was growing up, my Father was inactive. It was my mother that taught me the gospel.

She was always responsible and dedicated to the Church and always accepted the church callings she was given. She always did her visiting teaching and loved Relief Society. She read the Relief Society magazine and supported all Relief Society activities and projects - working hard, talking, laughing and showing me by her behaviour that the best, most important friends were sisters in the gospel. It showed me how to develop deep roots, not just in the gospel but in the community of the church. This has never wavered. Even when I was in times or places when I didn't feel like I was "Molly Mormon" enough and didn't really fit, I never left. I always have known that what I share with my Relief Society sisters is a bond that goes way beyond, day to day interests or external appearances. It is deeper, spiritual and eternal.


I was a difficult and challenging child for her - so different in many ways than herself. She was so patient - never came close to yelling or even raising her voice. Never any tone of voice that would compromise how I felt about myself. If I didn't do something that I was supposed to do, she would not ask me, she would just do it herself. Whatever I wanted to do, she supported and encouraged me.

She was dedicated to giving service to her family. Cooking, cleaning and caring for us. Life in relation to these things was much different in the 60s - wringer washers, clotheslines, no microwaves or dishwashers, paste wax for the linoleum floors that could only put on by hand. Everything was more work. We had wonderful, wholesome food. Nothing but homemade bread - everything made from scratch. Sunday dinner was an event every week with homemade buns, apple pie, garden grown vegetables and of course roast beef we had raised.

My mother showed perfect loyalty and love to her husband. Her advice to me when I got married was to never say anything negative about my husband. That certainly had been her example and my father was not always easy to live with. She supported him in whatever he needed - her time, her love and affection, and doing work with animals. She was pretty timid around animals. I never saw her ride a horse. She had fallen off one and had another run away with her. On round-up, she was always in the pick-up truck or walking. One big rangy yearling Holstein steer who we had fed on the bucket the year before recognized her and started to try to follow her. I can remember her trying to get away and telling "Ferdinand" (the name we had given him) to get away. As far as he was concerned, she was his mother.

When I was little, she read me stories, provided me with a wealth of dress-up clothes and books to read and catered to my many opinions - fluorescent socks, purple dresses, and bright red lipstick and ear rings. She saved whole milk for just me - I hated skim. She cooked other meals for me when we had liver or pea soup. She made me bowls of sugar and butter to eat and did her best to get me where I needed to be when the roads and weather were bad.

I never saw my mother perform but as a young girl she was skilled and talented at "elocution" something I greatly enjoy. She played basketball and was athletic. She told me not to stop using my talents because she regretted letting some of her talents go, disappear she thought. This had happened because of her focus on her husband and family. When I left home she had cared for children for 35 years. Her comment is about balance - a constant challenge for all women. How much do we give to others? How much to ourselves? When does giving to others have us lose ourselves? How long do we postpone our own talent development? These are still questions I struggle with.

Tomorrow, I wish I could sit down with my mother and talk to her and tell her how much I love her. I would tell her how much I appreciate the loving example she lived and the path she set me on. I have a happy family, a close and intimate relationship with my husband, deep and close relationships with other wonderful and spiritual women, confidence in myself and my abilities, career success, many rewarding talents and most important of all things, a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have these many blessings, very much because of what I learned from my mother. The older I become, the more I realize this and have come to appreciate how very much she sacrificed for me and how very, very fortunate I am.

Transitions

I like to run in the morning when the world is just turning from night to day. On a day not too long ago, I was having such a run and there was also the feeling of misting just before a rain. The air was fresh and clean and it had the wonderful feeling of spring – the first day of spring. Ah March – a time a wonderful transition. It made me reflect on the many important transitions that had occurred for me in March and caused me to think about the nature of transitions.

Some are wonderful, some not so wonderful. Some are planned and predictable – changes that you invite, marriage for example. Others are not. They come as a surprise or as a part of circumstances that you can’t control, like a move or an illness. Some like a child going on a mission are predictable in the event but unpredictable in our response to it. When some are happening, you know something is happening and it is important but it is not until after – sometimes years after, that you recognize how whatever it was that changed, changed your life. It is about these that I will focus on.

My first big March transition happened when I was eight. My family moved from living in Lethbridge to living in Scandia. I had adjusted well to Lethbridge. I was taking ballet and piano lessons. I was good at both and had won an award for the most promising dancer. I went swimming in the outdoor pool and skated in the indoor arena or on Henderson lake. I had learned how to ride an adult sized bicycle and could ride by myself to Gordies Grocery and buy 1cent bubble dubble bubble gum. I could go to movies Saturday afternoon, riding the city bus and could enjoy the only building that had air conditioning.

I had lots of Mormon friends and I loved going to Primary. The chapel was new and spacious. I got an award for being the best student in Sunday School class. I was baptized with about 20 other kids. It was the baby boom and I was in Mormon southern Alberta. My school was a brand new school where the desks matched the floor tiles (pink and green or yellow and grey). My teacher, Mrs Leonard, was young and beautiful and I felt that she liked me especially. The most important thing was that I felt like my friends really liked me and that I was kind of the centre of any threesome that happened.

When we moved to Scandia everything changed. The first day of school made that clear. Jenny Lind School had four rooms with grades from 1-12. I was in the 1-3 grade class. My teacher, Mrs Narum was old and her first comment to me that I remember was about my report card. With my classmates standing around she said how terrible it was to give a child so many high marks on a report card. Three students were my age. I don’t remember very much except being surrounded by them on the Monday of the second week and challenged about the fact that I didn’t go to church. I said I did and they said I didn’t. You see they went to three different churches – Lutheran, United and Catholic and I wasn’t at any of them. I told them I was Mormon and I had gone to church. It was clear to me that I was different and I had to figure out how to fit in.

There was no roads to ride bikes on, no easy circle of friends, no swimming pool and church was in the school in Rainier. Luckily there was one other girl at church – Merle Caldwell. The following year three communities amalgamated their schools and Merle and I went to school together. Years later when my manager at Alberta found out that I was Mormon, he thought that it must have been good training for being a consultant because I must be used to being on the outside of every group. He was pretty much right. Our family was pretty much on the outside because of being Mormon.

The next big March transition happened when I was 16. It was the month that my mother had her first and very serious heart attack. It was classic – 5 years after menopause. She was 55 years of age. I was going to High School in Brooks and was very very busy. I was on student’s council, on the Social Committee. We were responsible for planning dances and the fashion show. I was on the Intramural Council and intramurals were big – some kind of activity every day and often on week ends. I was the Stoney house league leader and we won the participation award at the end of the year for the most people participating. I had learned really well how to drag people out to things. I was in drama, on the volley ball, badminton and track teams and had one boyfriend after another. I had figured out flirting. I stayed in town frequently with all of my activities including once a week for Young Women’s (MIA or Mutual). I didn’t do much homework but I pretty much only took what was easy for me anyway.

My Father had spent a couple of weeks in the hospital in Lethbridge getting the tendon in his thumb reattached. It had been severed while castrating a calf the summer before. Herb was at home but Mom did a lot of the chores that Dad had done. She lifted bales and carried 12 , 5 gallon buckets of grain to feed the animals. I have no memory of what happened about her actual attack. Either I have blocked it out or it was not something that anyone talked about and I was wasn’t home. In fact I have no memory of her hospital stay.

When she came home of course, she was to do nothing but rest. That was so hard on my mother – work had been what she did and who she was. She had taken care of us all. No one asked me, but I could see that the house was up to me now. Week-ends were hard work – washing the clothes in a wringer washer and hanging them on a line. Cleaning the whole house including the stove and washing and waxing the floor on hands and knees. There was ironing on Sunday and making Sunday dinner. I wanted to take care of everything I could so that Mom wouldn’t feel so bad. She was so sick and getting up to eat often made her cry. I didn’t know what else to do but do the work to show her I loved her. Now I wish I would have taken some time to talk to her or read to her but then I didn’t know about doing those kinds of things.

It was a hard time and things never really went back to how they had been. She was always sick – always did too much and got sicker. Her quality of life just continued to deteriorate until her final heart attack 12 years later. She never did adjust to a limited capacity and all I could do was try to work faster and harder so she would have less to do. I saw how sick she would be after my sisters and their families came to visit. After I was married, I would try so hard to make our visits as easy as possible on her – making the meals, cleaning the house etc.

The next March transition that I want to talk about was the move to Calgary from Edmonton. Financially we were in serious trouble. My consulting business was flat after two fairly abundant years. Andy had moved to a job in the non profit sector that he enjoyed but pay was not covering the mortgage. We had marriages, missions and university to help pay for. In short there was a lot more money going out than was coming in and we needed out.

A job sort of fell from heaven but it meant moving from Edmonton. We had to leave our beautiful big wonderful house on the park. I had to leave my very very good and close friends – Ruth, Laura, Brenda and Sue. As painful as this all was, the worst part was we had to leave family. Sam and Gillian had already left home, on missions. Gillian was married. It was leaving Greg that was almost unbearably difficult. He was my baby boy and was still in High School. He had been the one who had taken care of me when I was sick with Anne. The bond with him was different and emotional and he wasn’t ready to leave. He wasn’t moving on to begin his life as an adult at school or on a mission. It just wasn’t the right time but there was nothing to be done. We had to go and it is impossible to describe how hard this was. And Calgary.... Well everything was different. That is what change is about. Of course it is different.

When I compare the three stories there is much to reflect on. I have learned a lot from all three situations. I think I am a stronger and more sensitive person because I experienced the injustice of discrimination as a child. I had responsibilities in our branch of the church at a very early age that strengthened by testimony and my understanding of consecration. I experienced the freedom of rural life and the simple pleasures that are a part of that.

I certainly was under no delusion of what it meant to be a wife and mother when I got married, as a result of my mother’s illness. I grew up at a young age in relation to that learning. I can’t say that all of my learning about taking so much responsibility has been an entirely good thing however, for myself or others. The process of unlearning some of this has been hard and will likely last the rest of my life.

The last transition feels like the hardest. I could reason that so much was lost – family, house, traditions, and even identity. I think there is more to it than that, though. The older we get, the more we get locked into expectations and build a comfortable world for ourselves. Change brings crisis and the requirement for new ways of seeing things, new ways of being. When we have worked hard to build the best life possible, this seems so unnecessary and unfair.

The very nature of transition is that we are in a “neutral zone” as William Bridges says. We don’t really know what will be different and how it will all turn out in the end. The simple directive is to walk by faith. That is very difficult when so much of our experience as adults is that it is up to us. How do we balance faith with our own responsibility? How do we keep our selves open to change at the same time we are trying to get some stability. Perhaps that is just all about the paradox - like the more I know the less I know or the "last shall be first and the first shall be last". There are no easy answers just always more questions and with the speed of change there will be more and more opportunities to test hypotheses.

Work at Play or Play at Work

Holidays are very important to me. Being able to have lots of them is one of the main reasons I have my own business. I have been employed by an organization full time, just twice. Both times, just about the worst thing was having to ask permission to take days off. Its the one thing that I think I share with GenXers - the notion that holidays are a right.

On a recent holiday I did have cause to consider an aspect of holidays that seem to be very important, that is the idea of having fun - of playing. It seems like we have holidays so that we can escape from work and do what we call play. Work is the necessary thing and play is the enjoyable thing.

Well on this particular two day holiday, my husband, 12 year old daughter and I went skiing. The first day, at Sunshine. Sunshine brags about the amount of snow that it has, guaranteeing knee deep powder. I have never really thought about why they named the mountain "Sunshine" before but since 4 days out of last 5 visits were almost total whiteouts, I think it is to create an irrational but positive view of the ski experience there. Our last day was a typical "Sunshine" experience. Wind, snow, and cold that made us shiver and cover our bodies, including our faces with as many layers as possible. We huddled on the lift, tripped in the drifts of snow, and generally felt like Arctic explorers on some of the runs.

It must be remembered that I am 54 years old, my husband is 58 and we are skiing with a highly competitive risk taker whose only desire is to whizz at great speed down every run. Stopping to rest down an arduous run, with the wind cutting my face, and watching a lot of other skiers over bundled like myself, a question occurred to me. Is this fun? It must be or at the very least we all must have an incredible sense of hope that it will be fun. You could argue that when we all bought our $60 tickets for $5.00 off in Calgary that we didn't really know what the conditions WOULD be. We did however know what they COULD be and we still made the choice to go.

The second day at Lake Louise, the weather was much better. Lake Louise has more snow this year than they have had for years. It was only cold some of the time which only meant that we skied like crazy people. Run after run after run until my legs were screaming and I again considered the question. Was this fun or was it just some kind of mild to mad torture? Was this play? If we had more money, more time - were less committed to work and church would we actually choose to do this more?

Okay change the thought. What about work? There are times when work is by far more fun than skiing. When I am with a group, teaching something, considering some difficult problem and I am on a roll..... coming up with ideas, stories, examples - making them think, laugh, feel deeply....That is fun like no other thing that I experience. It feels so much like "play". I have a book called "Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly(I defy you to pronounce the author's name)that talks about the nature of the experience rather than labelling it as play or work. It is about finding joy in what we do. Cool.

I never saw my parents have much fun. They relaxed at night watching TV but the certainly didn't play when I was growing up. I was surprised when my father played the harmonica once. I didn't know he knew how. I was amazed when he came swimming once in Radium (on the one holiday I ever remember taking) and he did a cannonball and just about emptied the pool. I was also fascinated with the idea of my mother doing elocution and playing basketball when she was young. Those pastimes were just as it says, in the past time. We played Rook a bit as a family but other than that the "fun" or "play" was pretty individual.

Most of what I considered fun or play had to do with sports. I curled in junior high. I skated on ponds and at the outdoor rink in the winter. Tobogganing on the river hills was kind of like the skiing experience - more like survival. Baseball was huge in school in both elementary and junior high. Training for the track meet was also something that I spent hours and hours doing.

Swimming in irrigation ditches was standard summer fun. My brother Herb taught me how to dog paddle when I was five and considering that only the canal was deep and the current so swift that all you had to do was float with the current pushing you until it was shallow, it was amazing that I learned to swim at all. The smaller ditches had moss covered "drop-boxes" that were like slides, whipping you down into sandy bottomed, though shallow whirlpools.

Waterton picnics brought the opportunity to swim in a heavenly pool with crystal clear, warm, water. And of course the tallest slide on the playground ever. My Dad would push me on the swings sometimes - grabbing my legs when I got really high. Those were the days of ridiculously tall swings where you could be pushed higher than children can even dream of now. The swings had boards for seats so you could stand up and pump to go really high by yourself. There were also giant merry-go-rounds and really big teeter totters.

Sometimes when I am skiing or doing some other sport that now seems to hurt more than please my body, I wonder if I should train more. Perhaps it is just that my body is not up to the challenge as it was. Maybe if I "worked" harder, I could lose myself in the fun of sport again. Perhaps it is just "play" that needs to be relearned. Maybe I have forgotten how. That relearning sounds too much like "work" again doesn't it. On the other hand maybe it is something that is just gone - a something from a past time no long a pastime. Maybe there shouldn't be the distinctions between work and play at all. Maybe it is just about joy and there are no boundaries or definitions that make any sense. In that case I can stop thinking about it and go to bed. Goodnight.

Love Was All Around

I have a beautiful bouquet of red roses on my living room table. There are 13 to be exact. I am not sure why roses come in "baker's dozens" but this bouquet did. This bouquet was a bit of a surprise but certainly an appreciated one. Both of us have been feeling pretty stressed and overloaded of late. There has not been much time for romantic thoughts or time together. As I was admiring the flowers, I started to think about this whole love and marriage thing and what it has meant to me. Its funny how defining our experiences as a child can be.

My parents certainly gave me the opportunity to learn about love in marriage. When I think of how much they loved each other, one core image is ever present. I see them wrapped in a passionate embrace, (usually in the kitchen, it was where my mother was), sharing a long and deeply romantic kiss.

We had a picture in the family album of them kissing like that. The picture was taken when they were probably in their late 30's or early forties. The picture was black and white and so the tones were muted and soft. They were standing on a hill and there was just a bit of a breeze. You could tell that from Mom's dress and hair. The embrace was perfectly choreographed. My father was lithe and strong. My mother, slender, fitting perfectly in my father's arms as he held her close. The picture of that embrace, that wonderful image of romance and the feeling of deep and abiding love that it brings are forever part of me.

These demonstrations of love were frequent, so much so that my friends could not help but also see them. If not kissing, just holding hands while they watched TV. At least three friends commented on how lucky I was. They had never seen their parents kiss or even sleep in the same room. Another friend just recently said what a difference being in our loving home had made to her. It was the only experience that she had of happy family life as a child. I realized, how I have taken it for granted.

There were other ways that they showed that they loved each other. They were always together. Mom spent very little time in the house or working in the yard. She was so often with Dad - going to town, feeding the cattle, doing the chores. We were frequently left alone since when Dad went to Bull Sales or on other business, Mom always went too. That was okay. It didn't ever bother me that Mom and Dad loved each other more than us.

What a difference it has made to me - this example. I have been blessed to have a wonderful and loving friend and companion for almost 35 years. We too have passionately kissed in the kitchen. We have not been able to work and be always together but have stolen time together whenever we could. Late night shopping at IGA, picking up kids from lessons,Sunday afternoon naps and especially (for me anyway) jogging in the morning.

When I left home to go to university, my mother said that she hoped I wasn't offended but that she was looking forward to just being with "Daddy". I wasn't, and as much as I love my children, I look forward to just being with "Daddy" too.

I was just thinking........

I clearly remember where I was and what I was doing when I first began to think about thinking. I was four years old. I know that because I was sitting on the couch (chesterfield as we called it at home)looking out the window at my Grandmother's house that was across the street. We lived up on the east hill in Cardston, not too far from where my brother in law lives now. It was a windy day and I was thinking about how I would like to go outside and run around the house. I didn't because that would be bad to do. Children who did that got whooping cough. I noticed I had just moved my arm and it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't really know how I had done that. How did I make it move? I had also been recently wondering how my cat Snowball, a big white Persian , could think. She couldn't talk and thinking obviously needed words.

I can remember clearly some of the things my mother would say and wonder what they meant. "I wish these flies were in Halifax" What sort of a magical place was Halifax? "That oatmeal will stick to your ribs" Did it really? Was the inside of me a big empty space where some food stuck and some didn't? " You're a better door than a window." This one really bothered me. I would be dancing in front of the television while the whole family was watching and someone, usually my father or my brother would say this. I had no idea what they meant since I was neither a door nor a window. I just didn't know and it annoyed me. It seemed that everyone around me knew everything. I didn't like not knowing, not understanding.

I asked a lot of questions. Having had a child that fascinated me by asking questions that I had no absolutley no answer for, I can understand somewhat the frustration I must have been. My brother's response was usually the same. I would ask why about something that he was doing and he would say "Oh just something to make little girls ask questions." The worse part was that he never would answer me. If I would ask him the time, he would hold up his watch to my face and say " Its this time." I couldn't yet tell time which leads me to wonder why I cared so much what time it was. I was no older than seven.


The importance of good thinking was more than an under the surface value in our family. It was an explicit standard of performance for all of us kids. When I asked what I should wear to school one day in grade 1, my mother replied that she didn't care. I could wear what I wanted. I replied, stamping my foot,"Daryl's mother tells her what to wear every day". My ranting was to no avail. I had to decide. My Father was not always so pleasant about his encouragement to think. He had more creative ways to compare us to dumb animals when were driving cattle, than I care to remember. We were chided to use our brains not our brawn. When we made mistakes, the feedback on our behaviour was "high IQ, low application".

This emphasis on thinking was also manifest in the lack of instruction on how to do complex tasks. It was a struggle to figure out how to harness my pony Prince to the cart by myself. There were so many buckles and straps. Probably the best example of this, "figure it out for yourself", was learning to drive a standard transmission. In my case it was the farm truck with an on the column shift. I was either 15 or 16 and wanted to be able to drive anything that could ever be available. It was summer time and the truck was parked close to the back door of the house.

Our drive way angled back toward the lane. There were trees on one side and a small irrigation ditch on the other. The driveway curved just a little and if you weren't careful and went straight you would hit the bunkhouse. It was critical to stay on the road because the final challenge was to not hit trees on both sides of the driveway where it entered the lane. Past that point all you had to do was turn and head down the lane. Of course if you didn't manage that, there was the corral to hit.

I knew all of this when I asked if I could learn to drive the truck. My Dad said yes and handed me the keys. I replied," Aren't you going to teach me?" To which my father replied," Hell no, I'm not getting in with you. You've seen me do it before." Well I did manage to find reverse, back up in great jerks and finally got the timing of using the clutch. All pretty stressful though.

So lets see...... Thinking is about using words, making decisions, understanding what others say and figuring out how to do things. The most important thing though to me is that its about figuring out what things mean, knowing the right answer.

Well now I teach thinking. I lead groups of very intelligent people through a learning process that has them become aware of the power of their assumptions. They identify their values and become aware of how their values impact their decisions. They explore their perceptions and how they draw conclusions about what the behaviour of others mean to them. They learn to ask questions of all sorts which incidentally most people find really hard to do. We talk about the power of context - all those factors that are part of the situation or problem. We become more aware of the fact that there is no reality, just perspectives that need exploring.

My experience with this whole set of skills is unfortunately that it doesn't make life particularly easier. I warn them that after the course they will be more annoyed by poor thinking and that the world will have even more shades of grey. They will make more informed decisions but making the decisions will not be easier. It will likely take more time and be in someways more painful. The worst part is the fact that there will be fewer right answers.

You see, knowledge is tentative,conjecture. It is our best hypothesis in the moment until something about the current context changes. What we can know with reflective effort is our own perspective. This is always value laden, personal and contextually driven.

A recent experience brings this all into very clear focus. My third daughter just had a baby. In the days preceding this event, I read much of book about the history of birthing. It tracked birthing practices from the middle ages up to the present time. I read about my time - the seventies. It spelled out clearly where the context of drugless, "natural" birthing practices had come from. I learned where they fit in history. It was not hard to understand. My mother's generation had been completely sedated for labour and strapped down. They woke up to find out what baby they had.

I don't know that my mother had that experience. "It wasn't something we every discussed." All I know is what I had experienced. All my friends had babies the same way and after each birth experience, we compared the ups and downs and intricacies of our labours. Giving birth was, as one of my daughters described it , initiation into "the club". There was a feeling of understanding and sharing at a visceral level of an experience that is as intense and life changing as no other. Although we couldn't really share the experience or know how it was for someone else there was a kinship in the having been through it.

My own daughters live in a different context. Epidurals are the norm. Pain is possible to remove from the birthing experience entirely. To do otherwise is the oddity. Now armed with this new information about the contextual nature of birthing practice I had a new lens to process the birth of the latest grandchild. I had become over the last few years less willing to judge and interested in this change. What did I think about it? I wasn't sure. I couldn't help wondering whether it really was a good choice. I was a child of the sixties after all. Would it be the same as baby sleeping positions. What was absolutely right in the seventies would become absolutely wrong in the 21st century. Would new research about epidurals eliminate the practice or had the experience of birthing changed forever? I really didn't know.

I was surprised then, when a feeling of absoute sadness swept over me as I learned of the epidural. It was intense and deep and took some time to consider. What was my emotional response about? What did it mean? What did I think? As I considered this I realized at first that it was about not being able to share what was one of the central experiences of my life with someone who mattered a great deal to me. I did not understand the experience that she had had and it felt as though she could not really understand mine. But, it was much more than that.

It was about the sharing of all experience across contexts. It was about the value of my own experience and the nature of wisdom. Wisdom has been something I have cherished and longed to develop. I have long been aware of the paradox," The more I know the less I know". I am even more sure of the truth of that now. In this era of constant and ever increasing change, the shelf life of knowing is very short. Everything must be tentative because the context changes so quickly. What are universal truths and what are out dated prejudices? What are best practices and what are just habits?

I guess things haven't really changed for me. I still want to be better at thinking. I need to be better at identifying the context and understanding its impacts. I need to become faster at understanding how my values are shaping my perspective. I need to be better at sharing my perspective in a way that people understand that I view my perspective as just that, my best guess at the time. I need to be become more skillful at and more open to experiencing vicariously the perspectives of others. The bottom line is that I need to become comfortable with taking action that is not based on knowing but is based on being open to possibilities.

Well thinking is still about using words, making decisions, understanding what others say and figuring out how to do things. But even more than before, it is about figuring out what things mean and considering what the best answer is at the time, knowing that there may not ever be a right answer.

Its all about dress-up

Today was Sunday and a day to dress-up. Yes , I mean it in both senses of the word. I do mean to put on "dressy" clothes and also in the sense of wearing a costume. I realized that every day of my life (and that is only a mild exageration), I have planned the night before, what I will wear. I remember doing this in earnest in junior high and high school but I am sure the practice began many years earlier. You see I think that what dress-up is, in the Sunday sense of the word, is only a bit removed from the game of dress-up that was my passion as a child.

I would have to say that there is nothing that defined me more as a child than dress-up. I wore bright red lipstick to church when I was four and gypsey scarves to school when I six. The latter behaviour must have become an imbedded gene as I had a child who at four wore stretch pants on her head. There was a dress-up room, a never used entrance, in our house at Boundary Creek ranch. There I kept my beautiful curtains that I draped around myself and stored the high heels that made every exotic outfit complete. I dreamed of having high heels that fit. My mother bought me a pair of toy ones ones once. It was a dream come true. They were hard plastic and really just a sole that fit on with elastic straps. They were beautiful with sparkles imbedded in the plastic. Being the '50s, and the plastic industry very new, they were brittle and lasted only for two days before they snapped in two. I was broken hearted.

The dress-up venue changed when we moved to Lethbridge. I had a whole unfinished basement to fix up as a play house. The costumes were consistent, still the curtains although now being taller I could actually use old dresses of my mothers and older sisters. The game expanded to include friends, Laurie Maxwell, Connie Johnson, and Marlene Selman. In Scandia, it became solitary once more with no interested companions and finally was replaced when I went to Junior High, with wardrobe planning.

This brings me back to my original thought, that dressing up is really just about playing dress-up as an adult. This week-end has been a case in point. In mulling over what to wear to church today, I considered the new yellow cotton blouse with a beige and grey hounds tooth skirt and a grey jacket - kind of a country business look. Decided against it. Skirt too uncomfortable and somehow it just wasn't right. The weather is snowy so wearing my new elegant black boots with long toes and high heels with a thick cozy green wool turtle neck would be a relaxed comfortable look and feel. Problem is I didn't feel like being approachable today. I'm in a quiet, reflective, introverted mood so I opted for the highly intimidating black on black look. It was hard core dramatic sophisticated and designed to scare people away. Black jacket, skirt, boots, turtle neck with just a dash of colour - a splashy blue scarf I got from a supplier for Christmas. I figure that if I wanted to soften the impact I could make the first move and smile and talk. Otherwise I would be left alone. I think it worked pretty well.

Friday was the Sweetheart's ball. I opted for Romance. A soft gauzy ruffly almost transparent beige blouse with a sophisticated long black skirt and my gold stiletos. A new look for me. I had rejected the sparkley sophisticated clingy top with a low neck top I had worn last year. Just not what I wanted to be. I considered a gold brocade jacket but it's formality didn't reflect my escapist mood - too much like work or mother of the bride. The blouse was perfect. I felt almost transformed - soft doey eyed, fragile..... .

I now know that really I am still playing dress up. All those nights at Scandia that I spent hours trying on outfits to decide on what to wear the next day were not expressions of insecurity but of escaping into the world of make believe. In front of my mirror I could try on ways of being, exploring what and who I wanted to be. Did I want to be the artist, the professional, the jock, the good morman girl, the trendy Twiggy in a mini. So many possibilities. All I had to do was decide and figure out how to make them work.

The question that I have now is, "why do I have such a limited cast of possible characters". Take the retro look for example. I tried on two retro dresses on my last shopping excursion at a consignment store. One was a pretend early 20s velvet. Interesting but pretty wierd on me. Maybe just too much like a costume. The other a sparkley early 60's shift and jacket. I couldn't help thinking that maybe someone would think I wasn't retro and that I hadn't really left the 60s behind. I have daughters that can pull off all kind of looks from retro to artist,and even high fashion, New York New York really well. I often just feel kind of pathetic. You know how you feel watching a really bad amateur actor that you just feel sorry for because there is nothing really believeable about their performance. That's how some looks seem for me. I just can't believe them.

Maybe its that when you pretend to be something, you have to want to be it. I wanted to be a Gibson Girl for my wedding and it would have worked for me if my hat would have been right. I wanted to be a medieval princess for high school graduation but couldn't find the right kind of tapestry brocade. I settled for the Classic Vogue and felt okay in my beige crepe blouse and long velvet wraparound. No one else had anything close. I can really pretend to be a high powered business woman in a suit. John T Malloy would be proud. I like to pretend to be a cowboy, a runner and a pioneer. I try to pull off being a skiier and I would dearly love to be able to be a mountain woman and a dramatist. I could do those with more money and more places to play the role. I can sometimes feel close to getting it right. I almost always feel pathetic trying to be cool, trendy, and sexy however. Well, maybe, after all, it does take more than wanting it and getting the costume. Maybe I should take that clown course or improv class I've been thinking about and increase my acting skills after all.