My parents ate porridge followed by poached eggs on brown toast every morning for decades.  Then during retirement, their lunch options narrowed to a point too: cheese sandwiches and salad. The serving window was tight - if you weren’t at the table at 8, 12:30, or 6, the kitchen was closed. And grazing from the fridge was not allowed. 

My mother’s love for routine isn’t just gastronomical: when recently offered an option to buy herself black underpants, she wrinkled her 95 year old nose with distaste. 

“I never have,” she declared. When pushed, the best explanation she could give was to say: “too glamorous.” 

For years, I mocked this love for sameness. Until I woke up to discover myself with a daily egg on toast, just one element of a tightly choreographed morning ballet that is best not interfered with. The walls of my small comfort zone (CZ, I’ll call it) sit on a foundation of DNA.

I hadn’t realized how much this tendency towards a mini-CZ had bled into my legal career until last year when I spent a chunk of my long goodbye from the firm purging old files. As I skimmed the 17 years of paper I’d generated, I saw how I’d gone from a full pie of legal work at the beginning of my career -  real estate, litigation, corporate, administrative law, governance, employment, wills & estates - to the narrow slice where I’d ended up: helping non-profit and co-op housing providers navigate the messy human drama resulting from people living in close proximity. By becoming familiar with a particular line of work I became more efficient and therefore less expensive for clients: happy clients = better business. But some of the narrowing was internally motivated. My limited professional groove became a CZ where I operated more or less on autopilot.  

Regular readers know 2023 has already been a big year of expanding my CZ.  I have two new jobs, a new house, and launched myself as “Celia Chandler, Honestly Speaking.” 

Earlier this month, though, was a shift in a way I hadn’t imagined. Annita, a close friend from high school, completed her undergrad at Mac with me 33 years ago. Despite migrating to different cities and having very separate careers, we remained close in our early adulthood, knotting our lives together in a macrame of weekly phone chats. In time, our strands became knotted to others: hers tied to her husband two decades ago and then, a few years later, mine interlaced with Jack’s.  We lost touch.

That all changed six months after Jack died when Annita called to tell me she had joined me in the 52 year old widows club. Through hours of conversation since, we’ve realized that our lives were adjacent strands in some macro-macrame project. Now we were once again tied together, each with our life-strands coloured and twisted by our similar experiences.  COVID of course intervened and ours has remained largely a phone relationship. When I heard she was selling the island property she’d purchased on Lake Temagami with her husband, I jumped at a chance to fire up our friendship again on a different level. 

I do love a good road trip and this one, five hours long, was accompanied by mixed CDs I’d unpacked in the ongoing moving-in process. Everything about this adventure fell squarely within the four corners of my CZ. Traveling by boat to an island would typically be OK if that island is Vancouver Island and I could drive my car onto a ferry. Not so. Instead, Annita met me on the dock with her pontoon boat and we made the short hop across to her sanctuary. The non-swimmer/non-boater in me was unnerved - if Annita were incapacitated, how would I exit?

Annita proudly showed me her kayak and canoe collection, knowing I’d respond as a child does to beef liver. I clutched my trashy cottage novel more tightly. For two days, we chatted, ate, drank, and read. 

The evening before I left, with novel complete, water like glass, and a sunset worth the drive and then some, Annita announced she was going for a paddle. 

“I’ll join you,” I replied. 

“Really?” Annita couldn’t have sounded more surprised, or more pleased.  Only a 40+ year friendship can hear the silent expansion of a CZ. 

So, yes, with lots of help getting in and out of her spare kayak, I circumvented her island and remained more or less dry. Did I love the experience so much I’d be itching to do it again? Hard no. I proved to myself I could do it though.  

And my mother bought black underpants too. 

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