Life is Your Story

Preface: Many years ago my dog and I fell through the ice on a lake in the country. My husband was away patrolling at a ski hill and the house we rented at the time was in an isolated area. The moment I fell through and started to go into deep freeze - I heard my late Grandfather telling me to fight and survive. I equate the depth, darkness and overall tone of this post to the traumatic events we all experience within our lifetimes and the spirit that arrives and takes us by the hand and saves us from everything and everyone including and most importantly ourselves. We all fall - here's to hoping we all get back up again. ---------------------------------------------- What happens when the ground you stand upon falls out from underneath you? Is an ambulance sent to the scene? Is there a trauma team on call waiting for you in an operating room? Are your loved ones contacted and gathered together? Are you able to express what is happening and why? Is there news covera...

We take chances every day. Actually we take chances every second of every day - we just don't realize it and we therefore do not always weigh the consequences. We take chances in allowing ourselves to fall in love for the first time. We are vulnerable and we let someone into our deepest, darkest secrets and share with them the most intense of intimacies - love making. Many people believe that life is but a chance. It may sound Shakespearean but think about it... how many times has something happened to you that seemed like less than a coincidence? Maybe it all is one big chance sort of like leaping over a large puddle between the corner of the street and the road and you either end up in a smash landing or you make it safe and dry onto the sidewalk. It's sometimes good to take chances because in taking them we change the path we are on and turn onto something new and refreshing and we even discover a part of ourselves that had been hidden or lost. Other times we t...

How to make more money? I've got it. It's genius. Actually the idea came directly from Tom Cruise's first starring role in a major film that film being "Risky Business". Here is a synopsis for those of you who missed it. Tom is a teen growing up in an affluent Illinois suburb. His parents go out of town and leave him alone for the first time. They also leave him with cash, a Porsche and a very expensive antique egg thing. Tom's friend convinces him to call a prostitute with whom he can lose his virginity. He does (call her and lose his virginity) and then all hell breaks loose and he ends up needing money and lots of it fast so he can return his home, his father's car and his mother's egg back to its original state. So him and his girlfriend (paid prostitute)open up a bordello in his parents house inviting all the local male teens to pay for sex and they do (pay for sex and have it). While all of this is taking place, an academic advisor or interviewer...

It creeps in slowly and tactfully, systematically erasing the images and memories that make up the scrapbook of your life. It floods your foundation causing deep cracks and crevices and it crawls into the well lit tunnels that send messages that guide you in how to chew, swallow, speak, walk and think and it darkens them with its filthy dirt. It confuses, mystifies and destroys. It holds you hostage and when your loved ones try to free you, it throws you into solitary confinement - no trial, no jury, just a corrupt judge, hammer down on an iron table. Yet day in, day out, they return hoping to find a trace of you. They need to do something that makes them feel like they are doing something. So they brush your hair, rub lotion on your arms and back, buy you new slippers. They nurture and nourish you with your favourite food that they prepare when they return home because they can't sleep and they need to feel like they are doing something, anything that may make a differenc...

It's already becoming dark outside earlier. It's already Fall. The Jewish New Year is knocking at the door and standing there by it are the souls we have lost in the year gone by. Whenever there is a holiday or a reason for our family to get together and sit around a dinner table I am reminded of how fortunate I am. At the same time, I look for family members, people I have so greatly loved and so very much miss who no longer sit there in a chair conversing, laughing and looking my way. We all lose people we love and when holidays come around, especially the New Year, a myriad of memories flood our minds and churn at our souls leaving us short of breath and weak at the knees. A Grandmother, a sister, a brother, an uncle, a mom, a dad - where have they gone and how do you move forward without them? Scents bring me back. This time of year when I arrive at my parents home and I smell the chicken soup, roast potatoes and my mother's incredible cakes and pies, I can close my eye...

Alone - it's an awful word. I meet people often who spend day in, day out alone. Some are fortunate to have a pet but most can't because it's not affordable or they live in a rooming house that does not allow it. I know them well. They participate in support groups that I facilitate for those suffering from mental illness. They have lost their mental health, jobs, financial independence, in some cases their entire family support, their friends, their pride, their dignity and inevitably themselves. These are the people you see on the "side lines" when you go about your every day routines. They are sitting alone in cafes nursing a cup of coffee and a muffin while reading or writing hoping that someone will look their way and perhaps smile or say hello. They are the ones walking - always walking because it's free and it takes up time and they have no where else to go and nothing else to do. They are also the ones who may look as if they are staring right pa...

Think of the park where you played when you were young. It was probably the closest one to your house. Back then, you could walk to the park, meet your friends there and play all day without much worry at all. So you've taken yourself to that place and you are accompanied by all your childhood friends and the bonds have been casted in plaster. Bonds that are perhaps or even likely the strongest you have ever formed beyond family and partners. Everyone is there even those who have exited this life. They are all smiling, healthy and you can reach out and touch them. Today in this flashback, in this park, everyone is very much alive and safe. The mission of the day - simple - have fun, laugh, chase one another across an open field, or a basketball court. Learn something - how to throw a Frisbee or pitch a strike or do a lay up. Gather that endless energy that has returned to every molecule of your being and put it all out there for everyone to see. Express yourself without an...

 This is a tribute, a pool of memories and a heavy heartache. It's the one year anniversary of the passing of both of my dogs. We never would have expected to lose them within a month of one another. For all of those who know me, my family and friends, you also know this story too well yet it is a story I relive, day in, day out and as a writer, I write about what I live. I had two dogs and they were the loves of my life. They were my children. Buddy was 13 going on 14 yrs of age. We adopted him from a shelter when he was 4 months old. He was a Flat Coat Retriever, actually a sought after and very expensive breed. The people who gave him up were living in a small apartment, leaving him there for 10 hours each day unattended and he consistently barked and destroyed things while they were absent (big surprise). He was a wild puppy. He barked all the time. He definitely mistaken me for a fellow canine and wanted to play with me and throw me around. He destroyed my bik...

Ethan Hawke. An actor who has played the same part over and over again and I don't think he has washed his hair once. He also smokes throughout all of his movies and although he is evidently not clean, the women love him and you know what? So do I. He's a bad boy. We like bad boys (we is you and me so just nod). When I was studying creative writing and literature at Concordia University in Montreal (where I learned about run along sentences and commas or was that semi-colons or were those semi-colons...I don't know because I never listened and here comes a dash) - there was this guy in my class. His name was well I can't really say his name so I will call him Tray (cause I always wanted to date a guy named Tray). Yes so Tray use to sit at the back of the class with me while our classic literature teacher read Chaucer (very confusing trust me). Trace would roll his cigarettes one by one, licking them closed with his tongue. The first time we spoke, class had ended...

Being in love is an incredibly, powerful feeling. It carries you from every day oblivion into a mind-blowing cluster of intense passion and desire. I don't know why we fall in love with certain people. Although in most instances, I have always felt that the people I have most been in love with; I knew in a past life. There is nothing quite as intense and hypnotic as those first few months together making love. When I think of being in love and making love, I think of deep, warm kisses. I think of lying in bed in the dark, buried under the covers, speaking softly about things that I share no where else, with no one else. I think of how magical it feels to melt into one another; nothing in-between except the energy of our lustful love. I am reminded of the stillness, skin to skin, loving, caring, floating effortlessly. Photo by Edward Eyers When was the last time you made love to someone, disconnecting from the world and all the worries? Can you remember how it felt to s...

We all start relationships with the best of intentions. We meet someone and they make us feel good about ourselves. They make us feel whole and alive. These feelings are amazing. They are some of the most incredible we have in our lifetimes. However they don't always stay because sooner or later we show our true colours, we argue over the same thing again and again and we lose the physical attraction we have for one another. When all of that takes place, you better have a rock hard friendship to hold up that bridge because a bridge is what you are going to need to get from there to somewhere new, next and better. Think about this - how often do you argue your partner (minimum 5 years together)? How often have you lied about something because it's easier to lie than to have an argument? How often have you said something really awful in the heat of a fight that you wish you hadn't said and you know you can't take back because it will still be there looming ...

Think of your childhood in a flash not at length. Close your eyes. What do you see? I see myself at 7 yrs of age. I am with my grandmother who was in the early stages of a devastating disease - MS. At the time she has a walker but 5 years later she would become paralyzed from the neck down and condemned to a hospital bed. We are on a picnic by a large fountain that shoots up from the mossy base so high that I can see it catch the rays of the sun. My grandmother is smiling and laughing and she affectionately brushes my cheek with her hand and kisses me on the forehead and says "I am very proud of you and I love you." I close my eyes again and I see my dog Buster who passed away last fall just before his fifth birthday from Cancer. This is a constant vision I have of him. He is sitting on the top stair waiting for me to come home. I open the door and there he is just waiting - no matter how long - he waits. He runs down to greet me and pushes me into the wall with...

"Two Zen monks in robes and shaved heads, one young, one old, sitting side by side cross-legged on the floor. The younger one is looking somewhat quizzically at the older one, who is turned toward him and saying "Nothing happens next. This is it." (from The New Yorker) I'm always waiting for what is next instead of focusing on what is now. There are people at this very moment (and you may be one of them) concerned, worried, scared in terms of Hurricane Irene and the damage, destruction and death she will bring. I would worry for my family and for all of those I love. I would also have compassion and concern for elderly people living alone in their homes without anyone to come and help them. Can you imagine being 80+yrs old and you really never leave your house/apartment unless it is for a medical appointment and you are suddenly alone in the dark unable to manage a safer situation - knowing that no one even realizes you are there? What about those su...

I t was 1AM, I couldn't sleep and neither could my dog Gainey so I grabbed a headlight and we snuck out without awaking my other canine or my husband. We headed down a wooded path in the light of a half moon. We were surrounded by giant pines and the sound of crickets and bull frogs chatting by a pond. We headed up a small hill and sat on a large rock and looked up at the sky. In the country, you can see all the stars. Whenever I look up at the sky I think of my dogs who passed away almost a year ago. I lost both of them within a month of one another. They were my boys and I loved them very much. While Buddy was older his stroke and passing the next day did not come as a total surprise however my Buster was only 4 and his terminal cancer diagnosis came as a terrible, horrific force that I wrestled with all my might but in the end I lost that battle as did Buster. Deep in the sky silouettes of warm white clouds float like giant snowflakes and every now and then a star sudden...