Tobacco, Hope & 25th Birthdays

I have a confession to make: I enjoy the occasional cigar or bowl of pipe tobacco.

Recognizing the ignescent nature of that confession, I must clarify my position and so extinguish the concerns of fuming anti-tobacconists: occasional for me means smoking perhaps once- or twice- or thrice- a year. Such occasions are often induced by a shifting of the seasons, like when spring breaks the brittle shackles of winter. Daylight lingers long into the evening. Buds on trees have begun to swell. Rust-breasted robins toss putrescent autumn-fallen leaves in a frenetic search for groggy insects. And the cool-not-cold air bears the smell of damp earth and turf. It is an invitation to behold the glorious shift while sitting around the first campfire of the year.

But to behold this shift is not quite enough. There is something deep within my being that identifies with and longs to participate in the growing chorus of life reawakening — this doxology of hope. In a way that I do not fully understand, participation in this can mean striking a match and lighting a briarwood bowl of cavendish pipe tobacco. Wafts and whiffs of aromatic smoke drift and mingle and dissipate into the evening. A fragrant burnt offering of dark-chocolate-peach-vanilla-whisky.

Me, my brother Brad, and Grandpa Skibinsky c.1976

I suppose I come by this appreciation honestly. When I was a child, our family would often travel to my maternal grandparents' farm in eastern Saskatchewan, near Carrot

River. I can picture my Grandpa Mike Skibinsky sitting at his chrome-legged, faux-wood Arborite kitchen table early in the morning. He would have his Red Rose tea in a golden-butterfly-pattern Corelle cup, its inside lightly stained from years of use. He would prepare it with sugar and a splash of Carnation evaporated milk. Also on the table would be his reading glasses, his Bible, and a tin of cigarette tobacco.

I can recall the rich, grassy-hay smell of that freshly opened tin of John Players Navy Cut and raptly watching him make individual cigarettes. Rugged hands deftly placing the loose tobacco into thin Zig-Zag paper, rolling it for a smoke later that morning.

What one remembers from their childhood is admittedly odd.

I have another confession to make. This one more incendiary than the first: I encourage my nephews to smoke. To be clear, I would discourage any child from smoking. However, upon the occasion of their quadranscentennial birthday (that’s their 25th birthday for those who prefer simpler terms), I purchase my respective nephew a gift. This gift includes tobacco, a pipe befitting their personality, pipe cleaners, a storage bag, and a pipe tamper — all the things a reputable tobacconist would recommend for one embarking on this smoldering journey.

The gift is a tool. It is a symbol. And it is given in conjunction with a glowing ember of wisdom. (I recognize that this proffered wisdom is not my own. It is etched deeply into the core of our being and has been embedded into the coding of our existence.) One hears this wisdom in the words of an ancient poem which goes something like this:

A person’s life is like grass

Like a flower in a field that flourishes

But when an arid wind blows, it disappears

And no one can even spot the place where it once grew.

To me, my occasional pipe smoking is like a sacrament serving as a reminder that:

Life is short.

It is a vapor.

It is like smoke.

There is little in life that endures. How can this not lead to lamentable despair? This is how: When one earnestly seeks that which truly endures, one finds hope. Spring, with its explosion of life, testifies to this hope.

So as we hear the Voice in life’s shifting seasons, let us contemplate the relentless flow of time’s current. And let us find hope. And let us live hope. Indeed, let our smoldering lives be wafting, wisping, aromatic trails of vernal hope changing the atmosphere around us.