we'll be fine, she said with fingers crossed

Thank you Jesus, it's nearly over. I am trying desperately to have faith in my fellow Canadians, even though they elected Stephen Harper twice and even worse, Mike Harris and Doug Ford. YUCK! Listened to Cross Country Checkup yesterday about pipelines - and what a problem it is, people desperate for jobs, people desperate to stop oil from flowing. Who would think the word 'carbon' would be one of the most spoken words in our election? I still barely know what carbon is.

Luckily I teach tonight, so will be unable to hang around TV and computer biting my nails till I get home at 9.30 or so. But despite other polls that have the Libs and Cons neck and neck, the amazing pundit Anna told me to watch on TVO, Erin Kelly, predicted a Lib minority and I'm going with that until further notice.

Saturday night was my friend Stella Walker's 60th birthday party - Stella, as I've written before, is an operatic singer and singing teacher, a comedic actor, a visual artist, a non-Jewish Yiddish speaker who has worked as a cantor, and a non-Indigenous teacher of Cree = an extraordinary person. A treat to know. Had a discussion with one of her friends, who has a 13-year old son, about TicToc, how his son had flown with friends to L.A. to meet their favourite young YouTube stars, some of whom are now millionaires. "Blogs are so ten years ago," he said. Soon our world will be run by pre-teens.

Sunday I listened to Michael Enright interview the brilliant Harold Bloom, who kept calling him 'dear'. The interview was from some years ago. At one point, as they discuss death, Bloom tells Michael that 3 different gypsies in Europe predicted that he, Harold, would die in October 2019. He died in October 2019. Pretty strange and marvellous. I don't want to meet those gypsies.

Bloom quoted William James: "Wisdom consists in learning what to overlook." Very wise.

Today - being completely honest with you - I saw my shrink about the letters I've been reading. I needed someone to affirm what I was seeing, and she did, pointing out that my parents were fascinating people but not very good parents, unable to put their own voracious needs aside to deal with the two small people in their care. That yes, it's clear that very early, they stigmatized me and idolized my brother, which harmed us both. That in different ways, for some reason, I was threatening to both my parents.

I knew all that, but the letters show it, prove it, and I needed to hear a wise woman affirm it. My family was not the family of Educated with horrendous abuse and neglect, not at all. But still, there was harm by adults to children, and this former child needs to process and figure it out.

Came back to heartening notes from former students, welcome words for my sometimes vulnerable self and for this ancient, old-fashioned dinosaur of a blog:
A quick email to tell you how much I love reading your blog and how much I deeply echo your feelings about the election and the attending madness... Thanks for writing it and also for celebrating the light (familial and otherwise) constantly creeping in. In spite of it all. 

And
I read your blog all the time and want you to know how much you inspire me and no doubt others - hope that helps the bummed out feeling you have been having re your writing success. I know it's totally not the same thing but still.

Thanks to you both. Yes, it does help. The city was brutal today - incessant noise, ambulances, dump trucks, revving cars, a tow truck spewing exhaust that nearly shoved me off my bike. But it's not too cold, the sun comes and goes, the garden is still green - fading, but green. I'm alive, you're alive, and Andrew Scheer is almost certainly not going to run this country. That's the good news, for today, and it'll do just fine. 

PS. Just took an online biological age test. YAY!
Well done your Biological Age is 32.