Gosh, that title sounds like a game of Twister, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t feel like a game these days. It got me thinking: What do you stand on guard for? Your word? Your livelihood? Your kids?
I vividly remember the last time I took my daughter camping. She was about five years old and I was just getting used to being alone in the world with her. I was striving to keep doing the things we loved, things that made life good. So we were in a little town, in a little tent alone in a corner of the campground. Quite far from anyone who might help, I realized in the middle of the night when a drunken group approached us.
I could hear them in the distance, the frivolity, the sharp slice through the quiet of the small lakeside town. I snapped into immediate focus, instantly wide awake and already jumping into action. I knew that sound, I knew the dangers and I grabbed for whatever was near. A little stick. No, that wouldn’t be enough. My keys. I pulled them from the pocket of my jeans and held them tight, unzipping the tent quietly to peer through the door to the car and back again.
Could I swoop her up and into the car before they got there? No, no time. They were just beyond the unbearably feeble chain-link fence and had noticed the little tent – something already outdated and funny looking in 1999 amid all the impenetrable fortresses of the fifth-wheels all around us. I splayed out my keys and placed them one by one between my fingers, points facing out from my suddenly hulk-like fist.
They would have to get past me if they thought they could get to her, I told myself, and I squatted near the door ready to pounce like a soldier at war. One was climbing the fence and I was ready. His jeans caught on the top wire, though, and he fell to the ground in a heap while the others walked on, unnoticing, uncaring. He ran to catch up with them and I lowered my shaking hand. I would have decked him. I would have wrestled him to the ground if he had come for her. I would have fought, and I would have won.
She’s the first person I think of still, when things feel vulnerable and unsettled around us. There are moments these days when I’m starting to feel like a little old lady sometimes, but that same force of the protective mother can consumes me in an instant. It’s can make me a superhero. On guard for thee? Yessiree, with every cell in my whole little old lady being.
What is your superpower and how do you harness it? Because it might be time. If our collective superpower is to simply stand shoulder to shoulder as Canadians and link arms, that’s enough. If it’s necessary, we will stand together with elbows up and we will make a formidable, fierce and focussed opponent. We are Canadian, after all.
Visit Sandy’s website at LifeInRetirement.ca
