The table was set when I arrived. Two crisp white square plates, significant silverware on either side. A salad of mixed greens with deep purple beets warm from roasting, sliced thick.

 

A white rectangular plate held colorful divisions of vegetables: thick cucumber chunks, soft ripe tomato halves, slithery sweet roasted red peppers, tangy olives and neat white chunks of hearts of palm, drizzled with a balsamic homemade vinaigrette.

There were two other plates – one with four neat symmetrical curry-meat pies wrapped in homemade soft dough and another filled with round fried potato chop balls – exquisite mixtures of the best meat ground by hand at home and Idaho potatoes cooked soft with parsley, salt and pepper for flavor.

 

We sat. We talked. We ate. Our flavors combined and intertwined, our backgrounds similar but different.

           

It was a Saturday in fall and I sat at the round table in Samira Cholagh’s home. The “Chaldean Martha Stewart,” as she is known by friends and family, had concocted the most delectable and gorgeous lunch I’d had in a long time. And the conversation was true.

           

She told me of growing up in Iraq, of earning her degree in agricultural engineering at the

University of

Baghdad. She told me how she moved to

America in 1980 and two weeks after arriving, gave birth to her first son.

 

She told me how she tested soil as a career while raising three children as Americans with the rich cultural legacy she’d brought from Iraq and she told me how every inch of her house, her pantry, the clothes hanging in her closet, the drapes adorning her windows – were devised by her eye and her hand.

           

And now, years later, as her children are grown and she works in the schools, Samira has compiled her hand-hewn recipes into a cookbook for everyone to enjoy.

 

American-born Chaldean brides get the book as a wedding gift so they can recreate the flavors of their ancestry. Her Arabic-language cookbook was created lovingly so that non-English-speaking emigrants can learn the recipes their children request.

 

With every dish, she is bridging cultures and making a name for herself in the world of food.

 

“My kitchen was a lab,” she says of the journey she has almost finished, creating her third cookbook. The photographs for this book were taken by Jewish photographer

Ally Cohen. “I used my math – I am an engineer.”

 

The key to Samira’s food is its simplicity. “It’s always flavorful because we don’t play with it so much,” she says, pointing to recipes with a handful of ingredients – mostly vegetables and herbs.

 

Before I left, Samira placed a thick piece of buttery cake on a glass plate and poured me a hot cup of tea. I slipped the fork into the creamy heft and extracted bites of candied lemon peels (homemade, of course) and pistachio hunks.

 

We are a generation apart but we are living the same story. “The children will leave you,” she said. “They will go on to their own lives. To this day, I still worry for mine. And I am about to be a grandmother.”

 

Starting Oct. 6, you’ll find several of Samira’s recipes at Hiller’s Markets in the prepared foods department. 100% of profits from sales of her dishes will go to the Chaldean Foundation’s Refugee program.

 

It takes a community to build a life.

I’ll never understand the patterns of other people. There is a natural ebb and flow distinguished by personality and drive that is so apparent, it’s almost easier to discern than the name on the mailbox. But I digress.

All the canoes and kayaks and sailing vessels of my Pacific Northwest trip in early summer have been analyzed and metaphoricalized for the taking. And now it’s fall in Michigan and I encountered canoes once again on the path at Cranbrook last weekend, offering up our sins for a new year in true Jewish tradition.

We hiked down the leaf-strewn path under tree cover on Saturday morning and emerged into sunlight and clear blue sky. We walked at our own pace over the footbridge and around the still of the lake. Banked on their sides, five canoes lay beside the shrubbery. My boys lay atop them. I took a picture to remember it.

Just before the Japanese garden, we heard the river before we saw it. Even the baby stepped up onto the concrete overpass and then we sat on the cold ground to look at the river in its course below us. Each of us held a piece of stale bread. And we tore pieces away to represent the choices we’ve made and the choices we’d rather make in the new year. The ways we could improve. The thought we could put into our actions. How we could love more.

Were the canoes significant? Of course they were. And of course not. It was a quiet Saturday in sunlight and most of the people we knew were in synagogue in suits, standing solemn with open prayerbooks. We sat serenely and listened to the pace of the river and learned more in those moments about how we might embark upon a new opportunity than all the finger-wagging of the scripture.

Not that following routine and what is familiar is a bad thing. Of course not. But I take the lesson of the canoes to heart. The vessel that contains and which allows for discovery. The opportunity in simple construction, in balance and wake. I find reverence in those elemental details and that is enough for me.

I’ve heard tell these last days, and in ongoing months from parties who shall remain nameless, that I am not doing it right, or at least not according to their definition of order and rigidity. Too bad. It’s a new year dawning and it’s mine for the taking. Isn’t that the right of each and every one of us.

On Saturday, we discussed our choices. We said prayers. We turned the pages. We sang familiar tunes in letters we all know. We kissed and hugged and finally, we slept.

On Sunday, we cleaned. We emptied corners and dusted surfaces. We carted bags and bags of discard to the curb. And on Monday it was business as usual.

Welcome to the new year. Every day is a year in time. Think about it. And then don’t.

“When you live beside water, there is an urge, often a need, to cross it.” Those are the first words in The Canoe: An Illustrated History.

In Victoria, in 25 kilometer winds, I kayaked. It was in the protected waters of the bay, but seaplanes took off and landed on the water beside the kayak dock, and then we were exposed to open winds and pushing waters before we could paddle ourselves into the inlet, closer to a shore. I feared the drift – suddenly panicking and not being able to control the vessel. Control punctuated the undercurrent of my life, one I was trying to relinquish.

My ex-husband sought control. My religion emphasized control. My parents had claimed control until I wrested free of it in my mid-20s. Entering motherhood seven years earlier had been my first step toward letting go of the notion of control and giving in to the moments. Every day since, I had done my best to anticipate only a single day’s torments and treats. And since ending my marriage, I was coming closer to success.

After three days, I repacked my suitcases and lumbered onto the Swartz Bay ferry once again. I scanned the countryside before we pushed off: heavy hills thick with tall pines, mist hanging like a curtain over ocean water, the taste of salt in the air. Ahead, a hill rose above the clouds like a slumbering bear.

The boat was massive. I settled back against a bench. Outside rain pattered down, a dreary day. Vessels were everywhere on this trip. Independence in a symbol? Reliant on instinct and air, the map of the moon, the tidal push, reading clouds and shadows to learn a true course. On my hike, I took the most challenging route. I could have skirted sea level on flat paths but I didn’t even see them when I set out.

The rain did not abate that entire day. I found my hotel, negotiated my room and unpacked my belongings into drawers beneath the TV. The initial rush of the vacation – the freedom of being alone, the anticipation of exploration – had dissipated. Now I was in a city of tall buildings and beautiful people and I slept in the king bed alone.

My first morning in Vancouver, I dined at The Elbow Room, a legendary diner where customers get their own water and are admonished to follow the rules spelled out on the first page of the menu. I loved it immediately. My effeminate, aged waiter brought me a cup of coffee; “seconds you get yourself.” He pointed to a carafe warming on a counter.

I strolled along the artists’ shops of Granville Island, the water relatively still. A sailboat named Paradox III docked by the market where vibrant berries beckoned like a lover’s finger. One night, I met Lee Ann, a tiny former Peace Corps volunteer and cousin of my father’s whom I had never met.

“I am light like your grandmother,” she said. Light eyes, long frizzy white hair, a backpack slung over her shoulder. We shared a drink and nuts from a martini glass in the hotel bar, and then Lee Ann walked with me across city blocks to the Blue Water Café, where I would have oysters fresh from the sea.

She remembered “Aunt Sarah” coming to visit her California family (my late grandfather’s four brothers and one sister all settled in California after serving in the Pacific during World War II; my grandmother’s two sisters also moved west).

My grandmother took over Lee Ann’s kitchen, and when she, a little girl, saw the butter my grandmother had placed on the counter to soften for a cake, Lee Ann diligently put it back in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t spoil.

“Who did this?” my grandmother admonished. Sheepishly, Lee Ann admitted her guilt.

“She wasn’t mad,” Lee Ann explained. “She deemed it a responsible thing to do.”

The grandmother she described to me was full of life, lively, bustling, a baker, a leader – unlike the woman my parents had shown me. I’d known her well but only in partiality. Grandma Sarah lived in Detroit for most of her life, but Lee Ann described a vibrant, talkative, happy woman who recalled her Montreal relatives in great detail. By the time I asked, in the late 1990s, my grandmother had forgotten everything. Lee Ann had names and memories of mink coats.

I learned from Lee Ann that my grandmother’s other sister, Bev, had breast cancer and a double mastectomy two decades ago. She would turn 80 in August and my parents would travel to

Arizona for the celebration. Lee Ann couldn’t make it. By the time I visited

Vancouver, my own sister had just finished a brutal year of breast cancer treatments. Until she was diagnosed, we had no idea of any family history. She is 35.

I learned that my grandmother’s mother was named Nechama, Hebrew for comfort. It is my daughter’s middle name, in memory of a relative in my ex-husband’s family. Lee Ann illustrated all the N names in our family, after this illustrious matriarch: my father, Norman; his sister, Natalie; a cousin, Nicky. Bracha was her mother, Hebrew for blessing. My father’s Hebrew name: Nachman Baruch, for two strong women he never knew. Lee Ann’s Hebrew name was Nechama, too.

In the restaurant, after she left, I was cold. My bare shoulders in a summer tank top as night fell. “Can I bring you a pashmina?” the waiter offered. I shook my head no, but smiled. I was reading Salinger. The Effingham oyster was my favorite of the four British Columbia bites of sea. As I left, finished beyond full, I took a silver tri-fold card to remember the restaurant. On its cover, the words in white: food, wine, friends.

 

My final day in Vancouver, I walked the seawall at Stanley Park. In the shade it was cold. Seaplanes took off across the expanse of the bay. Low clouds hung over the mountains.

 

Mountains and ocean. Height and depth. Between sea level, where I sat, and the summit, the progress defined by industry polluted the waters. I was happiest sitting on the sand, discarded opalescent shells sifting through my hand. But really, anywhere the tide goes in and out and in, I am at peace.

The recurrent sound of things that happen in any season, any storm, in sunlight under the moon. The scent of the sea was briny, full of earth and welt, almost like a promise. The ocean aroma was one of shedding all pretense and becoming linked with sun and moon. A sailboat meandered into my sight line. I had memories of sailing on lakes. This one had its sails down and was gently coasting between harbor inlets.

At the end of my trip, I pulled the Perth rune out of its soft bag. Powerful forces of change are at work here … the flight of the eagle, lifting yourself above the endless ebb and flow of ordinary life to require broader vision…let go of everything, no exceptions, no exclusions.

My last meal in Vancouver I ate at the Boathouse Restaurant on Denman and Davie streets. Overlooking the ocean, boats rocking on the harbor, little sailboats and big freighters, I sat inside a restaurant fashioned like the interior of a boat. I knew innately that the journey was indeed the destination. I sipped a mango martini. I could still smell the salt of the sea but I could no longer taste it in the air. 

That was the week that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died. My daughter called two days before I was supposed to return home, tearful that one of her earring holes had closed up because her father failed to replace a lost earring. So far away, I was helpless. My children needed me. My vacation was over.

Back home, my mother drove across town to get Eliana and take her for a re-piercing. I bit back tears to imagine her enduring the pain twice, inwardly shouting at my ex-husband for his indifference. Thankfully, the hole had not closed and a woman at the jewelry store shoved an earring through, securing it with a tight backing. Crisis averted, albeit with a slight bit of pain for both of us.

The symbolic work of a canoe is to resolve or contain. Canoes have carried people through history, through war and famine, to new shores and beyond the horizon. But the canoe’s voyage was never easy. It was risky and uncomfortable and in high seas, downright dangerous.

The great advantage of a canoe was its light weight: two men could carry one of average size with ease, yet on top of the water, a canoe can carry a heavy load and still respond well to the twists of a river of fast current. Still, it remains a fragile vessel. Even a slight error in judgment while running down a rapid could throw a canoe against rock and tear open its bottom irreparably.

Apparently, the border between the United States and Canada is not an arbitrary line. It is punctuated by watersheds, along which the first settlers flowed with the current toward the Pacific, toward an unimaginable and vast frontier, toward the vast endless hope of the sea. 

My trip continued. I hiked up Mt. Finlayson in Goldstream

Provincial

Park on

Vancouver Island, and along the steep trail I befriended the Bergmans. We danced around the specifics of our lives, sharing general notions and descriptions of what we do when we’re not scaling mountains.

If not for their conversation along the tree-covered paths, I would surely have turned back for the altitude strained my intake of air. And then, as we stepped delicately along the one-foot-wide trail between sheer rock faces just under the summit, it was the gentle voices of people I had come to know in short order that coached me down from the precarious top.

At the mountain’s base, as we exchanged contact information, I learned their surname and acknowledged our shared Jewish heritage. In my hybrid rental car, I careened toward Butchart Gardens and afternoon tea on the patio as my lunch, a hummingbird fluttering its beak into a basket of bright pink flowers.

 That night, someone suggested I dine at Canoe, a restaurant on Swift Street. I didn’t– I was too tired from the day’s activities - but I recognized the metaphor. Back at the B&B, Binners and Edward regaled me with tales of their Jewish brethren in Detroit – prominent leaders in my home community and synagogue members as well – and I recalled the trail of conversation with the Bergmans, how our lives were marked by milestones and the rituals we assign to them. Everywhere I turned, there were Jews in

British Columbia. Lisa called and emailed – did I want to meet for dinner, would I like to take a day trip together?

I begged off. I had come this far to hear the silence and know my own voice, but the fates were forcing me to focus on my Jewish identity. Why? What did I need to see?

The following day, I stumbled upon a used book store tucked down an alleyway in Victoria. Just in the door, a bell ringing as it shut slowly, I came upon a vivid shelf display of five books, all about canoes. “I have to buy these,” I told the proprietor. I fingered the smooth covers of Fire in the Bones: Bill Mason and the Canadian Canoeing Tradition and The Canoe: An Illustrated History.

On vacation, it is easy to lose sight of simple directives like budget and patience. I didn’t need additional books, certainly not tomes bestowing the virtue of a pastime and a method of travel I had no intention of adopting. Still. I bought three and arranged for shipping across borders.

 The movement of a canoe is like a reed in the wind. Silence is part of it, and the sounds of lapping water, bird songs, and wind in the trees. It is part of the medium through which it floats, the sky, the water, the shores …The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness, and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfaction. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known. (Sigurd F. Olson, The Singing Wilderness)

I was becoming more clear as to why the fates were putting canoes in my path so virulently. One year prior, I had divorced my husband and jumped full-force into a new business. My life was dotted with change and framed by freedom. Add to that the fact that I’d spent ten years prior trying to live as an Orthodox Jew in a rigid, closed community. I was coming out of other people’s expectations and into my own and now it was time for me to claim my own freedom and listen to the lessons in the reeds.

The history in the imprint of nature. The possibilities ahead. And give in to the notion that it didn’t matter what was around the next bend of the river – I was here in this capacity, in this moment, in this setting and I’d better soak it up if I were going to succeed in progressing to the next spot.

But along the path, every sign was pointing to the importance of not losing my treasured identity. Just figure out what being Jewish means to you, the air whispered almost as a kiss into my ear. It’s yours for the discovery; don’t abandon what matters.

That night, I settled into the fluffy bed with the University of Michigan LSA Magazine, the Spring 2009 edition which had gathered dust in my office. I rely on the time afforded by a journey in order to read the periodicals I collect with good intentions. I don’t know why I don’t read them during the normal ebb and flow of my days at home. I become singularly focused on work and children and the sound of the air outside my office window and the way the house looks at the end of each day.

On the plane, an article by William Least-Heat Moon in the WSJ Magazine spoke of the power of travel, the coast of a canoe. Canoes were in my mind as I have learned to be aware of the signs and stories all around me. And then, in the magazine of my alma mater, a professor in a canoe on dry land, and the title: Everywhere, Canoes.

Vince Diaz. Canoe Cultures class. “Through canoes,” Vince Diaz told his students, “you will learn about yourself. Canoes are a platform for addressing issues.”

Raised in Guam, he became a strident “born-again native” and subsequently ardent purveyor of the Islander tradition, which was punctuated by canoes. The way a vast archipelago was settled by its own people – not European interlopers – was by virtue of the staying power of a canoe. And now, at the University of

Michigan, he teaches students to build canoes as a way of teaching about cultural tradition. Canoes are “vessels that carry ideas as well as people, containers of culture as well as objects.”

What was all this talk about canoes? Why now? I had traveled to Canada for the mountains I would hike two days later and the ocean waters I would kayak after I slept that night – I had no intention nor desire to climb into a canoe. But clearly, the message was finding me. There was something I needed to know.

When I was a child, I spent one month every summer at a sleepover camp in northern Wisconsin. Camp Birch Trail, on Lake

Pokegama, was nestled beneath tall old trees. The waterskiing point was reached by a ten-minute traverse along a path cut through old growth and then, the little tinny dock jutted out ten feet or so into the still lake. Counselors encouraged the littlest girls to pee outside the cabin door if they had to go late at night instead of walking through dark woods to the wash house for fear of bears.

Once each session, every group of girls had the good fortune to take a three-day trip down a quiet Wisconsin river. We paddled canoes along gulping waters, rarely reaching rapids, almost bored by the meander. I certainly was. At night, we beached our canoes and put up tents, lit a crackling fire over which to cook spaghetti and hot dogs and corn and in the morning, pancakes on the dying embers before we pushed off once again.

As much as I love to travel now, I would be ok if I never climbed into a canoe again. I remember those journeys as slow and long, untold miles ahead around bends of a river with such sameness I wasn’t sure we had moved. It was a burden I endured as a part of camp; all my friends and I were interested in after the miles we traveled was whether some of the boys from a nearby camp were journeying along the same river. 

On land once again, Lisa drove me to the door of my bed-and-breakfast, a small house among houses near the shoreline, one block from the passageway between the Olympic Mountains of Washington state and the edge of B.C. Effusive in my thanks, I opened the door and pulled my suitcases out of the car. We hugged our farewells, friends now after so many hours of getting-to-know-you and the familiar glue of knowing what it is to grow up in a tight Jewish community in suburban Detroit. It was as if we were sisters of a sort and as they drove away, I waved and watched the old minivan disappear down the street.

Up the steps of Binners B&B, the gray exterior of the house and the English gardens in full bloom all around the small front lawn, I stopped at the door. There hung a mezuzah, the tiny parchment insurance policy, a blessing from above to mark the house a home and recognize certain rituals of tradition that are hard to abandon, even by the most secular of Jews. I was so far away from what I envisioned to be a Jewish community – both in geography and in emotion. And yet I chose a B&B owned by Jews by pure coincidence. Or maybe it wasn’t.               

They showed me to my room – a glorious continuation of spaces from jetted tub and heated tiles in the bathroom floor to a cozy queen bed with curtains on the French doors that led to the sitting room. The sitting room was mine to enjoy, with CD player and television and a laptop for my use. Windows all around and the sun rose early in Victoria.               

I ventured into town for dinner at the Blue Crab Bar & Grill, a waterfront hotel dining room where I ate raw oysters fresh from the sea and a salad of fresh greens. The bay water moved as the world fell still. Though I had traveled long hours and many miles, I was energized. Sailboats outside the restaurant held silent masts with small Canadian flags fluttering in rapid wind. A maple leaf, a white cloak, the red that grabs attention against the soothing white of snow.               

A glass of dark Shiraz and then another, I drank gem stones. So far from home, I thought of the plaque on the wall beside my office computer: What would you do if you knew you could not fail? And then I wondered, is failing more proof of living than success?               

My aisle seat on the plane, chosen by my father who gave me the ticket, was chosen for the leg room, the easy exit, the access to escape once the plane descended. Beside me, a coincidence? Friendship, guidance, a north star among unfamiliar skies.               

I could see my country from the breakwater, a space I walked along after dinner to ease the tired that was creeping in. Snow topped the mountains, even in summer. It was June 21^st, the longest day of the year, the sunlight stretching far into the night to kick morning in close. I walked forested paths, in quiet repose, in thought, in song.

I wrote in my journal: I am like a sea plane, perched on the water, never submerged, gaining lift with momentum and incentive, wings spread to fly. 

 To paddle a canoe on a calm stream denotes perfect confidence in one’s own ability to conduct business in a profitable way. To row with a sweetheart means an early marriage and fidelity. To row on rough waters – you will have to tame a shrew before you attain intimate bliss. And if you’re  rowing through muddy waters, you will have disappointing business affairs.

In dreams, water symbolizes so many things: birth, rebirth, renewal, a return to the safety of the womb. But it also symbolizes the future, especially if the waters are clear.               

And when there is a canoe involved, the symbolism deepens. The canoe represents resolution of a challenge, containment of the issues within a structure that is solid and sturdy and unlikely to be broken. It is the national symbol of Canada, a nation spread so far along the cold and vast land of North America, that its people are divided between those who love canoes and everyone else.

This metaphor of community and life’s journey attracts fewer folks than the latter group, but their voices are fiercer, their enthusiasm never dampened even by harsh conditions. The frail craft, originally made from the bark of a birch tree, thin cedar slats, spruce roots and pine gum, carries in its gulping path a huge metaphorical load.

When I got on the plane and settled into my seat with the seven magazines I intended to read during the five-hour flight to Vancouver, I anticipated a trip of solitude and contemplation, of beauty and reverence and inspiration in the moments. I did not, however, anticipate being over-run with new friends, and least of all I did not expect a religious awakening in the far reaches of Pacific Canada.               

I saw Lisa before I knew her, lumbering up the aisle loudly with her husband trailing behind. At my row, they stopped, smiled apologetically and I rose to let them find their seats beside me. Still, I wasn’t expecting conversation nor friendship – just a smooth ride above the clouds to my once-a-year solo vacation of hiking and kayaking and good food and long restful sleep.               

But the fates had other ideas for me. My gray felt bag of runes tucked in my backpack and a set of tarot cards, too, I turned the pages of the magazines and somehow a conversation began between me and Lisa, whom I learned quickly was also Jewish, originally from suburban Detroit and now a resident of Victoria, B.C.               

By the end of the flight, she was preparing to fix me up with single men in metro Detroit and we had agreed that I would ride in their car with them to the Tsawwassen-Swartz

Bay ferry. He was an electrician, she an artist, and between them there was a son. She had another son from a prior marriage and was as close as a sibling to her ex-husband. They were hippies of a sort, from the wandering days of the 1960s, having migrated across the United States to final roost in the far reaches of

British Columbia.               

I heard the whole life story as the landscape changed from wheat-colored fields to luscious blue ocean waters and seaside cliffs where highways ended and sky began. We bumbled the car onto the ferry in a line of cars heading in similar directions, shut the motor, opened the doors and meandered toward the sun-bathed decks.

As we made our way between out islands and mainland, a pod of whales crested and dove alongside the ship. I stared longingly at their smooth break and curve into what had to be cold waters, I watched as we passed empty beaches in quiet coves, and then two more pods joined the journey and eagles soared above us in the clear late-afternoon sky. We ate food in the cafeteria and I watched the beauty of the Active

Pass and I breathed deeply the air of contentment. My children were thousands of miles away in the embrace of their father and I had myself for comfort.

I have tried to write this blog post for a week now and I’ve been met with silence. Not because I have nothing to say. Not because I haven’t tried (first long eloquent draft disappeared into the ether of the Internet). And not because I don’t want to. Partially - it’s that I’m living my life and doing my work and when a brilliant idea pops into my head, I am driving miles and not daring enough to write it while the road disappears under me.

I have had moments with my children worth mentioning but then those morph into the next experience and the feelings are gone. It’s always like that. Writers have to put their thoughts and nuances to paper immediately when they occur or they somehow diminish.

I began this blog a week ago by writing about Galt Niederhoffer’s excellent essay, “Reversal of Fortune,” in this month’s Vogue. She wrote about her millionaire father who lost everything twice - a daughter of a self-made man inherits a mixed blessing: she is cushioned by the luxuries her father has earned yet lacks the hunger that shortage inspires. Our nation of immigrants abounds with examples of hard work rewarded. But what happens to the next generation?

It’s true there is little work ethic among today’s youth. I dare say it may even be true for my generation. A sense of I-deserve-this without the incumbent I-must-earn-my-keep. God knows I work hard - and I don’t mind it, it’s what one does to get ahead. Our nation was built on the dreams and beliefs of wanderers who just knew they could do better than they had ever imagined. My father’s beloved scrap industry was built out of Jews collecting junk from garbage bins more than a century ago - because they were not allowed to trade precious metals in dignified offices.

Who’s laughing now?

Every conversation these days is peppered with the assertion that spending habits have changed forever, that this recession will, moving forward, alter the landscape of consumer behavior. A friend last week lamented that, being out of work, he cannot afford the designer clothing his teenagers demand. I told him maybe it was time they learned that there are limits. He disagreed.

Galt writes: For anyone who has lived through boom and bust times, one thing is abundantly clear: money is fleeting. It is a hollow symbol…

We can look for the opportunities created by loss - and pursue them with passion. In loss lies opportuntiy for reinvention. As a mother, I realized it may be the most important thing I can teach my children.

My boys are sitting on the couch in their pajamas watching cartoons. My daughter is asleep upstairs in my bed. The morning has arrived in streams of sunlight along the lawn and birdsong outside our open windows. It is beautiful and brisk and promising warmth and sunlight and exquisite fresh air all day. No rain in the forecast. No storms. No extreme humidity. Nothing but perfection.

We are traveling to Canada today, to walk the boardwalk at Point Pelee, to watch the birds, to chase the butterflies, to mutter over marsh grasses and weeds that look like flowers. I am certain that my 3-year-old at some point will whine to be carried and I’m sure someone will kick dirt in someone’s eyes. And I am certain it will be an absolutely exquisite day.