Bobby - end of an era

Note: I wrote this on August 7. I was hoping to find a suitable photo for this post but never did, and then forgot about it. Only ran across the draft of this post by accident in October.

Yesterday I heard that a man I kind of grew up with died on Saturday. Kind of. Our parents were good friends at one time, they met when they lived on the same street in Toronto. I was just 4 then, the same age as Bobby. He was very worldly-wise in my four-year-old eyes, he knew how to make phone calls and we talked on the phone. He said we would get married when we grew up, and that actually scared me, I am not sure why. 

Once we ran away from home together, he seemed to know exactly where we were the whole time but I was utterly lost. At one point we ended up on a very busy street with stoplights, I didn't have a clue how stoplights worked and didn't want to test them, but Bobby did. Fortunately I was just too scared to be cajoled into crossing that street. We ended up back home in time for supper.

Shortly after that his family moved to Mississauga and a while after that my family moved to Forest Hill Village, then one of the municipalities that made up Metropolitan Toronto. But our parents remained friends and there was a lot of visiting back and forth over the years, we kids were close enough that Bobby once referred to me as his cousin, in a particular situation where I felt in danger and he was putting himself between me and the mean kids.

Bobby's younger sister and I became quite good friends as kids and teenagers. I ended up introducing her to the man she would marry and have a couple of kids with. More water under the bridge and Bobby moved to the US and I never saw him again, although I did hear stories about what he was up to from his sister and younger brother.

I was chatting with Bobby's sister over Facebook when she heard from Bobby's girlfriend that he had just died at her place. Not sure what happened, might have been a heart attack. I asked her if she had any photos of him, today she posted a few on Facebook.

"End of an era!" She texted me. I guess it is. In her family she is now the elder: both parents and her older brother gone now.

It is not so much that I miss Bobby or am sad about his death (I am), as that it brings back so many memories of us as kids. There were eight of us and we did a lot of things together, like family, or at least close cousins. Bobby was definitely something else; his sister said he became eccentric later in life, but I think he was born eccentric.

In the last few years of his life he reconnected with an old girlfriend. He moved back to Canada to live with her. I am glad he found love at the end. His sister said it changed him, for the better.

John

I got a phone call yesterday from a stranger telling me that a dear friend John had died a month ago. I almost didn't answer the call because I didn't recognize the number, but he was legitimate. It was shocking and extremely sad, I spent the rest of the day in tears.

John lived on the other side of the country, where I used to live. I met him a couple of decades ago, warmed up to him gradually. He was the kind of person who was a little bit in your face, but not in an aggressive way, he meant well. I got used to that and eventually appreciated it very much. When I moved across the country he was about the only person aside from family that I kept in touch with by phone, and our calls usually lasted over two hours. We talked about everything, we laughed a lot. Ostensibly we were talking about my financial affairs—he was my financial advisor—but rarely did that part of the conversation last for more than 15 minutes. And it went right over my head. I trusted him though and was glad that he knew what he was talking about, because I sure didn't.

The few times I went back out west to visit, he was on my list to check in with. We'd meet in his office and later go for lunch. He was into ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) and he made a new arrangement for his office waiting area every week. Sometimes he'd explain the meaning of it to me, but I'm afraid that went over my head as well. They were beautiful though.

The last time I talked to him was a few weeks before he died. I knew he had cancer, I knew it had metastasized, but he was so upbeat and optimistic that I thought he had more time. During the past summer when he knew his cancer had metastasized, he went with a friend to visit their family in England, something he often did. I gather it was a very good visit. He was also an extreme skier and hiker. He always took his dog on his hikes, sometimes his daughter would accompany him. He loved the west coast.

The man who called me yesterday gave me his daughter's email address, with her permission. I wrote to her today to tell her what a wonderful man I thought he was. She just had a baby the week after he died, how sad that John never met his grandchild! And how sad that she must deal with grief and joy at the same time. Understandably, she has not planned any celebration of life (nobody has funerals these days!).

It is so distressing to get such news and have nobody to talk to about it. I tried phoning a couple of people but no one was home, and none of them would have known who John was and how much he meant to me. I do hope his daughter is coping.

Surviving a broken brain

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Atlantic Balance and Dizziness Clinic in Halifax to have the dizziness I have been experiencing pretty much non-stop for two years now assessed by a physiotherapist. She was very thorough, the appointment was about 1.5 hours long, taking my history and running me through countless tests.

She diagnosed my problem as Persistent Postural Perceptive Dizziness (PPPD, or "3PD"). The standard treatment is a low dose SSRI for anxiety and cognitive behaviour therapy to train my brain to reframe what I experience as "not dizzy". Since I pretty much deny experiencing anxiety and am very wary of SSRIs she suggested pacing instead.

She emailed me a pacing checklist which I am supposed to use to assign points to all my daily activities and limit myself to only 10 or 15 points a day. So far I have scored 25 and 32 points daily, so obviously I have a long way to go to get it under 15 points.

The trouble with this system is that it assigns a lot of points for reading and computer use, and since I am very limited in the amount of physical activity I can do, I score lots of points in those activities. I am at a loss as to what I am supposed to do when I cannot do much else. This blog post alone is going to count for more than 5-10 points, meal preparation and "ADLs" (activities of daily living: getting dressed, brushing one's teeth, washing, grooming, etc) will account for another 5 points, and the rest of the day is toast.

I can see where such a system of pacing by points would be good for recovering from concussion, and limiting one's time on the computer or tablet or phone is probably a good idea, but I am at a loss as to what else I can do other than stare at the ceiling. Even talking to a friend racks up points at an alarming rate.

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I have been chatting on the phone with an old friend out west several times a week. The time difference (four hours) makes scheduling difficult, but so far we manage. She has Parkinson's. It affects her ability to communicate and think straight, resulting in a lot of anxiety and depression about her situation. Unlike me she can still do two hour hikes in the nearby mountains and play ping pong, although her coordination is failing so she has some difficulty with the ping pong.

Last night we were talking about cognitive and memory testing. A year ago I had my memory tested at a local clinic and she is undergoing cognitive testing at her local Parkinson's clinic. She agreed to the testing for the good of research but has been finding it frustrating. We both have memory and cognitive problems. But the tests that they do seem quite irrelevant, as if the people who are doing the testing don't really know what memory and cognitive loss really is like. The tests feel useless and beside the point.

In my own case, the memory tests started simply enough but gradually became more difficult. They required remembering words shown to you on cards in a particular order. On the final couple of tests my mind just went blank, I could not think of anything. The tester prompted me with hints and I was able to recall the words she was hinting at, but doing it without the hints was impossible. 

She gave me my final "score" and I asked what it meant. Was I normal? Average? Deficient? She hemmed and hawed and went into this whole thing about what is normal, what is average, so I knew she wasn't going to tell me.

The thing is, my memory deficits have nothing to do with words on cards, or counting backwards from 100 by sevens. They are not testing the real memory losses, just what they think memory loss should look like. Likewise for my friend, she feels very frustrated because the testing she is undergoing has hardly anything to do with what she is experiencing.

Our conversations are halting and involve long silences as we search for the words we know are there but can't speak, and we lose track of what we were talking about it in the first place. But I feel like we are on the same page so the communication difficulties are irrelevant. We laugh a lot at our shared experience of cognitive loss.

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Had a visit from the local Homecare Coordinator to see if I qualified. It's a tricky business. What I want is a little light housekeeping. What's on offer is personal care: help getting in and out of the bathtub or help getting dressed. If I need personal care they will throw in light housekeeping as well, but my income is too high to just get the light housekeeping. Also, the amount they would charge me for this is equivalent to what it would cost me to hire a housecleaner for a few hours a month, which is all I need. 

The problem is I don't know who does that sort of thing other than agencies which charge a lot more. The Homecare Coordinator said that they largely use VON for nursing and personal care, and Caregivers NS for the housekeeping. She told me the name of the local contact for Caregivers NS and it turns out I know that person, she lives down the street from me. I will call her to see if she can provide leads for housecleaners.

The visit was very helpful, and if I ever do need help getting in and out of the tub, I know who to call. She liked my woodfire and sat next to the stove because she said it was impossible to be too warm. Later she asked how I got my firewood into the house and I showed her my somewhat complicated system involving a firewood bag, wheelbarrow and an old bath towel. She marvelled at it.

"You have a system for everything!" she said.

Yup. That's what you do when you're old and live alone and want to stay that way.

Beginnings, endings and inbetweens

Students are back and my neighbourhood is surprisingly quiet. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. What, did they all mature over the summer? I saw one guy walking up the street with a bong, and later a couple of guys carrying 12-packs of … water! Maybe they all gave up booze? I don't know. I am enjoying the peace, for however long it lasts.

The dry sunny weather continues on and on. I've never had to water my garden in September before. We have water restrictions right now so it is a good thing I have a rain barrel. The water restrictions are not due to lack of water but rather a broken part in the reservoir that needs to be replaced, but is caught up in supply chain issues with no ETA.

I started a Tai Chi class. I really am hoping this is a level of activity I can tolerate. My Fitbit tells me that the first class hardly raised my heartrate at all, a good sign. But the following two days I've been pretty much confined to home due to dizziness, not a good sign. The instructor of the class is really good, plus he has volunteer helpers—more experienced students—to help guide us. There's one woman in the class who I am pretty sure has dementia, she sticks pretty close to her husband and only vaguely follows the instructions. But nobody says anything about that, the class is very inclusive. I don't have to pay for the class until I've completed two sessions, to know whether it suits me or not. At this point the jury is out. I really enjoyed it, but spending two days after virtually bedridden is a little disconcerting.

Shortly after I got out of my Tai Chi class I saw the news that the Queen had died. It feels almost like a death in the family. I know that some people disapprove of the Monarchy but I for one do not. She has been a source of stability for a very long time. When I was three years old I went with all my extended family to see her when she visited Toronto back in the day. Since our house was closest to the parade route, the family gathered there afterward. I remember the gathering but not so much the Princess (she wasn't Queen yet), just that it was a momentous occasion.

I liked living in a country with a Queen, I like that Canada is part of a larger community, the British Commonwealth. I realize that the Commonwealth is just the old British Empire with a new name and that the British Empire was a great colonial power that did a lot of damage in many parts of the world including here, damage that people are still having to deal with. But being part of a larger whole, for better or for worse, and having a long history, also for better or for worse, seems to me a good thing in the long haul. And I'd rather be part of the British Commonwealth than the Russian Empire.

Anyway, I miss Queen Elizabeth II, the end of an era that lasted almost my whole life. I think she did a very good job of it. It will be strange to have a King rather than a Queen, but I hope he does well too. I read something about him, how he was in the habit of espousing weird ideas that people made fun of him for. You, know, organic food, the environment, that sort of thing. Now he looks a little prescient.

Lives lived, and the fallout

My longtime friend S died a couple of weeks ago but I only heard about it last Thursday night. I had called her house the week before and left a message but there was no response, so I called again last week and her husband M answered the phone with "Oh dear." S had given him a list of people to call after her death and I was near the top of the list, but obviously he hadn't called. Not that I blame him, there are priorities and there are priorities. But we talked for about an hour, reminiscing, him describing her last days and how it affected him, where he was at now, so on and so forth. We both said we'd keep in touch, who knows if we actually do.

I met S in first year university, 55 years ago. We became close friends but at the end of the year I went to France and she returned home to Eastern Ontario. Our relationship continued but in an off/on sort of way. After losing track of each other for several years she and her new husband showed up at my doorstep late at night, when my husband and I were living in an off-grid log cabin back of beyond in the mountains of BC. Quite a piece of detective work to track us down! They only stayed the one day, we spent the time playing catch-up. Then they were off and I didn't see or hear from her for several more years. We had a chance meeting on the street in small town Nova Scotia. She and M were visiting someone who had recently moved here from Montreal. Again, they were only around for a few days and then off again. I didn't reconnect with her until two decades later, in Vancouver. S and M had moved there after our first meetup in the mountains of BC, and I moved back there in the early '90s. By then we both had 2/3 boy children, some of whom still lived at home.

I am not sure what drew us together, I certainly was fascinated with how different she was from anyone I had met before and god only knows what drew her to me. Perhaps it was just my persistence. That first year at university we both lived in residence and it was a tumultuous year for both of us. As I recall we did a lot of drinking to excess; first year away from home and all that.

There was a period of time in the late '90s when she stopped returning my calls, she told me much later that she disapproved of my lifestyle then. She was raised as a devout Baptist with a strict moral code that she herself was trying to break through, but there were just certain things she couldn't wrap her head around. Myself there were times when I had had enough of her stuff as well, so when she stopped returning calls I just moved on. It only lasted a few years, then we were visiting back and forth again since we only lived a few kilometers apart.

At the beginning of the pandemic when everything was in lockdown I started calling distant friends—including S—that I hadn't seen or talked to in years. She was ill. Her illness was ultimately fatal, she'd had it for a long time but was unable to get it diagnosed let alone treated, until it was too late. So I started having regular calls with her, maybe every other month or so. I'm not good at long distance phone relationships. But our calls often lasted for a couple of hours. Mostly I listened; she said she enjoyed talking to me because I didn't judge. It's true, no matter how much we might disagree I felt that at this point it was better to let it go. And the person on the deathbed gets first dibs on airtime.

The last time I talked to her was just before Christmas, she asked me to call her on Christmas Day because she was concerned about me being alone then. But I wasn't alone and I didn't call. She had as many family members present as she could possibly pack in because she knew this was her last Christmas. I should have called in January, but for a variety of reasons I put it off. When I finally called it was too late. I am glad I got to have a good conversation with M though. The odd thing is, since that call I have been having conversations with S in my head. She seems as present as when we both lived in Vancouver. Last night I watched a couple of documentaries about a guy who nurses sick eagles back to health and then releases them. This morning I've been telling S all about it, since I know she loves eagles. And wolves.

In a way, I have always been envious of her, she had the life that I wanted. She got to do a lot of things I wished I could do. But one night shortly before I moved away from Vancouver, she had driven me home and we were sitting in the car talking. She just poured out all her regrets in life up to that point. She felt that she had made some bad choices and as a result missed out on the life she really had wanted. It's kind of a weird moment when the person who is living the life you thought you wanted is expressing that kind of regret to you. Is this a thing? Do we all regret the life unlived?

I've seen inspirational talks by people who say they are living exactly the life they wanted ("and you can too!"). Last night I watched a trailer for a Brene Brown talk saying more or less that. Her prescription? Courage to be vulnerable. I think it is easy to say that sort of thing in retrospect, but it seems to me that in the moment there are constant choices you have to make that open one door and close another, and you just can't see into the future the unexpected consequences that will shape your life. In my own life I can't really say that the pivotal choices I made had anything to do with courage or the lack thereof. More like, you play the hand you're dealt as best you can.

Memory work

A couple of weeks ago I bought a painting. It's very Maud Lewis-ish, but I like it. I have another painting by the same woman, I told the saleslady that when I bought it. She said the artist will be thrilled to hear that someone out there is actually collecting her stuff.

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First major winter storm last night coincided with doctor's appointment first thing the following morning, necessitating getting out early to shovel snow. Not a fun time. On top of that, last night I was sifting through paperwork trying to find something or other and while I never did find whatever I was looking for, I did find the receipt for having paid the last installment of my property tax and noticed for the first time that the low income seniors rebate had not been applied to it. I then hunted for evidence that I had in fact applied for the rebate, and found none of that either. Not even a form that had been left unfilled and undelivered, just nothing.

So after the doctor appointment I trekked over to town hall to see if they had any evidence that I had applied for it and of course they did not. As the clerk said, they would have applied it if I had submitted the form. Well, I knew I was suffering from brain fog and memory issues, but this was one expensive memory slip. Sometime back in the early days of the pandemic I had requested that my bills be emailed instead of mailed, and that went okay for the first year but in the second year I was late paying two bills because I forgot, and I never applied for the tax exemption. I requested to go back on paper billing, so much for saving trees. The clerk muttered that she could never do online bills.

My doctor suggested that I get my memory tested, there's a local company doing some kind of study of dementia and looking for people to do memory testing on. My doctor doesn't think I have dementia but it might be useful to see how much the CFS has affected my memory. She also recommended a couple of other things which I asked her to write down for me otherwise I would never remember them. I've already forgotten what they were, but I have a piece of paper that she wrote on!

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I am not recovering very well from my mini-vacation, there seems to be way too much stuff to do to prepare for winter and I am not sleeping well. The bout of snow shovelling this morning has flattened me, I spend way too much time in a recliner. I have books to read but no energy to pick them up.

I was joking with someone else who has insomnia, we were talking about our evening "cocktails", how every night we look at an array of pills and herbals and whatnot and try to guess which combo will work tonight. So far, I am not guessing very well at all. 

I received an email last night from a friend who said she hoped I was more relaxed now, that got my back up. I fired off a reply saying relaxing was not my problem, imagine having a bad 'flu for months/years on end and maybe that would convey a little of how I feel. Saying that to her feels like crushing baby bunnies, I know she means well she just misses the point. But I'm tired of it.

Okay, I remember now one of the things the doctor thought I should do: apply to get CBT-I (cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia) at the regional hospital. And get my blood sugar checked, I am apparently now in the "pre-diabetic" range. Still can't remember the final thing, or at least I think it's the final thing. Good thing I have that piece of paper … somewhere.

Windows, Doors and Egg Rolls

I am getting new windows installed this week, they said it would take 3 days and they've just completed 2 days. All the new windows are in place and some of the trim. Tomorrow they will complete the trim.

Before coming in they asked me some Covid-related questions and then said they would be wearing masks and expected me to do so also, which I agreed to. As it turned out, one of the two workmen never wore a mask, but he also never entered my home, working strictly outside. I chatted with him at one point and he said he didn't believe in vaccines, but he realized that he was going to have to get vaccinated in order to keep working. I said nothing but thought, "good!"

While they install the windows I am weeding my garden, a task I don't relish but since I had to stay home but not in my house it does seem like a good time to get that out of the way. I think I am doing a couple of years worth of weeding.

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I dreamed about Hapi last night. We were on a trail we have often walked, she had her old energy back and was trotting along briskly with her tail up. Her coat was almost completely grown out except for a white patch on one shoulder. It was nice to see her back to her old self.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So, a few days ago I was cleaning up the muddy patch on the back door left from Hapi scratching there to notify me that she wanted inside. I couldn't get it all off, I think she managed to scratch through the paint and it was going to need repainting. I was thinking about what colour I wanted, and that reminded me of the Green Door and the Orange Door, two Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. They are no longer there but they used to be on a back alley in that city's Chinatown. There was no signage and no advertising, you heard about them by word of mouth and you basically had to walk down that alley looking for a green door or an orange door. I don't remember which one I ate at (it was in the late 60s), but there were no windows. Once inside you felt like you were in someone's basement, with an open kitchen along one side and big dining tables along the other side.

My boyfriend and I asked for two egg rolls each plus a couple of main dishes. The waiter gave my boyfriend a funny look, but we didn't know what that was about. He went away and shortly came back to say that they had run out of egg rolls and we could only have one each. Okay, that's weird, but okay. He went away again and after a while he returned with the egg rolls. They were huge. Each one was a full meal. We immediately cancelled the rest of our order and the waiter did not seem surprised or perturbed by that, I think he was expecting that reaction. We were greenhorns and had no idea what was meant by an "egg roll". It was almost literally a rolled up egg omelet filled with ground meat and vegetables. I'm guessing three or four eggs in each omelet.

So remembering that experience, as a result of cleaning the door, I then wondered how you would make such an egg roll, and whether it was something I could reproduce myself. I tried it out with what I had and it was pretty good. I just used what I had in the fridge, some celery, an old carrot, a very old frozen soyburger, an onion, some sweet Thai garlic sauce, and of course eggs. My omelet wasn't big enough so there was too much filling and I had to just spread the filling on top of the omelet and eat it with a knife and fork. A work in progress.

An old acquaintance and messing about in the attic

2007, my truck in Nova Scotia

This morning I received a surprise email, from a guy asking if I remembered picking him up hitchhiking a long time ago. And I did! In fact, I had been thinking about him only yesterday. It was 14 years ago, in 2007, and I was on my way to visit friends in Nova Scotia. I did not yet live there, in fact I did not really have an address anywhere, I was in the process of moving from Vancouver to Toronto.

So, somewhere near Hartland New Brunswick I turned off the TransCanada for gas and to look for a camping spot, because it was evening and I was tired of driving all day. While putting gas in my truck a young hitchhiker walked up to me and asked for a ride to Halifax Nova Scotia. I said Sorry, I was about to get off the road for the night. He pleaded his case and then left, presumably waiting for some kinder soul to stop there for gas. I reconsidered and after paying for the gas I told him I would take him a little further down the road, but I had no intention of driving all the way to Nova Scotia that night, and Halifax was kind of out of my way.

He loaded his bag in the back of the truck and we proceeded. He was chatty and as it turned out quite an interesting person with interesting opinions on things. For a young fellow he seemed to have done a lot of different things. Also he was interested in what I had to say as well. The conversation was interesting enough that I was reluctant to end it by dropping him off so I told him I would continue driving as long as I could, provided that he kept me awake. We actually made it all the way to Halifax.

He had been living in Toronto but he was an American who had been on the road for quite a while. He was going to Halifax because his girlfriend lived there and he actually thought she would put me up for the remainder of the night if we got there. We did get there but she wasn't interested in having a strange woman guest overnight so I continued driving to my destination which was a little over an hour away from Halifax. I must have given him my email address because he emailed me a couple of days later to ask if I made it okay and to say thanks for the ride and interesting conversation. I emailed him back and that was the end of the conversation, until today. He said in today's email that he came across our old exchange of messages while, I dunno, cleaning up his mailbox? He wondered if I remembered him.

I emailed back. I am curious as to what he did with himself over the last 14 years and where he is now. I am guessing he is in his mid to late 30s, possibly very early 40s, as he was quite young back then. Anyway, we'll see if he responds, I hope so.

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Last fall I bought some fiberglass insulation on sale to put in my attic. Then I got too ill to actually do it. I did manage to get the bales up into the attic but they sat there unopened all winter until now. This afternoon I geared up—old clothes, hat, goggles, mask, gloves, headlamp—and climbed into the attic to spread the insulation. I had 7 bales and managed to lay 5 of them down before I couldn't stand it anymore. Fiberglass insulation is awful stuff! The attic already has blown-in insulation, and that is pretty awful stuff too. I have a trapdoor to the attic and the blown-in stuff leaks down whenever I open it so I had to spread a tarp on the floor below as well. Filthy filthy stuff!

I got the worst of it done, all the places that required crawling around under low rafters. I think what's left is maybe one bale's worth, and it's all in an area where I can stand up. Thank the gods for that. However, I lost my utility knife somewhere in all the blown-in stuff. I tried looking for it but gave up pretty quick; easier to just get another one.

March news

Not much has happened in the last week, either that or my memory is shot to hell and I just don't remember what has happened.

My neighbour told me that the trees behind our houses have been full of Cedar Waxwings so I have been keeping an eye out for them and sure enough they arrived when I had my camera ready. They twitter like a crowd of grasshoppers. From a distance they don't look like much, easy to mistake for starlings. but up closer you see their crests and bright yellow bits, they are very pretty birds that like to hang out in large groups. They also are not that shy, they didn't mind me coming close to the trees they were perched in.

March came in like a lion, cold and blustery; let's hope it leaves like a lamb. I managed to get in a bit of skating, highly unusual for March, but the area of the pond that is skatable is so small that the time it took to put on and take off my skates was probably longer than the time I actually spent skating.

Remember B, my friend in the nursing home? Well, she finally got her first vaccination shot this week. They had promised it for early February. She has an appointment for the second shot in early April, just days before she plans to attend her daughter's funeral. Yes, her daughter died, cause not really known, she was found dead in her apartment. She was probably as unwell as B and she had stopped taking her insulin about a month before she died. Very sad. Also very hard on B, they spoke on the phone dozens of times every day. 

B's daughter was not mobile so she couldn't visit B even before the pandemic except on major holidays (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving). The funeral is being held in the small village where B raised her family; a local funeral director is taking care of all the details and it will all be done at no cost to B. The daughter wanted to be buried with her husband but she will be buried with her father instead, since B could not make arrangements in the town where her son-in-law was buried. They are one hard-luck family.

My brother sent me a couple of photos that he had scanned of the house my parents lived in right after I was born. One photo shows me and my parents (and their two dogs, Gunner and Tigger) in front of the house, probably around 1949, and the other is what that house looked like in 1986. At the time I lived in Ottawa and on a visit my parents showed me where the house was. So, looking at the more recent photo and knowing that it was somewhere near the river shore in that village, I used Streetview to find it by following all the streets that were close to the water on the map of the area. It's still there. It looks a little bit like the house I live in now.

Wealth

Hapi standing in my reflection at the Reservoir beach

The other day I was walking at the Reservoir with A. She is a year younger than my mother would be if she were still alive, she has the same name and she grew up in the same province. A's father was a doctor, my mother's father was a lawyer. A's family lived in a small village on the shore of the St Laurence River, my mother's family lived in a wealthy suburb of Toronto. My grandfather was involved as a lawyer in the amalgamation of some 12 or 13 smaller communities with Toronto proper, so by the time I was born, the house my mother grew up in was now in Metro Toronto. When I started school I used to walk by that house every day. I marvelled at how grand it was, nothing like the tiny overcrowded house my family lived in then.

But I digress. A walks very slowly and so does Hapi so I like walking with her because then I don't feel like I am slowing anyone down. A's dog Teddy is a little devil of a toy poodle who scampers everywhere, but he is growing older and shows more interest in Hapi than he used to. A and I chat about history, both personal and world. We share book titles that we think might interest the other. So, on that day I got talking about my childhood memories of "The Cottage", my grandmother's summer home that we stayed at every summer until I became depressive teenager who didn't want to go anywhere with anyone. I described the lake, the water activities, the trails, the tennis courts, the Regatta and the Corn Boil, so on and so forth.

A was ewwing and ahhing at my descriptions. She told me that I was so lucky to have that, that she routinely begged her parents to buy a little cottage on a nearby lake. Her father said No, they lived right on the Saint Laurence so why did they need a cottage on a lake and besides, he worked all the time being a country doctor. A loves tennis, so the fact that I had access to tennis courts all summer long particularly impressed her. However, I do not and never did love tennis, so I pretty much ignored the courts. My cousins were avid players so sometimes I accompanied them to the courts and would explore the surrounding woods while they played. And tucked into the underbrush not far from the road, I discovered a shuffleboard court. Now that I could get into! The mallets were kept locked up with the tennis paraphenalia so I had to borrow the key from my obnoxious cousins, but still, a small price to pay.

Telling A about the shuffleboard court, she exclaimed, Oh you were so lucky, so wealthy! Not just tennis courts but shuffleboard too! Well, I have to say I have never looked at my childhood as "lucky" or "wealthy", but A has set me straight. I think I have always looked at my childhood through that constricted lens of a depressed teenager, and missed the best bits altogether.

Anger is a funny thing

Yesterday I was talking to a friend on the other side of the country who is dying. Can't visit except by phone. She's at home in palliative care with her husband taking care of her, she qualifies for MAID whenever she decides she wants to pull the plug. Right now she's trying to cope with a new set of drugs; every time the doctor switches her to something different there is symptom havoc until they get the right dose or discontinue. She said she was feeling sad and also angry to have her life cut short before she had what she felt was her rightful lifetime. Also a close friend of hers is angry that she is losing her best friend. So I've been thinking about anger and also about how I feel about what is happening with her. She's only a year older than me so I certainly understand her feeling about this being way too early to die.

We have been in and out of each other's lives for over half a century, I first met her living in residence at college in my first year. It was my first experience of living away from my parents home and she was certainly a good "partner in crime" so to speak for the kind of shenanigans one gets up to in those circumstances. We both left that college after only one year, she to another college in another city and me to a year in France. We met up again and had a few "drug experiences" together, then I met a guy and moved away to the other side of the country with him. A few years later the guy and I and our first kid were living in a log cabin back of beyond, and in the middle of the night she and her husband and dog showed up on our doorstep. They had hitchhiked and somehow managed to track us down although we had not exchanged any contact info since the last time we saw each other. They stayed a day or two and then hitchhiked on, I didn't see her or have any contact with her again until I was living here, on the opposite coast to where we met up in the middle of the night. Once again, no warning, no contact info exchanged, just here we were again. After a slightly longer visit we continued our lives in different directions in different places, and did not meet up again until decades later, on another coast as usual. By then, email and internet existed so tracking each other down was more doable. We continued to be in and out of each other's lives over the years, but at least now when we wanted to make contact we could do it a lot more easily.

I think Kurt Vonnegut's concept of a karass best describes the relationship.

Anyway, anger and sadness. I rarely feel angry these days, but I used to. I used to think I had "anger issues" which I had most likely inherited from my Dad, who in my opinion was also a very angry person. Although now I wonder about that.

Anger is a funny thing. Mostly I feel like we get angry when something bad happens that we have no control over, feel very frustrated about it, and end up trying to find someone or something to express that frustration at. Like when you hit your thumb with a hammer. Or when you can't extract yourself from the bad things that happen due to poverty or prejudice or injustice. You get overwhelmed and try to find a target for what you are feeling. Nine times out of ten the target is either misplaced or useless, the vented anger does nothing to change the situation, although maybe you feel a bit better for having expressed it. That's a big Maybe though. As often as not the expressed anger is just plain useless or actually makes things worse.

For me, the situation that I suppose was the cause of all my anger just changed, evaporated. No trigger, no venting. And then after a while I began to realize that I wasn't really a fundamentally angry person, just someone in a bad situation venting uselessly. That was probably my Dad's experience as well.

I do feel sad that I am losing a friend, and that there will be no opportunity to get together one last time, except by phone. I feel a little sad that I didn't make more effort to stay in touch, but at the same time grateful that I made contact before it was too late. Which it could so easily have been. Anger doesn't enter into it for me, but I can understand that her closest friend would feel that way.

Anger is a funny thing.

Malt bread

Memories of malt

It's been a week of birthdays, starting with mine and going on to a brother, a friend, a daughter-in-law and a son.

On my brother's birthday I phoned him and he mentioned that his partner had just made some malt bread remarkably similar to the malt bread our mother used to buy on weekends. I asked for the recipe and a few days later he sent me a photo of the recipe, marked up with his partner's adjustments and comments. I have all but one of the ingredients in stock, I will have to go on a bit of a hunt to find the missing ingredient, to wit, the malt for which the bread is named. Strictly speaking the bread should be baked in an empty apple juice can but it will work in any old bread pan.

Locally we have a malt house where they actually make malted barley which they then sell to craft breweries; they also sell to customers at their small brewpub (now closed). But their malt is a dry powder and the recipe calls for a liquid extract. I could probably find out the equivalency, but first I'll look for the liquid version. Apparently you can buy it at wine and beer kit stores, but in much larger quantities than I really want. And I don't even know if any of them are open for business now, it seems unlikely. My brother suggested a natural food store, I'll try that first.

I can't wait to try it out.

Later: I called the local natural food store. They didn't have malt extract but they did have barley malt syrup. Dr. Google says, 'same-same'.