people

truth

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

I was at the beach the other day looking for a picnic table I remembered seeing months ago, in summer, that had Truth written on the seat— I wanted to take a picture of it.

The table had been on the sand, close to the water, but now it was gone. Well, it couldn’t be gone, it’s a big heavy picnic table, I thought, it had to be somewhere; somebody must have dragged it onto the grass nearer the barbeques and swings so I wandered about looking for it among the maybe thirty tables—I remembered bold black lettering in magic marker, easy to read—but I couldn’t find it.

Then it occurred to me that despite its bulk it was made of wood and technically could have been burned or broken and after checking every table twice I had to admit there was no reason to assume it should still be there.

But I checked a third time.

And then I saw it. The lettering had faded to almost invisible—I’d never have noticed had I not been looking for it especially.

Thing was, it didn’t say Truth. 

I remembered now.

Truth would have been a fine thing to write, but I’m not sure the single word would have caught my attention the way this had. I remembered reading the bold lettering on that lovely summer day and feeling sadness and shock and wonder at how alone this person must be despite any number of friends. I wondered: where were they now and how were they now, and how would they be…

I remembered feeling helpless, and angry that anyone should feel so alone, hopeful that whoever it was would find the strength they needed, and that we, that society, too, would find the intelligence and compassion needed to understand in a meaningful way. 

Funny how I remembered it all as Truth.

What it actually said was: I wish I was born a girl.

 

a new category is born: *judy sightings

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

*Judy: a long-suffering (make-the-best-of-it) dame of a certain vintage, usually attached to a male of a similar vintage.

~

MORNING AT TIM HORTON’S, PENTICTON

Judy, shoulder length brassy blonde hair, wears a white blouse, black slacks, name tag—My name is Judy—pale blue cardigan. Sits with sturdy, well fed man in race car driver sunglasses, football shirt, jeans and gold windbreaker. They begin their day in silence, blowing synchronicity onto their tea.

DEPARTURE LOUNGE, KELOWNA AIRPORT

Judy in crimson cardigan, black polyester tee, black purse rests on knees and what look like long johns poke out from the bottom of black slacks. Bare feet in black shoes. She files her nails beside a guy, a slow but incessant talker, in navy cap, navy golf shirt worn and faded, khakis, white socks, black sensible-sneaker-shoes. They both wear eye-glasses. Both have small carry-ons; hers, striped, crimson, white and black; his, royal blue with red trim. She rarely speaks and then in a high pitch, like a child, like her voice is seven decades younger than the rest of her. He answers in a way that whatever she has said, he’s setting her straight. He has all the answers. He knows. She listens, continues to file her nails, sometimes swings her feet that, if she turns her toes up just a titch, don’t quite reach the floor. He keeps his firmly crossed and locked—right mid-calf resting on left knee. She has been filing her nails beside him for 50 years.

CALGARY AIRPORT

Judy, short and squarish with grey hair, also short and square, glasses, maybe some hip issues, ortho type white sneakers, limping along the concourse with her guy, each pulling trollies, he in a lumber jacket (red and black), she stopping, making him stop too, placing a raccoon hat, grabbed from a display, on his head. Too small. She laughs. Hat clerk laughs too. Guy smiles, shakes his raccoon’d head. She is a riot everywhere they go.

one tin soldier

~ carin ~ 3 Comments

Each morning I visit the nursing home where my mother now lives. I help her dress and give her breakfast. I always leave by 10 a.m. But this morning, Remembrance Day, when we walk to the common room for a bit of exercise, the chairs, each with a photocopy of ‘O Canada’ on its seat, are lined up in rows facing a podium. There’s a large screen at the front and poppies everywhere.

I consider staying the extra hour or so but Phyllis isn’t interested in ceremonies. Me neither. I prefer observing my own two minutes of silence, alone and in my own way. We find a sunny spot at the back of the room, and I read Barbara Kingsolver’s piece about water in the National Geographic while Phyllis sleeps in the chair beside me.

It’s nine thirty. I’ll take her back to her room at quarter to ten.

But at twenty to ten they start arriving.

Soon there’s a row of four men and one woman seated beside the podium, facing the rows of chairs. “Residents who served” I overhear someone say. One, in a wheelchair, sleeps with his head back and mouth wide open. The woman sits quietly confused with her ankles crossed, and a happy man with a British dialect tells everyone who passes “you’re wonderful”, and to the man with dementia beside him who’s beginning to nod off and fall sideways, the happy man says Are you alright, Tom?

Someone straightens Tom out and asks what it was he did during the war but Tom just looks straight ahead. The happy guy says: What we all did… sink or swim.

More residents are wheeled in. A few come with aluminum walkers or a nurse. None come unassisted. The room is filling up with bodies and sounds. Phlemgy coughs, orphaned words, mumbles. The woman who yells all day I want to go home, somebody help me, what am I going to do? arrives, pushed in her wheelchair by a nurse and placed at the front of the room. Where am I? Where are you taking me? she yells. She has terrible teeth and long thin hair. I’ve never seen her family; she may be one of the many abandoned to the system, completely dependent on the mood of staff and Ministry guidelines, at the mercy of Long Term Care politics and rubbery cream of wheat.

‘One Tin Soldier’ plays in the background. By The Original Caste. I remember being young and hearing it for the first time and not really understanding what it was about. Listening to it now, surrounded by so many drooling tin soldiers of yore, it takes on even deeper meaning and I realize I’m staying for the ceremony.

I stay for these men and women who did, and others who continue to do, in a mad world because it’s, sadly, still the only way any of us knows to say thank you. I stay because we’re all a product of our past and because we’re all connected whether we like it or not.

I stay for my dad whose only comments about the war had to do with unexpected kindnesses from all sides. He didn’t speak of heroics.

The German man down the hall from Phyllis is brought in to sit with former enemies, which makes me wonder at the word ‘enemy’. Circumstantial at best. They all sit quietly confused together now, eating the same gruel, wondering perhaps what it was all about anyway.

Oh, yes. A madman. There’s always a madman.

Tom keeps falling over so his son moves him off to the side where he can keep him upright. He’s brought his dad’s beret and medals and pins them on a slightly stained beige pullover. The son takes pictures of Tom, asks Tom to salute. Tom just stares straight ahead.

It would be easy to leave. Wake Phyllis and go. I don’t want to hear ‘In Flanders Fields’ and cry with strangers. But I stay because it’s such an honour to sit in among the muddle of their confusion, their dignity and continued bravery in this forgotten place of forgotten people where the beauty of old age is seen as ugliness, as something to pity.

During the ceremony I watch a daughter put a pink sweatered arm around her mother, pull her close and kiss her face. Another daughter is her mother, thirty or forty years earlier, so striking is the resemblance. A man in a motorized wheelchair wipes his eyes with a facecloth, says it bugs him that he can’t stand up to pay his respects. The happy man occasionally blurts out: Too much talking, too much talking and he’s right of course; there’s always too much talking. I notice his breathing is difficult, like my dad’s the year he died.

I notice the woman who yells all day is quiet.

And when eleven o’clock comes the whole room is suddenly hushed except for the sleeping veteran who snores loudly beside the podium and the happy man who says Hallelujah. But the muttering and coughing and shuffling stop. It’s like these people, who aren’t sure of much, can still sense what’s important. Maybe that’s what makes us human.

As the ‘The Last Post’ is played, and while I blow my nose, Phyllis wakes, looks at the rows of silent backs in front of us and says: Wow, it must be a good movie.

The ‘residents who served’ are recognized and the anthem is sung and then later a video clip is shown, based on a true story about a guy in a Shoppers Drug Mart who was outraged that the store observed two minutes of silence, causing him to wait—two minutes—to pay for his purchases.

The happy man is again saying Too much talking, too much talking, and when the video and the ceremony end, and we’re thanked for being there and all is done, the happy man, breathing hard in his veterans’ seat, says: Peace at last, peace at last.

On our way out, I stop and ask Tom’s son if I might shake his dad’s hand. He beams, says Sure! and explains to Tom what I want. Tom in his beret and strip of medals pinned to his sloppy sweater, stares back, silent. His son helps him extend a hand. It feels soft and weak, the kind of hand that hasn’t worked in years except maybe to scratch an ear, adjust a bib at lunch. I hope that on some level he might still understand what a handshake is. And even if he doesn’t, I do.

I try to find something in his eyes to connect with but they stare in a kind of trance; I wonder what they’ve seen and whether I’d have the stomach for knowing.

Thank you, sir, I say, and Tom’s son tells him: Say you’re welcome, dad!

And ever so quietly, Tom does.
541px-Poppy-closeup

just thinking…

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Truman Capote, Rumi and my mother-in-law were all born today. Now there would be an interesting dinner party.

Happy birthday, MCO.

“A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet. ” —Truman Capote

from il giardino to valpolicella

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Awhile back I wrote a post about a documentary film— Il Giardino; I wrote how the essence of the film had stayed with me and continued to affect the way I looked at my own garden, especially in winter.

It was a post about gardens.

Who knew it would lead to drinking wine with poet and filmmaker, Karen Shenfeld, at her favourite hangout, Il Gatto Nero on College Street (in the heart of Il Giardino country)— Or that it would turn out to be a completely delightful afternoon, filled with good conversation and the discovery of several coincidences, not the least of which being a mutual friend in PEI.

I certainly never expected that, on the way back to my car, I’d be invited into the home of one of her neighbours to see a beautiful piece of folk art and hear the accompanying stories in a voice tinged not only with Portuguese, but with pride and warmth and welcome. 

Of course, all these things happened, I now realize, because Karen has the kind of wide open energy that draws people to her, and vice versa.

Something that struck me most about her posts on Open Book Toronto was the passion she has for her neighbourhood. She offers up the images, writing about the tree outside a window, a book store, art studio, restaurant, a hat shop that was once a tailor. But, as in her film, it’s never really about ‘the thing’— it’s always about ‘the people’.

I’m one of those writers that lean towards the reclusive at times, so the idea of driving into Toronto to meet, essentially, a stranger, to chat about who knows what, should have been uncomfortable.

For some reason I never thought of not going.

The best part of the day, beyond the conversation, the neighbourhood, the wine, was what I took with me when I left—I’ll call it the Il Giardino effect—a kind of energy that inspires, and isn’t soon forgotten.

And one that makes you realize the truth in the saying that there are no strangers, just people who haven’t yet met.

for miep and judy

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

 

A small tribute to two women who were born a month apart, who each lived more than a hundred years, and died a month apart.

Miep, the person who aided Anne Frank and her family, and who died on January 11, a month short of her 101st birthday.

And Judy, my one hundred year old friend in Naples, Florida, who spent a big chunk of her life as a journalist—managing the trick of being both a lady and a ‘dame’ at a time when most women were trying to manage the trick of being  June Cleaver.

After a heart attack in her nineties, Judy moved herself into a seniors’ residence and when, eventually, she found it too hard to walk, she accepted a wheelchair with a smile and a shrug, saying that if you lived long enough, chances were you’d eventually lose it “from either the neck up or the neck down.”

“I got lucky,” she said, like not walking was a gift.

She kept her eyesight and every one of her marbles right to the end and never lost her love of reading or telling a good story.

She didn’t have much to give, but always found something to send you home with: a stuffed toy she’d won at bingo, tic tacs, a lemon drop.

Eventually, she moved to a nursing home and practically ran her floor, keeping tabs on people, making sure others, younger but less able than she, got what they needed—the glass of water, the magazine, a hand to the loo—when they needed it. No doubt the staff thought she was a pain in the ass at times, but one they’d want around if it was their mother in the room next door.

Judy loved a dinner invitation and never said no to a couple fingers of bourbon.

She believed that people were essentially decent, that life, despite its madness, was good—and in Judy’s orbit, it was, and people were.

She died in her sleep last month, the day after her 101st birthday.

                *

“I want to get on; I can’t imagine that I would have to lead the same sort of life as Mummy and Mrs. Van Daan and all the women who do their work and are then forgotten. I must have something besides a husband and children, something that I can devote myself to!  I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me.”
(From—The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank)