This weekend’s dating adventure took me out to a talk sponsored by Nature Canada by Suzanne Simard, the author of Finding the Mother Tree. One of the ways that I have found to discover what might be happening in my community that would be good “date” material is by scrolling through the Eventbrite listings and seeing what is out there. This talk intrigued me because one of my book clubs had just finished reading “Finding the Mother Tree” and I had been listening to Suzanne Simard defend the book “Life in the City of Dirty Water” by Clayton Thomas-Muller on CBC Canada Reads. I partnered this event with another event that I found on Event Brite which was a fundraiser for the Ottawa Food Bank, with the Ottawa Guild of Potters – Great Bowls of Fire. The Great Bowls of Fire ticket allowed me to pick out a handcrafted and BEAUTIFUL bowl, as well as a multitude of choices of take-out soups and bread from so many different local restaurants.

This date allowed me to tap into a couple of things important to me. One, opportunities that are fundraisers for causes that are important to me are events that I am interested in. Being in a relationship often allowed me the opportunity to extend the invitation to my partner as an activity to do together. Two, opportunities to explore ideas that let me think about things differently stimulate my intellectual curiosity which is also an important part of my identity and something I look for in potential partners.

One of the things that I really appreciate about myself is that I do like a plan, and I particularly like when a plan comes together. Tonight was not that night. I had planned to attend the Great Bowls of Fire fundraiser, and then there was theoretically enough time to take my beautiful handcrafted bowl and fresh soup down to a park and sit and have my soup for my dinner before heading out to the evening talk. What I had not counted on is how long it would take at the Great Bowls of Fire – even though I arrived early – and that the takeaway soup would be cold. In hindsight, it makes sense that the soup would be available cold, I just had not planned for it. And due to COVID protocols, they were only allowing small numbers into each of the rooms at a time. It meant that things moved slowly. Since I had arrived early, I did have my pick of all the styles that were available.

I chose a beautiful blue bowl that had this light blue spiral on the inside of the bowl. It reminds me both of a shell and of the logo for community health centres. It also fits beautifully in my hands. After spending time perusing the handcrafted bowls, my bowl was carefully wrapped in plain newsprint paper to protect it for transport home and placed in a sturdy brown paper bag with handles. I was handed four tickets for soup sampling and headed up the flight of stairs to the second floor of the community centre for the soup options.

Now, I have to say that this event is a lovely event for a date night, or a get-together with friends. I greatly appreciated having four tickets for soup samples because there were so many to choose from, so I didn’t feel deprived that I wouldn’t be able to share soup with someone else, had there been someone else with me who might have been inclined to share. It took me a couple of circles around the room to finally land on my four samples – mushroom veloute, cheddar and broccoli, curried vegetable and roasted carrot and brie soup. There were several bread choices, but I wasn’t all that interested in the bread options having realized that the soup was in fact, not going to be my dinner tonight.

I was distracted for a bit by additional bowls that were for sale in the middle of the soup room and I allowed myself some time to wander around the table and pick up a second hand-crafted bowl for the evening. This bowl was also shades of blue, with a blue-flecked creamy interior. What I most loved about this bowl was its shape – it was quite deep for a soup bowl, with slight ridges alongside the outside of the bowl, plus a small little dimple on each side, about halfway up. It was the only one like it on the table, so I nabbed it.

What I thought might take me half an hour ended up taking me close to an hour and now I only had about an hour of time before the talk this evening. I was hungry and my cold soup was not going to cut it this evening. I headed back to my car and started driving in the direction of the church where the talk was going to be held. Parking was a challenge and so I ended up further down the street than I had planned. I ended up stopping at a little Thai restaurant and ordering pad thai as take-out and eating my dinner in my car, parked on the street about three blocks away from the church where the talk was being held.

I prefer to arrive early for things, and the talk was no exception. My daughter told me once that I think that I am on time when I am early, when I am on time, I am late and if I am actually late, I rather lose my shit. There is lots of truth in her observation. The flyer for the event suggested that people arrive starting at 6:15 pm so that there would be sufficient time to check everyone’s COVID vaccination status. I arrived shortly after 6:30 pm and found the first three rows of the church already filled with participants, masked, and chatting amongst themselves.

The even started right at 7 pm and Dr. Suzanne Simard was an engaging speaker. What I really enjoyed reading in Simard’s book was the revelation that trees are not solely a source of timber or pulp, but they have a complex and interdependent circle of life that not only connects tress to one another but also are social, cooperative creatures that are connected through their underground network and share a method of communicating and connecting communally in ways not all that different from our own. This level of connection happens across species and is essential for the bio-diversity of the forest. What is really amazing from her research is the discovery that the oldest trees in the forest are connected to over 80% of the vegetation in the forest area around them.

I describe myself as spiritual and not religious. For most of my life, I have believed that there is an energy that connects us all together and Simard’s book and talk reinforced some of that thinking. Somewhere along the line, I recall reading that Simard’s work formed the basis of the mythology of the Hometree and the sacred Tree of Souls in the movie Avatar. I can’t find the reference for it, but I can see the threads throughout the book.

After the talk there was an opportunity for people to ask questions, but I was done for the evening. After sitting for 90 minutes on church benches, my back and my butt were sore and uncomfortable. The beautiful thing about dating myself, is that there is no one else to negotiate with on my dates. I discretely and quietly stood up and walked to the back of the church and made my way out and into the quiet night. I walked back to my car, the sound of my cowgirl boots hitting the sidewalk as I strode back to the car.

What I appreciated about this date night was my willingness to adapt to changes in my dinner plans and to give myself full permission to be able to leave an event early when I just did not want to be there any more. It wasn’t that it was bad, I had just gotten what I wanted out of the evening.

This morning I woke up and felt a leap of joy and delight at finding my new handcrafted bowls sitting on the counter. I chose the deeper of the blue bowls – the one with all the ridges, speckled cream interior, and two little dimples on each side of the bowl. While I would only rate the date a 6/10, I really enjoyed taking the time to get ready to go out for the evening, to take delight in selecting a bowl for the evening, and listening to a conversation about a topic that I wanted to learn more about.

This was date number 4 and it was the date that I spent the most money on. My other dates were either free, or by donation, and at most I spent money on a latte. Tonight’s date cost me $55 for the Great Bowls of Fire and $25 for the Dr. Suzanne Simard talk. Spending money doesn’t necessarily make for a great date – it is honestly all about the intention and the energy that I bring to the events.

Any good date is more about the connection than the location, or time of day. I woke up this morning and was having a really lazy feeling and was struggling to get moving. However, I had made a date with myself for this morning at 10 am at the Ottawa Art Gallery and I needed to get going. I debated continuing to lounge in bed and skipping out on going to the gallery because it was a rainy, miserable day and my bed was super cozy. There was no one who was waiting for me like a “real” date and then I realized what I was doing in my head.

I was making myself less important than the value that I would have offered to someone else if I was meeting them for a date somewhere. Part of the journey of dating myself, of romancing myself, of making time spent doing activities more than just an opportunity to do something on my own. I wanted to shift my energy to ensure that I was making myself a priority and not an option in my own life. It is what I want from a partner at some point, and for that to happen, I also need to make myself a priority.

I got myself going and dressed for a daytime date in jeans, a nice casual flowing black top with my favourite red and black coverup over it. I took the time to pick out my mala bead necklace to wear along with it. The beads soothe me when I am not feeling my best and it was helpful when I was nursing a bit of a headache, but still wanted to head out on my date with myself.

Today’s date and connection with myself was to the Ottawa Art Gallery and I had planned for a Saturday morning date since the OAG is not open in the evenings. Originally I had planned to ride my bike, but with the grey rainy weather, and a faint headache persisting in the background, I chose to take my car downtown.

I was interested in this date with myself because of an exhibit by Don Kwan, a Chinese-Canadian artist whose work looked compelling as it grappled with the issues of identity, place, representation, and family memories. At the centre of his work was a Chinese lantern that he hung outdoors and photographed throughout the changing seasons over two years. He had removed the glass inserts that contained the images of his family members and these were on display in one part of the exhibit. What remained of the lantern after the documentation was presented, as photographed throughout the seasons.

Another exhibit that moved me was entitled “To play in the face of certain defeat” by Esmaa Mohamoud. The artist uses representative art to explore sports as a covert form of neo-slavery. The athletic equipment and symbols illustrate the pervasive discriminatory behaviours and attitudes based on race, class, gender, and sexuality. The art had me reflecting on the fetishizing of sports figures, and the dynamic of often white sports club owners making money from racialized athletes.

There was other art that I felt drawn to, including these two beautiful pieces.

After leaving the art gallery, I was not quite ready to end the date with myself and wandered looking for an independent coffee shop to grab a treat and a drink. Unfortunately, as I explored a couple of my favourites, they were either closed or were fuller than I felt comfortable with as we move into this stage of the pandemic where it is no longer required to be fully vaccinated in restaurants and no capacity limits. Along the way, I admired how the theme of today’s date remained present as I admired some street art along the way. I fondly remembered all the street art I have admired over the years as I traveled to other countries and places. One of my favourite things to do in a new city is to wander looking at public art. It builds a sense of connection to the culture of a community, and it is one of the most accessible ways to explore a city when I am traveling.

Disappointed that my first choice for a tea and a treat was not open, I wandered back to my car. Along the way, I saw someone weaving back and forth across the sidewalk headed towards me. He had no shirt or socks on and appeared to be wearing a grey towel wrapped around his waist and a black t-shirt wrapped around his head. He was muttering to himself and waving his hands in my direction. I had seen this gentleman earlier, as I was driving my car as they had been standing on a street corner taking off his clothes and shouting at the top of his lungs in a mumbled jumble of words that I could not decipher. I felt somewhat anxious as the person was potentially high, or in the midst of a mental health crisis and I was uncertain as to his intention. He was clearly headed directly for me even as I tried to discreetly move out of his path. As he got really close, he appeared to be handing me something in his hand and although the potentially safer response would have been to avoid him, I felt compelled to reach out to him in the spirit of connection. He opened his hand to reveal a somewhat crumpled and tired-looking orange tulip bud. I accepted it, said thank you, and paused to offer him something in return, but he waved me off, took a bow and kept on moving. I was touched – a gift of a flower on my date with myself. It felt manifested because all this week I was trying to figure out how to send myself flowers in a way that they would be delivered at a time when I was least expecting it, just like an impromptu gift from a partner. And here was a flower, presented to me by someone that I initially felt fear and concern for.

As I wrapped up my date with myself, I reflected on the fact that I had once again chosen a date that was easy to access from a solo date perspective. There were several people wandering the gallery on their own, and occasionally a group of two or three people would wander by. The date is genuinely something that interests me – a variety of artist perspectives – and stimulated my interest in visual art, as well as gave me a great deal to contemplate from an intellectual perspective. I realized I was judging myself for not being more outside of my comfort zone, for not challenging myself to someplace that was less comfortable as a singleton and I wondered why that was.

I reflected on a conversation that I had recently with a friend when I told them I was embarking on a project to date myself and had planned to tackle 50 dates in the remaining weeks of the year. She laughed at me a bit and told me that most people might have challenged themselves to maybe ten dates and wondered out loud why I needed to make it such a big goal. In my reflection, I realized that I had not only set myself this challenge, but I also felt that there was a need to push myself to do things that were always outside my comfort zone. That is indeed a part of my personality, but I also want the process of dating myself to be a process of my own self-discovery as well. What are the activities that I want to spend time on because they are of passionate interest to me? If I make myself a priority, how can I tap into my needs, wants, desires and explore who I am at my core? As I continue to reflect on who I want in my ideal partner, I want to also use this time to ensure that I explore who I want to be, now and into the future. I want to spend time investing in the person that I want to be and continue to develop myself into the kind of partner that the partner I hope to attract, will also find attractive. I am certainly enough as I am. but in making myself a priority in my own life, I know that I will have a clearer sense of who I am outside of the contributions that I make in my professional and volunteer life, or how I have defined myself as a parent.

And that is someone worth spending time with. I rated this date a 10/10.