40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 9

As the actual anniversary day approached and we hadn’t managed to check off even half the things on our list, I was hoping we could knock off half a dozen on the big day--October 1. To start, we picked  #8: Visit Seven Sisters Falls, hoping we might also fortuitously accomplish some of the other things along the way.

The warm sunshine looked so promising that Sunday morning. We began with breakfast at our local A&W before heading east down the highway. Halfway to Winnipeg, the rain began.

And it rained.

And rained.

I was beginning to think we’d dropped ourselves into a weird time warp where, instead of marking forty years, we would be joining Noah for forty days and forty nights.

“No vehicles beyond this point” greeted us when we arrived at the big power dam, so our options were to get wet or to drive all that way only to miss what we came to see. So we got out, crossed the bridge on foot, read the signs, saw the sights, and snapped a few photos. It really was impressive, and we definitely had the place to ourselves. 

After dragging our drenched bodies back inside the car, we cranked up the heat to warm up.

“Now what?” I’m not sure which of us said it.

There were certainly more things to do in the area—on a sunnier day.

“Well, we came all this way. Might as well carry on and see Pinawa, too.”

We drove around Pinawa, then up to Lac du Bonnet, and back through Beausejour to Winnipeg—the rain falling relentlessly the entire time.

Finally, after stopping in Winnipeg for supper, the waterworks let up and we drove home to Portage to discover the sun had shone here all day.

We’d covered enough ground to get us to South Dakota and only crossed one thing off our list.

As I thought about it, the rainy anniversary made a fairly accurate metaphor for marriage. You head off down the road of wedded bliss in the glorious sunshine. But the rain inevitably comes. The challenges can be relentless. 

You have options. You can turn around and go back. Start again with a different person and hope for better weather. You can keep going and mourn for all you are missing, the unmet goals, the crushed dreams. You can stubbornly stay in the car and stay dry while your spouse takes the risk and enjoys the view alone. You can grumble. Cry. Curse your partner. Rail at God, the only one who can change the weather.

The one thing you cannot do is stop the rain.

But if you pay attention, you discover things along the journey, such as... 

• There will always be a thief who wants to steal your joy. 

•  Plans rarely turn out the way you hoped, but moving forward and staying together will still yield more than giving up. 

•  The sun comes out again, eventually.
•  And perhaps most importantly: there is still extraordinary beauty to be enjoyed on a rainy day.

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 8

Sadly, our list of forty things went ignored for three solid weeks. This past Sunday afternoon I said, “c’mon, let’s pick one item from the list we can do today.” The weather was lovely. We were staying home. The answer seemed obvious.

#12 Draw a Hopscotch on the sidewalk and watch what happens.

A city sidewalk runs about twenty feet in front of our house, which not all the homes in town can say. And it’s fairly busy, especially on a lovely summer evening. We’d already “borrowed” two fat chunks of sidewalk chalk from our grandsons in anticipation of this day. I grabbed my phone so I could prove we did this together, and out we went.

The other man’s sidewalk is always smoother.

Our stretch of sidewalk is old and sort of crumbly. We were tempted to go around the corner and draw our hopscotch on the smooth, new sidewalk in front of the neighbour’s house. But then we’d need to beg them for seats in front of their picture window to fulfill the second half of our project: watch what happens.

So we picked the smoothest looking section we could find in front of our own picture window. Jon grabbed the push broom from the garage and started sweeping away the sand and stones while I stood watching, wondering if passersby were saying, “look at that selfish old woman, making her poor one-armed husband sweep the sidewalk while she just stands there.” I should have found a shovel to lean on to really complete the picture.

Then Jon took the camera so I could start drawing. I’d downloaded a diagram from the internet to make sure I got it right. I couldn’t believe how quickly we went through our chalk! Betcha it would have gone farther on the neighbour’s smooth new sidewalk.

For the rest of the evening and in the two days following, we watched the various reactions as people walked by. Most ignored it. But the ones who not only noticed it, but hopped it, did so with huge smiles on their faces, and made me smile too. My favorite was a mom with two little boys. She stopped to show them how it was done and then they tried. So cute. (I’d post pictures or videos, but I didn’t take any. Seemed rude and wrong somehow.)

We’re having so much fun watching people hop our hopscotch, I want to go out and buy a supply of chalk so I can keep it there all the time. Such a little thing, so much joy. I hope I never ignore another hopscotch beneath my feet. No matter how crumbly the sidewalk.

“Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have.” Ecclesiastes 6:9

40 Adventures for 40 Years, Part 7: Finding God at the Circus

Summer’s here, when the farmer in my husband comes out to play—er, work—and we have barely seen each other for three weeks, let alone conquering anything on our list of forty. But yesterday we did something that is currently holding the record as my favorite and merits a blog post all its own. Sure beats that jigsaw puzzle still on our dining table at any rate.

#7 See Cirque du Soleil.

Because I’ve always wanted to go, I placed this on the list early in our list-creating process, not knowing whether there’d even be a cirque coming to Manitoba this year. I was thrilled when in January, tickets went on sale for the steampunk-themed show called Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities in Winnipeg. It premiered in Montreal three years ago and is still going strong. I booked our tickets immediately.

If you’ve been to any Cirque du Soleil show, you know how mind-blowing it is and how much it makes you want to run away to join the circus. And if you haven’t seen one, there’s not a lot of point in my trying to describe it for you. For a little taste of this one, you can watch a great little You Tube video here. 

No words adequately describe what you’ll see when you go, but here’s a few that flitted around in my head as I watched:

Beauty. Grace. Wonder. Strength. Balance. Agility. Crazy Creativity. Skill. Courage. Team work. Brilliance. All words that apply to God.

Wait, what? God? At a circus?

Oh, yes. You might not expect to find God there, but he was everywhere I turned. And here’s why. I can’t be a witness to that kind of outstanding, dazzling creativity and not be convinced yet again that humans are created in the image of an amazing artist.

It’s like this. Look around the room you’re sitting in right now. What do you see? Furniture? Technology? Art? Correct me if I’m wrong, but each and every thing you see was created by someone, yes? You probably don’t know who, and you likely don’t stop to think about how smart that person is or how they’ve added to your life, but I’m pretty sure you acknowledge that a designer exists and that they came up with something good.

Now tell me, what is the most complex thing in the room?

If you answered “computer” or any other man-made object, you’re wrong. You are the most complex thing in the room. You, and other people, will always be the answer to that question, in any room you ever enter. I am the most complicated creation in my room at the moment. How can I imagine I don’t have a creator?

And so when the spell-binding Cirque du Soliel performers mesmerize me with their displays of what the human mind and body can achieve, I have no choice but to look to the one who made them. Who made me. Who looks on his marvelous creation with a smile and says, “It is good.”

Kurios will be in Winnipeg through July 9 and you can order your tickets here. Two things you need to know in advance: onsite parking costs $15 and you should allow at least an extra 30-40 minutes before and after the show for getting parked and getting out. Some folks parked at IKEA and walked over—not a bad plan. Also, the tent is air conditioned and even if it’s hot outside, you might want a sweater or jacket. I did.