Torris Travels

I'm undaunted in my quest to amuse myself by constantly changing my hair - Hilary Clinton

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:22:00 +0000

A reminder popped up on my screen yesterday that read, cryptically, 'Forget it. You�ll be sorry�just like last time.� My first thought was that some finger-waggling hacker with nothing better to do had been playing in my calendar, but then it dawned on me that I had written this little note to myself a year ago, cleverly predicting exactly when I�d get the itch to make a radical change to my mop.
For half my life since high school, I�ve had variations of the same, classic bob�a style that undeniably works best for my hair type but looks, well, boring. Not to mention unoriginal. What I really want is a drop-dead gorgeous hairdo�I�m thinking Victoria Beckham�that can be washed in thirty seconds and styled in under two minutes. And therein lies the rub, because the only style with a hope of meeting those conditions is a very short cut and there are two reasons why that doesn�t work for me.
The first one alone should give me sufficient pause that I don�t even need to call up the second. I�m tall�so tall that I only rarely encounter anyone at my eye level. Even men. The second reason is that I do not have an abundance of hair, and what I do have is fine. The way it works is this: the taller one is, the more proportion matters, and the sum of tall plus short and fine adds up to pinhead, which is not a look I care for overmuch. But even if I was five foot nothing, the fact remains that my hair, when released of the ballast that a bit of length gives it, refuses to adhere to a part of any location and falls straight forward. No matter how good the original styling was, I end up with second cousin to a bowl cut unless I spend at least half an hour and $15 worth of product on it.
Not everybody frets so much about their hair, for sure. There are people out there in shopping malls and public libraries who don�t struggle with angst about whether their locks look good. Or even clean! But I�m stuck with my preoccupation and am pretty sure I can blame my mother for it. She used to roll a mean chignon and wouldn�t dream of leaving the bathroom less than fully coiffed.
I�ve been around the block a few times, so to speak�the hairdresser�s equivalent of a serial monogamist. My fruitless search for the ideal style has driven me into the hands of countless cutters, but put an end to some promising relationships because there�s just no way to hide the evidence of my infidelity.
To be honest, I�ve only ever had one really awful experience�the time I decided, on a whim, to get my hair cut in a salon near Paris, with the wrong-headed assumption that if the coiffeur is French, ergo, he must be good. Jean-Jacques gave me a two-for one 'do�short on one side and then angled irregularly to finish about three inches lower on the other. Language difficulties might have been a factor but who knew that behind J-J�s mild expression lurked a punk mentality?? Not since my mother cut my bangs within an inch of my hairline had I cried myself to sleep over the way my hair looked.
For those of us who came of age during the feminist movement at its most ferocious, hair talk made us skittish; it was way too girly and unworthy of our status as strong-women-to-be-taken-seriously. But in recent years, the move to public, full-frontal transparency has meant that women can now admit to their deep dissatisfaction with their hair, and some have even spoken openly about their most secret fantasies. Turns out that having a post-grad degree in theoretical physics and being able to do your own plumbing does not preclude believing in fairy tales. Well, one, anyway, and it goes like this: Somewhere out there is the perfect haircut, one so flattering, so easy to manage, so totally ME... that I will be unequivocally happy with it!! This is on a par with believing that the Mafia is a charitable foundation.
All this openness has helped me a lot. It�s a relief to know I�m not the only one who struggles with delusional thinking, and I am fully aware that I may have to protect myself from me with 'don�t-mess-with-it� warnings. But despite all that, I have a sinking feeling that history may repeat itself, even though between now and my appointment with the new guy next week, I�ll give myself every possible reason to keep the status quo.
I can see it all now. He�ll take a long, discomfiting look at me from all sides, run his fingers knowingly through my tired bob (it�s taken a whole year to get back to one length), and then suggest�without actually saying it in so many words�that with some layering here and some choppy stuff there, he�ll make me look fabulous.
And that reminder? Maybe I'll pay closer attention next year.

24 Ways to Christmas � A Quiz Just For You

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:10:00 +0000

Oh, it�s been a while. According to (some) blogger etiquette, I�m not supposed to remind you of that, but I wanted to say that I�ve missed being here. Having been well-occupied with children and domestic Canadian life, writing has dropped to the bottom of the priority list. This is unfortunate but due to be addressed as soon as December 25th is just a memory. In the meanwhile, here�s a little something to stir up your brain cells. If I were diabolical, I would post this on Christmas Night, when everybody�s brain is in a fog from too much food and drink. However, since I will be in the same state and wouldn�t remember to do that, they�re going up now. Each phrase is a clue to a well-known Christmas carol. Good luck! (Answers will be posted�.later. When depends on how desperate you get!) ???????????????? 1. Move hitherward the entire assembly of all who are loyal in their belief. 2. Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious sounds. 3. Nocturnal time-span of unbroken quietness 4. An emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good, given to the celestial sphere 5. The Christmas preceding all others 6. Small municipality in Judea, south of Jerusalem. 7. Diminutive masculine master of skin covered percussionistic cylinders. 8. Omnipotent, Supreme Being who elicits respite to ecstatic distinguished males. 9. The first person normative plural of a triumvirate of Far Easter n heads of state. 10. Obese personification fabricated of compressed mounds of crystallized vapour. 11. Geographic state of fantasy during the season of mother nature�s dormancy 12. 12 Tintinnabulation of vacillating pendulums in inverted, metallic, resonant cups 13. In a distant location, the existence of an improvised unit of a newborn�s slumber furniture. 14. Proceed forth declaring upon a specific geological formation 15. Quadruped with a crimson probiscus 16. Adorn the vestibule 17. Cherubim audited from aloft 18. Hallowed Post-Meridian 19. Fantasia of a colourless December 25 20. A dozen 24 hour Yule periods 21. Befell during a transparent witching hour 22. Desire a pair of incisors on the day of Natal celebration 23. I spied my maternal parent osculating Father Christmas 24. Joyful Yuletide desired for the second person singular, by us! To all my blogger friends, I wish a joyful Christmas and all best wishes for the New Year.

Greece Part III. In which I give up swimming upstream.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 03:58:00 +0000

I suspect I�m not the only one here who resists going along with the herd. Telling me 'but that�s the way we do things here� sets off an instantaneous, knee-jerk reaction that probably has its roots somewhere in a childhood where my only siblings were (considerably) older brothers. There�s only so much direction you�ll put up with before the Nope reflex becomes part of your social behaviour. But I�m Canadian, and that makes me, paradoxically, a follower of official rules. I believe that most laws have a basis in reason, and that they should be obeyed. Plus I�m afraid of being found out, which is why I�ll wait for the red light to change even if it�s 3AM and every other driver is in bed asleep. So we�re on dry land, having finished the sailing part of our holiday and on the road headed for the Peloponnese and the first of three destinations. Having previously agreed to a policy of shared responsibility in most areas, MFB and I take turns behind the wheel, and it�s my turn first. Right off the bat, we have a problem. The vast majority of Greek highways consist of two lanes, with a paved shoulder on each side. The speed limits vary depending on how curvy the curves are, and I adhere to them religiously. I�m not always so respectful on home ground, I admit, but in unfamiliar territory I�m prepared to believe they�re there for good reason. And I have been taught, and agree, that the road shoulders are off-limits, unless for emergencies such as blown tires, vomiting children, or an urgent need to pee. But the Greeks view things differently. They�re not the only ones to consider the shoulder as an extra driving lane, but they are my introduction to this unnerving practice. So there�s a car on the shoulder, doing slightly under the speed limit. Do I pass? If I do, do I just stay in my own lane or do I pretend that this is a regulation pass, and move into the oncoming lane? What if there�s somebody coming the other way, and I start to overtake Slowpoke in my own lane only to see an obstacle on the shoulder ahead? So I stick to my Canadian rules of the road. I might be in Greece, but I don�t think it�s safe to pass somebody on the shoulder, nor am I going to move over for the Mercedes SUV riding my tail. (Digression: According to reliable sources, Greece is having an economic meltdown. In that case, why are there more luxury cars per linear kilometre than in France?) So, pass me already! It�s not like I�m just poking along, but after a few kilometres of determined passive-aggression, I have gained a following. It�s not pretty. I can only withstand so much of horn-blaring-arm-waving pressure until my defiance deflates. I move marginally to the right and straddle the yellow line for a bit, but as concessions go, it is ineffective. Finally I cave totally and move right onto the shoulder, only to find that it runs out 100 feet later, replaced by a bridge abutment. After a while I get used to it, and decide that maybe the Greeks are resourceful, not irresponsible. Just because there isn�t a passing lane doesn�t mean you can�t make one up, right? There are a couple of breathless moments when somebody coming the other way doesn�t play the game and forces the overtaking car over the centre line. We now understand why there�s a roadside shrine every couple of miles. We have a map of Greece printed in France, which gives French versions of Greek place names. They do not correspond to the English names that are occasionally shown on the road signs, so this mean we have to decipher the Cyrillic-Greek names and match them up with what�s on the signs�at 80 miles an hour. I am probably better at calculus. This gorgeous bridge crosses the Ionian Sea from the mainland to the Peloponnese peninsula at the port city of Patra. The one-way toll is about 11USD, cash only. I have fully embraced the concept of the cashless society, but that won�t take you far in Greece. Credit cards are unwelcome, not because the Greeks shun indebtedness, but because cash is easier to hide from the taxman. In response to the economic crisis, an army of tax inspectors has fanned out across the country in an attempt to curtail the black market economy, and anyone caught trading services or goods for cash without a receipt is slapped with a 1700 Euro fine (about $2500US). But suspicion of corruption runs high, and many Greeks remain convinced that tax revenue goes straight into the pockets of government officials. A compromise is struck between MFB and me about the route to take across the Peloponnese mountains from Patra to Nafplion, just south of the ancient ruins of Mycenae. He wanted 100% scenic (read 'non-stop hairpin turns), but settles for half-highway, half-scenic. Even then it takes about nine hours to do 250 miles, but the reward looks like this: Me:'Why can�t you smile??� Her: 'Why do you have to have a picture of EVERYthing?� Nafplion (Napflion? P before f or the other way around? Damned if I can remember.) is a pretty coastal town about 55 miles south-east of Athens. Our room at the pension opens directly onto a narrow street in the old town, and the place felt like a movie set. I�m thinking I should swap my house for this one, which overlooks the port and its ancient fortress. We all wish we could stay longer here, but next morning we�re off to � �the dry, rocky landscape of Mycanae, from where�despite its geographical isolation�a great civilization ruled and dominated ancient Greece. Agamemnon returned here, fresh from his victory over Troy, only to be murdered by his wife and her lover. Mycanae dates from the second millennium BC and was destroyed by the Argos in 463 BC � it is a site so ancient that it was already a tourist attraction during the Roman age! The 'Lion�s Gate� (middle photo) is the oldest known monument in existence, and at right is a Bronze Age example of a secant ogive, the single keystone at the apex of an arch, an architectural construct commonly seen in Gothic churches. I marvel at the brilliance of ancient engineering, but the Corinth Canal fair took my breath away. A joint project of the Hungarian and Greek governments, it cut through the isthmus between the Peloponnese and central Greece, taking 13 years to build. If your ship is narrow enough, it shortens the journey from the Ionian Sea to the Aegean by 125 nautical miles. Up next is Delphi, of Oracle fame, and a major site of worship to the god Apollo. In 586 BC the first Pythian games, precursors to the modern Olympics, were held here. And if ever you thought you were the centre of the universe, you were wrong. It�s always been Delphi, where the beauteous omphalos,(navel) of the earth still remains to prove it. The paving stones on the pathways around the ruins are shiny-slippery from thousands of years of being walked on. I�ve decided that my travel wish list should include all UNESCO World Heritage sites. Delphi is the fourth I can cross off my list. Apollo�s temple. Driving from Delphi to Itea, where we spend the second night, we are agog at the immensity of this olive tree orchard. Nothing else grows in the valley, save the occasional errant cedar. They taste the same no matter what the alphabet Another UNESCO world heritage site, Meteora, with its sandstone formations rising spectacularly from the Plain of Thessaly�. �on top of which are Eastern Orthodox monasteries, the first of which was built by hermit monks in the 14th century, seeking refuge from an expanding Turkish invasion. And cats! They are everywhere�on the streets, in restaurants, shops, parks. The country is overrun with felines. Some are abandoned, most are feral, and all are thin. And fecund. I wanted to adopt them all. We leave the next day for Egouminitsa to catch the ferry across to Italy. We get there by mid-afternoon and after check-in, there are still 8 hours to kill. Our friend Jos told us about a hotel-spa at Sivota, 20 kilometres away, where we can lounge around the pool for a minimal fee, so we head in that direction. I�ve had my fill of winding Greek roads but the resort is worth the detour. It�s very upscale, and there I am in the same shorts I�ve worn for the past three days and my hair is clamped to my skull with sweat. It�s hard, but I make myself not care. We swim and read, and drink iced coffee. There is supposed to be a 10 Euro fee for pool privileges but nobody asks us for it. After a light dinner in the poolside restaurant and a spectacular sunset, we�re on our way back to the port. We leave Anne to sit in the car and wander along the quayside, waiting for the ferry. There�s no security, no uniforms. People and kids pass the time watching ships disgorge their cargo, and small groups of young men�boys, really�emerge from the shadows at the edge of the quay, moving furtively, their faces wary. I�ve seen the reports on the evening news about Afghan boys, some as young as twelve, who make their way through Iraq and Iraq and across Europe to Calais, where they spend months in miserable conditions waiting for a chance to get to England. It hits home that this is real life in front of us, not just an item on the news. What wouldn�t they give for my ease of movement, my right to live in Europe, my security? The ticket in my pocket feels very heavy with symbolism. A thin, handsome dog pads purposefully between the waiting cars, ignoring calls from sympathetic dog-lovers. He�s looking for food, and isn�t interested in anybody�s transient affection. Out of the blackness a behemoth looms, blazing with light. It�s our ferry, just arrived from Brindisi. Loading is faster than on the journey over; and in under an hour we�re on board. As I leave the car deck, I turn back to make sure the car is locked, and see the dog. He must have come up the ramp unnoticed, and now he�s on his way to Italy. He flops down underneath a camper van and rests his nose on his paws. I want to think that he�s headed back home, that he hops the ferry the way some dogs prowl the streets. I hope so. Kalinikta, puppy. Efharisto, Greece.

The View From Here

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 20:46:00 +0000

I was very kindly invited by Marcie and Ginnie to write a guest post for their collaborative photo and essay blog, Vision and Verb. You can find my essay, 'The View From Here� by clicking here. While you�re there, I urge you to stay a while to enjoy the fine photography and essays by the talented women from around the world who are regular contributors to this wonderful place.

The Southern Ionian Islands

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:34:00 +0000

Greece was not quite what I had imagined. Glossy tourist brochures had seduced me into thinking that clusters of white-washed houses with cerulean rooftops would be typical of the island villages, and although this is the case on some of the islands in the Aegean (Santorini, at right) the architecture is quite different elsewhere. Although I like to think I don�t have preconceived notions about the places I travel to for the first time, this is mostly due to not having done any homework. Unlike the serious travelers who do their research in advance (and probably get a lot more out of their experience), I am happy to make my discoveries as I go. But although I had to slightly readjust my vision of Greece, or at least this southern Ionian part of the country. there was much to be appreciated. Leaving the port of Lefkas, we passed through a channel that had originally been dug under the reign and direction of Cleopatra. The story goes that a major skirmish was fought over Lefkas and that when Cleopatra�s troops went down in defeat, their commander abandoned them to run off with his lover, the Queen herself. The worse we had to cope with was wondering whether we would beat this big motor yacht through the narrow channel opening (marked by red and green buoys). First night on board the Maya was spent anchored in a quiet bay, sleeping on a narrow, sloping platform to the left of the hatch absolutely not designed for the purpose. Impossible to roll over without involving MFB. By early morning the sheets were clammy with humidity but waking up to the exquisite sound of Greek Orthodox plainsong drifting across the water was worth all the discomfort. Depending on which side of an island you�re looking at , the landscape is either dry and rocky, or green, but always mountainous. The last major earthquake to strike the area, in 1953, caused extensive damage, completely levelling many villages. The Dutch are well represented here � most of the sailboats we encountered were flying the colours of Holland, including us. Jos, our friend and skipper, is a big Dutch guy with a bigger personality, with a talent for getting himself into � and out of � sticky situations that would fell most ordinary mortals. See that little dinghy near the bow of the boat? Well, the outboard motor quit with 4 of us sitting in it the night before and just my luck to be sitting too close to Jos� right elbow as he yanked the starter cord. I have always promised myself that I would get myself a straighter, smaller nose if ever it needed to be repaired, and thought for a few star-crossed moments that my opportunity had arrived. Next morning we sailed to the port of Sami and Jos, never one to wait around for anyone else, decided he�ll haul the motor onto the quay to do a little fixing. What he neglected to consider is that when you�re in a moveable object and you lean one way, your moveable object goes the other way. By the time anyone realized what was happening, Jos was in 25 feet of water and going down, stubbornly clinging to his motor. MFB mounted a rescue, nearly landing in the drink himself, but Jos and motor were both saved, dried out, and made functional again. Mythos beer is the celebration drink of choice. Sailors get snarky about their parking spots. We had been told off at an earlier port for having inserted the Maya into a space considered much too tight by the boaters on either side, who launched an energetic volley of Italian at us amid much throwing about of arms. Our skipper tried to placate them but they were having none of it, and a few minutes later, a man on a scooter pulled up on the quay. He was clearly an official of some sort, with a serious-looking badge on his nicely-pressed blue shirt, so naturally we invited him on board. Under the glare of the neighbouring Italians, we adopted our most ingratiating behaviour until a closer examination of the badge revealed that it said not 'Greek Port Authority� but 'Family Restaurant Tomorrow�. Not a word was said about our moorage, and our expansive relief resulted in a reservation for four at 8. Next day it was our turn to be shamelessly hypocritical, raising objections as the sailboat (above left) manoeuvred between us and the sleek yacht in the background. To no avail. There were, nevertheless, advantages to having Italians as neighbours: the language is a delight to hear, and the men�.well, there�s a lot to be said for their sense of style. Sometimes a girl just has to sit back and enjoy the view. Greek men, I�m sorry to say, are not as pleasing to look at. On the way to Nydri, a piece of hardware at the top of the mast gave way, and once we were in port, a repair operation was mounted. MFB, volunteering his lesser size and greater knowledge, was hoisted up the mast, secured by two ropes and three nervous crew. After it was all over, he admitted that his only previous experience � as a thirteen-year-old � had resulted in his being dropped on his head during the descent. The food was always good. I love tzatsiski, saganaki (fried cheese), stuffed vine leaves, and feta. Eating out is cheap and portions are very generous. The four of us shared appetizers and two main courses, and with wine and coffee, our total bill was usually under 50 Euros. All the ports we visited had restaurants lining the waterfront, and while the views weren�t always as good as the one below, the ambiance was always lively. Although there has been much in the news recently about the sagging Greek economy, it�s evident that Greece has always been a poor relative to the more prosperous EU members like France. Abandoned construction projects are a common sight, as is the neglect of lamppost alignment. The government has sent forth an army of tax inspectors to ensure that shopkeepers and restaurateurs issue receipts to their clientele. The income tax coffers are now filling up nicely, thanks to a 1700 Euro fine that discourages businesses from operating 'under the table�. Daughter Anne arrived midway through the week, fresh from the other side of Greece (the part with the white villages and blue roofs) and quickly dubbed the Maya the 'ESL Boat�. With English native to only two of the five crew, there was a lot of 'what did you say?�s" Miscommunication is never a good thing, and especially in winds like this one (below). The sails of the Maya were so taut that we couldn�t reef them in to reduce our tilt. Two of us loved it, two were slightly apprehensive, and one went below deck to stick her head under a pillow. This beauty easily won the prize for Most Elegant Boat. A few random Greek scenes. An early-morning fisherman. An old lady filling up a wine barrel with sea water. I managed to understand that she wanted to use it for drinking water, but I couldn�t figure out what she was going to use for a desalination system. MFB explained later that she was simply using sea-water to expand the dried-out wood, thereby tightening the metal rings around the cask, at which point it would be refilled with fresh water. Ah. I wish my brain worked like his. On the last day together we climbed a big hill to a resort hotel and spent the afternoon recuperating in front of this view. There are worse ways to kill time. A last tranquil evening in the port of Spartochori. But wait, how did we miss the news about the end-of-summer party on Zulu Beach? I can�t remember why sound carries better over water than land, but I can confirm that it does. At 3AM, I lowered the gangplank and took myself over to Zulu Beach to ask the party-goers to turn down the volume. Let me put it this way: that music could have kicked waterboarding out of its spot as the CIA torture of choice. I�m open to a lot of different kinds of stuff � Turkish pop, marching bands, Russian male choirs, bagpipes, Gavin Bryars and the occasional heavy metal � but never have I heard anything that so strongly suggested the pain of having nails drilled into one�s head. The supremely unco-operative Greek fella in charge of the sound system grudgingly promised to tone it down, but it took him an hour to find the right button. Early next morning we walked up to the village to have breakfast in a Greek pizza joint specializing in omelettes. With an distant island that might have been Ithaca in the background, we watched an early-bird sailor head out to sea. This part of the world isn�t known for its strong winds, and it�s more common to see sailboats under power than sail. A little bit later, it was our turn to lift anchor and head back to Lefkas and the dry-land part of our Greek holiday. Even though I wasn�t looking where I was going, we got there in one piece. More later!

My Holy Trinity: Procrastination, Intimidation and occasionally, Exhilaration

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:22:00 +0000

A random picture of the Provencal countryside, with some potential symbolism related to Jumping off Cliffs or Keeping One�s Eye on the Far Horizon. As you may have noticed, I don�t post very often. In the early, heady days of my blog I kept to a weekly schedule, spending my Sundays in isolation in front of my computer (not much different than any other day, in fact) writing and editing and re-editing until I started to feel like a hamster in a wheel. Round about midnight I�d finally post my latest effort and head to bed in happy anticipation of what I�d find in the morning. I should be embarrassed to admit how thrilling it was to see those comments rolling in, but there are others out there who understand this very well. I had lots to say in the beginning. The folder of half-finished, semi-started essays that had languished for years on my hard drive began to expand and even took on a new name - Completed Blog Posts. My motivation was high and my commitment consistent. The phrase I am a writer began to seem like it could be true, and I practiced saying it under my breath and without the self-deprecating grimace that used to go along with I�m a full-time mom. Then somebody at a party asked me what I did, and the words came out all by themselves, as smooth as you please. It felt fabulous to say them in public and in front of witnesses and my left eyebrow didn�t even move. Writing was, after all, a substantial part of my daily occupation, and people actually read and liked what I had to say. Thanks to you, I wasn�t even afraid of Have you published anything? After a few months of nice reviews and some more out-loud practice, my new professional status felt pretty natural. I am a writer rolled off my tongue, although deep in the truth-telling part of my brain a few rebel cells muttered in protest. Every writer gives up energy to doubts about the authenticity of their calling and the measure of their work. Fortunately, every single writer I read has decided to press ahead regardless of their hesitation, and without them, I know not what I�d do. Let me give you an example. Loving the quirks and complexities of the English language as I do, I was happy to discover The Inky Fool, a collaborative blog staffed, in the main, by the highly entertaining, deeply knowledgeable and dangerously habit-forming Dogberry. Fortunately he is also prolific and reliably supplies his readers with a daily fix � occasionally more. The other day he wrote a wonderful piece called 'Prepositions The End of Sentences At�, the general theme of which was that all kinds of supposed rules of written English usage are not rules at all, but snobberies. The idea that I could start a sentence with And but not feel bad about it filled me with joy, and momentarily held the tantalizing prospect of morphing into motivation to write. And so it did, although with a considerable delay. (See? I used 'And� right at the beginning, as I often do, the difference being that now I don�t feel like I�m a lesser writer because of it.) But as I read Dogberry�s post, I was also conscious that while good writing pleases and often exhilarates me, it also intimidates. A skilled writer (along with a capable editor) leaves the reader with the impression that there was no hard slog behind the prose � that it flowed from imagination to page as effortlessly and continuously as it does in the other direction for the reader. Perhaps this is actually true for some writers, but we know how disingenuous it is to think that an adequately-equipped toolbox of literary devices is sufficient for success as a writer. But then I go and read Jocelyn at O Mighty Crisis and am convinced anew that she and Dogberry both know something I don�t about the secret to writing with effortless, fabulous, and often hilarious ease. So despite my hard-won smarts about some things, I can still fool myself into thinking that my appreciation for and intense enjoyment of good prose should somehow magically transform the uphill-struggle nature of my writing into something much easier and better. Before you think that I�m fishing for compliments, I should say that I know I�m not a dud. When I spend enough time and have enough patience to edit, I�m reasonably satisfied with what comes out, but the point is not what I produce, but how much and how difficult it is. It occurs to me that the title of my blog is apt in a different way than I originally intended. Words tempt me, definitely, but often that�s all they do. They beckon, they tease, they make me want to go out and play, but I don�t or won�t push aside the mundane and non-essential things that fill up my time and clog my attention. In more than one analysis of why writers find it so hard to write, it has been suggested that fear of success is to blame. I can hardly believe that. If you knew that success was waiting in the wings at the end of the performance, would you just shut it down and walk offstage? Not me. Fear of not being accomplished enough, organized enough, disciplined enough, connected enough, motivated enough � that�s more likely. How about fear of not having anything worthwhile to say? Years ago, after reading the loveliness that is Arundhati Roy�s 'The God of Small Things� , I decided that the world didn�t need less-talented writers to dilute the excellence that had been her contribution to English literature. Comparing yourself to others isn�t productive unless you�re learning from the analysis, but in that case I felt that Roy�s novel was so sublime that my time would be better spent worshipping at the altar of her accomplishment than producing any work of my own. Nowhere in my personality is there any hint of perfectionism except when it comes to writing, and the critic in my head stays plenty busy. Writing is not for the lazy and undisciplined. In my case it demands a marshalling of all my attention and the pushing away of a need to do something more stimulating, more active and less cerebral � something with greater potential for immediate results. I�m a sucker for immediate gratification and writing rarely gives me that. The pleasant anticipation that surrounds the thought of getting down to writing evaporates when the words don�t come fast enough, or when I have to reach for the synonym finder too often. What kind of a writer has to search for words? Is my changing mid-life brain to blame? Is this an early warning sign of the disease that shredded up my mother�s once-sharp mind? I continue to hope that my wordlessness is a temporary situation, and that the fog will lift eventually. Meanwhile, I�m vigilant about proof-reading my comments and disturbingly often find 'hear� instead of 'here� or letters in wacky order. Sometimes I suspect that I�m working in the wrong department altogether and would do better in appliance repair. When the kids were small, I read all the articles and listened to the discussions that exhorted women to shuffle the needs and demands of others off to one side to make their own desires and accomplishments a priority. I wasn�t good at it back then, and haven�t improved much over the years. Selflessness isn�t the problem, but more a willingness to be distracted by anything else that moves. Back in a situation where I am in close contact with my children, the need to be needed takes priority, and I get a lot of satisfaction from being useful and maybe even indispensable. It�s a temporary, two-month situation and would probably drive me nuts if it weren�t. In another month they will fend for themselves as they so capably do and I will be back in my undemanding, quiet French environment looking for other excuses not to write. It feels a lot like I�m letting somebody down, and that somebody is me and the people who believe in what I said I would do, which was to write. I want to do it, and I think about it a lot. The biggest problem is that I want the act of writing to be easier, and it isn�t. Practice, you say! Well yes, that would help, but so would turning off the thinking part that interferes with the doing. The man I love is a sometime tennis player, and was explaining to me yesterday how frustrated he is by the inconsistency of his game. He finds that putting too much thought into his play overrides his instincts, and the outcome isn�t usually good. Playing tennis is not so different from playing the piano or any other kinaesthetic activity, and too much cerebral input gets in the way. Perhaps the same is true of writing. I don�t put a lot of thought into the writing of un-serious things; my email style gets so many compliments that I�ve considered pretending that everything I write has a 'To� field. Meanwhile my novel is heading into its fourth year as an incomplete and very rough draft. It�s been a few days since I started this, and Obsessive-Compulsive Editing Disorder has stopped me from posting it sooner. Tomorrow my favourite Belgian arrives after a month-long separation and I will have yet another wonderful excuse not to write. If I don�t post this now, it will sit for another couple of weeks and I�ve already spent too much energy trying to ignore that familiar, niggling feeling that I�m not doing what I�m meant to do.

Not Bad, eh???

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 23:10:00 +0000

Photo: Facebook Wall, Vancouver 2010 Olympics
Any Canadian worth their mukluks was either in Vancouver or in front of their TV set last night to take in the showdown between the two best teams in Olympic hockey. All across the nation we chewed our nails, sucked in our collective breaths, groaned in disappointment and roared our approval for what seemed like the longest 67 minutes and forty seconds of play the game has ever known.
In the grandstands, thousands of Maple Leafs waved and fluttered in a sea of red and white, declaring our love for our country and our game. Not only was the prettiest medal at stake, but so was an Olympic record for the most gold medals ever won by a single country in the history of the Games. And what�s more, it was all happening on our home turf! We were swept up by a utterly unprecedented patriotic fervour, throwing off our usual self-effacement to openly revel in how far we had come.
A French commentator said of Olympic contenders that 'it is the marriage of their athleticism and our emotion� that makes the Games so magical. Heartbreak, pride, bitter disappointment and ecstasy were writ large across these last two weeks and it is all athletes of whom the world is rightly proud. In quintessentially Canadian fashion, although we wanted to think we could do it, and went into the games with uncharacteristic braggadocio, had we not been able to pull the whole thing off � including beating Mother Nature at her own game � we wouldn�t really have been surprised.
When the men of hockey clinched the deal, the country erupted in an explosion of joy. There has never before been, in the history of Canada, an event that has brought the entire nation to its feet and pouring into the streets, from coast to coast to coast. For us, Sidney Crosby fired the shot heard 'round the world. But his winning goal was more than just the icing on the cake � it was a seminal moment for the Canadian psyche. We took on the world and we won, and we might never be quite the same again.

Baby, Don't Go

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 07 Jun 2014 15:58:00 +0000

In the natural order of things, children are meant to leave their parents. They travel, go away to school, or move across town, and if we are wise we prepare ourselves for that from, if not the moment they are born, then at least from an age when the inevitability of their departure looms large. If we are good parents, we take satisfaction from their competence and ability to be independent, resisting the urge to hold on or to look back with longing to the time when we took their company for granted.
From the time she was nine, I knew my daughter would be a traveler. At seventeen she went to Serbia, a country made fragile by a war not long over and still staggering under the weight of its divisions. I was nervous about it, but stopping her was not even considered. From there she went to Paris where she lived for nearly a year before coming home to start university. Even then, she didn�t stay still, moving twice to other cities for work experience related to her studies. She always came back, but one day not too long from now she will make a bigger move, a permanent one, or as permanent as anything is in the life of a twenty-something. But her temporary absences served to inoculate me, giving me a defense against the malady of loss.
My eldest son rarely went very far, but even if he was physically present, his thoughts were always on the next thing to do, place to go, friend to see. He left home in a different sense, far more involved with his friends than with his family. Earlier this year he spent a few months away, in a place he wants to live permanently, but for now he�s back home, more often than not out and about. When he does leave for good, whether it�s to a faraway place or another neighbourhood, I�ll be so used to his comings and goings that I might forget that he�s really not here.
But today my youngest revealed that he is restless and eager to be somewhere else less provincial, less familiar. He has already put his plan into action, having quit his job and freeing himself to leave. The news hit me like a bus; without acknowledging it to myself I had counted on him being there, not forever, but for a good long while yet. I feel bereft, and am taken aback by the strength of my reaction. I can only put it down to a mother�s chagrin at the prospect of a finally empty nest � a conventional, classic response.
But there is irony in this. Three years ago I began to spend a lot of time away my children, starting a new life in France with the man I love, and although I came back home regularly, it is I who left them in the first place. The natural order of things was turned on its head, and it was they who had to get used to the empty nest. Somehow I had convinced myself that everyone had come to terms with our separateness, and more than that, that we were all stronger and more independent because of it. That might be true of them, but to my bewilderment, it�s not true of me. It�s an odd feeling, to be the one in need of reassurance that I�m not being abandoned. I expect I�ll get used to it � just like they did.

My mother, my daughter, my sons, my lover

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 08:46:00 +0000

Our relationship with our mothers drives all others.
When I read this in a book a few years ago it struck me as an exaggeration, one of those smart phrases that condenses complicated wisdom into a smug sound bite. I was in counseling then, trying to figure out what part of the difficulty I had with my mother was my own doing, and put the question to my psychiatrist. Is this really true? I wanted to know. Absolutely, she said.
I spent a lot of time thinking about that. I had already started to understand that I wasn�t the same person with my mother that I was with my children or my friends or my husband. I felt off-balance, not entirely genuine. My confidence and assurance slipped away from me, or came out in the form of brittle bravado and a need to be right. I wasn�t really sure of my own identity when I was around her, and didn�t much like myself, either. My other relationships reflected the true me, I thought.
Naturally, the bond I examined first and most closely was the one I had with my daughter. My relationship with her was much better than the one my mother had with me; I didn�t try to impose myself or my views on her, or use the force of my intellect to intimidate her. I was more transparent with her, more honest, more accepting of her differences. Didn�t take credit � at least not overtly � for the person she was. I avoided making comparisons, stepped back from pointing out our similarities. Distanced myself from her, let her make her own decisions. In short, I tried to do things differently, tried to be different � tried not to be my mother. I almost managed to convince myself that she didn�t really need me because the last thing I wanted was to need my own mother. And was brought up short by the fact that my relationship with her was most definitely being driven by the one I had with my mother.
I had seen how hurt my mother could be by her expectations of love from her sons, by their insistence on going their own ways, by their sometimes infrequent attention. My role, as perceived by me and given motherly encouragement from time to time, was to compensate her for what she didn�t get from my brothers. On the other hand, I schooled myself to accept but not expect from my own boys, to take exactly what they were prepared to give without yearning for more. But my mother�s perception of loss became mine, and I secretly feared that the same thing would happen to me. And so my relationship with her influenced those I had with my brothers and my sons.
It hardly seemed possible that my most intimate, adult relationships could be affected by how she and I were with each other. These were stand-alone partnerships, above the fray of family dynamics and mostly exempt from its history. My connection to boyfriends, then a husband, then a lover had nothing to do with how I felt about my mother. But what was I doing by taking over, dominating many of these so-called partnerships? Showing how very competent and capable I was, hiding my self-doubt so that I could be, not just the equal of my mother, but better yet. It took a sensitive man to make me recognize what had been my pattern. He suggested that I did not have to prove anything to anyone, and in that perceptive remark was the re-making of my most important relationships.
None of this was my mother�s fault. She was not the introspective person I am, and preferred not to discuss nor even to examine, as far as I know, her own issues with self-esteem, of not having lived up to her own billing. I used to wish that she could just let it all go, those layers she had wrapped protectively around herself, so that I could really get to know the very human and imperfect woman underneath. But she did the best she could, and her best was driven by love and a desire for her children to be happy. Isn�t that the same for all of us?
There are stories I read by women whose mothers nearly destroyed them, who manipulated them with cruelty, or failed in their mothering through ignorance or their own inflicted wounds. The imprint of their experience is indelible and devastating. My story is not theirs, but only a small examination of the enormously significant role we take on as mothers.
With thanks to Friko for having planted the seed for this post, and with admiration for the brave and excellent writer of Shattered Into One Piece.

Knitting My Way to Greece

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 01:34:00 +0000

5:18 AM Eighteen minutes late . The car was packed the night before and the house is shuttered closed. Is summer already so far gone that there�s no sign of sunrise yet?? Across the border into Italy it starts to rain, a few drops here and there, then a sudden deluge. I don�t like this part of the autostrada, with its endless alternation of tunnels and bridges. Fortunately the speed limit is only 110, sometimes 90, although you�d never know it by the clip at which we are being passed. Glimpses of red-tiled roofs below filling the crevices between steep slopes. Sea and sky are the same blue-grey; it�s hard to tell exactly where the horizon is. We say little; our night was short and all focus is on the road. At the two-hour mark we change seats. From here the road is straighter, the speed limit now 130 � which means about 160 in Italian. I never hog the passing lane and object to being flashed with high beams from half a mile back warning me to get out of the way. I take my sweet time time moving into the right lane and resist the urge to flip the bird as a Porsche flies by, with a Ferrari hard on its tail in hot pursuit. At the next two-hour mark, we switch again. The road is tediously straight, the countryside unremarkable. I retrieve my knitting from the back seat and toss the ball of wool onto the dashboard. It�s the perfect road trip project � staving off boredom and getting a head start on a Christmas present at the same time. At Bologna we miss the exit that would have taken us south of the snarl that is the ring-road around the city. An electronic signboard warns of an incidente ahead and traffic slows to a crawl. I am pleased that the smattering of Italian I learned as a piano student is quite useful on the road. The ferry we are headed for leaves Ancona, on the east coast, in 4 hours, and it�s beginning to seem a little tight. MFB must be wishing he had overruled my decision not to leave the night before. An hour later, after we�re covered only a mile or so, another sign flashes the all-OK and in concert, hundreds of gas pedals are pushed to the floor. We are half an hour early at the port of Ancona � the sprawling ferry terminal is crowded and noisy with the din of many languages. I hear bits and pieces of Greek, Italian and Slavic tongues � there is ferry service from here to Albania, of all places. The girl who checks our reservations sticks up four fingers when I ask how many languages she speaks. The rain pelts down as we manoeuvre into place for the ferry. We eat our picnic lunch sitting in the back seat, because of the fold-out tables. After lunch I knit some more. I�m on the second ball of wool now and going like gang-busters. The ferry arrives on time but disgorging its cargo of transport trucks and cars takes forever. Departure time comes and goes, and an hour after that the lines of cars begin to move toward the boat, in seemingly random order. Inside the bowels of the ship, we understand why everything is so slow. The lower deck fills in a classic U-turn configuration, so that cars are facing the right way to drive off the stern, but the upper level has only one access ramp. Transport trucks are the first to drive up the steep incline, reversing into their spots. Cars follow, parking front-first against the noses of the lorries. The deckhands shout directions in Italian, impatiently gesturing for passengers to get out of their cars so that the driver can squeeze against the row to the right. The cars are so close together that the only way for the exiting drivers to get to the stairwell is to climb across the bumpers of other cars. Despite the apparent disorganization below deck, all is smooth and charming service above. To our pleasant surprise we�ve been given an outside cabin instead of the porthole-less cubicle we have paid for. I stretch out in anticipation of a little nap while MFB goes off to explore the ship. Nearly asleep, I hear my cell phone ringing from the recesses of my damnit-where-the-hell-did-I-put-it backpack. It�s my lover, in the bar with a table for two and a panoramic view of the Adriatic Sea. How will I recognize you? I murmur throatily, and brush my teeth extra well before I leave the cabin. Exceptional situations call for exceptions to the rule, and a chilled white wine is the only appropriate drink for this one, accompanied by a Greek cheese pastry. This is no British Columbia ferry � more like a down-market cruise ship. We sip our drinks languidly, until, reaching for my pastry, MFB knocks over his beer onto his only pair of pants. Never one to let a exceptional situation get the best of him either, he uses my hair-straightening iron to dry them out before dinner. We turn up our noses at the self-serve cafeteria, nice as it is, and dine in the elegant restaurant, he in his perfectly pressed shorts smelling faintly of hops and me in jean capris and a fuchsia golf shirt. We are the best-dressed people in there with the exception of a woman who looks terrifyingly like Joan Rivers. Over Greek salad my lover admits to a slight concern about finding our way through Greece in ignorance of Cyrillic script. I scoff, in a high-handed Anglo-Saxon sort of way, because no country so dependent on tourism will neglect to its English-speaking visitors. Our kind-faced waiter takes the time to teach us a few words in Greek and I am ashamed of my ignorance at having spent my down time across Italy knitting instead of learning how to say please and thank you in Greek. Watching the disentanglement of the cars on the top deck once we arrive at Egominitsa is the best entertainment I have had since watching 'Most Extreme Elimination Challenge�. One by painstaking one, each car is directed to reverse out of the huddle, then do a U-turn in order to head down the ramp and out the stern. Miraculously, everyone�s paint job seems intact. The shouting reaches a crescendo when it is discovered that the little blue car behind us is destined for a different port, obviously herded into the wrong bunch on the Italian side. I am ordered to stop taking pictures of the chaos, but I don�t understand Greek, do I?? Sweating, swarthy men with three-day-old beards try to manoeuvre the errant car out of the way, but such an excellent job has been done of sandwiching everyone in that extraction is impossible. I am in rapture; knitting will never have the potential for this kind of amusement. It�s always a good idea to have enough gas in the tank to allow for disembarkation. Finally a flustered and dishevelled young woman appears with the keys to the little blue car, and we are freed to disembark. The directional signs are, after all, offered in Greek and English. It�s stinking hot and disconcertingly, people are driving on the shoulders. We have our usual argument about map-reading while at the wheel, but a couple of hours later we arrive safely at the town of Lefkas, where our extremely generous Dutch-Norwegian friends are waiting to welcome us on board their 15-metre ketch, Maya. We haul our bags out of the car and up the gangplank, leaving my knitting in the back seat of the car. I just hope nobody steals it. Our ride for the week. Not. The 'Maya�, built in Finland and sturdy enough to sail through the Northwest Passage. MFB at the helm, doing what he loves best. Well, almost. Posted, unedited, from Sami, on the island of Keffalunia, Greece. Next instalment when internet connection permits.

The Perfection of Being

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 18:22:00 +0000

Note: This essay, about an unexpectedly wonderful day with my mother, was the catalyst for my blog and first posted a year ago. My mom � who should have been a writer � would have loved the idea. She died six months after it was written. The colour of my mother's eyes has changed in the last few years. They used to be hazel, as well as I can remember. It struck me when I looked into them today that now they're a deeper green, the colour of late-summer pond water. And her irises are no longer transparent, but nearly opaque, as if someone took a green crayon and filled in all the bits where the light used to pass through. She can still see well enough, as far as I know, even without her glasses. They disappeared a while ago, probably tucked away in some unlikely hiding place that she can�t recall anymore. But I don�t think it�s cataracts that make her eyes look that way and imagine instead that some mechanism of self-defence allows her to hide the vacancy of her mind behind a coloured veil. I have a plan for our day. I want to take her to the petting zoo at the park, where we can sit in the car and watch little human kids chasing little goat kids. She loves children, to the point that it would be fair to say she is fascinated by them. It never mattered if they weren�t her own, and the older she got, the more appealing they became. Watching children play will be a safe bet: a guarantee of a good time.
The weather is more than fine, and there is a bench right in front of the goat enclosure, vacant just for us. She�s willing to be eased from the car and helped to the bench, in painful shuffle-steps. I put a fat red cushion behind her back and wrap a thick dressing gown around her legs. It looks a bit odd, but there was no blanket in her room that I could find. Maybe she had hidden it. She says she is comfy and warm enough, but is worried about me. I�ve got more flesh on my bones than you do, Mom, I say. I wonder if she thinks it�s strange that I call her Mom, or if she even notices. She is entranced by the scene in front of her. Children play and scramble on the rocks, chase the goats and run away in thrilled mock-terror when the animals turn on them. Some struggle to pick up the little ones and others squat down to peer into their eyes and pat them tenderly. Mom loves it. She points at a boy who can�t be more than two, shaking her head in admiration. Look at him, she marvels. He knows exactly who he is and who he�s going to be. She nods sagely and says it twice more.
This is a recurring theme for her - people knowing who they are. In almost every conversation she will say something along those lines. Sometimes she�ll refer to herself and state, emphatically and a little defiantly, I am me. It saddens me because she doesn�t really know who she is anymore, having lost track of that knowledge over the last couple of years. She does know, however, that she is missing something essential about herself, and it�s very hard to watch her trying to figure out what it is. That�s another part of my plan; I thought she might like to hear about the person she had been. Mom has always been interested in people and their doings, and it seemed reasonable to think she would be as intrigued by herself. We sit side by side on the bench and I share random memories with her. I tell her that she used to make really good pastry, and lots of it. Not just a few shells at a time, but a veritable assembly line of crimpy-edged circles of melt-in-your-mouth dough. She�s surprised and pleased by this bit of news. How interesting. I didn�t know that. I tell her that I can still hear the sound of her wedding ring clicking against the metal sifter as she shook out the last bits of flour. You used to love to go bike-riding three or four times a week along the river path, I say. It was your favourite kind of exercise - you used to ride for miles and miles. This astonishes her. It�s hard to say if she can even visualize what a bicycle is. And the way you drove! I exclaim With verve! She only smiles at that, a little uncertainly. Do you have children, she asks me suddenly. I tell her about my three, her grandchildren. She seems quite interested but gives no sign that she knows who they are. Her comments are completely irrelevant to the subject; the endings of her sentences unrelated to their beginnings, but it doesn�t matter. The sun is warm on her face and she�s got someone to talk to. I get the feeling that she�s pretty content with that.
I tell her about Dad, that he was tall and handsome, and that a few years ago I found a picture of the two of them in a box of keepsakes. They must have been in their late twenties then, and my father has his arms wrapped around my mother from behind. He used to call you Lover, I say. Her reaction is a curious mix of discomfort and puzzlement. She doesn�t remember Dad when I mention him, but in her random, directionless conversations, she talks about him frequently and exclusively, seemingly unaware that she later loved and married another. A peacock struts by, picking his elegant way across the grass. She wants to know what it is, but the word doesn�t appear to mean anything to her, although she thinks he�s beautiful. Seeing the bird reminds me that I intended to take pictures of us. It�s not likely that anything will help her to remember this day but just in case, I want her to have a souvenir. I turn the camera towards us and take a few snaps and show them to her. Mom peers intently at the little screen but I don�t think she knows what she�s looking at.
I go to the car to get us some cheese buns and as I come back to the bench she stares at me, incredulous. You�re there! she says. It�s you, it�s you, it�s you! I put my arms around her, pulling her close. Her recognition of me has come and gone in brief instants, but at this moment there is no doubt that she knows who I am. She starts to say something that makes sense, talking about the time when we didn�t do very well together.
I�m so sorry, I whisper.
For what?
For all the years when we misunderstood each other, I say. I can hardly speak for crying. If she responds to this, I don�t hear it. Perhaps she says it doesn�t matter now. I tell her I love her, and take more pictures. We scrutinize them together, and I realize that it�s there � the best picture I could ever have hoped for. She chatters on. Nothing makes sense, but certain names rise again and again to the surface of her confusion. Although she would not recognize the faces attached to them, they belong to her so deeply and irrevocably that her knowledge of them has survived the dreadful ravages of her disease.
Did David stay in the car? Where is Mike? Garry said...
The names of her sisters and a long-dead brother come, inserted randomly in repetitive, incomprehensible sentences. Are you warm enough? At this particular moment, she doesn�t know I�m her daughter, but she hasn�t forgotten how to mother. We stay for an hour, then two. I had thought she might last for half an hour, too uncomfortable or tired to be able to sit longer, but she�s happy to stay put. She rarely takes her eyes off the children, and when they leave, she comments about the goats and the arrival of the pea-hen. I am content to listen to her talk. She doesn�t need my response, enthralled as she is by her surroundings, the warmth of the sun and people passing by with their dogs.
Mom tilts her head back to look up at the sky and sighs happily. This is wonderful. It�s a perfect day. Perfect. She turns to look straight at me, and it seems as if she�s searching for something. Perhaps she�s just trying to make sense of what she sees; her green eyes are unreadable. She smiles. Aren�t we lucky! Oh, yes! Oh yes, we are.

The Perfection of Being

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 11:10:00 +0000

The colour of my mother's eyes has changed in the last few years. They used to be hazel, as well as I can remember. It struck me when I looked into them today that they're a deeper green now, like the colour of pond water in late summer.
The other difference is that her irises are no longer transparent. They're now almost opaque, as if someone took a green crayon and filled in all the bits where the light used to pass through. She can still see well, as far as I know, even without her glasses. They disappeared a while ago, probably tucked away in some unlikely hiding place that she can�t recall anymore. But I don�t think it�s cataracts that make her eyes look that way and I imagine instead that some mechanism of self-defence allows her to hide the vacancy of her mind behind a coloured veil.
I have a plan for our day. I want to take her to the petting zoo at the park, where we can sit in the car and watch little human kids chasing little goat kids. She loves children, to the point that it would be fair to say she is fascinated by them. It never mattered if they weren�t her own, and the older she got, the more appealing they became. Watching children play will be a safe bet; a guarantee of a good time.
The weather is more than fine, and there is a bench right in front of the goat enclosure, vacant just for us. She�s game to be eased from the car and helped to the bench, progressing in tentative shuffle-steps. I put a fat red cushion between her back and the hard metal slats and wrap a thick dressing gown around her legs. It looks a bit odd, but there was no blanket in her room that I could find. Maybe she had hidden it. She says she is comfy and warm enough, but is worried about me. I�ve got more flesh on my bones than you do, Mom, I say. I wonder if she thinks it�s strange that I call her Mom, or if she even notices.
She is entranced by the scene in front of her. Children play and scramble on the rocks, chase the goats and run away in thrilled mock-terror when the animals turn on them. Some struggle to pick up the little ones and others squat down to peer into their eyes and pat them tenderly. Mom loves it.
She points to a boy who can�t be more than two, shaking her head in admiration. Look at him, she marvels. He knows exactly who he is and who he�s going to be. She nods sagely and says it twice more.
This is a recurring theme for her - people knowing who they are. In almost every conversation she will say something along those lines. Sometimes she�ll refer to herself and state, emphatically and a little defiantly, I am me. It saddens me because she doesn�t really know who she is anymore, having lost track of that knowledge over the last years. She does know that she is missing something essential about herself, and it�s hard to watch her trying to figure out what it is.
That�s another part of my plan for our day. I thought she might like to hear about the person she had been. Mom has always been interested in people and their doings, and it seemed reasonable to think she would be intrigued by herself. We sit side by side on the bench and I share random memories with her. I tell her that she used to make really good pastry, and lots of it. Not just a few shells at a time, but a veritable assembly line of crimpy-edged circles of melt-in-your-mouth dough. She�s surprised and pleased by this bit of news.
How interesting. I didn�t know that. I tell her that I can still hear the sound of her wedding ring clicking against the metal sifter as she shakes the last bit of flour from it.
You used to love to go bike-riding three or four times a week along the river path, I tell her. It was your favourite kind of exercise and you used to ride for miles and miles.
This astonishes her. It�s hard to say if she can even visualize what a bicycle is.
And the way you drove! With verve, I say. She only smiles at that, a little uncertainly.
Do you have children, she asks me suddenly. I tell her about my three, her grandchildren. She seems quite interested but gives no sign that she actually knows who they are. Her comments are completely irrelevant to the subject, the endings of her sentences unrelated to their beginnings, but it doesn�t matter. The sun is warm on her face and she�s got someone to talk to. I get the feeling that she�s pretty content with that.
I tell her about Dad, that he was tall and handsome, and that a few years ago I found a picture of the two of them in a box of keepsakes. They were probably in their late twenties then, and my dad has his arms wrapped around my mother from behind. He used to call you his lover, I tell her. Her reaction is a curious mix of discomfort and puzzlement. She doesn�t remember Dad when I mention him, but in her random, directionless conversations, she talks about him frequently and exclusively, seemingly unaware that she later loved and married another.
A peacock struts by, picking his elegant way across the grass. She wants to know what it is, but the word doesn�t appear to mean anything to her, although she thinks he�s beautiful. The sight of the bird reminds me that I intended to take pictures of us. It�s not likely that anything will help her to remember this day but just in case, I want her to have a souvenir of it. I point the camera at us and take a few snaps that I show her on the little screen. Mom peers intently at them but I don�t think she knows what she�s looking at.
I go to the car to get our cheese buns and when I come back to the bench she stares at me, incredulous. You�re there! she says. It�s you, it�s you, it�s you! I put my arms around her, pulling her close. Her recognition of me has come and gone in brief instants, but at this moment there is no doubt that she knows who I am. She starts to say something that makes sense, talking about the time when we didn�t do very well together.
I�m so sorry, I whisper.
For what?
For all the years when we misunderstood each other, I say. I can hardly speak for crying. If she responds to this, I don�t hear it. I would like to think she says it doesn�t matter now. I tell her I love her, and I take more pictures. We scrutinize them together, and I realize that I have it. The best picture I could ever have hoped for.
She chatters on. Nothing makes sense, but certain names rise again and again to the surface of her confusion. Although she would not recognize the faces attached to them, they belong to her so deeply and irrevocably that her knowledge of them has survived the dreadful ravages of her disease.
Did David stay in the car? Where is Mike? Garry said...
The names of her sisters and a dead brother come, inserted randomly in repetitive, incomprehensible sentences. Are you warm enough? At this particular moment, she doesn�t know I�m her daughter, but she hasn�t forgotten how to mother.
We have been here for hours. I thought she might last for half an hour or so, and then be too uncomfortable or tired to stay longer, but she loves it. She rarely takes her eyes off the children, and when they leave, she makes comments about the goats and the arrival of the pea-hen. I am content to listen to her talk. She doesn�t really need me to say much, enthralled as she is by her surroundings, the warmth of the sun and the people who pass by with their dogs.
Mom tilts her head back to look up at the sky, smiling happily. This is wonderful. It�s a perfect day. Perfect. She turns and looks right at me and it seems to me that she�s searching for something. Perhaps she�s trying to make sense of what she sees, but her green eyes are unreadable.
Aren�t we lucky!
Oh yes, oh yes, we are.

Is that 'Ode To Joy' I hear?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 03:58:00 +0000

Late, late last night, still awake long after my beloved had given himself up to sleep, I thought of the people I have begun to know in the last months, and in the night stillness, their voices seemed to come to me as faint, distant bells. Signalling their presence in tones sometimes resonant, sometimes delicately crystalline, they compelled me to listen and after a time I began to hear their clear, pure notes joining and blending together in a harmony of ideas and intention, motifs and themes.
In Penned but not Published, the writer asks if symbolism informs our writing, or our lives. Music has always been part of my life, and I once heard it described as the purest form of human expression. It seems, then, entirely right for me to consider music as a symbol for what is created in this place of writers and artists. It is our vast concert hall, and without benefit of a conductor, we play and practice, our melodies simple, tender, bold, complex, amusing, heartbreaking, dark and unforgettable; the kind of compositions that we remember long after we first heard them. We create an exquisite opus, contrapuntal and melodious although dissonance is an integral part of the whole � without it, music is saccharine and superficial.
Then today, The Pliers wrote of paving stones and the grass that holds them fast to the earth as metaphors for the things we must do in life, and how we choose to do them. She refers eloquently to " the rush of feeling connected to another, above and beyond words and the rule book delivered by the stork along with one's corporeal form; the joy of trusting one's non-traditional ways of knowing" .
Her reference to the rule book, or rather, to its irrelevance, brings to mind another analogy. At the risk of mixing far too many metaphors, I liken my initial experience of this community of writers to being the new kid at school. On the playground at recess there are already well-established groups, and relationships within those groups � a hierarchy to be respected and an etiquette to be observed if the new kid has any hope of gaining entry to the circle. Depending on her level of self-assurance, she might try to integrate herself boldly, or hang around on the periphery, watching and waiting, analyzing the behaviour and personalities of the others to best assess her chances of acceptance.
It took me a few months to realize how preposterous this scenario was as applied to the blogging community. It took me that long to figure out that, in this environment, the usual rules do not apply. In the relative anonymity of this milieu we can present ourselves in only one context, without the factors that often influence how we form relationships in the physical world.
We are, simply, what we say. What we write. We may accompany or decorate our writing with lovely images, but we have, essentially, only one way to present ourselves to the world. In regular daily life, we assess, judge, analyze and absorb information about other people from a number of sources; the way they look, dress, the accent with which they speak, the pitch of their laughter, the quirks they reveal simply by their existence.
Here, almost nothing of that comes into play. In his book 'Blink� Malcolm Gladwell relates the experience of a female French horn player who auditioned several decades ago for a place in a major European orchestra from behind a screen. This was not conventional practice at the time, and although her playing was deemed far superior to the other applicants, she was denied the job once her sex was known. She didn�t give up, and her fight to be accepted for what she could do and not what her physical self was interpreted as being capable of became the basis for the standard practice of blind auditions for many orchestra players today.
Essentially, we are those musicians behind a screen. We play, we are heard and we are judged (yes, we are!) only by how we present our song. But there is an essential, crucial difference between an audition, the playground and what we do here as writers, and that is that we are not in competition . On the contrary, support of each other is what makes the music beautiful and each new voice only enriches the chorus.

Can a mother be true to herself?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 May 2014 20:46:00 +0000

A thoughtful post on blue kimono about the state of women�s happiness raised some familiar questions that still have no clear answers, despite years of debate and exhaustive analysis.
The essential issue was about whether women can succeed on multiple fronts � career, family, personal growth � without compromising the quality of any one of them. A recent article in a Canadian newspaper about women in law is an illustration of the hostile environment that can face women who try to combine motherhood with professional success, but even for those of us who don�t deal with this level of challenge, the underlying issue is the same. If we are mothers, can we also be true to ourselves?
I can�t count myself among those who had difficulty establishing a balance, mainly because I had neither the ambition nor the education to be driven to a profession that demanded more than I could give. But on a much smaller scale, I have struggled to determine the formula that would allow me to define myself as a good mother without losing what I need to maintain my individuality.
Several years ago there was an excellent series in that same newspaper about women who did not fit the conventional slot society has reserved for mothers. One woman�s story was particularly unusual. Mother to two children, she had realized when they were still very young that she just didn�t have the nurturing personality that she felt was essential to good motherhood. Simply put, she had not been made to have children of her own.
With the valiant understanding of a husband she loved and wanted to stay married to, she moved to a house of her own a few streets away. The children visited whenever they wanted to, and she dined at the family home on a regular basis. Her relationship with her children was much better, she believed, and she was released from the overwhelming stress of trying to play a role she felt completely unqualified for practically and emotionally. The children were learning to adjust to their mother�s new situation.
The liberal, non-judgmental person I�d like to think I am admired her for her honesty and her creative solution. The critical, product-of-my-society person that I am more often couldn�t comprehend how a mother � a mother! �could leave her children like that, even if they were just down the street. Could she not have just stuck it out � taken some parenting classes, got a nanny � for their sake?
This is an extreme example of a dilemma that women with children face on a regular basis. When is what I want detrimental to what my children need? The lawyers who work punishing hours, the clerk at Wal-Mart invited to a quilting retreat that conflicts with her child�s sports tournament, the full-time mom whose dream of getting a master�s degree means a lengthy separation from her family � these women have to decide where to place the line separating self-fulfillment from flat-out selfishness.
A few years ago I began to spend significant amounts of time an ocean away from my children, who then ranged in age from 18 to 23. They coped with my absence with varying degrees of relief, resentment, and grief, and although I frequently went back to be with them for lengthy periods, guilt kept a strong grip on my gut. Did I have the right to put my desires ahead of their feelings, which I could not separate from their needs? Did I feel at ease with my decision? Yes, and no. Not yet, and maybe not ever.
No matter how many friends encourage us to 'do it for you� and despite all the articles we read telling us that it�s okay to look after ourselves, that self-care is the essential component of other-care, many of us do not easily make the decision to follow our own path. We may be in complete theoretical agreement with the idea of putting ourselves first, but when it comes down to the crunch, few of us shift our priorities away from our families without a little or a lot of accompanying angst.
And therein lies the rub. What we accept intellectually as reasonable is not always so comfortable emotionally. And for every time that we are able to draw the line, it shifts and resists on countless others.

Move over, Jamie Oliver

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 May 2014 13:34:00 +0000

Summer in the south-east of France has the same effect on me that a few drinks would (and I say 'would� because it�s an entirely theoretical supposition) � I succumb to an indolence that approaches unconsciousness. A lot of reading, a little housework, a few pages of incomplete prose, some idle conversation and the occasional bike ride or tennis game are about all I can manage. Used to be that I�d have to save up all year to spend two weeks doing next-to-nothing at some Hawaiian resort, where I�d feel like I�d earned my leisure time, but now it�s just part of living in a place that half the European continent considers the ultimate vacation destination. I get a bit uneasy being so slightly occupied. It feels sinful and wasteful, and if life were already passing at the speed of light, it is now disappearing at twice that rate into a black hole of non-achievement. But my friend Jocelyn of O Mighty Crisis is much too disciplined for that sort of thing. She has just parked herself and her family at the other end of the Med - in Turkey - for a sabbatical year during which she is going to produce works of a scholarly nature, while also blogging (hilariously) about her new life in a (former) land of troglodytes. Yesterday, after a morning run (!!!) through the hot streets of Goreme, she nudged me awake to ask if I was ever going to post again. Soon, I promised. While I�m working up a little motivation for that I thought I�d share a couple of scrumptious summer salad recipes with you, just so you know I can chop and toss as well as write essays. The melon salad is easy, elegant and delicious, even for non-lovers of melon. Personally I think that cantaloupe tastes an awful lot like dish detergent, especially when it�s just beyond ripe, but I fell completely in love with this combination of flavours. Never met a guest who didn�t like it, and they unfailingly ask for the recipe. The second one is equally delicious although savoury rather than sweet-ish, and is dedicated to Jocelyn, for whom chick peas are about to become a staple food � once she gets over her Turkish tummy. Bon appetit!! Melon and Feta Salad I honeydew melon/cantaloupe 4 medium tomatoes 200 g. (8-10 oz) feta cheese 1 lemon 3 Tablespoons olive oil 1 bouquet fresh basil salt, pepper Cut melon in half and remove seeds. Cut each half in half and remove rind. Cut quarters into small cubes. Dice tomatoes. (If you�re really a purist, skin and seed them first. I�m not, and it works out just fine if you leave them as is.) Cut feta into small cubes. Finely grate lemon rind. Extract juice from lemon. Add a bit of salt and pepper, the olive oil, and most of the basil leaves (torn into pieces) to juice and rind. (let sit for a few minutes if you can) Gently toss melon, tomato and feta cubes in juice/oil dressing. Sprinkle with remaining basil leaves for decoration. Serves 4 blissfully ******************************************************************************************************************** Mediterranean Salad 1 large can chick peas (19 oz or 800 gms/850 ml) 2 Tablespoons lemon juice 4 Tbsp olive oil 1 Tbsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional, but it�s great) 1 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half, or 3-4 medium tomatoes, diced 2 roasted red peppers, coarsely chopped (optional too. Canned is fine) 1/4 Cup fresh coriander leaves, chopped (indispensable) 1/4 Cup chopped red onion 1/2 Cup feta cheese, crumbled Stir juice, oil and spices together. In large bowl, toss onions, peppers, coriander and chick peas with juice/oil dressing. Add crumbled feta. Toss again lightly. Serves 4 hearty appetites. Best to make this an hour or so in advance, so as to marry the flavours. Refreshingly tasty, filling and highly nutritious. We make a meal of this along with some whole-wheat bread to mop up the dressing.

The End of the Road

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 May 2014 06:22:00 +0000

After hours of driving the secondary highway (#20) that meanders across northern Washington state, we are in need of a coffee and something to tide us over until supper Around 5 o�clock, we round a bend in the road and fall upon Winthrop. The town turned back the clock in the early 1950s, when local businessman Otto Wagner, in gratitude to the townsfolk for the prosperity he enjoyed, underwrote the transformation of the town back to the way it had looked at the turn of the century. When he died, his widow took over the realization of his dream, and Winthrop became a living museum of early 20th century Western architecture. Wooden sidewalks run the length of the main street, and every building and storefront is made of or covered with wood planks. Our hotel was straight out of a cowboy film, and even the pumps at the gas station looked at least half a century old. The only thing missing were a couple of horses tethered to the railings. It�s a delightful place, and its old-style air brings in the tourists and their custom. In my hometown of Calgary, an Old West village in a beautiful lakeside setting has been constructed from old buildings, machinery and artefacts, but while an admirable job was done to recreate a showpiece of life as it existed over a hundred years ago, it is a display. Winthrop, on the other hand, is a place where people live and work, and the place feels genuine despite its obvious tourist appeal. Supper was steak and pizza served by a motherly waitress at the Whiskey Bar, sitting side-by-side in a booth by the window. If I were a beer drinker, I would have gone to the former schoolhouse afterwards, but instead we strolled through the town and then drove up into the hills to take pictures in the golden evening light. From the spectacular mountain ranges of central Washington, the topography has changed to rolling hills and the vegetation � much of it low brush � reflects a much drier climate. The next morning, astride saddles outside at the café, we breakfasted on cinnamon rolls, the best yeasty treat on earth provided the baker is generous enough with spice and butter. In the shade of a courtyard tree, a busker plays lovely music, but his instrument seemed a little out of place in a Wild West town. Once I�d licked my fingers clean I went on a mission to Find Out More. David Michael�s Celtic harp was made for him 28 years ago, and he has earned his living playing it ever since, For 17 years he had a steady gig on the Whidbey Island ferry north of Seattle but in the post 9/11 paranoia, Homeland Security declared him a threat. His sacking made the national press, but even all that publicity didn�t save his job. He composes film soundtracks, teaches harp and for three months every summer, he busks in Winthrop. I bought two of David�s CDs and think I might have found just the right kind of background music to write my novel by. (According to the prolific blogger and published author Larry Brooks, music can make a big difference to a writer�s output. Finding the right music will release a lava flow of words and ideas, I am certain, but songs with lyrics are too distracting and classical music only works if it�s not something that demands attention. Pop music is out of the question, being full of clichés, which invariably find their way into my prose.) After breakfast and a stop at the Frontier Bank, we head east to the hard reality that scenic routes do numb bums make. Narrow Idaho passes in the blink of an eye, although we have a very good lunch at a slightly funky restaurant in a town where pickup trucks idle up and down the main street and the street corners are anchored by churches. Across from the restaurant is a general store advertising fabric, and I wander in to see if there�s anything interesting. The proprietor is an extroverted, friendly woman who doesn`t mind that I buy nothing, and chats about the weight of good denim and parenting. There is no border crossing between states, but it�s immediately obvious that we�ve crossed the line into Montana. The speed limits increase and the paved shoulders disappear. The land gets drier and the roads straighter, and there�s hardly any traffic although we frequently spot deer in the long grass or sprinting across the asphalt ahead. At regular intervals white diamond-shaped markers atop long poles indicate the limit of the pavement, for the winter months when snow covers the road. After a time, I realize that sometimes the markers are in the shape of a cross, planted singly for the most part, sometimes in pairs. They represent deaths from car accidents, obviously, but oddly enough they appear most frequently on long, straight stretches of road where the view ahead is unobstructed. The road has only one lane in each direction, with a dotted line down the middle, and it�s not hard to imagine a fatal scenario. At one point we pass a cluster of five crosses, and I wonder how many of them were members of the same family. We stay the night in Missoula, arriving too late for a proper meal and hungry to the point of snappishness. My personal boycott of McDonald�s crumbles in the face of an empty stomach, but I�m not sure if I feel any better after a Big Mac � hold the onions � or not. Heading to the Logan Pass the next morning, we have a brief disagreement about the necessity of checking the status of the spare tire, something we�ve forgotten to do from the start of our trip. I win the round, and we unpack the rear of the car to reveal a seriously flat tire. It�s hard to hide my 'I-told-you-so� smirk, but my favourite Belgian offers some statistics about the unlikelihood of impaling a tire, bolstering his case later when the trip is finished without a single blip with the car. . Disappointingly, the Going-To-The-Sun road is not open all the way through the pass � wet weather and a late spring are to blame � so we turn around at the 26-mile point and make our way back down a vertigo-inducing striplet of road along with thousands of others who have come for the thrilling scenery. Almost out of Montana, we see an artist by the roadside, with a bumper sticker that makes me smile. She agrees to a photo shoot when I explain that I like the juxtaposition of the pickup truck and the easel, but the more I explain, the more I have trouble talking around the foot in my mouth. On our way north to Alberta now, across the border without incident although I see no point in telling the unsmiling Customs guy about the wine or the heirlooms, since their provenance is Canadian anyway. It�s another two and a half hours up to Calgary on a dead-straight road, with hardly a tree in sight. The fields are green, green, though, and the Rockies rear up from the western horizon. The vast breadth of the land is astonishing and whoever named this part of the world 'Big Sky Country� was bang on the money. It�s not a sight I have ever seen in Europe. Then we�re almost there, turning onto the street where I live. Above my house, against the backdrop of a slate-coloured sky and lit by early evening sun, a double rainbow arches prettily. Youngest son�s leaky, un-useable car still sits under its flapping tarpaulin, and he is just finishing mowing the lawn as we pull to the curb. It�s good to be home for a while, but we�ll be off again soon, headed across the water to France next week A bientôt!!

Something I've been Wanting to Say To You

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 May 2014 23:10:00 +0000

A friend who teaches elementary school has a student who got into trouble for an incident that fit his modus operandi perfectly. When she confronted him, he denied any wrongdoing and was then suspected not only of the deed, but of lying about it. When the story was finally unravelled, it turned out that he was innocent. His teacher felt terrible for having doubly accused him and apologized profusely. He told her that her apology didn�t matter, that he didn�t feel any different or better because she had said she was sorry. She thought about that, and later took him aside to say that she now realized her apology was really for herself, but that her words had made her feel better. With time, she hoped, they would have the same effect on him too.
Well, they won�t, he said.
For a long time now, I have wanted to make an apology . Two, in fact. But hearing this story made me re-examine whether there was any point to saying I was sorry, if the words used to express regret are not well-received. And while it�s generally true that the giver of an apology feels a lessening of their burden, but the relief isn�t always reciprocated. 'Do you accept my apology? ', we might ask, but the response is not always positive. How difficult it is to extend our regret to another, only to see it slip through their hands.
Reconsidered thusly, my apologies may simply become acknowledgements. There will still be a faint hope accompanying them that repair is possible, but an acknowledgement does not carry the same weight of expectation. An apology is a bit like a birthday present, offered without obviously anticipating anything in return. But if, when the giver�s birthday rolls around, nothing comes her way, there�s likely to be some disappointment.
A misunderstanding of the highest order passed between a brother and me some years ago and it remains unresolved, leaving traces still evident despite the erosion of time. On the surface, we appear to have gotten over it, and part of my reluctance to say anything now is a fear of re-opening an old wound. But I can�t bury things like he seems to be able to do, and my old distress, half-conscious though it is, regularly turns over and mutters in a dark corner of my mind. What also stops me from apologizing is that I believe I had valid reason to say to him what I did way back then, although I never dreamt that my words would have such a devastating effect.
And longer ago than that, events that I put in motion changed the course of my former husband�s life to such an extent that he cannot bring himself to speak to me. It is our youngest child�s greatest wish that his siblings, his father and I simply be able to share a meal together once in a while, on the rare occasion that we are all in the same city.
For that to happen, I would need to make an apology � or an acknowledgement � of what my husband suffered when he lost a life he had thought would always be his. For the sake of my son, I think I can do that, but there is something standing in the way. Until I started writing this essay I didn�t understand that it is the very real possibility that my regret will only be met with continued hostility. That it just won�t do.
That�s the crux of it. I�m afraid to say what wants to be said in case nothing comes back. No reciprocal acknowledgement, no acceptance, only silence. Or worse, outright rejection. But as Christmas approaches, I am pulled by a strong urge to make things right, to offer a gift in the true spirit of giving without expectation of something for myself.
Unwrapped, no strings attached and straight from the heart.

Forever love

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 25 May 2014 15:58:00 +0000

Unconditional Love Artist: AngeJedudsor
The first essay to appear here was about an unexpectedly wonderful visit I had last year with my mother, whose mind had been almost completely lost to Alzheimer�s disease. I wrote several more posts about our relationship, but after her death a few months ago, I decided I was done with examining and analysing the dynamics of our often wary and awkward dance with each other.
Then last week I emailed an old boyfriend to tell him about the bit part he had played in a recent essay about an incident in my chequered past. He got a kick out of it, but it was an allusion I had made in the story to my fear of disappointing my mother that caught his attention. He wrote:
'Poetic license aside, my sense was never even of a whiff of disappointment but only of the sheer and absolute delight your mother took in you. I don't recall Rhoda's zest for colour but I do recall her zest for you.�
There are an extraordinary number of motherless children among the writers I follow. The most thoughtful comments on my struggle to find the right balance with my mother have come from women who, far too young, lost their own mothers. They have lived what I believe to be the ultimate loss, along with those who were emotionally abandoned, some in ways too terrible to imagine. I am very lucky not to be one of them, but my friend Brian�s recollection � and he remembered right �made poignantly clear that I am missing more than I thought now that my mother has died.
Motherless children face the loss, among the infinity of other irreplaceable things, of the unassailable, no-matter-who-you-are-or-what-you-do kind of love that is utterly unconditional. If they are lucky they get it from their fathers or grandparents, but perhaps it is a rarer gift from those hearts. This is not to suggest that men are not capable of profound, no-holds-barred love, but I believe that many find it hard to communicate such deep feelings clearly and unequivocally.
Regardless of the difficulties I had in my adult relationship with my mother, she gave me a solid, healthy foundation, and the best part of that was her love, unwavering and independent of whether she liked or approved of what I did. Without that, I would have been a different person and quite likely a different mother than the already imperfect one I am.

A man I once knew well gave me a view of what it was like to suffer from conditional maternal love. His mother�s esteem for her family and friends was like the stock market, the joke used to go, up one day and down the next. We might laugh at mothers portrayed like this in sitcoms and films, but it stops being funny when real children try to make sense of the precariousness of love that is doled out as a reward, or withheld as punishment.
For him, an only child, the message he got from his mother�s conditional love was that if he did the right thing, it meant he was a good son and worthy of her love. But when his decisions were made in his own, or his family�s, best interests, or when she simply didn�t like what he did, all bets were off. He spent a lifetime trying to navigate the shifting sands of her affection, resisting and resenting the power she wielded. As a father himself, he sometimes followed her example and was not able to understand, despite his own experience, how painful this was both for him and his children.
Is unconditional love just for kids? I think so. A friend once told me that her love for her husband was conditional, and considering the warmth of her heart, this admission took me aback. But lovers, best friends, husbands and wives all have the potential to trespass the limits of love; estrangement and divorce are the sad detritus of once-strong attachments. To love someone despite anything they might do, say or become takes the unthinking, unblinking parental love that every child deserves.
It seems appropriate that it�s finally on Valentine�s Day that I can finish this essay, which I dedicate to my mother, Rhoda Josephine Goba, formerly Sudul, nee Grasswick, who made sure I knew how much she loved me. Whatever other regrets shadow my memories of her, I believe this much: I have honoured her by passing on her gift to my children. If they frequently seem to take my unconditional love for granted, it only means I got it right.

The Real Shame about Rape

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 May 2014 08:46:00 +0000

Recently, a Canadian judge found an individual guilty of assault in the beating and robbery of an elderly man. The facts introduced to the court revealed that the victim had been approached by a person who admired his diamond-studded watch, and even offered it for closer examination. When the other person seized the watch, the old man resisted and was beaten, suffering serious injury. In his sentencing report, the judge noted that 'the victim, visibly frail and alone, must surely have known that his presence in a dark alley after midnight would signal his vulnerability and could prove tempting to a potential malfaiteur who, had he crossed paths with the victim on a busy street in daytime, would never have considered such an assault. The assailant, by virtue of the victim�s poor judgement at placing himself in such a vulnerable position, cannot be entirely blamed for his actions, reprehensible as they were. He can even be forgiven for thinking that the victim deserved to be robbed, especially since he was foolish enough to show off his expensive time-piece.� In the judge�s view, the victim�s own behaviour warranted leniency for the accused, who was handed only a conditional sentence, without jail time, to be served in the community. What is your reaction to this judgement, and the rationalization of the judge for his leniency? Would your reaction be different if the charge had been rape, and if the individual accused of the assault was excused for his act because the female victim had been wearing a tube top without a bra, heavy make-up, and had generally acted in a way that led her aggressor to believe that she wanted sex? And what if the judge was of the opinion that her dress, manner, and willingness to kiss her 'admittedly clumsy Don Juan� signalled her assent to sexual intercourse, even though she had repeatedly told her assailant that she did not want to have sex with him? The scenario at the beginning of this article is a figment of my imagination. The second � the rape trial � is an actual case, and the conditional sentence was handed down this past week by a Manitoba judge. His judgement has met with considerable controversy, even thought conditional sentencing for such crimes is no longer possible in Canada. Changes made to the law now limit judges� discretionary sentencing power in cases of violent crime, including rape, but only apply to crimes committed after the law was amended in 2007. The rape in this case occurred in 2006. There has been much discussion over the last few years about the wearing of the burqa, and in general our Western view holds that requiring women to conceal themselves under an all-enveloping garment is not just denial of personal liberty, but is even the evidence of,in the words of the scholar Feisal Mohamed, 'a deep spirit of misogyny�. But our hypocrisy � and when I say 'our� I mean to include both men and women � lies in our accommodation of a simultaneous condemnation of the Islamist view of female provocation, and an attitude towards sexual assault victims of 'she-should-have-known-better� if the woman wore provocative dress and particularly if she had previously engaged in openly sexual behaviour with her rapist. I�ve been guilty of it myself. Having a bit of an idea of how feminine comportment has changed since I came of age, I shake my head at the practice of 'grinding� with a complete stranger on a dance floor and cringe at the flaunting of cleavage of both sorts. Age has wised me up to the realization that sexual attractiveness isn�t wholly dependent on physical attributes, but maybe I�m just an old-school prude and that�s why I have sometimes judged other women�s behaviour as inappropriately or even dangerously provocative. It�s a sort of 'what was she thinking??� mindset. It isn�t unreasonable to think that an elderly person might have done better to think twice about frequenting an alleyway in the middle of the night, but while common sense is one thing, being held responsible for the actions of someone else is quite another. There is an element of risk in most things humans do, and there are times when we underestimate or choose to ignore the risk, whether it involves walking through a sketchy part of town waving a fist-full of bills or getting into a car with a guy you�ve only just met at the bar. Smarts are lacking in both situations, but that does not excuse the also-human reaction on the other end of the spectrum, which is to manipulate another�s vulnerability. The Manitoba rapist�s interpretation of events, up to the moment his victim said 'no� was, in my view, understandable. I can see how a guy who�s had a few drinks, whose libido is aroused and whose companion is happy enough to kiss him, might be inclined to think that sexual intercourse will be the outcome. I don�t have to be an anthropologist to understand that a woman who makes a point of displaying her sexual attractiveness is sending a message as ancient as humanity. But precisely for this reason, and because all humans are subject to imperfectly human responses - which include misinterpretation of the message - risk-assessment should be part of the picture for all women. This is not to lay blame at the wrong doorstep, nor provide any justification for sexual assault. It is to acknowledge the reality that, although 'no� should trump dress and behaviour every time, it sometimes does not. The law exists in order to protect the vulnerable � who include the foolish, the inebriated, the naive and the merely unlucky � from the predatory. Earlier this week, four Americans sailing in the Gulf of Aden were killed after pirates hijacked their yacht. A significant number of online comments to this news story referred to the victims� lack of good judgement, how they should have anticipated such an outcome. Analysing the risk of a possibility is not the same as expecting it to happen, and I would suggest that the Americans knew perfectly well a hijacking was possible, but did not consider it inevitable. But imagine for a moment that the pirates are put on trial in the United States, found guilty of kidnapping and murder, but given minimal sentences because their victims had deliberately put themselves in a situation where they were at risk of being preyed upon? It�s absurd to think this would happen, of course. But when the crime involves sexual assault too many of us � including judges who should know better � mistake a victim�s faulty risk assessment skills and her naiveté, for culpability.

Running On Empty or, How Patience is a Belgian Characteristic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 May 2014 01:34:00 +0000

I made a pledge years ago, when the 26th stopped being a real holiday, that I would not set foot in a store for a Boxing Day sale. It would continue to be a day for lying on the couch, eating Christmas mandarins and reading the book Santa left for me. And I�ve kept my word, eschewing that horrendous frenzy that is post-Christmas consumerism, but there isn�t always a book under the tree, and sometimes I feel like spending the day after Christmas somewhere other than on the couch.
So this year we had the idea that all of us � me, my favourite Belgian, and my three offspring � could go up to the mountains to do some skiing and snowboarding. Actually, the 'we had the idea� was really 'he had� - my Belgian - with me chiming in because it seemed like a fine thing to do, at that moment. But by the time Christmas night rolled around, my enthusiasm had waned considerably at the prospect of a very early morning, the uncertainty of finding rental boots for a son with Very Big Feet, having to make a trip to the Daughter�s house to pick up her gear, convincing the Elder Son that being together on the slopes was a better idea than his going shopping, and imagining myself hurtling inadvertently down a black run, scared shitless and swearing a blue streak.
Daughter tried her best to be head cheerleader and almost had me convinced, but then Eldest Son�s feet dug in too deep to move, and the whole idea started to unravel. My Belgian tried to salvage what was left and suggested that we just take Bigfoot Son and the Daughter, but since my approach to life is generally of the all-or-nothing variety, and with the vision of plaster-encased bones looming larger in my fevered imagination, I pulled the plug completely. And went to sleep feeling like the biggest party-pooper ever.
Morning dawned, and my mood was lighter. Let�s just go for 1/2 a day, with 2/3 of the kids, said I, brightly. But oh, we still have the boot problem. And OH, what about the PUPPY??? Forgot about him. He can�t be left alone all day, and Eldest Son will be in the mall and unable to help. So let�s drop Puppy off at a friend�s place. But OH, Friend wants to come WITH us. In that case, let�s take Puppy, Friend, and while we�re at it, Friend�s puppy TOO, but OH, the car isn�t big enough for everybody. Let�s rent a mini-van, my Belgian offers, helpfully. But it�s Boxing Day, and even though every retail outlet on the planet is open and offering 70% off, the car rental company is not. And furthermore, Daughter needs to go back to her place to take a shower first, after spending two nights on the couch at her mother�s house. Back in an hour, she says. We all know how that goes.
When finally we leave, it�s way too late to do any skiing so we�ll just go to the mountains for lunch and maybe a swim in the hot springs. We go to the Friend�s house, and Son-With-Big-Feet hands his car keys to me. He�ll ride with Friend and Two Puppies in the other car and they�ll meet us at the restaurant.
Son�s German car has a 1/4 tank of gas, and by my Japanese car standards, that�s plenty enough to get to the mountains and almost back. My Belgian mildly suggests getting more. Sure, sure, I say. But there�s no rush. Off we go, with now-grumpy Daughter in the back seat wishing she had never agreed to spend the day with her disorganized family, 3/4 of whom are pathologically incapable of making a plan and sticking to it.
It's a lovely day and it's great to be out of the city. The mountains move closer but the needle on the fuel gauge moves to the left exponentially faster. The Belgian�s renewed suggestion to get more gas takes on a firmer tone but I am the picture of insouciance. Oh, don�t worry, I say, there�s one about 20 km away and we�ll definitely stop there.
But OH, the engine is starting to miss. The road climbs uphill and pressing the gas pedal down is not having the customary effect. My Belgian gently asks why I am swearing. Other than that he says nothing, not even I-told-you-so. In the rear-view mirror, Daughter�s eyes are rolling. I pull off onto the shoulder just as the engine dies completely, and there is now total silence in the car.
Daughter calls her brother, who tells me later how relieved he is that she is only calling to say we�ve run out of gas in the middle of nowhere and not that we are already at the restaurant wondering where the hell he is. We wait, fogging up the windows, buffeted by the hundreds of cars passing us at high speed.
My head fills with disaster scenarios. We will be struck from behind by someone who has mistaken the shoulder for the road. Son and Friend will be hit at the very moment they arrive to rescue us. Or, Son and Friend will not be able to buy a gas can at the service station that is only five short km away. (Couldn�t the damn car have kept going for two more minutes???) Or, they will be able to buy a gas can, but Son will be struck by a passing vehicle as he attempts to fill the tank. I am driving myself crazy and get out to check which side the fuel tank is on. It�s on the right, so that�s good news, anyway.
An interminable time later, Son and Friend arrive with a full can, laughing their heads off. We have not yet been struck from behind. Nor do they get hit. The engine starts. We arrive at the restaurant for lunch at 4 PM and let the Puppies out for a pee in the parking lot instead of the frolic through the snow that we had planned. The sun has already dipped behind the mountains, leaving only the very peaks brushed in gold. The food is good, but then anything is when you�re really hungry and cold and relieved to be safe.
The hot springs pool is just what we need. Submerged to our chins amidst clouds of steam rising into the crisp indigo sky, we laugh about the day. I lean into my Belgian�s arms and gaze up at the 3/4 moon. Life is good again and I�m going to overfill the tank before we head back home. And next year I'll make sure to put a book under the tree myself.

On the Road Again

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 May 2014 18:22:00 +0000

Left Calgary last Friday, headed for Vancouver Island, land of my childhood dreams and retirement hopes. In Canada, there is one major road from East to West, officially called the Trans-Canada, and more often simply the No. 1. It might even be the longest highway in the world but it certainly isn�t the smoothest, or widest. On day one of our trip, after stopping for lunch at Field, BC (above) we ran into a traffic jam (below) about 40km east of Golden, BC. Such imaginative names, along with Radium, Kicking Horse and the aptly named Bountiful, infamous home of a polygamous breakaway branch of the LDS. Obviously an accident of some sort had blocked the two-lane road and we had no idea how long the wait would be. My favourite Belgian, accustomed to the spiderweb network of European roads, wondered if we couldn�t just turn around and take a detour. In theory, this was possible, but since there are only three ways to get from Alberta to BC through the Rocky Mountains, getting to the next pass would add at least 800km to our trip. We elected to wait it out, and it only took an hour for things to get moving again. It�s been a sentimental journey, and MFB has risen to the occasion. First stop was an overnight stay in Kelowna (above) with a cousin who I first met at a family reunion when I was seven, and to whom I promptly proposed. An aunt was scandalized when she heard of my plan but she obviously had no idea that the Royal Family had already been there, done that. Next stop was tea and sticky buns with an uncle at his hilltop home overlooking the Okanagan Valley, and more family news and gossip. MFB still able to keep up. Pressing on, we wander through south western BC and MFB comments on the lack of wildlife. Two minutes later a young black bear runs across the road ahead of us. I�m tempted to stop but have grown up with stories of stupid tourists who stop to take picture of beers and elk in Banff National Park and end up with concussions or badly scratched cars. Two nights with a different cousin, one of my special ones. Our mothers married brothers, and that should make us look almost like twins, but the only physical trait we share is our height. His wife is my good friend Kath, of YOU ARE HERE, and it�s all her fault that I started to blog. Wonderfully generous hospitality, hours of talk, a few games of billiards, and outdoor fish and chips followed by a stroll along the beach at White Rock, just east of Vancouver. MFB mildly confused by the number of family members and friends named Jim. Two ferries later, we landed on Saturna Island, one of the southern Gulf Islands between the mainland and Vancouver Island. Explored by piloto Jose Maria Narvaez of the Santa Saturnina in 1791, it is home to about 400 winter residents and about three times as many summer visitors. It�s a quiet, wet life much of the time, suitable for seals, slugs and people who really don�t mind being away from everything, including reliable internet service. Although, if I had a view like the one my uncle and aunt have from their kitchen window (below), I could learn to live almost anything. More family, now on Vancouver Island. My brother and SIL live in Sidney, just a few minutes from the ferry slip. One night in their huge guest room with its king size bed and stupendous view, and I�m ready to move in. My sister-in-law had thoughtfully laid out what was left of my mother�s things after her death last November, and packed up what I wanted to keep. Her jewellery set off flash floods of memories � the turquoise glass beads that went with a tulle-skirted party dress she had made for herself in the late 50s, the opal ring she bought in Australia, a little silver ring fashioned into a lovers knot that I recognized but couldn�t remember the provenance of�it all made me a bit weepy. MFB still putting on an attentive face at the umpteenth re-telling of family stories. Then on to Tofino, on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island, a Mecca for surfers with dreadlocks. Our hotel is right on the beach, but nobody�s catching any rays here. The temperature might have got up to fifteen degrees Celsius and even though every surfer wears a wetsuit, I still don�t understand how they can stay in that water for hours. To compensate for our budgetary excesses at dinner last night we buy stuff for a picnic lunch today and go to Long Beach. Sitting on a big driftwood log, we watch crows filch a bag of chips from a picnic basket left on the beach. After they�re done I fold the empty bag neatly and return it to the basket, hoping to drive somebody crazy trying to figure out what happened to their chips. I take a photo of a couple on the wharf at Tofino and ask them to return the favour. We don�t have a lot of pictures of the two of us, and most of the ones we have are way better of MFB than me. For once, we�re both looking not bad. Tomorrow we head to Bainbridge Island, WA, (visiting a dear aunt on the way) and hope there�ll be no explaining to do to US Customs about all that stuff of my mom�s. I can�t believe they�d hassle two senior-looking people but every Canadian has a horror story to tell of trans-border car travel. Seattle is for Sunday, and then a leisurely drive back to Calgary through northern Washington, Idaho and Montana. The high point, in both senses of the word, will be the Logan Pass, also known as Going-To-The-Sun road. See you sometime next week!

On the ultimate decision

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 May 2014 11:10:00 +0000

Last week, an old friend got what she wanted most. Death was her wish, and it arrived in the way she had hoped it would � in her own bed in the apartment where she had lived for more than fifty years, the person she loved most in the world at her side.
A year ago she had tried to end her life, and the intervention that saved her was not welcome. She had always been fiercely independent and the thought of becoming increasingly reliant on the small community in which she lived was untenable to her. Her vision of her situation was realistic and pragmatic. With no living children to care for her, she was adamant that she would neither move from her apartment nor become a burden to her only relative, the grandson she had raised for most of his childhood.
Her home was a walk-up apartment in central Nice that she had shared with her lover for 40 years �they married only shortly before his death � and she would not consider any other, under any circumstances. She gauged her ability to cope with her advancing age by the frequency with which she was willing to go down and up four flights of stairs � over the last few years it had dropped from four times a day, to once, then to only a few times a week, until finally she had only enough energy to leave the building when absolutely necessary.
The first time she spoke to me of suicide was several years ago, when she revealed that she had accumulated enough medication to deliver herself a fatal overdose if and when she reached the point where life was no longer livable. My first reaction was shocked rejection of her intention. In remarkably good health for someone in her late eighties, she walked to the shops every day, went to the cinema regularly and treated herself to a weekly restaurant meal. She was keenly interested in politics, changing societal mores and the influence of the internet, and her plan to choreograph the end of her life seemed completely incompatible with the person she was.
But over many discussions with her, I began to see how suicide could be considered the reasonable act of a rational person who refuses to be taken hostage by diminishing physical capacity and declining health. She was clear-eyed about the future and would frequently remark that at her age, there were no miracles left.
After she failed in her first attempt a year ago, suicide became a frequent, almost obsessive reference in her conversations. She still went to the hairdresser once a week, still watched the evening news, still took an interest in what went on around her � but she had started down a path from which she would not be diverted.
A few months ago her eyesight began to fail rapidly and although she was willing to undergo treatment to try and save what was left, the effort so exhausted her that she stopped it after the first session. We had lunch together a few weeks later and she talked of her distress at no longer being able to read a newspaper, a bank statement or even to watch television. She knew of ways to put an end to her life but candidly admitted to her fear of suffering pain in doing so. It was difficult not to protest her single-minded intention, or to offer her empty reassurances, but I had no basis from which to argue that her life could be improved or would even be bearable.
All I could give her was my attention. As much as I could try to put myself in her shoes, it was impossible for me � forty years younger and in very good health � to imagine how hostile her future had become and how untenable was the prospect of needing help to function in her daily life. I believed she had the right to do whatever she chose with her life, and that it was not mine to moralize.
In the end, she tried again. She didn�t succeed, at least not immediately, but during the brief period of hospitalization that followed her second attempt a cancerous tumour was discovered. She refused both treatment and nourishment; her beloved grandson acceded to her wishes and took her back home. I don�t really know if I, or others, failed her, but I doubt she would think so. I only wish she had been carried off by a heart attack in her sleep and so been spared her terrible decision.
If ever I get to the age she was, I might then truly understand her determination to live � and die � on her own terms, but I could not admire it more than I already do.

All I needed to know about being a mother, I learned from a dog. Too late.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 May 2014 03:58:00 +0000

My parental decisions, I am embarrassed to admit, have too often been influenced by the potential for my permanent unpopularity. The occasions when I have parked my common sense in favour of making a child happy � or side-stepping their negative opinion � have not always done them any favours. Like many parents of my generation and culture, I tend to place more importance on the relationship I have with my kids than whether the best answer is 'no�. To those brave and confident parents who have managed both firmness and friendliness with their children, (Midlife Jobhunter appears to be one) I offer my congratulations and a not a little envy. Over the 28 years that I have been a parent, I�ve spent some time examining my errors, and this one is at the top of the list. Number two is my inconsistent application of discipline � not the corporal kind � and after spending a couple of recent months in the company of my adult offspring, it is apparent that I have influenced them towards a certain insouciance, insofar as deadlines, order and the judicious application of their attention to the road are concerned. (Note to my children: Don�t think for a second that I believe you to be seriously flawed. Rather, it�s sometimes evident to me that, had I been a little more with it as a parent, you might have had some more helpful habits in place. The nature vs. nurture debate has never satisfactorily determined what aspects of personality and character are inborn but it�s safe to suggest that I am responsible for not instilling in any of you a better defence against procrastination, for instance.) So I could have put my foot down and just said No when Youngest Son said last fall that he wanted to bring a dog to live in my house, but being firmly opposed to anything is not a natural position for me. I preferred to appeal to his practicality. After a protracted, long-distance MSN discussion during which I cited at least 30 reasons why getting a dog was a bad idea (I saved the conversation in case a reprise was necessary), he proved once again that I am someone to be ignored. When I arrived home a month later, a Giant Alaskan Malamute was in residence. (Like their Canadian cousins, the Huskies, Malamutes are Northern sled dogs who are noted, among other things, for their physical strength and mental stubbornness. These two attributes do not a good combination make, in either dogs or children.) I am a realist. There was no point in objecting � the dog was there to stay. And besides, I fell in love with him. There was no other option for an animal with snowshoes for paws who could easily whup a lion cub in a cutest-ever contest. But the black-and-white bundle of fur who had to be plucked out of December snowdrifts had become, four months later, a 115-lb adolescent whose height was the canine equivalent of Eldest Son�s 7�0" and whose personality could be best described as Totally Chill alternating with Cannon-on-the-Loose. The first time I offered him breakfast, he went vertical and kibble scattered to the four winds. My eardrums hurt from the sonic thunder of his bark. Going for a walk meant trying to get out of the house without having my upper body slammed against a barely-open door, and my left bicep began to develop at an unnatural rate. In short, he was trouble: undisciplined, oversized, and too big to control by force. Despite his affectionate temperament and complete lack of aggression, he was an intimidating sight bearing down on small dogs and children, his favourite beings in the world next to his human dad. Something had to be done. My only experience with dogs had consisted of a decade-long relationship with two pre-owned Belgian Sheepdogs, one of whom came with a perfect report card and natural deference. The other one got me enrolled in some basic training and we both learned a few things about what I should and shouldn�t be doing. She was intelligent � as opposed to obedient � and although I never could trust her around rabbits or other female dogs, she became my favourite. Having supplemented my patchy recollection of dog commands and desirable behaviours with Youtube videos of Cesar Milan, Dog Whisperer, I felt ready to take on the task of teaching Noa how to be good. Whatever nuances of puppy-training I didn�t know about, one thing was burned into my intent � I would show him who was Da Boss. Mealtime manners were first. No aggressive food behaviour allowed any more, and he had to sit, lie down and wait to eat until given permission. His master had done a good job of teaching him the first two, but Noa figured he owned the bowl. It took about a four days before he could be relied on to wait in front of a full bowl, ,even when the food-giver left the room. A couple of weeks later he didn�t even need to be told what to do, and without a word from anybody, he lay down quietly and would not eat unless given the OK. Next step: door decorum. Ladies first � in fact, humans first. This was a bit tougher, as Noa would already be on a leash and in a state of high excitement about getting a walk. It took a couple of weeks before he stopped trying to take my arm out the front door without the rest of me, but after a while he got the message that if he didn�t sit and let me go first, nobody was going anywhere. Ditto stairs. But the biggest issue was the neighbourhood Iditarod. This world-famous sled race usually takes place about 10 degrees further north and requires snow, but Noa had his own version. The first half-block of the competition was deceptively easy, distracted as he was by getting the leash between his teeth. Looking up with an 'aren�t-I-cute� expression, he would trot beside me for only as long as it took him to realize that we were actually Out of the House. Once the full significance of the situation hit, he was off at full-bore sled dog, with me hauling back on the leash with every ounce of strength I had and thinking that gaining an extra hundred pounds had its advantages. Grind to a halt. Sit. Calm down. Heel. Shoulder dislocation. Halt. Full circle turn. Sit. Heel. Shoulder dislocation. Do it all again. And again. And again. But finally, interrupted step by interrupted step, he learned that he couldn�t get away with anything and that if he wanted to go for a walk , he had to stay beside me. (This is still a lesson-in-progress, and for every time he responds to 'Heel�, there are at least as half as many when he doesn�t.) It did not escape me that there was a certain amount of enjoyment involved in my gaining the upper hand. Being an Alpha female is more fun than bungee-jumping. That Noa was learning to behave well was the primary reward, but there was also that ancillary glow about being decisive and unambiguous about my expectations of him. There were times when I was tempted to let him sniff even when he was supposed to be at heel, and others when his joy at seeing another dog made it seem mean to insist that he sit patiently and watch, but damn, it felt good to be totally consistent. I became one of his favourite people despite, well, actually, because of my role, and it was then that the light went on. I didn�t spend a second wondering if my firm decisions affected my standing in his doggy heart, and that left me free to just go ahead and apply the rules for his own good. He held nothing against me and in fact, the more I persisted in expecting him to do the right thing, the more he seemed to like me. Why couldn�t I have done this with my kids? This should not have been the revelation it was. In theory, I knew this already, but sometimes you actually have to experience the truth to really get it. Had I known way back when what I know now, I could have been as good a raiser of children as a trainer of dogs. If I could do it all over again, I�d practice parenting on a pooch first. But since that�s not going to happen, I�ll have to wait and see if it works on the next generation. Although, the other thing I�ve learned from Noa is that good grandparents must be equipped with Velcro lips. I guess it really is too late.

The Last Supper

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 May 2014 20:46:00 +0000

Creeping emphysema from a lifetime of smoking took hold of my robust, athletic father and turned him into a frail and fragile old man whose every exertion left him gasping for breath. Hospitalized after a fall, the slow disintegration of his body gathered speed and one afternoon a few months later my eldest brother called to say that things didn�t look very good at all.
Within a few hours I was on a plane. I felt guilty for not having gone to see Dad sooner, sick with anxiety that I might be too late. It was awful to think that he might leave before the rest of us got there, robbing us of any chance to say goodbye.
He was hanging on, but unconscious and unresponsive to touch or voice. I dozed in a chair by his bed, waking frequently to check on him. When sleep was impossible, I tried to bring back all the memories I had of him, but the same few kept replaying in my head. Walking me to school, laughing at my attempts to match his long strides. Showing my brothers how to fight fairly, with gloves instead of fists. Teaching me to waltz, my child�s feet tenuously balanced on his long and bony ones. Bringing home the first new car he had ever had�a two-seater MG. Sailing the dinghy one last time before winter came, through paper-thin ice. Coping well, despite all our fears, with a sudden loss of vision at the relatively young age of sixty five.
I wondered how and when he would die. He could linger for days, or even weeks. It didn�t seem right that his life, which had been by turns adventurous and industrious, familial and solitary, would finish in such a sterile, unworthy place. I imagined carrying him away to some beautiful spot; a high, grassy meadow overlooking the sea where, in the warmth and brilliance of spring, he could leave us behind in a setting infinitely more appropriate.
By daylight, nothing had changed; he barely breathed and his skin, almost luminous, was tinged with blue. The only one still missing�my middle brother�arrived in early afternoon. There was still no reaction from Dad.
Now we were complete. We sat beside his bed, talking in low tones, waiting, holding Dad�s hands and watching for the nearly imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. Then, astonishingly, he spoke. "Is that you, Garry?", he asked of my middle brother, faint surprise in his voice.
By evening, he was completely alert. The next day he was strong enough to eat small amounts. He slept a lot, but between naps he talked with us, made weak jokes and took quiet, obvious pleasure in the presence of his family. We were amazed, and wary of what might happen next. Every time he dozed off I half-expected that he would leave us as abruptly as he had come back, but two more days went by and still he was there.
Finally, reluctantly, Garry and I made our plans to fly home. No one said anything out loud, but it didn�t feel right to leave without some kind of acknowledgment that these might be the last hours we would ever spend with our father.
What comes back to me most vividly about that last day is Dad�s reaction when we announced that we had cancelled his bland hospital meal in favour of a tasty supper of his favourite foods. Over years of living alone he had become a pretty decent cook and despite - and because - of the loss of his sight, cooking became one of his most important daily activities. Mealtimes were events to be anticipated and appreciated, and he planned them accordingly. Almost every afternoon at four o�clock he sat down at the little table in his kitchen with a glass of wine and two pieces of Stilton cheese�crackers on the side�and the highlight of his week was go out for dinner to his favourite restaurant. But while we were pretty sure he'd like the idea, we hadn't counted on the effect it would have.
'Bring it on!!�, he roared, as if he'd discovered salvation at an old-time revival meeting. He pulled himself up straighter and smoothed his pyjama top - to be more presentable, he said. My brother poured a generous amount of red wine and held it steady for Dad to drink.
"That�s the ticket!" he chortled. It didn't matter that the wine was served in a plastic cup. Next came a cracker topped with Stilton, followed by another, and another. The tremors that had bedeviled him for years were worse than they had ever been; we took turns feeding him. My brother warned him not to eat too much or he�d have no room for the next course, which just made Dad laugh. Oh, we didn't need to worry about that, he said. His pleasure was so intense that it almost hurt to watch him. I was stricken by the fact that something this simple could bring him such joy. Why hadn�t we thought of it before?
The Greek salad was a big hit, eaten with gusto and washed down with more wine. This was the guy who, just days before, had been barely able to get a few tablespoons of applesauce down the hatch. With relish, he moved on to the spicy designer pasta, but soon he began to tire. The effort and excitement had taken their toll and then suddenly, he was asleep. We waited, wondering if we should just pack up what was left. My brother�s eyes rarely left Dad�s face, and on his own were shadows of tenderness and grief.
After a brief nap, Dad roused himself to continue but the pace slowed, and after a few more bites he pronounced himself 'full fit to bursting!�. In the lengthening evening, we sat together as he drifted in and out of wakefulness. When finally it was late and time to go, we embraced him and wished him goodnight and goodbye.
A week or so later I called him on the phone. He told me there were still some leftovers and that at around four o�clock that afternoon the nursing aide had brought him some Stilton and red wine. "I had a wine and cheese party for one and really enjoyed it!" It was the last time I heard his voice.
My little dream of taking Dad to a meadow overlooking the sea was, in fact, a wish for a meaningful way to mark the end of his life and a gesture that would let him know how much he meant to me. But in its spontaneity and simple joy, the meal we shared with him - our Last Supper - did that perfectly.

My Tale of Two Countries

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 May 2014 13:34:00 +0000

A Typical French Day Proof that I live on the French Riviera. 08h00 Stagger out of bed. Pull on bright pink dressing gown. Turn laptop on. Feed cat. Make coffee while My Favourite Belgian fetches fresh baguette from boulangerie. Check emails and blogs Clean up cat vomit. Chat on msn with daughter. Accept transfer of term paper to edit, due by day�s end. Reflect on irony of having escaped writing university term papers, now cornered into editing for others. Eat breakfast in pink gown and companionable silence, casting longing glances at morning newspaper. Accommodate MFB�s values, which place reading at mealtime slightly below flatulence in elevators. 09h00 Re-read emails, yesterday�s sent emails, other blog comments, still in pink gown. The village next door , much more picturesque than ours. Write emails. Read online newspaper. Read re-read emails. Check new blog posts. Check again for comments. Check responses to comments. Shower/shampoo/blow-dry/dress. Wish for thick hair with style resilience. Make bed. Remind myself bed-making job is voluntary position. Pour first coffee of day. Contemplate why new chapter in novel-in-progress is not progressing Read blogs Write half of blog post Read blogs. Contemplate my addiction to blogs. 13:00 2-course lunch prepared by self or MFB. Report blog news/Canadian news on my side. Report computer programming news on his side. Fight the urge to nap. Nap. Read blogs. Read emails. A mere 10 minutes from the madding crowds of Cannes Brisk walk in Provencal countryside. Barely able to keep up to American friend despite her small stature and 10-year seniority. Vow to get more exercise. Read blogs Realize term paper still not edited. Read emails Edit term paper. Contemplate writing new chapter of novel-in-progress. Decide it�s too late for today. Do online crossword instead. 19:30 2 course dinner prepared by self or MFB. Wider range of conversational topics, including but not limited to blog news, computer programming news, family news, weather, how to get cat not to vomit. 20:00 Evening TV news with gorgeous 50-something female news anchor - whose lover is half her age and looks half as smart. Followed by weather report with gorgeous 60-something female weather forecaster. Contemplate the well-preserved good looks of French women. Brush teeth. Wonder if Botox would help me look like French weather forecaster. Hope having clean teeth will eliminate urge to snack. Evening television-watching with MFB while simultaneously doing internet job, laptop on lap. 22:00 Snack Read/write emails Read blogs Contemplate another day without progress on the novel-in-progress. Consider abandoning novel. Consider getting a handle on blogging addiction. 23:30 Bed. Fall asleep over book in 9 1/2 minutes. A Typical Canadian Day Proof that I also live near the Rocky Mtns. 08h00 Stagger out of bed. Pull on ratty green dressing gown. Turn laptop on. Make coffee. Feed son�s cat. Feed son�s dog. Stop dog chasing/licking cat. Cat after dog face-wash 09:00 Chat on MSN with MFB. Accept transfer of documents in French, and agree to translate into English. 09:30 Fast shower/haircare/dress. 10:00 Take daughter�s car for summer tires. While waiting, take 110-lb dog for long walk. Attempt to train dog to heel. Dislocate shoulder as dog lunges at wild hare. Dog after cat face-wash Pick up car. Break news to daughter that front wheels of car falling off and require expensive repairs. Cancel afternoon shopping trip as car status uncertain. Return home. 11:30 Son #1 emerges from upstairs room, thunders into kitchen, downs 5 litres of milk enhanced with protein powder, cooks 6 eggs , utters 3 words, slams back door on way out. Read one-half of online newspaper article. 12:00 Son #2 emerges from basement. Excites dog, who barks wildly. Experience painful aural concussion. Son stands mutely at open fridge door, eventually abandoning quest for breakfast. Leaves for work. Dog howls inconsolably. Remove shoe from dog�s jaws. Spend several hours removing four month�s worth of grime from overlooked corners, banisters, stovetops and behind furniture. Remove shoe from dog�s jaws. Fight urge to nap. Nap. Blog briefly 17:30 Student boarder emerges from room. Stands mutely at fridge door, eventually withdrawing carton of eggs. Landlady offers pork chops/zucchini/roasted potatoes instead and eats with boarder. Remove feather duster from dog�s jaws. Feed dog. Dog walk park. Spring not readily apparent. Look forward to quiet evening of writing new chapter of novel-in-progress. Blog briefly. Friend of son #2 arrives. Entertain friend while waiting for Son, who eventually arrives with more friends. Girlfriend of son arrives for sleepover. Spontaneous party erupts in kitchen. 21:30 Daughter arrives unexpectedly accompanied by two male Good Samaritans, holding large ice pack to right eye. Contemplate damage done by 30-mph Frisbee to orbital socket and determine emergency treatment by medical professional un-necessary. Recall when daughter diagnosed by mother as having painful period, eventually operated on for near-perforated appendix. Hope diagnostic skills have improved since. Drive daughter home, picking up pirate eye patch and anti-inflammatory medication on way. Wonder if taller, better-looking, twenty-something Samaritan will realize an irresistible attraction for black-eyed girl but forget where mother lives. 22:30 Return home to quiet house. Play piano briefly. Investigate source of persistent loud hum from basement. Call son to determine proper procedure for turning off 10,000 watt amplifier without electrocuting self. Finish second half of newspaper article. 23h15 Son #2 returns home with friend/girlfriend. Impromptu jam session in basement, without amplifier. Snack. Blog. Snack. 00:30 Chat with MFB on Skype in relative quiet of upstairs bedroom. Realize translation job has been forgotten. 01:15 Bed. Fall asleep over book in 3 1/2 minutes. 05:30 Get up to pee just as Son #1 returns home.