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Notes from a Garage

With John Gardiner

Remembering Pappa; the miracle of life; and the way we feel…..

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Pappa delivers the cake to grandson Isaac while cousin Ashley checks out the action.... Isaac opening his loot.....

Had an exciting time at the Gardiner-McPhail residence on Sunday last weekend. My little grandson, Isaac, celebrated his fourth birthday, and there was cake and presents and good wishes all around. I can’t really explain to you what my grandchildren mean to me and how much I care for them. They are tiny and vulnerable and I have vivid memories of my own time as a child. And for me being a child was a wondrous and exciting time, but it was also a scary, terrifying time. I have my first real memories of life when I was four. Before that, I have glimpses of life – I can see the first home my parents and I shared – I can remember the chocolate tractor my Aunt Karen got me for Easter one year. But it wasn’t until I was four and starting school that I can really remember a lot of stuff. I can, for example, still remember going for my first music lesson on the clarinet at the age of four. I can remember Miss Tizzard’s Kindergarten class. So, as I watched Isaac at his birthday, I was thinking that he will be starting to really become aware of his surroundings – these are the memories that will stick with him for a lifetime. I hope Isaac will remember me when he gets big. I was five when my grandfather died and I have only very fleeting memories of him. I can see him clearly and remember him as being really old – although he was only 65 when he died. But I still wish I’d have had the chance to know him better….to know who he was. Although I’ve never been told this by anyone else in the family, I think I look more like Grandpa Gardiner that any other of my grandparents, but I don’t know a lot about him. I hope that one day when Isaac is my age that he will remember his “Pappa” and will know who he was and have fond memories of the guy with the big bushy beard. I love the children and wish I could do more to protect them and make their lives safe. I wish them well……

Weather has been luxurious so far this spring…lots of sunshine, a few spring showers and wonderfully warm. And, of course, my wife has started all of her little plants so our house will look beautiful this summer and we’ll have good things to eat from the garden. I help her as much as I can with her gardening, but she does most of it – except the potatoes. I’m the potato farmer in the family and have had good fun producing a small crop of Yukon golds and reds and a few other varieties. And even doing this little bit of gardening really puts me in awe of Mother Nature. What an enormously wonderful planet we live on and how miraculous the whole process of life really is. I am sort of overwhelmed by it. I rather enjoy the theory that the entire planet is one organic, living thing and everything is interconnected and there is kind of a universal oneness to it all. I’ve sort of thought this way since I was a young guy and first started to become aware of the way life works. Still, it’s hard for a mere mortal to really comprehend life and its amazing complexity. We think of computers and modern technology as being fairly complicated stuff and yet they are nothing and but children’s toys compared to the wonder of life. I’ve watched science shows and read articles and books where scientists try explaining the “Big Bang” and how the Universe began. But there simply are no answers. We do not have the scope of intelligence to even imagine how life began. To do this, you must imagine something that really can’t exist…a concept I call “not even nothing”, and I’ve spent some considerable time dwelling on this subject and find that it leaves me feeling frustrated and unsure. And I know, I’m crazy for even thinking about stuff like this…and who cares, right? But I do love the planet and love growing potatoes and stuff like that. Too bad everyone couldn’t stop for a moment each day and marvel at life. Maybe that would help cut down on the amount of conflict on Earth. Not likely, but possible…..strange, but true….

My good friend, Philip Shaw, has been writing about conservatives and liberals in his column, At Issue, over the last couple of weeks….He’s been asking the fundamental question, wondering what liberals and conservatives really are these days. I really think there’s no such thing as a pure conservative or pure liberal these days. Maybe there hasn’t been since Sir Edmund Burke and John Locke wrote about the two philosophies several hundred years ago. All of us are sort of a mix of different ideologies, sometimes conservative and sometimes liberal and sometimes even socialist, depending on the circumstance. For most politicians, it’s political expediency that usually determines which way they go. For the rest of us, it’s usually how we feel in our hearts about an issue. The politicians could take a lesson from that. Anyway, I am sort of a “conservative rebel”, as Phil remembers, but we’re all sort of like that….

Out of time for another week and feeling a little under the weather today……Really nice outside but I’m stuck on the computer all day….Take care and remember…..”Hew to the line; let the chips fall where they may.”



John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm He welcomes comments on his work.