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My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 102: Talking About Walking

01 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by duckykoren in Cars, driving, Fitness, Health, Stories

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Cars, driving, Family, hospice, joke, kidding, Mother, parking lot, poker face, Shopping, shopping mall, Stories, walk, Walking

My Mother, as I knew her could be funny and challenging on multiple levels.

She had such a good poker face that there were times I couldn’t tell if she was being funny or serious.

Take the following story for example:

After her husband went into hospice care Mother got an apartment of her own.

It was a nice place and right by to a little shopping mall where she bought her necessities of life: paper towels, printer ink, orange pop, and prescriptions.

When I was visiting her in Vermont, I liked going to this shopping mall because it had all kinds of pretty little things that I couldn’t get back in Canada.

Once, when I told her I was heading out to the store she asked me if I wanted her to drive me.

I could only look at her and stare.

“Mother,” I said to her…

“It’s only a hundred yards from the front door.”

She would just shrug her shoulders and raise her arms at me as if to say:

“Okay… okay!”

Not wanting to let the matter go, I pressed further and asked:

“Don’t tell me that you drive to the store….”

Ever since she moved into the apartment I worried about her being too sedentary and not getting enough exercise.

The drive would have taken less than ten seconds, as you were only driving from one parking lot into another.

Her reply to me was that yes, she did drive her car to the store.

Then it was my turn to shrug my shoulders and throw my hands in the air.

It was about a year after she moved into the apartment building that she got her own underground parking spot.

That’s when I got a phone call from her.

“Guess what?” … she asked me.

“What?” I said, instantly afraid.

“I walked to the store today.”

“You actually walked to the store?”

… I was happily surprised.

“How did that happen?” I asked in return.

“Well, I figured it out,” she began explaining to me…

“Remember my new underground parking spot that I told you about?”

I told her that I did.

She continued…

“Well, believe it or not, when I worked it out, it’s a longer walk to the underground parking lot than it is to the store.”

I wish I could have seen the look on her face as she was telling me this so I could maybe have some indication of whether she was kidding me or not.

Either way, I was very grateful that she couldn’t see my face because I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

She always loved reeling me in like that…

In fact…

It amused her to no end.

My.Daily.Distraction ~ Post 63: For The Love Of Birch

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by duckykoren in aboriginal history, Gardening, Gardens, History, trees

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aboriginals, birch trees, History, love, Museums, Trees, walk

I find myself in an odd state of mourning.

While out on a walk, I came upon the sawed up remains of a birch tree whose circumference was well over twelve inches in diameter. The log pieces were sawed up and placed haphazardly across a lawn very much the way a bed of carrots would like on your plate.

This vision was a blow to what had been ingrained into me: that the birch tree was sacred, magical, and everlasting.

At least, as a child of six years old, that is what I believed.

I don’t remember very much about my primary schooling, but what I do remember are the visits to the museums.

There, we studied aboriginal history and my imagination was taken over by the idea of the mysteries of the birch tree, birch bark canoes and birch-bark paper.

My own parents planted birch trees in our yard, and tended to them well. I was taught to respect them, and for heaven’s sakes not to rip off the birch-bark paper because it would prove harmful to the tree.

It was perhaps my first lesson in self-discipline, the first thousands I have encountered in my life.

And so, with the scene of the dismembered birch comes yet another realization that something from childhood has been lost.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best:

“One by one, our comrades slip away…

Deprive us of their shade.”

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