Canada

Let’s pretend that it’s Canada Day.  I was proactive, and weeks earlier, I began to draft the text which would become this post.  In part, that is true.  Believe it or not, on May 25, I scrawled 'Blog Post for Canada Day' atop a fresh notebook page, along with a few ideas that might be relevant.  I have even added to it since then.   My intention was to return to it closer to the day.   Well, it’s closer to the day, isn’t it?

I won the lottery almost sixty years ago.  I was born in Canada. 

To live in Canada means 

· to have confidence in safety;

· to have access to universal health care regardless of financial status;

· to be part of a culture of caring and generosity whose images are always before us:  in the Albertans who opened their homes to 75 000 neighbors displaced in the flooding,  leaving only 1 500 Calgarians needing shelters (although the city had provided for 2 500 places);  in the millions of dollars Saskatchewan people raise each year for Kinsmen Telemiracle, $5 546 712 in 2013, to support fellow citizens who need special needs equipment or medical treatment;

· to have access to a public education system of the highest quality;

· to be able to speak my language(s) and practice my religion without fear of reprisal;

· to have potable water;

· to breathe reasonably fresh air;

· to live and work alongside people who arrive from other countries, and who contribute a strong work ethic and a desire to succeed;

· to rejoice that people arriving in this country can preserve their own identity while integrating themselves into the mores of their new land;

· to know that a parliamentary system of government means we can change our leaders without massive demonstrations leading to an army coup;

·  to be part of a grand experiment, largely successful, where people of diverse backgrounds and religions can live together in peace and prosper (as John Ralston Saul says in the work cited below, We have learned to accept that people are capable of sorting out how to be more than one thing at once, knowing that their children will be yet another mixture or blend.  People are capable of staying the same and changing at the same time (p. 145));

· to seek mediation and negotiation to settle conflict, rather than violence;

·  to be vulnerable to our freedoms being used by some to plot destruction in the name of radical causes;

· to live with some black marks:   the mistreatment of the First Nations people; the internment of Ukrainian Canadians  during World War I, and Japanese Canadians during World War II;  a disappointing record in the protection of the natural environment.

Until a few years ago, I really didn’t understand how it is that Canada became a nation of negotiators, or what besides survival in a forbidding natural environment could inculcate in people such a profound sense of community.  Then, I read John Ralston Saul’s A Fair Country:  Telling Truths About Canada.  

Saul maintains that 'we are a métis civilization.'  Indeed, this description would characterize our future as much as our past, I think, as ethnicities mix, cultures combine, and we become more and more a hybrid society.  However, Saul traces the origins of our defining characteristics—inclusion and mediation—to our aboriginal roots.  His is a gripping account of the interactions between the First Nations and the Europeans in the sixteenth centuries, and of the repercussions of those interactions throughout the evolution of Canada to the present day.  To summarize what I have learned would be an injustice to the careful scaffolding of complex ideas and the powerful narrative of Saul’s book.  It’s best if you read it for yourselves.  The book will change you, as it did me.  Once you begin,  you will be captivated, incapable of putting it down until you finish, like your favorite mystery novel.

Allow me to whet your appetites, however, with a few nuggets:

o       The newcomers did not discover the interior of Canada.  They were shown it, thanks to alliances, treaties and commercial agreements.  And most of it was shown to them by canoe.  Writer John Jennings has demonstrated that Canada is the only country invested in by the Europeans in which the local means of transport and much of the way of life was maintained.  Everywhere else the Europeans introduced their own boats, carriages or horses. . . . Why?  Because the First Nations had developed the appropriate means of transport for our road system, that is, our rivers and lakes. (p. 38)

o       the metaphor of the common bowl:  The idea of both [the Great Peace of Montreal (1701) and Sir William Johnston’s gathering of two thousand chiefs at Niagara in 1764] was to establish a continuous equilibrium, shared interests and shared welfare.  The phrase in the Great Peace was that they would all ‘Eat from a Common Bowl.’  Which is to say that relationships were about looking after one another.  This is the shared foundation for equalization payments and single-tier health care and public education. (p. 69)

o       The oscillation between ‘Peace, Welfare and Good Government,’ and 'Peace, Order, and Good Government’ in our official documents:  Through all of our history, through all of our legal and constitutional documents, all of the precedent-setting declarations, the phrase Peace, Order and Good Government has been used only twice.  The rest of the time, from official documents to proto-constitutions to political instructions, the phrase was fundamentally different—Peace, Welfare and Good Government.'  (p. 114, and following, for the story of why Peace, Order and Good Government prevailed.)

o       Canada was the first colony in any empire to extract full democracy from the central power without having to go to war.  I think of this as an early illustration of the manipulative skills and patient toughness needed to accomplish what we would come to think of as the middle way. (p. 152)

My interaction with these ideas and the entire story in which Saul engages the reader in A Fair Country has infused Canada Day not only with a deep sense of connection to our rich history, but also with a recognition of my own unique identity as a Canadian.

Nostalgia

The drive to the treed oasis of St. Victor, nestled in the hills south of Assiniboia, could be just another visit.  Bromegrass and foxtail encroach on the  narrow, oiled road.  The mustard yellow canola complements the bright blue summer sky, and acres of wheat stretch to the horizon.  Angus cattle still dot the pastures.   From the hilltop turn that leads into valley, I notice the grid road to the petroglyphs park and the land my father farmed cutting through the hills in the distance.    The St. Victor: Le beau village sign just past the clay hills still welcomes us as we round the curve into town.  Surely my parents will be sitting around the kitchen table awaiting our arrival, the coffee on, the beer cold, the wine cabinet well-stocked, treats ready for the kids.

This time is different, though.  Our destination today is the cemetery where my parents rest.    Waiting for my sister and her husband to arrive, Elmer and I first inch down main street.  The Post Office/Library has been moved.   I notice an attractive addition on one home.  The stone fence around the former insurance building is still there.  Our old house at the intersection of main street and the only avenue looks much the same as it did when I was a child, except for the French doors that have replaced the kitchen window.  I try to reintegrate myself in this context.  I can barely recognize the young girl who

learned to ride her two-wheeler beside the house on the only side street in town,

played the organ in the church just up ahead,

tobogganed down the hill at the intersection at the base of the hill,

climbed the trees and played Prisoners’ Base in the swimming pool yard,

performed plays on the house steps,

took the school bus every morning in front of the grocery store,

learned to swim at Jubilee Beach,

smelled the lilacs hanging over the fence from the rectory yard,

threw up on the sidewalk on the way to her first piano recital,

addressed the neighbors in French on the street.

Yet that girl has become the woman who unlatches the cemetery gate.   It’s peaceful here.  I see only a woman in a broad-brimmed hat and Bermuda shorts tending her massive garden.  The high grass scratches my legs as I acknowledge the graves of my uncle and aunt and continue to my parents’ spot, adjacent to that of my stilborn older brother.     Au service d’autrui, we had inscribed on their tombstone, centered under Papa’s carved wheatsheaf and Maman’s engraved roses.  In the service of others, they always were, first of their families, each other and their children, then of their community.  Papa supported his parents on the farm, grew wheat that fed the world, transformed the sweat of his brow into books and music for us and appliances that would make Maman’s life easier.  It is a much richer alchemy than that of base metal into gold.  I remember photographs of the  graduation dresses and wedding gowns Maman created for her sisters, of the wedding dress she sewed for me, and the masterpiece our daughter wore for her confirmation (right, front and back views).  Transfixed at their resting place, I think of the community hall a hop-skip from here that arose out of my father’s vision, determination, and ability to inspire people through his own hard work.  I see the posters, wedding decorations, and costumes my mother crafted from recycled materials before it was fashionable.

 My sister, her husband, and my niece park beside us.  We have made the six hour round trip to honor Maman and Papa,  our first visit in two years, since the summer we buried my father, his sister, and his brother.   Dianne places red roses on their grave and our brother’s, a small remembrance of our time here this day.  We pause in silent gratitude.  Then, we wander on, to pay our respects to our uncle and our cousin, and to the people who kept this town alive in its zenith, our parents’ contemporaries.  We recall a young victim of Hodgkin’s Disease now in the company of his parents.   We talk about a neighbor’s battle with breast cancer.  The town of our childhood is here, now. 

I realize that I needed this reminder of where I come from, of the good people I knew growing up.  I needed the reminder of my parents’ core values.  Things are important only inasmuch as they help people to grow.  Invest in people.   

We stretch out our departure, loathe to leave, but without any reason to prolong our stay.  My sister and her family head to the petroglyphs.  We postpone that visit for another day.  We have an important stop on the way home, another connection with family.  My father would be pleased.

Hands

What I would do in retirement never really worried me.  I don't bore easily.  Besides, I had the list of things I didn't have time for while I was teaching, raising my children, and caring for my parents.  Case in point:  extend my writing beyond professional prose.  As you've noticed, I've been experimenting with various forms.  Some of these experiments have ended up in this space.

Today is another example.  Months ago, I wrote about hands in response to a prompt.  This week, looking through my writer's notebook, I reread that piece and wondered what I could do with it.  Turns out, it can be a poem.  While mulling over the shape, I recalled a rhyme I read to the children when they were small.  Why I associated that particular rhyme to this subject remains a mystery. You will recognize the inspiration.

Hands

These are the hands that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the wrists, thin and bony,

                                    that produce the octaves

                                    that direct the choirs

                                    that open the jars

                                    that stir the birthday cakes

                                    that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the the palms, broad and tough,

that splashed babies in the bath

                                    that smooth sheets and tablecloths

                                    that gauged fevered foreheads

                                    that cupped Maman’s last luminous moment

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the fingers, long and thin,

that thread the needles

                                    that stitch the sequins

                                    that practice the scales

                                    that create the sounds

                                    that weave the words

                                    that place the dinner settings

                                    that season the dishes

                                    that wear the rings

                                    that extend the palms

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the nails,  cut to the quick,

                                    that bear the stress

                                    that disfigure the fingers

                                    that extend the palms

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the cuticles, gnawed and pulled,

                                    that attest to anxiety

                                    that witness deliberation

                                    that border the nails

                                    that disfigure the fingers

                                    that extend the palms

that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the thumbs, scratched and worn,

                                    that decorate the pies

                                    that deal the cribbage hands

                                    that rub the spots

                                    that direct the comments pen

                                    that resemble the cuticles           

                                    that border the nails

                                    that disfigure the fingers

                                    that extend the palms

                                    that need the wrists

that rotate the hands

that cradle fragile hearts.

These are the hands, veined and splotchy,

                                    that tell my story

                                    of cradling fragile hearts.

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

                                   

Coincidence

Fifteen minutes into my thirty minute drive to school that June morning the week after my father’s funeral in 2011,  I can visualize the exact location of my school keys.  They are nestled in the pocket of my purse.  Minor detail--it's the purse on the shelf in my home office.  Not the one beside me in the car.  What will I do?  Will anyone be at school at 7 :30 a.m.?  How can I compact my early moning to-do list into whatever time becomes available?  I visualize myself circling the school, looking for a light or a shadow in any room, banging on the window in the desperate hope that someone will hear me.  Ugly.

Turning into the school access road, I am philosophical.  Whatever.  I’ve invested the last half of the trip fleshing out contingency plans.  I’ll make it work.  Just then, passing the door near my classroom on my way to my parking spot, I notice something peculiar.  The door does not seem to be flush with the outside wall.  In fact, it seems ajar.  Is it possible?  Could the door not have locked properly when the last person entered or left?  That never happens.  I unload, lock the car, and amble up the walkway, eyes trained on the door.  Well.  It’s not closed!!  I giggle.  

I’m in the school.  I’ve sumounted the most difficult hurdle.  Surely, now I’ll be able to find someone with keys to open the classroom.  Later, the office will lend me a set for the day.  Only a few steps into the dark hallway, I notice light coming from my classroom.  That’s impossible.  I know I shut the lights the night before.  No, it’s really true.  Not only is there light—the door is open, and the maintenance staff is wiping the tables and sweeping the floor.  I can't remember that ever happening before in this school. I can barely speak.  So, I’m in, and I’m ready to go.

The disbelief carves a smile on my face which nothing the day might bring will be able to crack.  I think of my father.  I can't help looked around the room and say, "Thank you."   I feel his caress, his reassurance,  even his gratitude for the time we shared before he died.

Inexplicable confluences of circumstance dot my life.  After 40 years, I am reunited with a woman with whom I went to high school.  She moved to a community near mine; I was working with her sister at the time; we both love to do liturgical music.  Then,  comparing our children’s birth dates one day, a friend of mine and I  are amazed to learn that our daughters were born hours apart the Christmas of 1983 (hers on Christmas Eve, and mine on Christmas Day), and that our youngest children, both sons, were born in March of 1989.  Another head-spinner.

Stories abound.  At Christmas Eve last year, we await the beginning the Midnight Mass at our daughter’s church.  Nostalgic at the memory of  commemorating her Christmas birthday with "Happy Birthday" at the end of so many midnight liturgies in our home church, I remind her that we won’t be able to do that this year.  We settle in to imbibe every molecule of the characteristic joy of liturgy at Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Winnipeg.    Father Kevin has just proclaimed, "The mass is ended," and wished everyone a joyous Christmas.  The music director steps up to the microphone.  Instead of the recessional hymn, he announces that it is Fr. Kevin’s birthday.  The entire congregation belts out "Happy Birthday."  Of course, we sing to Dominique as well, and the tradition of the Happy Birthday after Midnight Mass continues.  One for the books.

Then, just the other day, checking email, I see that the mineral makeup I use is on sale.  Good time, then, to stock up, and to take advantage of sales on a few other items as well.  Not ten minutes later, I drop the small terra cotta jar of my current supply on the bathroom sink.  It splits, spilling the precious contents.  I cannnot believe I have done this.  With a small spoon pilfered from the kitchen, I scoop up what’s still dry like gold dust, and preserve it in a plastic container.  As I wipe the orange stain from the sink, the vanity, and the floor, I mull over yet another concours de circonstance, as we say in French.  Only this time, it’s not heureux.

At one time in my life, I would have looked for the mystical  in these occurrences.   Now, three weeks shy of my sixtieth birthday, mystery has supplanted mysticism.  In ways I can never understand, I am spared stress when I can least manage it; I am reunited with people I never expected to see again; my life parallels that of a stranger who later becomes a close friend; traditions echo in foreign places; bizarre coïncidences give pause.  I revel in awe, freeze-frame the moment, and try to be grateful for the experience.  I have come to terms with mystery, I think.

Solstice

At the beginning of the end of my day, I press the Power button on the car, strap myself in, and turn on The Afternoon Edition.  I’m making the right turn out of the office parking lot when I hear Craig Leiderhouse talk about flooding in southern Alberta.  Massive amounts of rain in the last week, especially, have swelled the Bow and Elbow Rivers.

How bad can it be, I wonder?  I listen, incredulous, as reporter David Fraser describes his escape from his stalled car in High River, just before the water swept it away.

"How long between first seeing the water on the street and leaving the car?" Leiderhouse asks.

"About a minute," Fraser answers.  He waded in the water with the salvaged backpack, moving toward the police car lights and safety.   Calgary is affected, too, Leiderhouse adds, and evacuation orders will be announced very soon.

I drive on autopilot the rest of the way home.  Our son and his wife live in the far northwest, in the hills, so neither their personal safety, nor their home, is threatened.  However, flooding could complicate the transfer of a second property, this one a few blocks from the Elbow River.   That was yesterday.  Today, Sunnyside is under water.

Summer Solstice is not supposed to be like this.   The longest day of the year on the prairies is for sittting outside on the patio, preferably with a carousel of  friends and neighbors, over a mug of beer, a glass of wine, chips and dip, cheese and crackers, and whatever dessert lurks in the recesses of a freezer (usually Gloria’s).  The official beginning of summer means the stars poke through the purple sky at ten o’clock, a fire interjects in the conversation, constellations of lights in the trees bewitch the yard, and the sentinel Narnia lamp monitors the goings-on.

Instead, summer solstice this year means trauma, loss, and rebuilding for people in southern Alberta, and worry and anxiety for those elsewhere connected to them.  For many, life has exploded.    Still, in that turbulence, this summer solstice offers the opportunity for generosity, co-operation, resilience, and equanimity, for grace under pressure.   An end ushers in a beginning,  maybe of living in the moment, conscious of life’s fragility and ephemerality. 

Perception

I notice her, from the piano,

kneeling, head bowed, eyes closed,

fingers interlaced with beads,

lips forming the repetitive prayers of the Rosary.

She mouths the last ‘Amen’ after

the last prayer after

the last ‘Glory Be to God’ after

the last decade of the

last Sorrowful Mystery

of this Rosary before mass.

During my pan of the congregation

as I announce a run-through of new music,

her eyes lazer mine.

Her head shakes from side to side, and

her mouth contorts into a No!

I hesitate in my introduction,

smile to myself so I won’t blanch.

I feel taisered.

Five decades, twenty minutes,

erased

in one primal gesture.

Wait—a companion has emerged beside her,

engaged in a quite different conversation,

surely.

Not about me at all, then.

That must be it.

Fatherhood

"I’m not biking any more."  He meant it, too.  Five-year old Daniel was tuckered out. 

"Looks like we’ve found the trail head.  Let’s rest for a while, and then we’ll continue," his father said.

I lifted Daniel’s two-year-old sister from her seat on the back of my bicycle, and we set the bikes down.

"No.  I’m not biking any more," he repeated, as he collapsed on a nearby log.

We had set out from our campsite that morning to bike along a trail that seemed manageable, according to the park map.  Finding the actual trail head, however, had proved a time-consuming challenge, and we had already been biking for more than an hour.  No wonder Daniel was tired.  As we munched on granola bars and Rice Krispie cake,  and passed around the juice boxes, we analyzed our options.  Clearly, we would not be doing the trail today.  The more problematic question was, How were we going to get back to the campsite?  I didn’t like the movie of a long trip back with a recalcitrant rider that was playing in my head .   How far had we come, anyway?

"I could bike back alone, and come back and pick you up with the car," he suggested.  Well, yes you could, but that might be a long wait out here alone with two small children.  We continued to munch and sip.

"Hey, Daniel,"  Elmer said.  "See that post over there?"  The post was maybe ten feet away.

"Yeah."

"Do you think you could bike to the post?"

 

"Oh, sure."   Daniel climbed on his bike, rode to the post, and rested.

"Would you like some more juice, Daniel?"

"No thanks.  I’m done."   In more ways than one, I thought.

"I bet you’re too tired to ride to that tree down the road,"  Elmer ventured.

"Oh, no I’m not,"  Daniel assured him.  "Watch."

Off he went.  Right to the tree.  Elmer followed him.  I strapped little sister back into her seat, and joined them.

Now, we had a strategy, and we leap-frogged back to the campsite, from a tree to a cairn twenty feet away, to a rock thirty feet away, to a sign forty feet away, all the way home.  We sputtered back to the trailer, with the perfume of the pines, the birds’ chatter, and a tail wind for encouragement.

I thought of that summer morning so long ago all day yesterday, Father’s Day, as I reflected on my husband’s fatherhood.   Already thirty-five when Daniel was born, he didn’t know what to do with a baby—the hair pulling, the collic, the spitting up, the diapers.  But give him a child that could walk and talk, and he came into his own.

As soon as the children could talk, he recorded long conversations with them about tea parties, Lego constructions, bath time, and books.  What have come to be known as the "Voices Tapes" now preserve a three-year-old voice reading, "I is for Iguana, impala, ibex, and ibis,"  or  "How many trucks can a tow-truck tow.  One, two, three, four, I don’t know."

He passed on to them his love of gadgets and everything electronic.  They played Birthday Cake and Lemonade Stand on an Apple 2e, and operated VCRs and turntables before they were four. 

He created as many experiences for them as he could.  He registered them in skiing lessons, even though it meant heading out early Sunday morning when he had just returned from playing at a dance a few hours earlier.  He coached baseball and soccer, until we realized that, if we were glad when the games were rained out, maybe baseball and soccer weren’t our collective thing.  He bought a boat and some tubes, and they learned the thrill of water sports and time at the lake with friends.  We traveled.  They learned to play polkas, old-time waltzes, and Latin tunes, and to dance to them, too.

Mostly, though, he respected their ability to make sound decisions, and insisted that they have practice doing that before leaving home.  Serious decisions, not artificial, concocted decisions designed for rehearsal.  Decisions with consequences.  Never a Net nanny in our home.  "They have to deal with the Internet when we won’t be there—they need to start now," he maintained.  Whereas I would have tended toward protection and supervision, he favored discussion and openness. 

I am so grateful for the life lessons taught through the actions more than the words of a good father.  Grateful, too, for the lessons the children have not yet mastered; they still don’t track important events by the make of car they were driving at the time.