Category Archives: humor

Bulletin from Shangri-La: the boxcar house

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boxcar house #2

Shangri-La, here in the Sierras at the bottom end of Kern County has a type of house called the boxcar house.

This is the possible view from the back of the boxcar house.

mountain view from boxcarmountain view #2This is the actual view.

actual viewThere are no windows on the long side, except around the front door. There are sliding doors at either end, but we are enjoined not to leave them open, in case of bears. THey are the only windows that open.

During the day when we are out, the temperature inside soars. It is still about 90F/33C when we return. There is no AC. Someone used to live here full-time. How?

My room-mate and I have 163 years between us. The bathtub is two feet off the floor. Tai chi and a well-anchored bar makes it possible for me into it to take a shower. The other gal showers elsewhere.

Our first night is amusing. It is about 60F/15C inside. We have been told there are wall heaters. And yes there are. I turn on the one in the living room. It heats well enough, but not as far as the open kitchen and certainly not to the bathroom or the bedrooms, which are at either end. I turn on the heater in my bedroom. The fan powers up. A little guy inside is hitting heavy metal with a sledge hammer. I actually try to bear it. After three minutes I shut the heat off. I prefer silent cold.

The phone will not make long distance calls. The owner lives in Ventura. My cell phone gets no reception at this spot. Who carries a phone card these days? Next day, we learn that the noise will quit after the first five minutes. That proves to be true.

I start to make my bed. Like all rental cottages, this one does not provide linens. We have brought linens from the house in the pines, over the way. The bed is queen-sized. My sheets are not. If you turn the top sheet crossways and tuck it in at the sides, it more or less covers the mattress. Then the fitted sheet can be tucked in at one bottom corner to serve as a top sheet. I pile the five blankets, I find in the cupboard on top.  Quite a heavy load. I wrap what turns out to be a padded baby crib mattress cover around my shoulders and endeavour to read in bed.

In the morning, I decide to boil water for tea. I search all the cupboards. No kettle. For a few dizzy moments, I can’t find any dishes at all, until I spy the narrow cupboards built into the front wall. I find a pan to fill with water. How to turn the ceramic top burner on high. I take a guess. Ten minutes later the pan is still cold. My room-mate is an outgoing, former actor, a famous joker, but with less salty language. I stand there in exasperation and hear myself exclaiming, “Bad word, bad word, bad word.”

But here’s the best part. It is silent. No railway trains, no traffic noise. One jet – overhead in two weeks -a fighter from Lompok. No light pollution. Great beds. Excellent water pressure. Lots of hot water. And it is costing less than $60 a night. I have the address.

 

 

What I Learned at the Airport

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Not taken at 6:30 on a Monday!

Not taken at 6:30 am on a Monday!

Toronto Pearson Airport 6:30 a.m, a Monday. The septuagenarian hobbit is about to learn a lot.

Lesson 1: The physics of a rolling object 1.0.. The new large roller suitcase isn’t as easy to roll as they claim. The carry-on rolls better. The bigger problem is how to co-ordinate two rolling bags.

Lesson 2: Times change 1.0. I’m already checked in on-line. I’ve already paid for my checked bag. What the –? I have to print my own baggage tags. Do the check-in kiosks do  that? The very tall man in front of me, who hasn’t checked in yet – how old school- assures me they do. Then an attendant, one of a rare breed, identifies me as old. Helps me flatten my passport, sticks the baggage tag on, scans it and send me off to find the E entrance.

Lesson 3: The physics of rolling objects 2.0. Should have got a push trolley. E is half a kilometer away. The big bag weighs at least 23 kilograms.

Lesson 4: Patience 1.0. There are at least 1000 people in the U.S. customs hall. They are all ahead of me.

Lesson 5: How to Queue. By spreading my feet and doing a high sit into my hips, I can keep from fainting in the dense, winding line. Tearing off the coat, scarf and tam I have worn against Toronto weather helps as well, as does chatting to the people behind and in front.

Lesson 6: Times Change 2.0. Eventually, I arrive at  another kiosk which also wants to read my passport and again, I have to flatten it with both hands. Then on to the next line with a real human being at the end.

Lesson 7: Times change 3.0. American Customs and Immigration officers have mellowed. In 2002, I was almost denied entry. I had family in the U.S. and it was felt I was going to stay. I bit my tongue and did not say, “As if.” I said that if I did, I would lose all my benefits. She let me through. Today I am asked if I am having a good day.

Lesson 8: Patience 2.0. At the security check, I am behind an older couple and their adult son. (They are probably younger than me.) Totally emptying his pockets is too much for the old guy. He thinks that’s an imposition. His wife puts her smart pumps in the bin. The next thing I hear is, “I have to take my shoes off too.” He steps through the metal detector which sounds its alarm. The officer tells him to step back. He is told to go through his pockets again. He is wearing cargo pants. He fishes out a wad of paper. He steps through again and again. Same result. I stand waiting for my turn. The officer uses the wand which squawks many times. I want to shout,” He has metal knee replacements.” I don’t. Dad is moved over to stand on a black square, facing the wall. Mom is stood on a second square beside him. A female officer joins the fray and both desperadoes are carefully patted down. Nothing. I pass through the metal detector. Dad is standing at the conveyor built, which is standing still. “My money’s in there,” he cries. Mine too, Dad. A second invigilator arrives. Much study ensues. Son has moved Dad back to sit in a chair. Mom stands beside him. “My shoes,” cries Dad as the belt starts moving. “Dad’s shoes,” Mom cries. “Get Dad’s shoes!” I pick them up and turn to Son, saying,”Dad’s shoes.” As I reassemble myself and claim all the valuables I have in the world, I hear, “Flashlight. It was a flashlight.” Right, can’t have seen many of those before.

Lesson 9: Perspective. The tall, rangy West Indian guy who lifts my checked bag onto the belt, makes up a special song to wish me on my way.

Lesson 10: Patience 3.0. The line at Starbucks is 20 passengers, 4 pilots long.

Lesson 11: How to count. My gate is F34. I set off on the moving sidewalks, pulling the carry-on bag. Near the end, it occurs to me that F34 is not going to come after F80. The moving sidewalk says, “Do not enter”. I need to hurry. It is boarding time. I begin to trot back – “boats beating against the current” (F. Scott Fitzgerald), but I am working up a good sweat, so it isn’t all bad.

Lesson 12: Self-worth. I am finally seated in 18D. A woman is in 18F at the window. She gets to see the Grand Canyon . I get to pee. We are both praying no one will claim 18E. He is the last person to board. He is 6’4″ with the weight to go with it. As he folds himself into his seat, he says, “I tried to switch to an aisle seat but couldn’t.” And can’t now, I observe to myself. Age before beauty.

ac 321

 

What I Learned At Easter Brunch: the times they are a-changing

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IBM SelectricAt Easter brunch, I learned that a 15 lb, 3-month-old baby is too heavy for these ancient arms. I learned that a grade 3-er doesn’t read cursive writing, except her name, which she can proudly sign. I learned that a 30 year-old is baffled by the expression “ham it up” and others, which astonished elders then trotted out to further bafflement. I learned that this same young man can solve a computer problem that I have struggled over for at least an hour in a split second. I relearned that even the grade 3-er spends half her time face down to her device – a tablet, as did those 20 and 30 with their smart phones.

I already knew that my 19-year-old grandson, who was having Easter brunch across the continent, had a problem telling time on a non-digital clock and my 28-year-old grandson prefers to print rather than write. Although he must have also more or less mastered his signature – to be a doctor. That can be blamed on the “hippie” school he went to in Los Angeles. I have heard about an 18-year-old who went to apply for his passport and couldn’t sign his name. There is an ad posted in my doctor’s office for private lessons in cursive writing. My sister, Georgia says that curriculum is so demanding these days that teachers can’t give much time to practice, although cursive is still taught in the school she knows best.

In the spirit of cultural exchange, I recalled to a 20-something, my progress from straight pen and ink well to fountain pen. She knew about fountain pens, but had never much considered there was a time before the ball point pen or biro as the Brits say. She had never heard about the dastardly male-child practice of dipping the braids of the girl in the desk in front into his inkwell. She obviously had never been chosen for the momentous task of filling the ink wells. She had missed the joys of ink splatters and blotting paper. I inevitably got marked down for messy writing. We were allowed fountain pens eventually and I got one when I graduated from grade 8. And lost it in early grade 9.

The computer whizz recalled that first they had to write their essays in cursive and then they were forbidden to. In fact, even I experienced the shift to typed-only essays in my night school courses, a major pain since I had deliberately not taken typing so that my father couldn’t make me quit school to work in an office. In addition, school secretaries no longer typed material for teachers – cost cutting started in the 70s. The typewriter with corrective ribbon -an IBM Selectric- came along to save me. I could barely lift it.  I learned to type one-handed, 3-fingered, quite fast, as I am doing now – while looking at the keys. My first Apple desk top computer in 1992 was a dream come true, of course no corrective ribbon, but “delete” and “undo” and “copy” and “paste”.

The conversation at brunch moved to the study of key board/ typing skills. Mostly, it doesn’t seem to be happening. It is assumed that one way or another kids have those skills once they get to high school. So much for QWERTY. The little finger may become vestigial.

The 50-year-olds watched cartoons from the thirties as children and learned old-fashioned expressions then or from Andy Rooney pictures. The 30-year-olds are more apt to have learned expressions from Rooney Mara, whose tattooed girl had computer chops they can admire.

My own colloquial history, alas, goes back to the 19th century. My grandparents were born at the end of it, and dragged their parents’ language from mid-century in to my early life in the late 30s. One internet citing traces “ham it up” to a mid 19th century touring theatre group in the U.S. led by a man named Ham, and given, I suppose, to exaggerated gestures and bombast. (The 19th century means 1800 to 1899, by the way.)

Sorry if that note is offensive, but yesterday I told someone that one of my grandsons is in California, the other in Massachusetts and she asked if they were far apart.

Earlier I remarked to a friend about the beautiful robin song we could hear and she said, “Is that a robin? I don’t know bird calls.”

What is the world …… etc?

It’s Earth Day. It wasn’t called that in 1949. It was called Arbour Day and we were herded outside with rakes and other implements of mutual destruction to clean up the school yard and we were jolly well expected to know the birds we heard there and the trees we raked under and the bushes and even the bloody weeds.

Okay. Times change. Catch up girl.

I dislike the way the French police their language. The number of French words in use – so quick research tells me is about 43,000. Samuel Johnson’s 2 volume English dictionary of 1755 had about the same number -of English words. Today’s Complete Oxford Dictionary, 20 volumes, has over 200,000 and some estimates put the number of English words even higher. The amazing thing about our language – you are reading this in it after all, so it’s ours- is its adaptability. We accommodate change and even embrace it. (I do still bristle at “grow our business”, having the old idea that you can grow carrots but not businesses.)

True, for over 30 years, I was in the business of holding the line on grammatical structure. I had that mandate, but I didn’t like it much. I saw that sentence fragments could be the best way for students to express an idea, for example. I red-penned errors that made a sentence incomprehensible, but I may have let down standards otherwise.

Talking to Georgia, I said wealth distribution is changing so that a small percentage of people -1%?- have most of it and I think there is a similar disparity between the percentage of people who read and those who don’t, between the intellectual and the non-idea people. Of course they are not at all the same group. In fact, apart from Conrad Black, the 1% and the readers seem exclusive of each other. (I know, really, me bad, as the kids now say. Dumbed down from my bad. Even dumbness can be dumbed down.)

I failed to transmit my knowledge and love of the King James Bible and the Anglican liturgy to my children. I made a stab at it by giving my bar mitsva-ed grandson the King James Bible and he used it as a literary resource. The younger one eats up marketing books. He believes strongly in the necessity of being cultured, but his definition differs from mine. He seems to mean “becoming fully human”.

Looking at my past, I see that apparently, I don’t want to set our culture in stone but I am uneasy with the rapid change I observe. I suspect that my uneasiness comes from the fact that I am cut off from what is replacing it, out of touch, a relic of a bygone age. Except at Easter brunch.

 

Septuagenarian Buys a Stamp (or not)

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stampI set out on this sunny afternoon to buy a stamp. Well, actually several. Canada Post has just increased postage for a single stamp to $1, but if you buy a bunch it’s only 85¢. I had bought thirty 63¢ stamps designed for the Chinese Year of the Horse in January. Now I need twenty 20¢ stamps and 2¢ stamps to top those up and two 10¢ stamps to top up my U.S. postage from $1.10 to $1.20.

I have to mail the yearly doctor’s note, prescribing physiotherapy to the insurance company. On-going maintenance becomes necessary in advancing years. The doctor never refuses to give me one. The insurance company never refuses to accept it, but every year, I have to trot off to the doctor and then resort to snail mail.  So I started out with bureaucracy on my mind.

Canada Post is in trouble. We haven’t had Saturday delivery for twenty years or more. In a year or so, none of us will get home delivery. They’ve closed all but a few actual post offices and franchised out postal outlets. Then they told all these convenience or gift shops that they had to upgrade to better computers costing tens of thousands of dollars. Mom and pop gave up their franchises, which were bought by large corporations, chiefly Shoppers Drug Mart here in Toronto.

Now I can’t walk to a post office and the Shoppers mall parking lot is so badly engineered that it was probably designed by Canada Post. If I park as far south as possible, I stand a better chance of getting out, but I have a longer walk. Then in one of those brilliant marketing moves, I have to go in through the cosmetics department at the northeast end of the huge store. I never buy perfume or makeup. Doesn’t matter. I get funneled through there. Then I make a left turn. The post office is in the southwest corner. There is a hurrying person trying to pass me in the narrow toothbrush and mouthwash aisle. Then I have to swing through the lineups at the pharmacy counter and the boxes of stock still looking for a home. At last, I arrive at the Canada Post outlet.

A young woman there is turning away a business woman with a stack of thick, large brown envelopes. She is telling her where the next post office is, several miles west. Clearly, the clerk is in the middle of a phone call. “No computer,” she says. She doesn’t say, “I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t help you.” The stamps are there. I can see them. My money is  in my hot little hand, but we can’t just do an exchange. That would be too old school. Once I nearly starved in a restaurant because the computers went down, although clearly food had been cooked and wait staff stood idly by. Whereas the clerk had been quite cordial to the previous customer, she responds to me by saying, “I can’t do anything about it.” Okay, I frowned, I admit it. She doesn’t care, she is back on the phone with tech support, just a little flirty.

My unspoken curse is really not all that bad. But she may have trouble getting more than the minimum wage for a while.

I manage to worm my way out first of the store, then out of the lot up to the four way light, where I try to figure out what to do while I wait and wait for a left-turn green.

No wait, wait. First, before I get in the car, I spot a store front advertising shipping. And it has a red post box outside. That’s a very good sign. Apart from the post box deep in the heart of the old drug mart, there isn’t another for ten blocks. Relief. I dash in.

“I need stamps,” I announce.

“We don’t sell stamps,” the clerk says. “We can ship your letter Express, only $10.”

“We’re not allowed to sell stamps,” says another. “We can only ship parcels or fast mail.”

“I was just on the phone with Canada Post in Ottawa about that,” says the boss. “They told me it could take 6 to 12….. years.”

We all fall about laughing bitterly.

I decide to drive up to the Kingsway on Bloor St. There’s another Shoppers and presumably another postal outlet. Once there, I’m in paid parking territory. The machine says it takes nickles but evidently not mine. I manage to piece together enough change for 10 minutes. I go in the out door, thus circumventing the cosmetic department. I ask a woman in the checkout line where the post office is. On the second floor! How convenient. The elevator may not be the slowest I have seen, but it’s in the running.

I am #3 in the queue at the counter. I step up and order the stamps (see above).

“We don’t have any 22¢ stamps.”

“That’s okay. I’ll take 10’s and 2’s.”

“We don’t have those either.”

I won’t bore you further with a play by play. Imagine disbelief on my part. Imagine grim fatalism on hers.

“They were supposed to come yesterday. They didn’t. They were supposed to come today. They haven’t but we’re open til 9. We warned people a month ago that the price was going up and still they bought hundreds of the 65¢ stamps.”

“Well, leaving aside that it would have been possible to anticipate this need,” I reply, “nobody warned me three months ago.”

“But,” she continues, sympathetically, “you can just stick that letter in the box. They’re still accepting  the old stamp.”

Here is a fellow human being, just as fed up with inefficient bureaucracy as I am. She is not doomed to minimum wage.

It takes a large ginger cookie and a tall soy chai to cool me down.

One thing for sure, I’ll be there with bells on when they hold the wake for Canada Post.

 

 

 

The Ex – a love letter

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I needed a date the other night, someone who would appreciate a family party and would be willing to drive an hour north into white-out country, late March though it was. Naturally, I called my Ex.

When I was 16, the year that Blake and I met on a Good Friday bicycle hike, the word “ex” hadn’t been invented and had certainly not devolved from meaning ex-husband/wife down to meaning ex-boy/girl friend. Only the rich and scandalous and movie stars got divorced in those days. I can’t even remember whispered adult conversations about divorced people in my home and I always heard the whispered, good stuff.

Blake and I were together for over 25 years before we broke my grandmother’s heart. (My mother had passed on, so my grandmother had to fill the role.) She thanked God that at least my grandfather had not lived to see it. Then divorce began spreading like a nasty disease and she started working hard to keep up.

So my second niece was turning 50. My children and my sister’s are all one year apart – Irish twins, as they say. This niece was the last of the four to reach 50. Initially I phoned her daughter -great niece, that would be – to say sorry, apologies and all that. I got off the phone and had a brainwave. The invitation had been addressed to Joyce and guest. I phoned Blake and he readily agreed to be my date. It would be good to see the family, he said. I cancelled my regrets.

Blake could drive through hell without turning a hair as he proved in Paris, Rome, Athens and on the Autobann when we were married. And although we have been divorced for 36 years, he has come to family gatherings in the last few years. My sister greeted him at that first Easter dinner, “Gee Blake, I didn’t know we were going to get you back.”

It hasn’t always been hearts and flowers. At first when divorce loomed, the kitchen knives lured me, sang siren songs, but both Blake and I have a blood phobia and being a bright guy, he moved out.

Even so, we didn’t fight over the division of property or children. Fifteen and sixteen -year-olds make up their own minds. The rest we divided in half, although I resented being given the cabinet television set, which took 2 men and a boy to move. We didn’t divide my brother’s drug stash in the crawl space because we didn’t know about it and he didn’t know we were selling the house. It’s still there if you look up in the rafters near an air vent or so he claims. But that’s on your head.

Any lingering angst evaporated when Blake’s wife died. No, I didn’t mean it like that. She was a beautiful, vital young woman, as passionate as only the Spanish can be and she was a brilliant cook of Mediterranean food, ambitious and hard-working. She and Blake were coping with the idea that he would go first since he already had a cancer diagnosis. Then she was diagnosed, but the prognosis was good. Not to worry. But in the course of one autumn, she turned very badly for the worse and passed away on the winter solstice.

Our daughter came flying back to aid and comfort her father. Although neither of us had known his wife well, we felt a great out-pouring of love as if she were sending it back from the other side. Blake was perhaps too overwrought to register it. It wasn’t hard to realize that Blake could use support once our daughter left.

We go to movies like August, Osage County, I cook steaks or stew, or we eat out and we talk about politics or current events: ‘what did happen to that airplane’. Julia says it’s just what we did at our own table all those years ago.  We go along with each other for medical appointments, just to have a second set of ears and to decide on treatment if necessary. It’s true that Blake has other companionship as well. Fine with me. She can keep up with him. Being younger. Is there a pattern …. No, no, that’s small minded.

Dressing for this masked ball proved challenging for me, but I pulled together a long sleeveless dress, heavy tights and a black scoop-necked top with long sleeves for a suitably “formal” look. Blake showed up in maroon cords, a blue shirt and the softest grey/blue jacket that invited touch, mine and that of several other women.

We had a charming misunderstanding about our gift of cash. He insisted on being generous. I thought we were dividing what I had ready in half. He thought he was adding to what I had ready.

When we arrived, my niece’s grandchildren greeted us at the door, the boy in a tuxedo,  two girls in long dresses and one in a tutu. Our coats were whisked away and we were provided with masks.

Shortly, thereafter, Blake wished my older niece happy birthday and she thanked him, noting that he was 5 weeks early. “Wrong niece, Blake”, but Blake is forgiven everything. He is the beloved, absent-minded uncle to them and always has been.

It is an interesting venue, the long narrow foyer of an athletic club where the birthday girl works, with a bar and tiny kitchen in the middle and  glassed in squash courts in clear view. There is one baby. Two others have been left at home, to great disappointment. And all those flying beautiful sub-teens. So septuagenarians right down to a one-year-old. In the kitchen is the family chef, birthday girl’s son-in-law, father of 6, churning out nibblies, that the kids pass around, explaining each in detail.

Someone is reported to have said, “It’s nice to see Blake and Joyce back together.” It’s not clear if this was a joke.

Blake and I enjoy a chat with my younger sister, Georgia. They have always liked each other and are not above flirting. Then we try to mingle and find ourselves with the most mono-syllabic fellow in the room. He regards innocuous questions as an invasion of privacy.

Then a remarkable thing happens. Georgia’s ex-husband takes his two daughters – my nieces- aside and tells them he is giving each of them $40,000 from their grandfather’s estate.

It takes me only a minute to slide over to the gift table, unseal the envelope  and pocket my gift money. NO, no. I didn’t do that. Honestly, I didn’t.

Then in general jubilation, the band starts up – Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin – and the dancing begins.

Once upon a time as in the best fairy tales, Blake and I danced. We square danced, we polka-ed, we two-stepped, we jitterbugged, we foxtrotted. Since we parted all those years ago, neither of us has danced. Sixty years later, we dance.

 

 

 

Septuagenarian Puts Out Garbage

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This is no country for old women.

On Saturday, I confirmed that hypothesis. I did a really hard tai chi class. I climbed into the little red Yaris, which helpfully told me the temperature was 2 degrees celsius (34 F), but of course, it had not factored in the bitter wind, which meant it felt to me much colder. I stopped at the local wine shop to pick up my drug of choice, a little Pinot Grigio to get me through the night. At home, I struggled out of my long, brown, old-lady coat and my fur-lined aviator ear-flapped hat. I unlaced my snow boots. Then I remembered.

Twice a week, at least, I have to put the garbage out. I had the recycling pail ready in the kitchen. The newspaper rack was over-flowing. The ‘real’ garbage pail under the sink was not too fragrant and the compost on the counter was fermenting big time.

I crawled back into the feather duvet, which passes as my coat. I couldn’t dare dash out with just a hoodie on. My screamingly sensitive cells would catch the bitter wind and go for … a week-long headache or pneumonia.  I tied the  hat under my chin. I dragged my tall black Wellingtons out from the back of the closet and clumped out with the recycling pail, the garbage bag and the compost bag. Thus laden I started down the walk that leads to the drive. OMG, I need to put more ice salt down. “Be very, very careful.” I manouevre carefully past the cedar trees that have started to lean with the weight of ice and snow. This gives me a sideways sort of hunchback-of-Notre-Dame look. I decide to leave one of my burdens on the stone wall so that I get a purchase on the wrought-iron rail on the steps. I open the green bin and deposit the compost. Then I move it back away from the basement window sill. The coon which moseyed by my front window this morning needs the sill’s height to get a purchase on the green bin.

I pass on to the blue bin where I upend the recycling pail, noting as I do so that my house mates drink a lot of pop. They may also drink wine, but we have stopped putting wine bottles in this huge bin because of the Polish-only scavenger who insists on rooting through it and putting the recycling into the garbage bin as he goes. True my Polish neighbour has helpfully translated my threats to him and on the third try, achieved the same angry volume as I did. I haven’t seen him since, but that may be because this is no country for old men either. (What do we do with the wine bottles? We have to haul them off to the beer store (!!!) to get our deposit back. I have a whole winter’s accumulation waiting for warm weather.) Last I retrieve the vraiment garbage from the stone wall and turn to the black garbage bin. Back in the house after a careful return walk, I go down to the basement to get the ice salt and carefully salt the walk and the steps and the patches of ice on the drive, which is on a steep slope.

Back in the first floor apartment, I divest myself of outer wear, hang it up and go into the kitchen to make lunch. Opening the freezer, I discover another bag of compost, which really prevents my putting in the frozen food, I just bought at the market where the wine shop is. See above, re outer wear, still icy walk, sloping drive, green bin.

When I was young, you know 30, when I could still whip out the side door in a sweater and put the ONE unsorted bag of garbage in the ONE garbage pail in our double garage, I had children, I had a husband. All I had to do was threaten them with death to get the garbage taken out. It all went to a landfill I never saw and I was content.

Then it transpired that we were killing the earth. We mustn’t buy packaged goods. That worked well. More and more things came sealed in impervious plastic and cardboard. We must reuse. Well, no problem. In my family we even drove our cars until they died of age.

I left the city. I moved to a country town sans help-mates, mostly. I got acquainted with the dump -sorry- transfer station. I got acquainted with the nice man in the gate house. I enjoyed fireside chats. I started sorting bottles into one dumpster, paper into another. I learned to heave heavy, real garbage bags exactly where I was supposed to that week and I enjoyed browsing through the stuff people left at the side, which you could reuse, no charge. I did have to pay when I needed to get rid of a truck load of drywall and old pieces of plumbing. But it was a reasonable cost and Daniel, now an adult, no longer had to be threatened. I had bought the 20-year-old truck for him.

In my back yard, which lay open to my little barn and open fields, I had a composting pile that yielded lovely black loam for my vegetable garden.

By the time I moved back to the city, I found myself with a grey box for paper, a blue box for glass, a real garbage bin and, eventually, a counter-top holder for compost and a small green bin outside, which was especially designed to accommodate the small hands of a raccoon. Luckily, my first apartment on the second floor of a house also had a pond, so we were coon-central for dining excellence.

Well, at least we didn’t have bears, so I saved a couple of thousand on a garbage safe.

Eventually, the city introduced large black garbage bins and blue recycling bins -the green bins were such a success, they carried on. The former two bins can be automatically lifted by the truck as you probably know, except on streets with parking, except…, except… And the green bin guy has to get out and hand load.

In the house, I have often stood with a ting scrap of food and a tiny bit of cellophane extracted from the sink strainer and puzzled my over-worked sorting brain. Which goes where? Sometimes, I confess, I just put both in the garbage, even though the voice of my friend, Sara, alias, the garbage police, is shouting in my head that I have just put another nail in Mother Earth’s coffin. It’s my small rebellion.

Forgive me, Mother, for I have sinned.

Note #1: Initially I gave the scavenger bags of bottles.  I was repaid by a grunt and intense self-satisfaction. Then he must have started coming when I wasn’t in the kitchen where I could hear his racket. That’s when he started trashing the recycling..

Note #2: A woman I know went out to her green bin one morning and a coon sprang out in her face. She staggered back, tripped, broke her hip and had to crawl next door. I visited her in rehab. She blamed her husband.

Note #3: Calling all coons -you are nocturnal.

Screamingly Sensitive Cells

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As I stepped out of the shower, the skin cells of my upper arms began screaming,”We are dry. We are dry. We can’t stand it. We’ll probably die….” and all in spite of the fact that they always get rubbed with lotion after a shower.

A little earlier, the second toe on my left foot screamed, “I’m bruised you know. You dropped something on me. I can’t go down these stairs. Please don’t make me…”

Earlier still right lower back cells yelled, “We’re stiff. We’re stiff. OMG be careful. We could spasm….”

As I made the bed, the heating contractor cells began, “Oh, it’s sooo hot in here. Oh, don’t try to shake that sheet. We’re dying in here…” Stripping to an undershirt, I stifled them.

I plan to go out to shop and my face is already gearing up. As soon as a cold wind -or even, let’s be frank a moderately cool breeze- hits it, face cells will yell, “Batten the hatches. Put up the shields.” This is a cue for every muscle cell in my body to harden up and spasm.

And there is more, so much more. Years of therapy have made no dint in this cellular hysteria.

Here’s a new idea – stop stifling these voices. If you come upon me wandering about and vocalizing as I did just now, don’t be surprised. “We’re so itchy. We can’t stand. We’re going to die”. etc. It seemed to work.

Separatism Fatigue

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I was born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, (on the border with Vermont and New Hampshire) and although I moved away when I was nine, my heart still lives under Hereford mountain. So imagine my surprise when I reacted to the latest uproar about Quebec separating from Canada by wearily wishing it would just go and be done with it.

I must have got old and crotchety, I thought. How could I think that? True I didn’t journey to Montreal in 1995 as thousands of others from right across Canada did in a massive demonstration of love, which worked. That referendum was defeated and we have had almost twenty years of something like peace, not all that peaceful but not excessively worrying either.

On the other hand, we have been stewing over this problem since the early sixties when A Royal Commission on Bilingual and Bicultural-ism was set up in answer to growing Québec nationalism. The effect was that people enrolled their children in French immersion schools across the country and seriously ambitious folk made themselves bilingual. We had a brief cultural détente during Montreal Expo in 1967, but the next year, we had FLQ terrorism and murder in the name of Separatism. We had the War Measures Act, martial law in Québec. Individually, we had serious inner conflict. That was the year the Parti Québeçois was formed by the merging of two existing parties. Under the leadership of René Lévesque, it won the provincial election in 1976.

I took that very hard. My mother, who had been given two weeks to live in 1970, was by the fall of 1976, unable to fight death off any longer and this Lévesque wanted to take away my motherland.

English speakers left Montreal in droves and flocked a few hours down the road to Toronto doing their bit to liven up their new city.

In 1980, Lévesque held the first referendum to that effect, weighting the question by what we Anglais considered to be an ambiguous question. Despite this the No’s prevailed, settling the question, we thought. Foolish hope. In 1995, after the Unity Rally, the No’s won again but barely.

Before I go on, a little personal history. I was an English-speaking Québecer. The mortgage on our farm was held by a Frenchman. He was depicted in family conversations like Simon Legree. I was dragged along by my father to “negotiations” with this man. The rest of the continent might have been pulling out of the Great Recession, but not Hereford Hill. The only reason we were still eating, and not well at that, was we grew potatoes, milked cows,  and hunted. I remember those tense ‘sort of’ conversations. Hard to talk when two people don’t share language, except for swear words. So my father gave up the farm. “Je me souviens” (“I remember”) is on the Quebec license plates. It’s not clear if it means the Battle of the Plains of Abraham where the British won over the French, or the humiliation of having to address the Federal government in English. When I read it, I remember being downtrodden by the French.

In the years since Lévesque’s win, Québec has passed laws limiting education in English schools. If you are a native French speaker or an immigrant, you are required to go to a French school. Together with the falling birth rate in the province, this policy has reduced the population, although people from Haiti or Morocco, French-speaking countries, flock in, it seems. Not sure how the “pur laine” (pure wool) the good old fashioned French Québecois, feel about that.

For a while in the 70’s, when I visited, store clerks, etc. actually pretended not to understand any English or my fractured French. I do have several years of study, but unfortunately under English speakers who had dreadful accents. My children fared better with French-speakers and summers in France. That is changed now. Hotel employees and other service providers are eager to communicate. They have lost their Parisian frostiness.

As I said in an earlier post, it is still not possible to figure out all the highway signs and I find myself praying – in English- that the one I just sailed past uncomprehendingly, didn’t say “Road closed ahead”. Let’s see “rue fermé…” And sort out “est” and “ouest” at 120 KPH!

Lately, Pauline Marois the P.Q. premier of Quebec and the merry band in her minority government, have sought to woo voters by plumping for a more secular state, à la France, which went that way after the French Revolution. She seeks to pass a bill forbidding the wearing of visible symbols of religious allegiance by public representatives and workers – the hijab, the turban, the yarmulka, even to be fair, ostentatious crosses, although small ones are to be allowed. So goodbye job, Muslim, scarf-wearing daycare worker/ teacher assistant. Marois called a provincial election for April 7, 2014 and proposes to win a majority in the legislature by this strategy. She vowed to fight the election on that bill and on the province’s economy.

Last week, she showed up at a press conference with PKP (Pierre-Karl Péladeau) in tow. He, she announced, would run in the election. He is the owner of a country-wide media conglomerate, including newspapers and television stations, which he vows to retain, but place in a blind trust if he is elected. (Blind, my eye; this guy is a hands-on publisher.) Trouble is he didn’t act like a humble, first time candidate. Immediately, he made it clear that he chose to run only with sovereignty in view. (Yes, that means Separation.) By the end of the week, Ms Marois was (gently) holding him back from the microphone. Then she went on to explain that a separated Quebec would still have open borders, use Canadian currency and have a seat on the Bank of Canada.  Really! but will there be a tariff on cheese?

Pundits including Conrad Black in Saturday’s (March 15, 2014) National Post (Let’s hold our own referendum) think that “the French are about evenly divided on the issue, and the 20% of Quebecers not native French Canadians are solidly Federalist” leaving opinion at about where it was in 1980 – 60 No to 40 Yes.

But … do I care? Finally, in Rex Murphy’s column in the same paper, I found out that I am not so special after all. In fact, he says that as a country we are worn out by this marital spat and we have all begun to think, “If you want to go, go.”

Did I actually say that? Oh my dear starvation mountains please still be there.

Daniel, Road Warrior

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(This is one of a series of posts about my estranged son, Daniel.)

bike awardI opened the front door, looked down and almost fainted. There was my small son, clutching his throat, blood spurting out between his fingers. I screamed. His father came running and pried Daniel’s fingers open. It was his chin, not his throat after all. Blake swept him up and into the car while I stood there, immobilized. The small tricycle lay overturned on the sidewalk. The other children, including Daniel’s sister Julia stood beside their tricycles, most of them larger models. They had been racing like maniacs up and down the sidewalk and shouting in glee.

Daniel had had his first serious bike fall. It would not be his last. In the years to come, he would take many spills – on his first small two-wheeler, on his banana-seat bike, on his mountain bike, on his road racer, on his commuter. He would up-end over handle bars, somersault over car hoods, narrowly escape leg crushing in traffic, get doored, get run off the road on highways. He would bleed from road rash; his wounds would turn red, then blue, then yellow, but curiously he would never break a bone.

I didn’t know any of that then. I just knew that my husband who couldn’t stand the sight of blood, who fainted in movies that depicted blood loss had just leaped into the fray while I stood helplessly by.

After a few hours, they returned, Daniel sporting a series of brown stitches under his chin, which he rushed to show the other kids. He has that white scar still, just out of sight until he lifts his head.

(Strangely, it always turned out that when Julia was bleeding, I handled it. Daniel shut her in the oven of the toy stove – at her insistence – and I dealt with her bleeding hand, holding the compress in the emergency ward, etc. But whenever Daniel turned up bleeding or even reported a close call, I got weak in the knees.)

In summers in Guildwood Village, the kids would take off on their bicycles in early morning, riding off to the cliffside parks, ditching the bikes to climb the bluffs, coming home late for lunch, dusty and scraped, only to set out again. No questions asked. Well, none answered anyway.

When Daniel’s doctor recommended exercise to deal with his incipient asthma. we foolishly enrolled him in soccer. In full regulation gear, knee socks and all, he spent his time avoiding the action, hanging back, taking an ego hit until he decided that he was meant for racing. He began by racing on his feet and was soon doing training runs up the big hill and around our neighbourhood. It was later when he was in his twenties, living with me in my country village house that he moved on to bicycle racing. It’s a complicated sport because it involves a machine as well as physical conditioning. A bad tire or a dropped chain can finish off a skilled, fit rider. He started with road racing and moved on to mountain bike racing and then to cycle-cross. For many years, he was guaranteed a top spot in his category.  Training consisted, probably still consists, of hundred mile group rides on the weekend. (Much hated by some country types.)

The scariest time for me was the year or so he worked as a bicycle courier. Speed was imperative and this interval found him at his road-warrior scariest. Eventually, he quit to save his life, but he carried that style over into his commute to his safer job. He tangled with a car on Bloor St. and ended up because of our no-fault insurance having to report it to my car insurance company. An agent called me to confirm details. He asked me if Daniel was married. I said no. Then I said, “Hang on. He is married.” The agent said,” What’s with you people? Your son said exactly the same thing.” For political reasons, Daniel had been married for five minutes to a girl he loved. Politics changed. They had moved on, neglecting divorce.

After that accident, he gave up wearing a helmet. He said it was the only way, he could make himself slow down. Work that logic out.

When I was recovering from heavy duty surgery in 2001, he showed up, just back from a race and gave me his winning medal, pictured above.

So there it is, a snapshot of my reckless son, who has unorthodox principles.

Valentine’s Day: reconsidered

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Romantic love has co-opted February 14th. Hard to believe that is what St. Valentine was all about,although Wikipedia would have us believe that he championed courtly love. Just to be clear courtly love is all about poetry and wearing a lady’s favour, not something sweaty.

It’s turned into a festival of red roses and chocolate. And heartbreak. Not evough cards in the classroom valentine box. No engagement ring again this year. He/she actually forgot. That convenience store bouquet. Dinner out in a much too crowded restaurant with bad service. The roses you bought for yourself drooped over next day.

Let’s re-conceive the idea.

Valentine’s Day is the celebration of love, the feast of the god of love or God of Love, if you prefer. Whether that is Eros or something other dude, up to you. Change the gender if it helps. Now let’s take a look.

Feel your most beautiful feeling. Remember it. Imagine it. Picture its beauty. The full moon in August hanging over the Tioga Pass is a good one. The effervescent foam on the moonlit gulf of Corinth. Use your own.

Now focus deeply within.

Perhaps you will hear yourself say “You are more beautiful.  More beautiful than all the red roses, all the red hearts, all the chocolate given and received. More beautiful than sunlight. More beautiful than warmth on a snowy day. More beautiful than _____(name a recent or beloved new born baby.) More beautiful than ____ (name your most beloved animal and/or person).” You get the drift. Just keep piling it on, naming gardens and places, islands, mountains, individuals, whatever warms your heart.

Does it happen? Do you begin to know that that great beauty and love lives there? Repeat as necessary.

Love does dwell within.