An avoidance of the obvious and belief in the present

I’ve been writing this blog for over six years. My first two posts were on December 19, 2019. One about yoga and one about MS. I’ve written fifty seven stories specific to yoga, forty eight stories specific to MS, six stories about teaching, twenty eight Moon poems, seventy three other various poems, song lyrics, stories, and several stories about my journey with prostate cancer. That’s approximately one hundred thousand words. That’s a lot of words.

I’ve reached this point before but it gets louder every time it happens. I wonder; am I repeating myself and should I continue to write this blog (we wonder too Dave).

I want to be a positive force in my stories as that’s kinda who I am but it represents an attitude disguised in self preservation.

Positively is a way of getting through what I have no chance of changing. I’ve sidelined what MS is doing to me because I can’t change it. I have to live with it; there’s no getting around that. So I look for the positive things that are in my life. And if I look for them I find them. Sometimes they show up even when I’m not looking. It’s kinda the life in life. Those unexpected people, things, events that occur. They can be tiny and they can be big. Most times for me they are tiny but what they represent is huge. Sometimes the huge ones are the ones that occur in my mind. It’s a vast space just like the universe. And the universe is constantly inviting me to believe. It talks to me all the time. I’d tell you but maybe this story will infer. Statements like that sound like I’m some flighty flake but I’m far from that. And I hope this story indicates why.

My mind has the power to see the good in life. To see how good I have it and how much love is around me.

My granddaughter lives about seven minutes away from me – she’s thirteen. It’s her last year of middle school. She’s old enough and does take the city bus to school. One day a week I pick her up and take her to school. I don’t have too but I want too.

It’s about a twelve minute drive from her place to school so I pick her up with twenty minutes to spare. If traffic is good we will stop at a bakery / coffee shop and pick something up.

Some days we talk some days we hardly say anything. Everyday we listen to music. She has hers and I have mine. When we first started we decided to each play a song we thought the other hadn’t heard before. Then it morphed into me just listening to her music. I like her taste in music it’s a learning experience for me but it’s also my passion – I love music. She’s introduced me into artists I now follow. I get to experience what she likes and it’s new to me. I love a good song I haven’t heard before – it gives me hope. (Funny eh.. new music gives me hope?).

Mornings for me are unpredictable. If I haven’t been to the bathroom we could be in for a surprise. The thing about MS and me is that sometimes I have to go and I have to go right now. So I’ve made it a point not to do things early in the morning that take me away from a bathroom. But I take that chance with my granddaughter. It’s way worth it.

When she started kindergarten I walked her to school most days. At the time her mom and her were living with my wife and I. They were transitioning from Vancouver to Victoria. My wife and daughter were both working so I took her to school. I was also practicing yoga at that time. I’d go to yoga class in the morning and be back in time to walk her to school. I could do that walk back then – I no longer can.

It’s not that far of a walk about 800 meters. Every day we’d walk, hold hands, and she’d talk the whole time. That was one of the best times of my life – that walk to and from school. We did a book about those walks. She did the illustrations and I wrote the stories. We gave the book to friends, family, her kindergarten teacher, and people we met on that 800 meter walk.

Her first illustration in the book was both of us holding hands on the way to school. She painted me with a shirt that said YOGA. Those illustrations were mostly her ideas.

The last sentence I wrote on the back of the book says “I wish I was a granddad before I was a dad”. That says everything those walks taught me. A lesson never to late to learn.

The other day I dropped my granddaughter off at school she kissed me on the cheek and she said “I love you granddad” and I replied I love you too.

I kinda am repeating myself; the words may be different but the message remains the same.

Ahimsa