Icy trails, part two

I followed some of the mystery trails in the woods that I mentioned in my previous post, and I am thinking that they are red squirrel trails. Red squirrels look like chipmunks without the stripey markings. What I noticed was that the trails come close to large tree trunks in many places and if these are squirrel trails then that makes sense, the squirrel can get off the trail quickly if it suspects trouble. And when I was following one particular trail there was one squirrel screaming at me from high in a tree and another watching me from a fallen tree that disappeared when I got too close. Actually, it was probably Hapi they were watching and screaming at.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A couple of nights ago I watched two movies, Three Identical Strangers and Edie. 

Three Identical Strangers is a documentary about triplets who were separated after birth and adopted out to three different families; accidentally discovering each other at the age of 19. The movie starts out quite joyfully as the three boys ecstatically discover and connect with each other. But it gets darker as the adoptive parents and an independent investigator look into how this could have happened. As it turns out, the boys were deliberately separated as part of a secret experiment, a "twin study". 

I must say that I always wondered when twin studies were cited as evidence for the heritability of certain human traits or nature vs nurture debates, how did twins get separated in the first place? Accidentally? On purpose? For good reason? This documentary makes it clear that in this particular case it was deliberately done for the sake of someone's research. Of course it raises huge ethical issues about such research, and I won't be able to read about twin studies ever again without being rather disgusted by the implications. In the film a pair of separated female twins were interviewed after they reunited. The interviewer commented that this was like a Disney movie and one of the twins said, Yeah but darker.

An aunt of one of the boys commented throughout the film about her reactions to the revelations that ensued; I thought her comments were insightful and wise. At the end she says—on the subject of nature versus nurture—that she thought that good parenting could overcome anything. One of the issues raised in this film is that not everybody is so lucky to have "good parenting". Sometimes who the parent is and who the child is due to genetics or whatever is at odds, and sometimes it is irreconcilable.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Edie is a story about an old woman determined to climb a mountain in Scotland. She is probably in her late 70s or 80s and quite frail, not at all an athletic kind of person. Her husband has just died and her daughter has packed her off to an old folks home of some sort. She rebels and sets off to climb this mountain, but is poorly equiped for the venture. She literally bumps into a young man who then becomes involved—initially against his will—in helping her to achieve her goal. The film ends with the two of them on the peak of the mountain. 

There's a lot of drone footage that is quite dizzying and if you have any kind of fear of heights you might want to close your eyes for some of that. My reaction to the ending was that I am quite certain that climbing down is a lot harder than climbing up and if she had so much difficulty getting up there I sure hope she got airlifted out because I could not see her surviving the descent even with the help of the young man.

What got to me about the story was that I could relate to a lot of her back story. Essentially she had spent an adult lifetime caring for a disabled husband and a child and having to forego a lot of stuff she would have liked to have done while she still could. When the husband died she was set free but was now so old that the adventures she longed for were out of the question. Years of caring for others when she would really have rather not, turned her bitter and grumpy. She treated the people who were trying to help her quite abruptly and unappreciatively, not that there were a lot of people trying to help her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now in my 70s I look back on an adult lifetime of raising boys by myself and taking care of old dogs and, briefly, a parent. There was maybe a 12-year gap when I had no children, dogs or parents to be responsible for. Right now I am caring for my second old dog. Both my parents died in their 70s and although I am assured that my parents' age at death has little bearing on how long I have left to live, it doesn't feel like that. I feel like I maybe have five good years left, not a lot.

It is winter and while there is not a lot of snow there sure is a lot of ice. Finding places I can let Hapi off the leash is hard, all the trails are icy and she must be on leash on sidewalks. Being old she likes to stop and sniff every tree, every snow bank, every fire hydrant; and since her sense of smell is somewhat diminished by age, she takes a very long time for each sniff. So when she is on leash we plod from tree to hydrant to snow drift and stop at each one for a minute or more; it is not exactly a lot of fun. Not to mention the picking-up-your-dog's-poop bylaw. At least when we are on the trails I can let her off leash and not have to stop and wait every time she wants to sniff something.

I relate to Edie's anguish at her life having been a total waste of time. At one point she tells the young man to take a lesson from her, don't do what she did. But I figure there is little chance of that, our culture presses women into caretaking far more than men. When I was young I dearly wanted to be a boy. Although I did not know the details, I was pretty sure that living in our world as a girl or a woman did not nearly provide the opportunities available to boys and men. My mother did encourage me to think about going to university, mostly as a hedge against poverty as a married woman. She herself had had the opportunity to go to university but she gave it up to get married and I suspect that she regretted that decision very much. But I was young and keen to be free of all restrictions, including those imposed by schooling and pursuing an education, so I did not follow her encouragement until much later in life.

"Love what you do and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life. " ~Ray Bradbury

I find this quote (from the whiskey river blog, Feb. 28) annoying. Sure, follow your heart and do what you love and don't pay any attention to all those naysayers. But if you are a woman that means don't get married, don't have kids and don't take on the care of your own parents when they get old because all those things will stand in the way of doing what you love, unless of course caretaking is what you love. Our culture pays lip service to the idea of finding what you love and pursuing it, but it all hinges on someone else doing the caretaking and there are precious few men doing that. It's woman's work.

One Out of Three Ain't Bad

(Three out of Three, plus The Dog)

This past week has been perfect winter weather, it has warmed up but there is still snow on the ground, there's no wind to speak of and the snow has been cleared off the long pond for skating. Supposed to get a lot of rain on Sunday so I don't know how long this will last. Yesterday Hapi and I went for a long walk in the Acadia woods and my youngest son called my cell phone, so we chatted while I walked. Hapi used to be his dog.

Things are going very well for him now, he has several projects on the go and they are all looking promising. The best one is his new girlfriend. He is in his forties now and has never had much luck with women. I can remember telling him when he was in early 20s that if he was still single by the time he reached his 40s he'd be in big demand, and that turns out to be more or less true. That's how it went with one of my brothers, he didn't meet his current partner until his mid-forties, after many years of not being quite good enough. Anyway, my son has a couple of other projects happening and they are turning out well too. He moved from the west coast to Ontario and this is his first experience since childhood of 'real' winter. It was nice to hear from a child who was doing well in life.

When I came out of the woods onto the road there were three young women walking towards us. They asked to pet Hapi and were oohing and aahing about how beautiful she was. My son was still on the line listening to this. When we parted ways he laughed and said he remembered when that used to happen all the time with Hiro, Hapi's brother.

* * * * * *

I visited a friend to drop off an application form she needed and to pick up some cheese her husband bought for me at Costco. We were talking about our various offspring and she told me a heartwarming story about one of her sons. She said, "One out of three ain't bad!" I told her some stuff another dogwalker told me, she also has three offspring and two are not doing well. I never hear about the third one, The Good Daughter. We both laughed and said, "One out of three ain't bad!"

* * * * * *

B is still alive and still in the hospital. She is a lousy patient. I was visiting her every other day but that became exhausting and very depressing so I dialled it back to twice a week. Still exhausting and depressing. Last night I googled "pity party" and thought, Yup, that's what we have going on here. She told me that her son F couldn't visit every night any more because he didn't have enough money for gas. I called him and said I'd loan him the money but he said he only told her that because he didn't want to go every single night. They moved her to another room, she no longer has a window and there's a woman with dementia in the bed across from her. I think they moved her because she was disturbing the other patients in the room she used to be in.

F says the doctor told him she won't be moving to a nursing home for 2-3 months. There's a bed waiting for her but she's not well enough to leave the hospital. I suspect they don't want to move her while she is in such a foul mood because they don't want her disturbing the other nursing home residents. She is not nice to be around. I know she's dying, I know she's very uncomfortable and can't sleep. She has to drinked thickened liquids and eat pureed food and hates it with a passion. She tells me terrible stories of being abused by the night nurses. F says to take everything she says with a big grain of salt, she's not in her right mind. Listening to a constant stream of complaints and nasty gossip about the nurses and orderlies is distressing. I may be some kind of naive Pollyanna but I just can't take that anymore. Beginning to see why F and I are the only people visiting her and we are both secretly trying to figure out how to reduce our time with her.

* * * * * *

Yesterday I walked by the skating pond with Hapi and another dog walker. I was admiring how beautiful it was. The other dog walker said I should take Hapi home and come back with my skates. I sighed and said I couldn't, that today was a day to go visit B. I thought about that last night, I don't think I am doing anyone any favours not going skating. Today is Friday and it's going to rain on Sunday and who knows what the ice will be like after that…

Pre-Christmas newsletter...

It's been a good news/bad news kind of week, but I guess that's normal for this time of year. Going shopping for the necessaries is torturous due to all of the seasonal gift shoppers out and about. I have kept my own gift shopping minimal; in one short hour I went on Amazon to pick out five gifts—four for grandchildren and one for a distant terminally ill long time friend—and had them gift wrapped and shipped to various parts of the country. Sons and their wives will get Amazon gift certificates on the 24th. Easy-peasy if a little ethically compromised. I'd just as soon skip the whole thing but right now might not be the time for it. Maybe next year…

Hapi is cruising along uneventfully, her limp comes and goes. She has discovered garbage which I suspect is deliberately being left out for her, someone out there likes to see her snooping around their back yard and is encouraging her illicit activities (the garbage was not only not in a bin but carefully placed in what looks like a dogfood bowl!). Now that there is a bit of snow on the ground I can track her and managed to catch her in the act, so now she is locked into my back yard. The picture above is her looking morose about her captivity.

After years of sending unreciprocated Xmas cards I decided to give it up this year, and then two of my dogwalking buddies gave me cards at the Reservoir. Now I am considering rushing out to buy cards to give back. Who knew we would become a little community of card-exchanging friends?

The ponds are now at their most dangerous, covered in ice that looks thick enough to walk on but really is not. Hapi learned her lesson long ago and avoids ice-covered bodies of water like the plague, but many younger dogs don't know any better. Then dog owners attempt to rescue their dogs with the not unexpected results, soaking wet and freezing cold humans and dogs.

The park maintenance guys have been busy doing post-Dorion clean-up and over the past few weeks have come to know all the regular dogs. They stop their chipping machine when we walk by to chat and pet the dogs; the dogs have come to look forward to these little encounters. The other day one of the guys was asking after one dog in particular who they hadn't seen in a while and we realized that we hadn't either. The dog's health has been iffy lately so we wondered if something bad had happened. But that very same morning the dog showed up with his owner, who explained their absence as a happy event. They were off in PEI celebrating her 65th birthday.

The bad news is two-fold. One is finding out about the terminally ill friend mentioned previously. That was shocking. I have been debating going to see her (she lives on the opposite coast), but leaving Hapi behind is problematic and taking her with me is out of the question. So for now our relationship will be confined to the telephone.

The other is regular visits with B, who is in terrible shape. Can't move, can't breathe, can't sleep. All efforts to get her help have either failed, been put on hold due to the holiday season (!!!) or been sabotaged by B herself. It is so depressing and makes me so angry that I am almost beside myself after such visits. I fantasize about angry calls to various authorities but am afraid I will only make matters worse if I follow through on such fantasies. Three times in the past few weeks her son has called an ambulance to take her to Emerge because he can't move her himself. At $140 a pop it's an expensive proposition and they have no money. I said to him, well, they can't get blood from a turnip so keep those bills coming. Maybe someone will take notice of her if she becomes a regular ambulance user. He agrees.

My smarty pants kid

My youngest son wants to buy a house here. He doesn't want to live here, he just wants it for rental income. I've been going out with a real estate agent off and on for a year or more to look at possibilities. He's got a condo out west that he is selling to buy the house. The condo sale has been a torturous affair but it now looks like it might actually happen. So I went out yet again looking at houses and I found one. I really liked the look of it, it is in a good neighbourhood and within my son's budget. The price is reasonable for the current state of the housing market here.

My son was not enamoured with it, he thought it was too "suburban" for his taste. He sent me links to houses that he thought were more to his liking. I pointed out to him that while the houses he liked would probably be nice places for him to live, they were not really suitable as income property. He thought he could get a twofer, something that he could make money off of and also enjoy living in himself some day. I said I didn't think that was really possible unless he came down here himself to do the house hunting. It's one thing for me to choose an income property for him, quite another for me to choose a place he might like to live in.

So I think he is reconciled to this house. In any case he made an offer and it was accepted, we did the home inspection and I made the deposit on the house. Until he closes the sale of the condo he has no money. Let's hope the condo sale goes smoothly.

The weekend before the home inspection my son found another place for sale that he wanted me to look at. It was well beyond his budget, I think he was just getting jittery about the house. I think I talked him out of it, then felt jittery myself that I might be pushing him in a direction he did not want to go. But I think he is okay with it. We chatted last night after I paid the deposit and he told me of his plans for the future. It's all very ambitious and I really hope it works for him. We talked about him coming for a visit to see Hapi, who used to be his dog. I said travel in the winter is a bit dicey here, he should either come right away or later in the spring, but I didn't know if Hapi would still be around in the spring. Some days she's full of beans, other days I think she's just barely hanging in.

I mentioned to him a book I was reading. I said it contained a lot of philosophical references which I was not expecting and were kind of over my head. He asked who the author was and I couldn't remember, then I looked at the book and told him the author's name.

"Oh that guy is garbage, don't read it," he says.

"What do you mean, why is he garbage?"

My son starts in on how the author has off-the-wall theories about ethics, but this book I am reading I don't think is about ethics. Although I could be wrong on that, I'm only on the first chapter.

"Well I think I'm going to read it anyway, I'll let you know what I think when I'm done," I said.

He told me once that I was the smartest person he knows (aw shucks!) but he's pretty smart himself. I'm kind of proud of him.

It's a Wonderful Day (Not)

Dear Diary:

Well, that's what this feels like, almost private although obviously not. Anyway, my house guest just left with her daughter an hour ago.

She was kind of the perfect house guest: good fun, good company and not really needing to be entertained since she had her own agenda here and the use of her daughter's car. She lived in the area for about a year a couple of years ago and met a lot of people that she wanted to catch up with. Her prime reason for being in this province was to spend Thanksgiving with her daughter S who is at school in Halifax, but that left her with lots of time to visit friends in the Valley. For me it was just the right mix of busyness and downtime while she visited with other friends.

Last night S came up from the City to participate in the Valley Thanksgiving Marathon; she stayed here overnight and got up early this morning for the race. Since S was not feeling well she only did 5K (there were options for 5K, 10K, a half-Marathon and a full Marathon) and then after she cleaned up we all went out for breakfast at a local restaurant.

I asked S what she was studying and she said she was working on her Master's in Nutrition. I asked what her thesis topic was and she said it was about senior women and communal meals. That sounded intriguing so she explained to me that it was a chance for her to combine her studies in nutrition with feminist theory. That older women have usually spent a half a lifetime or more caring for and feeding other people but at the ends of their lives are often deeply marginalized and forgotten by society and even their own families (tell me about it!). So she was looking at how senior women come together to care for one another and specifically how they share food. She said it was a very satisfying topic and an easy one to apply feminist ideas to. I was quite admiring. At least there are a few young people who take notice of that sort of thing.

Prior to breakfast I took Hapi for her walk at the Reservoir and met up with my friend P who is 86 and her dog Maddie. I was in a kind of angry mood so I ranted at her about being ignored by my family on this Thanksgiving weekend. They all make the duty-bound calls at Christmas and my birthday, and occasionally show their faces in my province. But the two big family-related holidays of the year are Thanksgiving and Christmas and not once have any of them called me on Thanksgiving. Everyone I know has some family nearby so they are all busy this weekend celebrating. One of my sons told me that he didn't believe in Hallmark holidays so they never call on Mother's Day because that is such a phoney thing to do. Of course, if you are often talking to or spending time with your mother then you have every right to criticize it as a phoney Hallmark holiday.

Anyway, I ranted. P sympathized as she had similar feelings, although she does have family living nearby and they are planning to get together this weekend. Then we saw Teddy. Teddy is a toy poodle belonging to A (93 years old), so we knew she could not be far behind.

P said, "Let's see if she tells us what a wonderful day it is."

That is A's trademark: she always tells you what a wonderful day it is, no matter what. So when she appeared we waited for her to tell us that. Instead she told us about the wonderful opera she had seen the night before at the cinema. She couldn't remember the name of it but she said it was one of the well-known ones and it was absolutely wonderful. P tried to prompt her to comment on the weather or the state of the day but A wasn't biting, she was totally enthralled with the opera. Since we were headed in opposite directions around the ponds we knew we would meet up with her again and by that time she would no doubt remember the name of the opera. Sure enough, we did and it was Turandot.

Then we jokingly told her we were expecting her to tell us what a wonderful day it was and she said, "Well at least it is not raining."

P and I laughed and laughed. First time A has admitted that the day might not be so wonderful. When you're feeling utterly crappy, it's nice to have a good laugh with old friends.

The picture above: I loaned my house guest a set of keys and she promptly lost them. The key fob is made from my dog's fur and some green wool so it has sentimental value, even though it is quite dirty now. We tried to figure out where she might have left them and I started phoning around. Sure enough, someone turned them in and I was able to retrieve them. I took the photo to text to my friend who was then in Halifax, to let her know she was off the hook on that.

What is in a name? It turns out a lot

Taking flight

I am thinking about changing my name.

I was married, briefly, during the '70s. Back then I changed my surname (not knowing any better) to my husband's name, and changing it back to my "maiden name" after the divorce didn't seem worth the bother. So I have spent most of my adult life under an assumed name, or so Vital Statistics tells me. My married name is not a legal name, it is an assumed name.

My brothers and never-married sister all go by the family name (i.e., my father's family name) and so in my family of origin I am an anomaly, the only one not bearing the family name. My kids all have their father's surname, sort of. One has a different father but since I was still legally married at the time he had to be named after my husband who was not his father. Another legally changed his name when he got married to a double-barreled name. This blog is in my ex-husband's and my current surname. My parents and my ex-husband are all dead.

If I had my druthers I'd change my surname to my maternal grandmother's "maiden name", only because I happen to like the sound of it and I know something of its history. But I think changing one's surname to something other than one's own "maiden name" is a bit more expensive.

The other thing is that the given name that I commonly go by is my second name on my birth certificate, and I have always gone by that name even as a very small child. I don't know why that is but I never objected to it and still don't. However since computers became common it has been an ongoing source of irritation because virtually all government agencies insist on using my first given name. If I am sitting in a waiting room it is that first name that gets called out, not my more commonly used second name. Government ID seems to be mixed on the issue, some of it shows the first name, some both names, and some only the second name.

So I thought maybe I should just cave on the issue and go by my first name like almost everybody else does and just stop arguing with officials who insist on it. It will be weird having a new name but at least it will solve a few minor problems.

Into the wild blue...

I started looking up what is involved in changing a name and it turns out that it is really complicated, there is no one agency you can call to deal with it. First of all there is the provincial government, then the federal government, and then of course the municipal government. Each of these involve multiple departments that all must be dealt with separately. Finally there are the financial institutions and various commercial organizations that I have accounts with. I feel quite confident in guessing that it will be an endless task rooting out the last vestiges of my old (i.e., current) name. No wonder I didn't do it right away! But I was naive, I did not know that it would be that much harder now than it would have been three decades ago. Who would have thunk that computers would make things harder not easier?!? (sarcasm)

So why bother? I'm going to blame it on Dorian and Arthur. Arthur was a tropical storm during July 2015 and Dorian a hurricane of less than a couple of weeks ago. In both cases there was widespread damage to the entire province and power outages lasting a week or more. I was very lucky during Dorian to get my power back within 18 hours, extremely lucky actually. My home did sustain a little damage but nothing really devastating. Going without electricity, internet and phone for 18 hours is way different from going without for a week. During Arthur I was without power for 3-4 days I think and that was hard enough. It is a very isolating feeling to not have phone or internet. I did have a cell phone then but not a lot of data so I couldn't go on the internet, and after a couple of days the battery had died anyway and that was that.

None of my kids called me during or after Arthur or Dorian. My brothers did, but not my kids. They are very bad at keeping in touch quite frankly, and I am told that it is because they are men not women. I had the great misfortunate of not bearing a single daughter. I have tried to talk to my sons about the importance of keeping in touch but it just hasn't had an impact. One son cannot be reached by email, he has an email address but he does not read email there because he says there is too much junk mail there and for whatever reason he does not want to create a new email address. Text messages are okay but I have a hard time reducing what I want to say to text message size.

I understand that my two married sons have busy lives with jobs, wives and kids to be concerned about. I was not so great at keeping in touch with my parents when I was their age either. So I resent it and feel a little guilty about it too. But from where I am sitting it looks to me like my siblings are more concerned about me than my kids are, and the name change might be appropriate. An outward and visible sign of true allegiance, so to speak. I feel abandoned whether it is actually true or not, and I feel like I need to disown my family and go on without them (my kids, not my brothers). I am tired of dealing with the recurring disappointment and sense of abandonment.

Aloft

It looks like a long term project and one that will take considerable planning to do everything in the right order. When it is done however, that will be the end of this blog. I will no longer be Mz Odell. I may start another blog in my new name, and if I do I will provide a link here.

...We thought they'd never end...

Labour Day, one of the very few days of the year when everything is closed. I like it, it's like a moment out of time, time standing still.

We are into the very best time of year around here, a month or two of absolutely perfect weather. The unbearable heat of summer is done, the miserable cold of winter still in the future. And the gardens and farm markets bursting with tomatoes and corn and squashes and everything else. The students are back and celebrating the way students do, the streets are lively and sometimes too lively. This year the students in my neighbourhood seem not to be the "party hearty" types so we all get to sleep at night.

This is good for Hapi too. She can just barely handle the heat of summer, the cooler days are perking her up. I was supposed to take her to the groomer to get all her matted fur cleaned up but I totally forgot and now the next available appointment is a month away. She's going to be a terrible mess by then. Under normal circumstances it takes hours and hours to clean her up but now that she is old I am reluctant to put her through that. I told the groomer I just want "quick and dirty" and if that means she comes out still a matted mess then so be it.

She had a bad episode of diarrhea necessitating leaving the back door open at night so she could get out rather than do it in the kitchen, when that cleared up (yay rice and apples!) she then became incontinent. So she has decided not to sleep indoors at all. I miss her being by my bed but on the other hand I get to sleep through the night.

She is losing the fur on her tail, her once beautiful billowing flag. The vet checked her out and thought it was not a sign of something worse, she was otherwise healthy enough, and recommended trying melatonin. So we're doing that. I now sympathize with men going bald, I hate seeing her ratty tail.

Birthday gift, one of the tea towels I wove in the spring

Last Wednesday was a friend's 65th birthday. I've known L for 46 years, she was a teenager when I first met her. On Wednesday a bunch of us met at her sister-in-law's for a birthday lunch and then on Saturday her husband threw her a "surprise" birthday party at home. It wasn't really a surprise, when he phoned to invite me to the party L happened to be there and I had the phone on speaker (I usually do that automatically): so much for surprise. But he invited all of the old gang, all of us who have known L almost since she arrived in this province.

She arrived a year before I did, in 1972. There was only one other person at the surprise party who knew L longer than I did, M. He told a story from back in the day, a story that until this Saturday he had not told in its entirety. As L told me later, if M had told the truth about the incident before now she would have killed him. She always knew he wasn't telling the truth, fortunately she no longer wished to kill him for it. It was a good story, I'd never heard the whole story either, just his severely edited version of it. L and I rehashed the story on Sunday and we decided that even now he was not telling the whole truth, parts of the story just didn't ring true. Oh well, we all self-edit.

Now you're intensely curious as to what the story is, I'll just say that it involved drugs and the RCMP and hiding stuff behind L's back. In the end nobody got hurt and nobody went to jail, sort of an Alice's Restaurant tale. I guess that tale was M's birthday gift to L.

At one point in the party L's husband sat down beside me with their old photo albums and started turning the pages. Talk about Memory Lane!! Between the photo album and M's tale it was an evening spent in the past, almost half a century ago.

L's mother died when she was quite young and her father was no great shakes at parenting. So at 16 she took off with her boyfriend on his motorbike and on a whim they headed to Nova Scotia. Shortly after arriving here he was killed in a road accident, leaving L and another friend who travelled with them behind. They had found an abandoned house way back on the mountain, near some other hippies also squatting in an abandoned house. So she met some of the local freaks that way. There quickly grew up quite a community of young people, including some new arrivals from out west, the three guys who set up Trinity Farm ("the three guys"). My husband and I and our 2 kids arrived the following year, we had lived in a house with the three guys in Vancouver. We had parted ways for our own adventures, but for one reason and another we decided to follow the guys to Nova Scotia a year later. M was the cousin of one of the three guys and used to hang out at Trinity Farm, and so did L. My little family arrived at Trinity Farm on the Labour Day weekend of 1973.

When M told his story we weren't sure exactly when it happened, but piecing together the bits that each of us remembered from those days we decided that it was it was either the fall of 1974 or the early winter of '75. I was preoccupied with my own drama (family breakup) so I was only dimly aware of other people's dramas. Those were definitely the days, my friend.

Lions and tigers and bears oh my, or, how my son went to sea

I took my son and grandson to the airport yesterday, we made a day trip out of it by going into Halifax a little early and strolling the waterfront to see the International Buskers Festival. My son tells me it is one of the best in the world. We stopped to watch a couple of performers, my grandson requested a balloon creation of a dragon from a ten foot tall man in a red suit and top hat (he was on stilts I think), and we had potstickers, egg rolls and naan rolls at the Farmers Market.

We happened to see the HMCS Sackville moored at a dock with a big sign saying it was free to tour ("by donation"). It is a decommissioned corvette veteran of three wars. My son said it was similar to a ship he served on when he was in the naval reserves. So we went on board and my son gave us the tour. He explained in detail how everything worked, showed us the sailors quarters, the engine room, the helm, the guns and a host of other things. Since my son was the helmsman on his ship when he was on board (in the reserves he did "contracts" of four weeks or so out at sea) he was able to explain in great detail how it all worked. Everything was mechanical, almost no electronics or electrical components at all. They communicated with each other via bells and speaking tubes.

He told us that they did duty in four hour shifts and the shift from 12AM to 4AM was known as "mids". When he was on mids he would sleep leaning on the wheel. The compass ticked whenever it changed direction by a degree, the ticking woke him up and he would adjust the course of the ship. He said he was very good at it and every time he went to sea they always put him on the helm. He sailed up and down the east coast of North America from Labrador to the Caribbean. He said he felt privileged to have had that experience.

In this ship the sleeping quarters and the mess were the same rooms. There were racks for hanging hammocks from the ceiling and below the racks were tables and benches for meals. The hammocks were very narrow and each rack held four hammocks in a space of about six feet in width. Pretty tight! My son said that on his ship they had bunks not hammocks, and the bunks were in a separate room from the mess. But it was still pretty crowded.

Before that we spent some time in Prince Edward Island at a cottage that belongs to my son's inlaws, near a beach. The whole area is mosquito infested, you pretty much had to stay indoors or be thoroughly bug-doped-up to go outside. At the beach were deer fly. The water was warm and the beach quite shallow for a long way with a series of sandbars that you could swim to. Some people sat on the beach in the sun and never went in the water. I quickly found out why: if you went in the water and came out covered in salt, the deer fly zeroed in on you. It was impossible to sit still once you got wet, the deer fly saw to that.

I took Hapi there with me and she quite enjoyed the beach. She went out as deep as she could while still keeping her feet on the bottom, then wandered up and down the beach to check out all the people and kids in the water. She kept a close eye on me and when I went out in the deep water she tried to follow. She did actually swim a bit but mostly she walked on her front legs and dogpaddled her rear legs. The kids at the beach quite enjoyed her.

After a few days of that I was thoroughly insect-bitten and just wanted to go home. Hapi does not travel well and she was glad to go home too. We spent a couple of hours cleaning up the cottage before leaving, one of the owners arrived the day after we left and was impressed at how clean and tidy we left the place. Back in Nova Scotia we mostly just hung out. My son is training for a marathon in the fall so he did some running, we took Hapi to the Reservoir every day and on one day we went to the zoo. It is a really nice zoo, just the right size for an hour or two of walking around looking at the creatures without burning out on too much zoo.

It is a private zoo, run mainly by one family who live on the premises. All the animals have names and little placards saying when they were born and how long they have been with the zoo. Every year they sell off some of their animals. Last year when I went they were selling guinea pigs and pygmy ponies, this year it is piglets. The llamas are in a large pen that you can walk into and pet them. Last year they let the peacocks run free but this year they are penned; someone said it was probably because they were losing them to local coyotes.

There's a resident bald eagle who is injured and can only hop-fly. There used to be two bears now there is only one; the jaguar, siberian tiger and half a dozen lions were all sleeping. One lion slept on his back with his legs in the air! Lots of gibbons and macaques, fallow deer and goats, and one very noisy cockatoo. Of course there was a corn feed dispenser for hand feeding various creatures whose pens clustered around the dispensers. Two huge pythons slept entwined with each other in the reptile house.

Today is my first day of getting caught up on chores and whatnot since the boys left yesterday. Pulled up all my garlic, picked and froze a bunch of green beans, pulled up all the pea stalks and weeded, weeded, weeded. Cleaned out the shed in readiness for stacking the firewood which is currently piled in the driveway. With cold and wet in May and June and then a heat wave for most of July, the garden is not doing so well. Two packets of basil seeds planted and none survived, cucumbers barely surviving, peas so-so and half the potato plants look ill. The blueberries did not do as well as last year and I've been lazy about picking them so the birds are doing it for me. The birds also planted sunflowers all over the yard and they are not doing well but they are flowering. The daylilies are happy though.

Now that the garlic is done I'm thinking about planting carrots and a fall crop of peas. My beans take a breather and then produce a second crop later in the summer. I used to replant them but I don't think I will this year. The tomatoes reseed themselves, I just transplant all the ones I like into one garden bed and pull up the rest as weeds. My strawberry bed has had the biscuit and hardly any of them came up this year, however tomatoes have taken over the strawberry bed so I just let them be.

TBD...

The rain and the ramifications of aging

The downpour last Friday was pretty significant, lots of flooding and washouts. 72 mm, which is a lot in one day around here. Damage to roads, flooded basements, so on and so forth. I heard that Main Street filled right up and overflowed the sidewalks onto adjacent lawns. But my basement stayed dry! All the work done two winters ago paid off. Of course the sump pump was very busy for a couple of days after that.

I just got email from a dear friend out west, she has been very sporadic about replying to my emails. She said there was a reason for that, the last couple of years have been awful for her. And now she knows why, she just got a diagnosis of Parkinson's. Apparently before any of the physical symptoms show up there is depression and anxiety. I remember that the last time I visited her (two years ago) she did seem uncommonly anxious, but I attributed it to recent events in her life. Which it may very well have been, but exacerbated by this other thing. We have a mutual friend who was diagnosed with Parkinson's around about the time I left BC, on subsequent visits I have watched his deterioration and the effect on his partner. Not good.

I was shocked by my friend's email and I was just headed out the door to a meeting. For the first half of the meeting I was kind of out of it. I did eventually get into things, but it was always there in my mind. Still is I guess.

My brother's birthday yesterday, I called to wish him Happy Birthday. We chatted about a bunch of things and he told me about our other brother's call, how other brother was quite upbeat about treatments for his liver cancer. I pointed out to my birthday brother that that may very well be, but other brother's prognosis is little more than a year without treatment, and a few months more than that with treatment. Birthday brother said he did not know that. Birthday brother is very busy right now and I said I hoped he could get everything done this year because next year we may be needing to travel out west …if not sooner.

The meeting I attended this week was a Green Party thing. First campaign meeting for the newly nominated Green Party candidate in my riding. Potluck and strategizing, very exciting. I met a very dynamic young woman in the committee I joined who kind of left all of us older folks gaping. Amazing energy and activism. WWW take note, she's headed your way, going to Memorial for first year university studying the ocean. Molly. We are sorry to lose her but she has left behind everything she can think of, all of her connections and history, for our candidate to use. Voting age is 18, which means high school grads, and I guess there's a lot of them wanting some meaningful change.

On another note, I went for an eye exam today. The local optometrist has quite a shop, employs a whole lot of people. I went to him back in the day when it was just him and his receptionist. Anyway, after the exam he sent me to talk to someone about prices for glasses. After a bit of a wait I talked to this woman who laid out all the options, ranging from the "cut rate deal" of $299 (just the lenses, frames extra) up to $869 (lenses only) for the super duper lenses that make you think you are not wearing glasses at all. We discussed coatings and angles and health benefits and she gave me a bunch of pamphlets and I noted down manufacturers' names and prices for turther investigation.

One of the things she told me about was this coating that is supposed to filter out "high energy blue" (or something to that effect). Used to be UV was bad, now it's creeping up the spectrum through blue.

So I went online to find out what the big deal about blue is. Turns out there is a lot of conflicting information. Blue is good/blue is bad. At my age, cataracts are starting, a number of my friends have already had the surgery. Cataracts cause your vision to yellow, blue is filtered out. One study says blue causes insomnia, another says blue cures insomnia. Cataracts protect against macular degeneration (caused by blue!). Cataracts good/cataracts bad.

Another thing I have been researching is lawn mowers. As noted previously, I can't start my gas-powered lawn mower, so I was looking into alternatives. My lawn is broken up with bushes and garden beds, there is a very dry area and a very wet area and a steep slope on one side. Not to mention all the holes that Hapi has dug either as hidey holes for precious bones or as cool nests to sleep in. A corded electric is out of the question, too many twists and turns. Self-propelled sounds nice but it means you can't mow backwards in tight spaces. I looked at a cordless electric (battery powered) and that was promising, but it was 20 pounds heavier than my rinky dink gas mower. It's big and hard to maneuver, but it's quiet and doesn't vibrate and it stores well.

For the life of me I cannot find a mower that is easy to start, light-weight and maneuverable, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I may have to give up on the idea.

In the mean time I am weight lifting in hopes of being able to start my mower before mowing season ends. And I decided not to worry about blue, I soon won't be able to see it anyway.

An expletive deleted children's story

The weaving project in progress

My big news this week is that I got shortlisted for a prize in children's lit. Actually happened over a month ago but I was sworn to secrecy until they published the official list, which just happened. It's terrible to be sworn to secrecy on something so exciting, and the release was palpable. I immediately fired off emails to friends and family and all of the friends—every last one of them—was just as excited as I was.

Deafening silence from family. A prophet in one's own land sort of thing I guess.

Eventually one brother, the one with the awful diagnosis, broke silence and the three sons one by one also chimed in over the next few days. Have not heard from brother #2, but I believe he does not check email regularly, or so I tell myself.

Anyway, I won't know till the end of the month whether it goes any further than being shortlisted and I don't really expect it will, but the shortlist is exciting enough. There's going to be an awards ceremony (multiple prizes in different categories) which conflicts with my weaving class and I almost feel like skipping the awards but that wouldn't really be kosher. Show up and congratulate the winners, hobnob with 'real' writers. Risk not finishing my weaving project due to too many skipped classes.

Being a 'children's writer' was not really what I was aspiring to but hey! I'll take it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The new couch

In other news I have rearranged and refurnished my living room. I was at a local building supply place a month ago to purchase a tool that was on sale and happened to see a couch there that interested me. It was in the paint and flooring department and there were a couple of customers sitting on it contemplating some flooring samples. I sat down beside them and decided it was comfy. My only issue was whether it would actually fit in my living room which is small and already overcrowded with furniture. So I took measurements and went home, took some more measurements and concluded that if I got rid of a couple of furniture pieces I might be able to fit the building supply couch in.

The old table

One of the furniture pieces that would have to go is my large dining table. It's a good table but it is too large for the small room and really only gets used for piling books and papers on. If it had a leaf that I could remove it would be fine but it doesn't. So I did a bit of moving stuff around and bought the couch. Huge effort to get it home and set up but worth it, I love the couch. Then some internet browsing to find a smaller table and thought I found the right table at the IKEA in the city. A trip to the city with a friend to look at it in real life, combined with a browse of the best Chinese grocery store in the city (or that's what the newspaper review of Chinese grocery stores said) and I came home with a Norden gateleg table (and dark dark soy sauce, noodles and dried mushrooms). The table's principal feature is that it has two huge hinged leaves so that it folds down to almost nothing.

This week I assembled the table. I had forgotten what IKEA assembly projects were like.

The instructions have no words, only pictures. There was a whole separate document of warnings, all in pictures only and some of them quite incomprehensible. At a certain point I was stymied, the hinge screws would not screw in. I tried an electric drill/driver but that did not help. The warnings document had a picture of a person phoning the IKEA store (as opposed to standing there with the manual in hand and a big question mark in a balloon above their head) so I did that.

The person with the heavy accent (I had to get him to repeat what he was saying numerous times because I couldn't understand him) told me to try harder. After huffily telling him that I had already done that (I think I used the F-word) he then told me to bring the table back to the store. I thanked him for his assistance and ended the call. The question mark was now multiple exclamation marks.

The electric drill was lying on the floor next to the offending hinges so I picked it up and selected an appropriate bit and reamed out the pre-drilled screw holes until the screws would go in. I may regret that in the future but for now it works.

I am happy with my new smaller table and the building supply couch. Hapi on the other hand is not, she hates change. She comes into the house and stands at the doorway to the living room and looks around with a big frown, then she turns and goes back outside. Aside from two brief inspections of the living room she has stayed outside ever since. Doggy disapproval is clearly communicated.

Lonely goose

In the picture above is one goose. There used to be two, but the horse that also resides in this pasture rolled over on the other one and killed it. I'm sure this one goose is lonely now, it was always in the company of its fellow. I am sad for it, I used to enjoy seeing the two of them together. [Disregard the snow, this picture is a few weeks old]

My son who just lost his dog (my dog's brother) is coming to visit this summer, he wants to see Hapi and keeps asking how she is doing. He's afraid she'll sicken and die before he gets to see her again. She used to be his dog. Apparently my vet is worried too, I got a call from her office a few days ago asking how she was doing. She's fine! She's fine!

This month has been very wet and cool. My backyard lawn loves this but I do not, I need waders to walk to my compost bin. The grass is looking like it will need mowing before I leave but the ground is so soggy I dare not. I am afraid that by the time the ground dries out the grass will be knee-high. I don't need one more task before I leave anyway. Maybe this is the year to just turn my backyard into a "meadow".

Phone call

August 2017

My brother phoned me yesterday. Usually we only phone on birthdays and Christmas despite good intentions to do better than that. It was not good news.

He started by describing surgery on his wrist for a longstanding problem that had worsened in recent years, we had talked about this upcoming surgery on our birthdays (two days apart in early April) and so I thought he was calling to talk about the results.

Pre-surgery he was required to do a regular physical check-up, and it turned out that in his medical records was a 5-year-old diagnosis of liver cancer. Somehow that report was overlooked at the time. My brother has his suspicions about how that happened and it pretty much amounts to grounds for suing somebody, but that is kind of beside the point now.

At the time of the diagnosis the cancer was operable, but if nothing was done he had a prognosis of 18 months to live. Five years ago. Now it is not operable. He will do chemo for it but the prognosis is considerably dimmer than 18 months even with the chemo.

He has been healthy as a horse the past five years. He quit drinking, he ran, he lost a bunch of excess weight, he renovated his house and built a monster workshop/garage/guest apartment pretty much by himself. He still has no symptoms.

I'm kind of stunned. His first appointment with an oncologist is after I get back from kayaking. He is my youngest brother and I don't want him to die. I wasn't planning to go out west this year but maybe I should.

I think it might be Spring

This is the frustrating part of Spring, still lots of ice and the temperature swings wildly between below freezing and almost-T-shirt temps. Snow flurries, rain and sun. I can see funny little soil bumps in the garden where tulips are about to push through and the birds are not visiting my birdfeeder near as much (they're too busy nesting). On nice days I've been doing a bit of yardwork in preparation for gardening season.

I've been thinking about preparations for Hapi's demise. My son told me a couple of things about Hiro's last days that made me think that I should be prepared. One is, Hiro spent his last days on my son's bed, Hapi cannot do that because my bed is too high for her to get up on. So I have spent the last few days figuring out how to lower my bed so she can get up. Not that she cares, she has never expressed an interest in sleeping on my bed, but maybe that will change. Another is, I realize that taking a very large dog in pain to the vet's office for euthanasia is just not realistic, I need to talk to the vet about house calls.

Not that I am expecting this to happen in the near future, but the time from my son realizing Hiro was in trouble to the time of death was only a matter of days, I need to be prepared. Most of Hiro's early symptoms were simply signs of old age: stiff joints, increasing lack of energy, and the occasional falter in gait. Hapi has all of those on occasion, but I'm still thinking it's just old age. Another vet conversation. I've decided that I won't be taking heroic measures, but comfort is important.

And I have a kayak expedition coming up in May, very exciting. Already have Hapi's dogsitter lined up, he lives just around the corner so Hapi can stay home while I'm away. This time we won't be camping but rather staying at a lodge on a lake at a seriously discounted price ('winter season'). Hopefully we'll be out there before the black fly become awful but after the ice is gone. So exciting!

I've been off Facebook for a month now. I thought I'd pop back on briefly to let my Facebook friends know what I've done, but every time I think of doing that I just don't feel like it. I was talking to another son over the weekend and he mentioned that he had told my DIL that I was off FB but still on Instagram. I had told him previously that the one thing I miss from FB is that DIL's posts about her kids. So she has decided to move her activity to Instagram, and sure enough I am starting to see her posts there. Sweet!

Two of my grandsons have Instagram accounts so I see their posts as well. One of them is very quirky, as only a 12/13 yo boy can be. I was supposed to Skype with him on his birthday recently but he was having a serious meltdown so the Skype got postponed to the next day. I've never seen a kid who could throw a tantrum like he could when he was a toddler, apparently he has honed his skills in that department now that he is officially a teenager.

Joy, and Obligations

Okay first the Joy. I went skating this morning. The ice was amazing, like glass. And I was almost the first person on it since the last big rain and subsequent freezing. I met the guy who tries to keep it clear on my way in and he said the ice was so good that you really need sharp skates or you won't be able to skate on it. My skates are sharp.

Hapi ventured out but only made it a few feet to a mound of snow that looked like a little island surrounded by a glassy sea. She stayed there the whole time I was skating, she looked like an Eskimo sled dog abandoned on an ice floe. Each time I came around her little ice floe I thought, Just one more time, one more time and then we'll go. It was so hard to stop, I was in skating heaven!

I did finally stop and after changing back into my boots and Lee Valley Icers because the trails are as icy as the ponds, we went for a hike through an apple orchard and then a woodland trail. By the time we got back to the ponds parents and little kids were arriving for skating and hockey because today is a holiday.

The photo above was taken a couple of weeks ago, today it was even better: the sun was shining and the sky a brilliant blue.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The comments on my last post were pretty unanimous, don't feel guilty and take time for yourself. How exactly one does that is of course for me to figure out. After venting about the problem, I then turned it around from what I didn't want to do to what I did want to do. I had a list of things I wanted to spend more time on. That list made me feel better, I felt justified in staking out time to tackle my list.

I called E to explain about how driving to her place at supper time was too hard, that I would drop by in the daytime if/when I was in town to shop. She seemed to accept that, but three days later there was a message on my phone (I didn't hear it ring) pleading for me to come visit. Ugh!

I called her and said I'd visit soon and she was more than welcome to come visit me whenever she wanted. Next day she got her son to drive her over. It was suppertime of course, but at least I wasn't out driving around in the dark, and her son texted me when they'd be arriving so I was prepared. But OMG, watching her struggle out of the car, up the driveway to my back stairs, then precariously manouevre herself up those three steps with her son behind her with his arms out in case she fell backwards, then across the back deck and through the kitchen to the nearest chair: that was painful!

We had a nice little visit, there was a stack of photos of children and grandchildren on the table by her chair which we went through after she fed her little bag of dog treats to Hapi, and then it was time for them to leave. The painful process of getting from the car to the chair was re-enacted in reverse and they drove away. But not before E tried to nail down the exact time of my visit to her place in the next couple of days. I just said, Soon, soon.

But I don't know which is worse, driving to and from E's place in the dark when I am tired and hungry, or watching her struggle in and out of my place. I feel doomed.

So yesterday I was talking about this situation with a dogwalking friend, F, and he described his own struggle with aging parents. First his father and now his mother. His father died in his 90s and was both blind and demented, his mother is mentally healthy but blind and physically deteriorating, also in her 90s. In comparing notes I realized that my relationship with E is rather like his with his parents, and the sense of obligation is not much different. Although E is only a few years older than me, regarding her as a debilitated and dying parent puts things in perspective. There are obligations I can shake and obligations I can't, much as I would like to.

We commiserated on feelings of obligation and what it did to the rest of our lives, also on our growing desire to withdraw from everyday socializing altogether. I think it's a bit easier for guys to retire from social obligations than for women, there is more of an expectation of women to "take care of people". I can reduce the socializing with J more easily because she is still mobile, has a car of her own, and multiple other friends. But E has none of those things. Plus, her son has been a real lifesaver for me in the past, so I can't just say, Sorry, I don't feel like it. He said to me a few years ago, You are part of our family. Unfortunately I'm afraid that is true.

I spent the last few days tidying and reorganizing my home which was immensely pleasurable. I now have bags of garbage and recycling prepared for disposal and a couple of bags of stuff for Value Village and/or the SPCA. If I take it to VV, they will give me discount coupons to shop there which I could give to E, but E commented that she hates that place and would rather shop at the SPCA. So maybe I'll take my stuff to the SPCA.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I am going off Facebook. I disabled my account yesterday, if all goes well I will delete it in a month or so. A Facebook friend posted a TEDx video by Tristan Harris on why one should quit social media and most of his reasons made sense to me. There are pros and cons to everything but right now the cons are outweighing the pros for me.

Mr Harris noted that he thought the first couple of weeks after quitting would be the hardest but then one would adjust. We will see. Last night I went through my Facebook friends list and noted three people for whom I have no other contact info. It may be that I will lose those friends, I don't know. Two of them might be able to contact me if they remember the email address I had before Facebook and the third, well, I think I could probably track her down through mutual friends if I had to. All of them currently reside in other countries.

Across the divide of time

I thought I had a dentist appointment this afternoon but I got the day wrong, it's tomorrow. Which gave me a whole extra two hours this afternoon, better than a time change!

Yesterday was my grandson's birthday, and the family tradition is for me to Skype or Facetime in for the singing of Happy Birthday and the cutting of the cake. T, my grandson, had requested a cheesecake for the occasion. He is now 17 years old. What was remarkable from my perspective was that he initiated the Facetime call with me. While everyone else in his family was getting ready for the 'main event', T made conversation with me.

He asked, "So what are you working on today?"

This was so unexpected I didn't know how to answer. I sat there trying to remember what I had done that day, and since it was actually a busy day there was lots to remember. I finally came up with: "I made salsa."

He was impressed that I made salsa, he said he didn't know that you could make it yourself. I asked him what he worked on today and he said he was rehearsing Twelfth Night, for which he had scored a main role. Then he picked up a small child and showed him to me on camera. He told me that it was cousin with a name I can't remember or even pronounce if I could remember it. Told his cousin to say 'Hi' to me, which he did. Then swung the camera around to show me another cousin, a slightly older child, and finally his younger brother P.

What impressed me about the conversation is that he asked me what I was doing that day. Never in all the conversations I have had via phone, Skype, Facetime or even in person have any of my kids expressed any interest in knowing what I was doing. Occasionally I will mention something but it falls into the conversation like a rock into a black hole, never to reappear or be acknowledged.

Earlier that day at the dogpark I was chatting with a fellow old lady dog walker and mentioned a conversation with another older woman who had been quite ill this summer and whose husband is paralyzed and keeps her very busy looking after him. Her illness made the summer extremely stressful and she complained that none of her kids stepped up to help. When I repeated this story to my dog walking friend she chipped in with her own stories of offspring neglect. How the youngsters don't seem to appreciate the difficulties of older age (my friend is 85, the other woman I spoke of, 80) and blithely expect one to carry on unaided. So far my own experience is similar although not quite as extreme.

At the dogpark

I complained that my kids want me to listen to them talk about their lives but seem totally uniniterested in what might be going on in my life. My friend countered that she remembered having that same attitude towards her own parents. That they must be endlessly fascinated by the lives of their children and couldn't possibly have anything to say for themselves that might be of interest. I said I knew what she meant and that 'what goes around comes around'.

So when my grandson actually asked what I did today, I was struck speechless.

Towards the end of the call he suggested that I download a particular game that we could play over the internet, he thought it would be fun to have a 'gaming granny' that he could play with. After the call I looked up the game he suggested and it was a popular shoot-em-up last-man-standing-wins kind of game. Much as I would like to have the interaction with the grandson, I don't know if I can bring myself to play that particular game.

The difficulties of navigating intergenerational communication…

A death in the family

I think I might be getting better. I am still sick, but not as sick as maybe a week ago. It's very gradual. I am hoping that in a couple more weeks I'll be out of the woods with this. A retired geneticist friend of mine thinks maybe I have a virus that hides in the body somewhere and every once in a while comes out and wreaks havoc. I think she's probably right.

Because my energy level is so low and I have to budget my activity, my social life has taken a back seat to things I need to get done around my place. Like harvesting the garden, stacking firewood, mowing the lawn, walking the dog. I always have a to do list, I can only cross off so much. But enough about me.

My son's dog died on Friday. The dog had tumours growing around his trachea, eventually he would asphyxiate. My son was trying to decide what to do. The vet had suggested surgery but my son didn't feel he could afford it, and anyway (as I pointed out), there was no guarantee they wouldn't just return again. He didn't know when he should pull the plug. Avoiding suffering was his main concern.

Some friends said, "Oh, you'll just know."

I said that wasn't always the case, it can be very difficult making that decision. We had a long phone call about it and at the end he thanked me for being able to have that conversation. I think he just needed a sounding board for all the conflicted feelings he had about it.

A couple days later he posted on Facebook about the dog's last day. The whole family took him out for a walk and then went to the vet's office. I think it was as good a way to handle it as possible.

I was fond of the dog, I feel sad that he died. He was a good family dog, he loved everyone in the household. He was always very happy to see me when I came to visit, but perhaps not so keen on my dog (who did not behave well when the two first met).

My son's youngest son has been hardest hit by this death, I don't think he has any memories of their previously dog-free home.

A glimpse into family history

So, last week a long-awaited (16 years!) package arrived at the post office for me. It is a painting that was given to my grandparents back in the '50s that my mother inherited and I in turn inherited from her. But it came with a condition: it must first go to my mother's sister for the rest of her lifetime. Who knew she would be so long-lived (95 years)! She died a year ago so the painting finally became mine, but since she lived and died on the west coast her children gave the painting to my brother (also on the west coast) to take care of sending to me. We dithered for a year about how to do that and finally he put it in the mail a few weeks ago. Surface mail being the cheaper option and an extra week or so of waiting after 16 years not being outlandish, that was how it arrived. Unscathed (we worried about it).

I posted a photo of the painting on Facebook and then in the Comments section my brother and I argued about its origins and meaning. It was an interesting argument that among other things involved internet searches of family history and the posting of various photos supporting our differing opinions. Yesterday my brother sent an email message to various family members seeking further information, it will be interesting to see what evolves from that.

Portion of a wartime letter from family friend to my grandmother, 1916 give or take

The painting supposedly represents a visit to my grandparents' summer place by persons unknown (or rather, disputed). I believe it was painted by our great-aunt Evelyn and that she is one of the figures in the painting. My brother thinks it might have been painted by a family friend representing his visit to our grandparents. The family friend was a wartime buddy (World War I) of our grandfather's with a great sense of humour and cartooning ability. My brother's supporting evidence is the photocopy of a letter written by the friend taped to the back of the painting when he received it. My evidence for supposing that Evelyn painted it is a written inscription on the back of the painting gifting the painting from Evelyn to our grandparents, and another painting I possess that she painted (indicating that she was indeed capable of producing this piece of art).

The family mansion, 1896. My great grandfather and possibly Evelyn sitting on the verandah

In the course of our internet research, we found several photos of Evelyn and our grandmother at the home of their grandparents in Toronto (actually, I think it would have been the outskirts of Toronto at that time). Turns out our great-great-grandfather was very wealthy (the founder of a bank that still exists today) and his home was a mansion that might be considered a Canadian version of Downton Abbey. I have a notebook written by Evelyn in which she describes the life at her grandparents in very Downton Abbey-like terms: servants, stables, governesses, and her mother having no idea how to cook or even hold a broom. And as it turns out, I briefly attended the church (as a child) that stood on land that he donated from his large country estate. That church is a prominent church in central Toronto today.

Evelyn is the young woman in a white blouse standing on the steps, my grandmother is the young girl all in white sitting on the grass. 1900

The thing I found most interesting about all this is that the photo of my grandmother at age 7 or 8 looks remarkably like me at that age. I was not fond of this grandmother when she was alive, but she played a big role in my young life. Among other things my father disliked her intensely and my parents very nearly divorced over that. I remember that period of time too well, it was quite frightening for a young child. However the storm passed, my father did come to terms with his mother-in-law, and the marriage survived. I regret that I did not get to know her better, from what I have learned of her life she was an interesting person in interesting times.