Never book the middle seat

Okay. Maybe the size of the middle seat on an airplane is the same as the window or aisle seat when you look at the spec sheets. In reality, the moment you ask the passenger in the aisle seat to let you in, it starts to shrink.

There is the smirk on the face of the person by the window. The tripping over the suitcase of the man on the aisle, which does not really fit under the seat in front of him. And finally, the plopping down into the middle seat, landing on a spiderweb of seatbelts belonging to everyone, trying to work out which one is yours and which are theirs, all the while groping under your own bum without touching theirs.

By then, the seat has shrunk, along with your ego, to the size of a pin.

Photo by szm 4 on Unsplash 

Monitoring the delay

Sharp pellets of snow
Chug, chug, scrunch, crunch, I’m waiting
With numbed frozen toes.

Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash

Morning yoga

My feet glide my sleep-filled bones towards my mat. I bow quietly, tentatively start a series of yoga poses. Lotus. Butterfly. Hero. Thunderbolt. Supine spinal twist. Pigeon. Supine pigeon. Revolved hand-to-big-toe pose. On and on, I slowly move my limbs where they should be, stretching my tendons, muscles, and my faith that the pain is manageable. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe again, until there is a shift in my willingness to move one more inch away from old aches.

I cross over the boundaries of decades long gone and suddenly feel myself young. My body memory rewinds the clock of time and rediscovers those precious, impossible poses of an aspiring ballet dancer. Flexible. Free to twist my body into pretzels of silliness. And so, I finish my session by sitting on the ground and bringing my big toe up to my nose in an ‘aha you thought I couldn’t do it’ pose. Et voilà.

Cold Sunday morning

Pigeons fly over 
Taking in all the wonders
Street below's empty.

Proud to be Grenadian

Listening to this speech by Jumaane Williams, who comes from the Williams family of St. Andrew, made me think of Pat and how proud she would have been to be Grenadian, listening to his moving words.

She only became Grenadian at the end of her nearly forty years there. She did so as a symbol of her gratitude for the country and the deep love she felt for the people who held her hands all those years. 

Beautiful sounds: quiet resignation

The crunch-squish of my boots stomping through the slushy snow all over town. 

Now the year begins

Our children have left 

Alone, no decorations 

The tree stands bravely.

A house, remembered

This piece is about the Buckley grandparents' home. It differs considerably from the piece I wrote about the Hadley grandparents' house. It is easy to see the difference in the home's atmosphere through the lens of my childhood memories.

It could be that the main difference is that Pat, John, and Peter were raised in this house, whereas the house where the Grandparents lived was bought after Dave, Barbara, and Gordon had already left home. The stories Pat and Peter told me about their childhood and the strictness or tyranny of their father have also seeped into my memories.