thebluesock

By Cynthia Bigrigg

Three nights ago, just as I was falling asleep, I had a kind of vision. In it, I was dancing down the main street of my town, loose, free and full of joy. I felt wide open, carefree, as if my soul were bared for all to see. I met someone I knew on the sidewalk and stopped to say hello and give them a hug. The confidence and happiness I felt in that four second vision astounded me so much that I snapped right out of it. I was instantly sad that what I saw and felt in my mind’s eye had vanished, but what I heard and felt in my awakened state was a loud and resounding YES. It was almost New Year’s, and my love for change and progression was putting the pressure on me to come up with some sort of resolution and a plan to go with it. I had searched externally for days, online and through books, in my relationships and in my home, and tried not to be disappointed when nothing inspired me. I knew this had to be it.

So here are my resolutions for 2012:
1) Go to church regularly.
2) Follow (loosely, but DO follow) the routine I have created for myself.
3) Be single and unattached for the year (but still have fun. A lot of it.).
4) Become the more carefree, uninhibited, beautiful, more confident and unchangeably happy person that is dying to show herself from within me.

I have high hopes and expectations for this year. I want adventures. I want fun. I want to have stories that I can write about, but that I will also be able to tell my one-day children (or nieces, nephews and godchildren) – even if I have to omit details to keep the stories age-appropriate and not be accused of being a bad influence. I want new people, new connections and new opportunities. I want to accomplish things. Most of all, I want to squeeze every drop of potential out of each minute, because I am always moving forward, and when I leave, who knows if I will return.

Happy New Year!

By Cynthia Bigrigg

This has been the best year of my life. It hasn’t been the easiest, I did not spend all of it happy, parts of it were devastating and I spent at least one month of it certain that my world was going to crash down around me. But it was the best year of my life.

The second most important thing that I learned in 2011 is how much I need to NOT be seriously committed or attached to anyone for a while. I am too young for that. I (even after all of my adventures) don’t know myself well enough for that. And I am not going to commit myself to anyone else until I have committed to knowing every ounce of my mind, body and soul.

The absolute most important thing I have learned this year is that the only way I will ever be any good for myself or anyone else is to learn how to treat myself really, really well. To respect myself, pamper myself, fuel myself, let myself change and grow, let myself learn, allow myself to follow every little intuition, every gut feeling I get, and show myself complete and utter acceptance and love.

I learned how to stand up for myself, how to be firm without being mean, and how to be comfortable telling someone I love that enough is enough.

I learned that all little birds have to leave the nest, and that for me, becoming an adult meant moving far, far away – I would have remained a child under the thumbs of others if I had stayed.

I learned that grown ups really can do whatever they want, if they have the means to and are prepared to face/aren’t concerned about the consequences.

I learned how to pack my life into a car and take off, how to drive with my knees and how to pull off on the side of the road to take a nap.

I learned that someone can change, but that they can’t change another person. And I learned that it is a waste of time to try.

I learned that I have a lot to learn.

I learned that when the present is entirely satisfying and filled with joy, all of the hurt from the past feels like it existed in a whole other lifetime.

In 2011 I held six jobs until I found the right one. I met people from all over the world. I felt pride in myself and I felt success. I went cliff diving into what I swear was the world’s coldest water. I drove 3600+ kilometers. I slept in hostels and other people’s beds. I tied up loose ends and I learned that living in a space that feels good and right is imperative to my happiness.

2011 was the start of a life not dominated by responsibilities to other people, not dominated by other people’s wishes for me. It was the start of my journey and mine alone. And the journey continues.

By Cynthia Bigrigg

My first Christmas away from my family. I’m not sure how I imagined it. I’m not sure that I imagined it at all. I probably told myself that I would deal with it when the time came, every time the thought popped into the foreground of my mind. Or I may have thought “What family? I have a lot of relatives, but do I really have a family?”. Well, ’tis the season, the time has come, and I’m dealing with it. And I’m dealing with more.

Out of the five of us who comprised my original family, my father and my youngest sister are the only two who live under the same roof. My mom, middle sister and I are scattered. When my parents got a divorce, my father got a new girlfriend and a new family. Apparently we weren’t good enough for him, so he traded us in for another model. My dad and I haven’t spoken since July. I know it’s Christmas and everyone should be all warm and willing to get along, and I’m SURE somewhere it is written that it is the season of forgiveness, but I am SCARED. Quite frankly, I don’t want to give him another chance to lie to me, to let me down, to turn the tables, to fail me, to tell me how selfish and ungrateful I am because I didn’t give him his way. I don’t want to give him a chance to be mean. I am not one of those people who thinks that their father is perfect. I know he is human. And there have certainly been many times where he has been an excellent father. But there have been at least as many times where he has been deceitful and manipulative, where he has guilted and said terrible things, where he has threatened and thrown things across the room. I know that in another life, if I had gone to him and told him that a boyfriend, or anyone really, had been treating me that way, he would have said to me, “You know what to do, Cynthia.”. And I would. And I do. My parents raised me to respect myself and to have standards, and I do. But it hurts like hell that my Dad can’t be my Dad anymore.

And then there’s Mom. Mom was like the Christmas glue in our family. She would spend hours in her bedroom wrapping our presents, and then hiding them in her walk-in closet in an attempt to stop my sisters and I from snooping. She would haul the Christmas tree up from our basement and help us sort through the ornaments. She would decorate the top of the tree where we couldn’t reach. She would make cookies, “spiders” and “bark.” When I was about nine, she told us about how she and her brothers would wake up at five in the morning to open their stockings on Christmas day. This sparked a tradition with my sisters and I that would last until this year. When I was old enough to know “the truth” but my sisters still asked “Mom, do you believe in Santa Claus?” she would reply truthfully and elusively, “I believe in the magic of Christmas.” I thought hearing her say that was the most beautiful thing. Now she says all of the meaning has gone out of it. It holds nothing special for her anymore and she really dislikes it. Hearing that, it’s like the magic is gone.

I think about what my Christmas at home this year would have been like, and I can sum it up in two words: awkward and uncomfortable. Everywhere I would go, something would be wrong, someone would be missing and there would be no magic.

I am reclaiming the magic. (Again, I think there was a “bigger reason” for me coming out here).

I wasn’t expecting any Christmas cards until after Christmas. Really. The mail moves very slowly here. And yet somehow I received parcels from my mom, sisters and grandparents this week! I ripped them open with complete abandon, entirely missing the note on the back of the envelope from my sisters, which sternly warned “not to be opened until Christmas Day.” I grinned as I tore the paper and laughed as I read the messages inside. I didn’t care that to the other pedestrians I looked like a crazy person. I felt great. I felt childish. I felt the magic. When the parcel came from my grandparents (stellar wrapping job, Grandma, I know you’re reading this!) I skipped around my apartment singing “Frosty the Snowman.” I destroyed the brown paper that hid the box and made happy gasps as I pulled out the cheese, fruitcake, chocolate, earrings and the most adorable pair of pajamas, as per tradition. I thought it was the next best thing to being home. But now I think it was supposed to happen like this.

My plans to visit family in British Columbia have been thwarted. Instead, a few friends and I are gathering to make our own Christmas dinner. It won’t be like I imagined, but things rarely ever are. I know we will eat, drink and be merry, and like my Christmas parcels, there will be tidings of comfort and joy.

By Cynthia Bigrigg
I realized today that some of you may not know anything about me, other than what I have previously posted on here. I am going to correct that. Right now. Sort of. I am on a journey of happiness and healing, of self-discovery and self-creation. Here is an incomplete, not-all-encompassing, brief list of some of the things in life that bring me pure joy:

Pretty dresses ~ lit candles in the dark ~ shaking the minister’s hand at the Christmas Eve carol service ~ magnificent thunderstorms watched from the front porch ~ driving fast to country music ~ wheat fields ~ sunsets ~ sunrises ~ a big mug of steaming hot tea ~ realizing that this is the first place I have ever lived where I don’t have to share a bathroom! ~ playful puppies ~ curious kittens ~ incense ~ flowers ~ forests ~ slipping on icy sidewalks but not quite falling ~ chewy brownies ~ Christmas lights shining through a layer of fresh snow ~ girls’ nights out, especially with my mom and sisters ~ friendly strangers ~ dancing ~ red wine ~ mail ~ road trips ~ trains passing through the mountains ~ my bed ~ quiet nights alone ~ sunshine ~ pajamas ~ colourful scarves ~ being silly ~ new haircuts ~ random phone calls ~ log houses ~ baths ~ yellow the shade of butter ~ lattes ~ old things ~ lost and found things ~ good books ~ “The Little Shop Around The Corner” on a cold winter’s day ~ old friends ~ new friends ~ hats ~ beautiful places ~ beautiful spaces ~ warmth when I am cold ~ when things go better than expected ~ music ~ the smell of wood stoves ~ roast beef dinners ~ a good scare ~ hugs ~ embracing womanhood ~ re-embracing childhood ~ mountains ~ oil lanterns ~ a good massage ~ a good discussion ~ people who tell great stories ~ learning, creating, discovering more and more each day. <3

By Cynthia BigriggThe drive from my small mountain town to Edmonton, the booming capital, reminds me so much of Ontario. No majestic mountains, no spread of prairies, just gently rolling hills of sprawling farmland, now covered in a thick layer of untouched snow. Occasionally the speed limit dips from 110 to 80, and I slow to admire a whitewashed one-room town hall in the middle of nowhere, or a blink-and-you-miss-it settlement on my path. These places remind me of the scenes from my mother’s Robert Bateman calendars. Songs of my adolescence and teenage years – country music from the late ’90′s and early 2000′s – play on the radio and I turn them up loud and sing joyfully along. There’s nothing quite like driving through the country listening to those songs. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good because it feels so familiar. It feels like “home.”
At this exact moment in time a year ago, I was preparing to give up and get going. I was depressed, unmotivated, and I felt hopelessly stuck. And now I am here. Far away and practically drinking up my small success. I feel like the polar opposite of my former self, but I feel close again to the self I was before that. Close, but better. Different.
I know I won’t stay here forever, though I grow more and more attached to my job by the day. I will stay years, yes. I will stay long enough to make a notable difference, long enough to get a good chunk of experience. But not forever. This place is just a little bit alien to me. It is certainly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, but I don’t fit quite right here, try as I might, and I know it. I know I will always be “not from here” no matter how long I stay. I know that as long as I am young-ish, no matter how much good I do, there will still be a handful of people here who will not entirely trust me. Of course, that will give me the drive to do my best.
It’s funny to me how, when I am determined to be independent of all things Ontario, this town is my home. And I am attached to it – if you have read any previous posts, I don’t have to convince you of that. But when I ache for my family and old friends and the support that comes so easily with them, ache for country roads and evening walks and the heavy smell of rain, ache for the old kind of adventures that will welcome me unquestioned and unguarded, then, Ontario is home.
I know one day i will find my place, but I also know that I won’t have to spend my whole life searching: if home is where the heart is, then I have plenty.

By Cynthia Bigrigg

It feels like forever since I have had meaning in my life.  I can’t remember the last time and I don’t remember what the meaning was – what I was proud of myself for, what I was excited about, what I wanted to accomplish.  I must have been so lost all of those years, wandering around with no purpose and with wishy-washy dreams.

That part of my life is over.

Now when I wake up in the morning, I have a purpose, and I am excited to see my goals achieved.  I am working towards something – something for myself, and for my community.  I never knew that helping my students achieve small successes could bring me such joy, and that I would take so much pride in them.  I  never knew how grateful I could be for a boss who invests in my ongoing learning and development, and who takes a personal interest in my well-being as well.  And honestly, I never thought that working in the not-for-profit sector teaching low-literacy adults would ever, under any circumstances be the field for me.  I always thought that I would end up in the public school system, but after just two days of training for this new position, I was hooked, and I have a feeling that there is no going back now.  What could be better than teaching students who are here to learn because they want to, who take their education into their own hands, and who are more than willing to do the work involved in reaching their goals?  Like I said, I have never experienced such joy.

Maybe I had a rough year or so.  Maybe I lost my way a bit and had to do some searching.  Maybe I was broke and selfish and mopey and unreliable.  I don’t care.  I learned a lot about myself.  The most important revelation was that I won’t stand for something that isn’t right for me.  I wouldn’t change a thing, and now I am back on track.  Sure, it will take a month or two to get back on my feet, but in I am in the right place and I know it and it is amazing.

This bluestocking has a career now.  My mom always said (much to my chagrin), “Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.”

She was wrong.  I’ve got both the job and the letters behind my name to prove it.

By Cynthia Bigrigg          Photo By Cynthia Bigrigg

The story of our friendship is legendary.  Once upon a time.  Six years ago, a boy and a girl who couldn’t stand each other.  Then something changed.  One day there was something there that wasn’t there before.  An extension of kindness, a glimmer of respect.  A heartfelt compliment, a heartfelt smile.  One on top of the other, they built something strong.  Something they couldn’t understand, a strength unfathomable…

We laughed until tears streamed down our cheeks.  We didn’t speak like the stubborn mules we were.  We flew down backroads – the bumpy, dusty, country ones that we knew so well – at speeds that would appall our parents.  We sat on my front porch and talked into the darkness.  We lifted each other up and we broke each other’s hearts like teenagers do.

The first September of the rest of our lives rolled around and I left without saying goodbye.  At the town fair on Thanksgiving you wouldn’t meet my eyes across the booming agricultural hall.  You happily chatted with our friends amidst the competition tables and the smell of hay, and ignored me.  When I returned in November we pushed the limits, exploring the boundaries of our friendship on top of the water tower hill, making our adolescent mistakes.  Seventeen is an age of innocence, but curiosity abounds and knowledge is just around the corner.

My first year of university flew by in a blur.  My last summer at home had its ups and downs with you.  I left again and we grew apart.  You found love in a serious girlfriend and a year after that I fell in love with a charming man nine years my senior.  They say the first time won’t ever last.  In separate cities and separate lives we found out they were right – we suffered our heartbreaks unbeknownst to the other.

I graduated university and left a dreary city and a failing relationship for a small town in the mountains, three thousand kilometers away.  I don’t know how we reconnected.  I suspect that Fate played a hand, for he had been my constant companion all summer long.  Soon you were on a plane, making your way speedily above the golden prairies.  As I waited at the bottom of the escalator in the airport for you to appear I shook – with anxiousness, anticipation, joy, suspense…

I will never forget when you appeared.  I grinned goofily and waited impatiently for the motor-steps to bring you down to me.  You walked over to me wordlessly and lifted me into the hug that I had forgotten…

Who knew that we could still be such good friends, that there was mutual understanding?  Who knew we would be so much better at this at twenty-two than at seventeen?  Who knew our adventures would be bigger, better and more fun?  Who knew we could span years and provinces?  Who knew we could still laugh until tears streamed down our cheeks and talk long into the darkness?  You and I, we’ve climbed mountains.

Yes, the story of our friendship is epic.  It is the stuff of legends.  I replay it in my head and savour the highs and the lows.  I love the good times and the seemingly insignificant details.  But my favourite part of the story of our friendship is that it carries on.  My favourite part is that it is not The End.

By Cynthia Bigrigg

My mother’s parents always had an ancient television topped with a pair of “bunny ears.” I liked it this way. My grandparents lived three hours away from my home growing up, so it was always a special treat when we got to visit them – something that my sisters and I anticipated anxiously, that we packed and re-packed for until the day finally arrived.

As a child, while Mom was still sleeping, Grandma would make us breakfast and send us into the living room to watch Saturday morning cartoons – Bugs and Tweety distorted by fuzzy lines running down the screen, by the snaps and crackles of the incoming signal. As I got older, most of the television-watching in my grandparents’ house happened in the evenings – “Jepoardy,” “Wheel of Fortune” and “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” on the beloved CBC, one of the four or five channels that the bunny ears could pick up on, and definitely a favourite. It became a bit of a game, trying to adjust the antenna to get as close to a perfect picture on the screen as possible, so we could see just how grey and aged Alex Trebek was becoming. There was something special about these evenings that I didn’t recognize at the time. My father rarely joined us on our visits to my mom’s parents, so my mother, sisters, grandparents, myself (and in the early years, my young aunts) all crowded around the picture box in the living room. In the early years there was a popcorn maker. My Grandpa would make a plain bowl for us and Grandma would melt some butter to put on top. It was a family activity. We enjoyed our fuzzy, distorted entertainment together. Of course, we did other things together too, but watching the moving pictures brushed over with moving lines brought everyone in that house together at once as a community. This always made me happy.

When I heard recently that bunny ears would soon be obsolete, that towers would stop transmitting the signals that they could pick up and that television would only be accessible by cable or satellite, I became rather irrational. I was upset. In fact, I was downright sad and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. And then it dawned on me: In my own home growing up we had cable television, a computer, and many, many more material things. But what we were lacking in my family was the unity that I found in front of my grandparents’ old television.

Times have changed. My divorced parents live in separate houses, and my sisters and I all live apart. For my grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, all of their children pitched in and bought them a flatscreen television and a satellite subscription. I have a sneaking suspicion that although they have hundreds of channels available, their television remains mostly on the CBC. I sometimes have a secret laugh about that. I hope that someday I will be able to tell my own children about the bunny ears, and will be able to form the type of unity that my grandparents’ showed me in my own family.

By Cynthia Bigrigg          Photo By Guylaine B.

Max and I sit opposite each other on the red couch.  He holds a green bottle in his left hand and wrestles with my puppy with his right.  Max and I might have had a moment once, but it feels like ages ago.  Tonight what we have can’t be described as anything other than honest friendship.

When Max talks, you can’t help but pay attention – partly because of his thick Quebecois accent, partly because you want to hear what he has to say.  Sitting on the red couch, he talks easily about his family – how his mother went to school after having him and how he tagged along to class with her, how his father worked odd jobs.  He tells me about the moment he realized his grandmother – a small town socialite (or in Max’s French-To-English translation, “social genius”) was getting old – how she forgot to put the coconut in her traditional coconut cake.  The family sat around the table eating it, no one quite able to figure out what was different about it until after dessert when someone found the bag of coconut, unopened, in the cupboard.  He tells me about his grandfather’s box of war souvenirs – legal documents, pictures of German families from the pockets of soldiers he helped capture, letters from a girl he knew before he met Max’s grandmother.  It sounds like magic to me.  He says when his grandpa died, he was insistent that he got to keep that box.  He says he got his grandfather’s war box and his grandmother’s cookbooks.  I have never met someone who loves to cook as much as Max does.

We sip our beers and he talks about how he gets bored easily and likes to change jobs and towns, how he needs to be challenged.  I tell him that I think that is a good thing, but he says it is hard, frustrating.  He would much rather be able to settle, be able to be “content.”  I know when he says “content,” what he really means is “bored but okay with that.”  I laugh because he is frustrated with not being content, but would also be frustrated being content.  I tease him and tell him I guess he will never be happy either way, but I don’t believe that – the thing he talks the most about is home, his small town.  Learning to play hockey on the rink his dad made in their backyard, supper with his mom, the perfect mix of Quebec and New Brunswick culture, how nobody gets dressed up to go to the store – the less fancy your clothes, the better you fit in.  He says when he is ready to settle down and start a family he wants to go back there, and I envy him a little.  He knows what will make him happy – he has already had it.  It occurs to me that I will never have that.  I will never have one place that I grew up in, where all of my memories exist, one place that I love and am loyal to.  Once place that is a part of me and that I am a part of because it is home.

We finish our beers and say goodnight.  I go to my room and ponder a little more about what it is that I want out of life – right now and beyond.  It’s funny how others can influence you and open your eyes.  I have been missing my family lately, but I know that I am doing the right thing.  Maybe I will make those memories that I crave right here, starting right now.  Maybe this will be home, or maybe it will remain a stepping stone.

By Cynthia Bigrigg          Photo By Jane Ta

A new chapter has begun – I can see it in myself and in those around me.  What started out as a five-month trip to self-discovery has turned into my life.  The seasons are changing and so is everything else.  It is time for me to adopt the attitude of Summer: We have to live life the best way that we can – and take it with me into Autumn, Winter, and beyond that into a lifetime.  I strongly believe that this lesson is what I was supposed to learn, that this lesson was the higher purpose of me coming out here.  Yes, everything is changing.  Everything always does.  I have always loved and embraced change, and I know I am not going to stop now.  With change comes different opportunities to devour hungrily.  And I will.

I am excited to grow closer to the group of people who I know are staying for the winter, and yet I am feeling oddly vulnerable.  I love quickly and freely and for the first time I am afraid of what might happen.  An odd contrast to my newfound attitude.  I know now that people might stay here for a season, or they might stay here for a few years, but sooner or later most of them will move on.  But, such is life, and living life in the best way that I can, I believe that there is a reason for everything, and it is the right reason.  I will continue to trust in this.  I will continue to love quickly and freely.  And I will squeeze every drop of happiness and pure joy that I can from every moment and bask in its light.   This is who I am now.