How do you rest

… Write a newsletter inspired by the word, rest (or maybe…just rest, your choice)

My whole body is aching and I’m exhausted. Both existentially, physically, mentally and whimsically.

The whole of me is tired.

After less than a month back on social media I can feel the pressures of “not doing enough”, that the world is full of war, natural disasters, people who used to be on the same side…fighting. The hate building. I can see the global destabilization happening in real time.

When I was 11 years old my father was being sworn in as a judge up north. He’d been a lawyer in a small town. My Dad had fallen into law. He’d been taking a French literature degree, fallen for a girl studying for the LSAT (or so the story goes) and had helped her study. He decided to take the LSAT with her. He got it. She didn’t. So he’d become a lawyer. By accident.

I’m my father’s child in this respect. I often end up where the wind blows me. Trying to be helpful in the ways I can.

My Dad never set out to become a judge. Which I think made him great for the job. He genuinely cares about people. In that deep way. He cares about community. The weight of being a lawyer…it weighed on him. It was late nights. Pierogies instead of payment. Thankfully my mom and he both worked and we fed ourselves by hunting, fishing, trapping, foraging and gathering and planting our giant garden. My parents always shared what they had. If someone was down on their down, in the midst of hard times they’d be helping. They were always helping. I grew up that way. My parents both have a heightened sense of justice. I inherited it. I can feel, everywhere, how things are unfair. My Dad was always bringing home stories about how someone ended up in court, but it was nuanced, very rarely told in a bad guy/good guy story-line…he shed light on the nuances and the system that was oppressing everyone. The system that gave people roles, distanced people from community, isolated us from one another. Pitted neighbour against neighbour because resources were scarce.

My parents gave when they had, accepted help when they needed it. I grew up in a place where mutual aid was part of our very fibre.

Then that day arrived. I remember my Dad was being sworn in. It was the same day that bombs started dropping in what would be known as the Gulf War.

I was watching the television. The green bombs falling on places I’d only heard of.

The phone started ringing. It was people looking for my father to congratulate him. I answered each call with one sentence.

“Don’t you know there is a war going on??”

And I would hang up.

I got a stern talking to that night, but also I think my Dad was also proud that he’d taught me to care about the world. About people.

Inside of me there is an 11 year old hanging up on people over and over who can’t see how the world is in a state of need. It’s needs us. But hanging up doesn’t help.

The amount that it needs is overwhelming.

It can be so hard not to shut down, to crawl into a cave, to hope it will all be over, to put our trust in the system to figure it out.

I can feel all of it all the time. I know you can too. I know it can be utterly immobilizing.

Today I brought my best friend for coffee before work. We said hello to the other wondrous bookseller on the street. We chatted gently with the people who made us our hot morning beverages.

We walked into the bookstore. I said good morning to the shop.

My best friend looked at books.

Then we stared at some handsome bees on the flowers outside and she went on her adventure.

I looked at the stack of towering boxes to receive and felt my pathological demand avoidance kick in. I did not want to put books away. Oof.

The UPS driver came in to add to the pile.

It was not my UPS driver. The one who put a personal delivery in the back of my car because he knew I was working and didn’t want to leave it on my front porch in the rain all day. Who knew my name and always had room for a gentle hello and a small chat in his day.

My heart fell. I know change is inevitable. But it is hard for me. For a lot of people.

But this new driver. He was gentle and calm, and stopped for a moment to chat. He told me he’d pass on our thanks and gratitude to our former driver.

I made room in my heart for him.

It’s a big place my heart. Kind of like Mary Poppins Bag. An endless space, but because it’s infinite and people are always being added, I need reminders of the people who’ve been pushed to the ever-expanding edges. Like I will forget to do the laundry if I close the closet door. Or let watermelon rot if it’s at the back of the fridge. I am not forgetting you on purpose. I am always remembering you and feeling scared that you’ll think I don’t care if I’m not always checking in.

But you could forget about me for years and I’d just be happy to hear from you.

I set alarms to send messages to my closest friends. I associate connecting with them to tiny consistent moments in my day.

When I take my dog for a walk I voice message my friend in the hospital. I try to do this every day. I have been sending him nearly daily messages for two years, because that’s when his mystery illness began. I know that his being forgotten would make his heart hurt. I love him and want him to know that. He looked after me when I was a teenager. He was also a teenager. He made sure I was not hurt, that I always had music to listen to, good food to eat. We made art together. We were both of us queer people looking for community. In our friendship we found it.

I moved away. I wore the shoes we painted together every day until my feet hurt.

I carried them from place to place. When I hear Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah I think of him.

He is still here, and so I message him moments from my day.

****time passes****

It may seem like I’ve forgotten the core of what I was talking about. I haven’t. Every little thing is connected.

Sometimes I feel like a rucksack full of stories about to burst. I am made up of stories. Of concerns. Of worries. Of caring.

I think this is why I am craving the making of a small corner of the world. Because I need to be doing something kind. Actively. Every day. It is what fuels me. Staring at this stack of books that I’m to put away is making me feel that this, what I’m doing, is a job. I am grateful for this job. But I know in the end that my purpose here is to sell books, and to put them away. The magic I make, the stories I listen to…that is incidental. I have not been hired to distribute kindness and make magic.

(Hilariously, at my other “job” on Monday, that is what I’ve been hired to do. It is an essential piece of my time there. I’m to sit with the locals, and the people passing through. I’m to be a part of diminishing the loneliness of existence. That is part of my purpose there. Part of the purpose of the space I work in on Mondays. Yesterday my friends, the people who created that space, they came down to bring me the potato kitten and to check in on me, to share stories. Part of my being there is friendship, and it makes me feel so honoured that they trust me to help them build that space. Because there we are a we. It is a community.)

The bookstore I work at is magical. It really is. I promise. I think it just makes me crave having my own place like this so I can set the tone, so I can write magic and community and kindness into its purpose.

It is not this bookshop’s fault that it is so beautiful that it makes me dream of more. That it reminds me of the times when I was facilitating community on a year and a half ago.

I love this bookstore. The people who have made it the gorgeous entity it is…they are phenomenal people. Such wondrous people.

All of the bookstores on this street and there are three. They all care so much. About books. About people. About community.

I think at the core of all of this, it’s community, it’s feeling connected to our neighbours. It’s hoping our collective of children will be held and loved. It’s hoping the land will be cared for, that it will care for us. It’s looking up at the stars and seeing how small we are. How very small we are.

When I was made I think I got a part of the stars that remembers the empty beginnings and the bigness of the universe existing all of a sudden. The nothing and the everything.

It’s hard to focus when everything is always happening all the time, and I’m just a speck in all of that. But damned if I’m not going to be a speck that makes a tiny difference. I’m going to connect with some other specks who also care so much.

I see you there. I see you caring. I see you needing rest. I am sending you so much love.

Thank you for existing. I’ve got boxes to put away. Then tonight resting to do. So tomorrow I can figure out how to do the things.

Heart,

Wake