“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” Gandhi

My brother has an amazing memory. He can remember climbing the white bars of his 1970’s crib and courageously leaping to his soft landing on the small toddler bed pushed up beside him in our tiny room. My “big girl bed” was covered in a period yellow blanket, probably hand-made by one of my mothers many sisters. I must have slept through the constant attacks from above because I remember only a faded square picture in an old brown photo album, the kind that had one sheet of plastic over card-stock covered in some sort of “always sticky” glue.

I remember very little about my early childhood. A few flashes of Gramma & Grandpa Baker in their “huge” house on 8th ave, 2 doors down from Center street, Christmas day with all the fixings! The boys in their brown vests, the girls matching in delicate blue flower printed homemade dresses, Gramma’s good china laid out around the solid wood table with a pungent spruce tree in the corner all decorated with colorful home-made ornaments. We felt like royalty. That was the year I got Kermit the frog, his long green arms with individual fingers and small velcro squares on the hands. My Dad loved the muppets, Statler and Waldorf who sat in the balcony to heckle and grump at all the other muppets had Dad giggling until it was a full belly laugh and we were all laughing at him.

I remember almost nothing of the tiny trailer we lived in at the old KOA trailer park. Only a few instant still moments when Mom would adorn her 2 piece bathing suit, drape our beach towels over her arm and we would carefully navigate the trail that led from our trailer to the edge of, what seemed to be, our own private beach on the shore of Burns Lake.

I remember the excitement of moving into the cedar A frame cabin on Tchesinkut Lake when I was 5 years old. Grandpa John took me down to the over grown lake edge and taught me how to skip rocks. After searching and finding the perfect flat stone, Grandpa finally convinced me to throw it in the water instead of keeping it safe in my treasure box. He taught me how to stand, leaned over ever so slightly back and to the right and twist my body forward as I threw the rock. His perfectly flat rock would bounce over the surface of the lake effortlessly, too many times to count. My goal in adulthood was 5 skips, 5 little splashes on the sky’s perfect reflection until it plunked and sunk. 2 skips were ok…but 5 was an achievement. Grandpa John would take my small hand and position the rock perfectly between my thumb and my next two fingers to hold the smooth bottom of the stone in just the right spot. He told me to let it roll off the tip of my middle digit and then again from my pointer to set it spinning. It was the spin that would make it fly! I was set! the perfect rock, the perfect body position, the perfect hold, the perfect lake, the perfect teacher on a perfect day. I concentrated on spinning the rock to make Grandpa proud of me, I drew back, swung my body to the right and threw the perfect stone into the tall purple fire-weeds on the bank behind us. Grandpa John was a serious man, he smiled his tight-lipped smile gently and showed me again, like he had all the time in the world.

I remember when Gramma & Grandpa Baker moved from 8th ave to their house on 1st and Carrol. The pink carpet matched Gramma’s pink recliner perfectly. The fire-place on the back wall was set in red brick beside the back door that opened to a perfectly manicured lawn with the biggest Saskatoon tree I had ever seen. Grandpa John had to share his office with Glenny whose small bed was in the far corner beneath the framed picture of horse-drawn carriages. Grandpa’s desk was opposite that along the wall that bordered the hallway. I would walk past the open door of his office and he would be sitting with his hands on the desk, fingers interlaced tightly and his thumbs twirling round and round each other in a meditative motion so he could think through the latest work conundrum. I remember this time vividly. Saturday morning cartoons interrupted only by Gramma’s special Mickey Mouse pancakes smothered in butter and syrup. Gramma picking me up from school and sitting at the round table in her kitchen teaching me long division the old school way, the way that made sense. The sleepovers with my best friend Susie, our perfect glass tea set in the kitchen with real juice and biscuit cookies! The Mary Kay parties for me and my friends in high-school and the evenings where she hosted the pre-dance girls group. I can hear the giggling and overwhelming chatter and remember Gramma hiding in her room with a good book.

Gramma’s house was the center of activity, fancy dinner parties for the elite in Burns Lake, in the posh part of town…it was without question “the place to be”. Life on the lake was simple. Mom had a large garden and greenhouse that we would eat from all summer long and preserve what we couldn’t eat in the fall. Our cool room was always full of potatoes and homemade jam’s and jelly’s. We spent hours on the lake catching fish and lighting up the little chef smoker to indulge ourselves for months on candied smoked trout. Fall was also the time Dad had to go hunting. It seemed like a chore to me at the time but looking back I’m sure this was Dad’s get away…alone in the woods. No one liked taking a moose to feed us through the winter. It was a necessity. There was simply not enough money. Despite this fact, I never felt truly deprived in any way. We always got new clothes before the start of the next school year. Our tree was always crammed with gifts. We always had a dog.

I remember my first Barbie doll. She was the birthday celebration doll with blond hair and a rainbow chiffon dress over a satin slip. Mom made me Barbie clothes from old Paton’s patterns on her sewing machine. I had everything! Swim suits, slippers, bathrobes and nightgowns, jeans, shirts and jackets for my Barbie. Mom had a Barbie too. She kept it tightly locked away in a blue metal trunk with moth balls. She would take it out once in a while and show me….like taking candy from a baby….she would put it back in the trunk telling me how much money this doll would be worth someday. I’m sure that Barbie is still tucked away in that trunk.

There was no Saturday morning cartoons or Mickey Mouse pancakes on the lake, but there was always cleaning for the girls and chopping wood for the boys. Sunday was our day to indulge on pancakes and listen to Abba on the 8-track, after the work was done. You wouldn’t think there was an art to dusting, but there is. Kids nowadays have no idea how to dust. They have one fancy colorful mini duster with soft chunky hairs that they swipe around the edge of the cabinet and call er’ done! If I handed them a dry toothbrush and asked them to dust they would stare blank eyed at me with their mouths open in disgust at the used toothbrush in their hand. I worked hard for Mom cause I had my eye set on a Cabbage Patch doll, everyone else already seemed to have one. No dusting meant no allowance. Plain and simple. No second place ribbons, no exceptions, no make up chores.

Gramma took me to my swimming lessons on Burns Lake. I hated the cold murky water that harbored little vampire leeches and the slimy plastic on the bottom under the sparse layer of sand that the village used to keep the weeds down. On the other hand I loved the special book they gave you with empty spots for all your swimming patches that you added like stickers in a sticker book as you moved your way from Turtles to Dolphins. Extra special was the date and signature of the instructor in your book as you moved up, like winning the Olympics. Gramma promised to take me to the drug store to pick out my Cabbage Patch after our lessons. I stood in the second aisle from the mall wall and took in the sight of the dolls all neatly in their boxes. Not one was the same…blonde and brunette yarn heads with cute dresses, blue and green eyes, dark, light and medium skin and little boys in overalls. So many choices. If my mother had been there she would choose the blonde girl with the pink dress and ribbons in her pigtails. Gramma waited patiently for me to look at them all in detail. I finally choose a bald baby girl in a plain white muumuu with white lace along the edges, white bonnet and tiny white knit booties. Gramma looked at me and asked “Are you sure you want the bald one?”. I surveyed the group again. It was my money. I worked for it. It was my choice. I said “yes”, expecting my mother’s voice to come out of my grandmother saying the one I chose was ugly but Gramma just nodded and smiled supporting my choice. The doll’s name was Celeste. She had her own birth certificate and adoption papers. To this day Celeste is with me. I have her papers, her bonnet, booties and dress. That was independence for me, individuality inside a sense of belonging and acceptance.

Life was simple on the lake, it was also hard. I learned to cherish the things I had, and work hard to earn the things I wanted. I came across a post in the buy and sell the other day selling her Cabbage Patch collection in “un-played with” condition. Gack!!! What a crime! Of course I had to have one! When I stopped by, I was VERY happy to see that the ones that were left had indeed been played with and loved. They no longer had their birth certificates or adoption papers, there was old marker on the tops of their bald heads, holes in their thumbs and missing ribbons and bows. They brought back for me a feeling of cherishment and gratitude. A feeling about a doll that I missed passing onto to my boys as I thought I would. I missed teaching them to highland dance, figure skate, braid hair and love The Little Mermaid. They didn’t like the Nancy Drew or Little House on the Prairie books. They had no use for Barbie’s or Wendy Walker. They love to cook, make slime, play basketball, snowboard, ride motorbikes and light fires. I am grateful that I always have a boy around to get the boy things done that need to get done.

The words on this page are all that is left of the feeling I get from Celeste. It doesn’t diminish it, just changes it into something I didn’t expect. A feeling that’s all mine, that can’t be shared, taught or recreated. This realization also makes me feel like it’s time to do some hard-core de-cluttering. Some Cinderella magic in turning the physical memories into words and letting go of the things I have no room for. When the words are not enough…the pictures are.

As Jason heads to Vegas this week with plans to celebrate his 40th milestone with a tight-knit group of kindred friends from high-school…all facing the same harsh reality of middle age, he talks of the atrocities that Vegas harbors. He is appalled at legal prostitution being available in Nevada, and the idea that someone would approach him to offer this service. As far as I am concerned it’s the same as legalizing marijuana, prostitution can only be made safer with legalization. Illegal female workers are thought of as disposable, worthless and dirty. These sub-human ideals come straight from the men that pay them. Legal call girls are protected, provided for and treated with respect. Their protectors enforce these ideals if for no other reason than these girls pay their bills. So where in this equation is the atrocity?

I spent some time watching a new Netflix documentary called Murder Mountain. It details the legalizing of marijuana in Northern California’s “redwood curtain”. I love the serene feeling of the naked hippies building a community where they raise their children in complete freedom. Their children growing up with solid values of family and living simply, living free, living without judgment. The freedom to grow illegal weed.

Legalization has its challenges. The all mighty dollar corrupts human ideals like “the one ring to rule them all”. One tiny hobbit strong enough to show more resistance to evil than the world’s strongest warlock, human warriors easily being the weakest of all species to resist in fantasy and in reality. Government run by the best of our human leaders create hoops that line up neatly, then tangle and overlap like a shiny silver slinky climbing down yellow shag carpet stairs in silence until the tangled mess at the bottom gives up in exhaustion and begs to be thrown away. As legal cannabis operations fall at the bottom of the stairs, illegal operations are untouchable and highly dangerous. Government paperwork reaches up from the fires of hell like Gollum, to hold onto the all mighty dollar that is thickly cloaked in the promises of safety for the industry.

We need to figure out how to make this industry more safe for the people who are involved in it, and I think legalization will provide that in the end,

(https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6575161/From-marijuana-mecca-Murder-Mountain-troubled-history-Californias-redwood-curtain.html)

Safety will be provided in the end? Where is the end? 60% of US weed has been provided by Humboldt County for decades. Decades! The hard choices to keep people safe, shouldn’t be this hard. We sit in our warm homes owned by the bank and hydro, pretend it’s ours and loudly protest the choices made above us, pretending like we have a voice. One tiny voice being the weakest of all voices. One tiny voice that could’ve, should’ve, would’ve been combined with a world of voices that can actually make a difference. Instead of combining our voices we attack, bully, undermine and judge people so our own voices are heard above them and then we get lost as the very voice we needed to be “many” is silenced. And so it is.

We cannot fight illegal operations. We are the consumer. Illegal products and services exist because we support them. They exist because the hoops to be legal are fueled by the dollar, controlled by the corrupted humans that we chose. We need to come together and show our support of legalization to simply and realistically protect people. We come together by making the right choices as a consumer, not the easiest choices.

As consumers we will continue to support puppy mills until we all make the choice to support the breeders that don’t make it easy. The breeders that ask questions, support your choices instead of dictating theirs, and stand behind their commitments to protect the puppies they bring into the world. This ideal then gets fuzzy as we examine the blurred line between dictating and educating. The right choice will be hard. The right choice will come from your instinct, the one that feels right, without dramatized words. We will continue to make the easy choice until we actually listen to that instinct, and the motivation behind it. Any decision made in real love will always be the right one. Same as puppy mills consumers claim they are rescuing, we cannot make an easy choice while claiming it was done in love.

Until we fix ourselves at the core of who we are, we are disposable, worthless and dirty.

It is this core that is our individual voice. A singular soul of celebration for all human beings, non-judgmental, acceptance of other’s choices and their individual learning journeys. A core of safety and freedom and love. Instead of seeing how our core power can together change the world we expect our leaders to do it for us. The way we see our houses as “ours” is a veil that makes us see reality in fuzzy pixels, it starts with our homes and spreads like fleas to all areas of our lives. We must open our hearts and live real lives. Real lives.

Living a real life is not my original ideal. I am queen of drama and waiting for someone else to fix it for me. This ideal was tightly woven into my DNA decades ago. Jason has the amazing ability to live a real life, not without personal constant reminders but…so it is. Drama has no place in a real life. I have learned and continue to learn to sort through the drama and focus on what’s real thanks to following his lead.

I have to believe I am making a difference by fixing what I can from the core. I try to focus on non-judgment and accepting my easy decisions and their damaging consequences humbly. I’m headed to my very first “hippie” retreat in a few weeks. My bestie, vegetarian food, meditating, yoga and a 2 day vow of silence…eeekkk! The goal of the silence for me will be a reflection of my motivations, an acceptance of myself and others, a clear definition of my personal truth (whatever that means) and the spacious freedom of my thoughts with the fine tuned ability to turn them off to truly live in the moment. Secretly I hope this retreat turns me into a full-blown hippie so I can physically move into a remote area and live off the land undisturbed. The fuzzy pixels creep over my fleeting clarity and jolt me back to the “One ring…”. And so it is.