In Celebration of Our Wedding Anniversary

Dear Mother, to use the name you signed to the letters you wrote,

Sorry to bother you wherever it is you are. I suspect heaven, to be heaven to you, would include a class for you to teach, and you are probably pretty busy. But I think you're going to like what I am going to say. It was something I couldn't or wouldn't tell you while you were alive.

Remember how furious I was with you for selling the middle portion of the family property in the mid-1980s? Of course the property was yours to sell, and you had what you thought were good reasons to sell it. I did grow to appreciate the nice bathroom you added to the bigger camp, because it allowed us to take hot showers while still experiencing the rusticity of the original camp property.

However, the sale occasioned much wailing and gnashing of teeth on my part. Lots of “How could you?” and all that. While I grew quieter about it, I never really got over it. Partly I was afraid that you'd sell more of the property without consulting us kids. But mostly, I grieved the loss of the whole—our family legacy had been ten acres in the most beautiful place in the world, our Paradise, and now the middle was gone.

Not only that, the buyers bulldozed most of the trees and built a honkin' year-round home there. Who knows what nefarious plans they had that would change our experience of the place? And before I could relax about that, they had to sell to some other couple with two kids, all complete unknowns to us. At least these new people owned a canoe, let trees grow up, and left much of the shoreline natural, which we considered hopeful signs.

But still, as the years became a deacade plus, I
harbo(u)red a resentment, the one that starts “if only.” If only I had been older and presumably more flush with the money you needed. If only I had won the lottery or cured cancer or published a spectacular best-seller or otherwise amassed enough wherewithal to prevent that sale. Ah, I sighed, “If only.”

Well, I am telling you today what I should have known all along: you did the right thing. Not only is it okay that you sold the property. It was the wise and right thing to do, and I am grateful for it. You were right, an infinite number of times over.

Here's what happened. The family that bought the house endured happy times and sad times. The kids grew up and spread their wings. The wife grew sick and passed away, because sadness and death come, even in Paradise.

Seasons change. Eras come to an end. You knew this. You had watched your own parents age and, eventually, die. I heard you talk of it, but I didn't understand the consequences of the turning of the earth and accumulation of years. I know now.

As it happened, the man living alone in the house still knew himself to be Paradise, even in the sad times, even in the fallow time after his wife's death. While he waited for life and hope to grow again, he watched the fawns appear and grow until they lost their spots and even had fawns of their own. He saw a fox dancing with snowflakes. He skied over his property, and ours, and he walked carefully and lightly on it, and he saw that it was beautiful.

You'll recognize this, Mommy: “Reader, I married him.” How could I not—a man of such sense and caring, who shares my values so explicitly? Three years (thirty-six months) ago today, in fact, we stood on the beach in front of the little camp where I write this, which your father built 85 years ago. We cried through the reading from Ecclesiastes—“To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven”—and through our vows to ourselves and to each other. This morning, I woke up with my husband in the house you made possible some 25 years ago, when you sold the middle part of our Paradise.

I cannot say enough good things about this man. Get this: he likes the family. Really, he does! He welcomes friends and relatives, some of whom are virtual strangers to us both, and helps them enjoy our Paradise in whatever way they like best. He was my Mr. Knightley in the time of Daddy's sickness and death. He somehow accepts me as I am, with all my imperfections, and yet challenges me to be my best self.

I'm not sure what I do for him. Sometimes I bring him coffee or bake scones. When we go out in the canoe, I let him steer. He gets to do projects. For example, he put a new roof on the little camp and dug the piano out of the collapsing floor in the back room and shored up the floor and foundations. He has the fun of using his chainsaw on the trees that threaten the various structures here. These things seem hardly enough, yet he claims they are plenty.

Mom, I am not daft enough to imagine you could have foreseen this particular life for me. But you and Daddy were people of faith. You believed, among other things, in the inherent goodness of humanity. You believed that we all have the responsibility to do what we believe to be the right thing, even when that action is unpleasant, while trusting that doing the right thing is the best way to serve the greater good. So you showed that faith is a verb. You sold the property and you trusted in the outcome.

And that is the greatest lesson for me in all this. I can't see the future, but I read Ecclesiastes, and I know that death will come again to Paradise. As if I needed a reminder, gold leaves are falling from the birches as I type this. Someday, my husband and I, as well as the rest of your “kids” and grandkids, will have more decisions to make. They may be hard decisions. They may require active trust and faith in the process of birth, death, and renewal, of a time for every purpose under the heaven.

Fortunately, we have your example to guide us.

Best of all, we don't have to make those decisions today. Today, our only decision is whether it's a good day for canoeing, because in Paradise, the best way to celebrate one's third anniversary (or pretty much any day) is by going out in a canoe, or on skis, depending on the season. Or even for a walk, perhaps with a chainsaw or camera.

In closing, Mother dear, I'll say again: thank you—you were right.

Love,
Marion

Don't Talk to Me. Just Don't.

If you have wondered why I have not enabled commenting on my blog, and even if you have not wondered any such thing, you can find the answer here. All is revealed.

Well, some is. I guess to be topical I could call it a boundary issue but that might be an example of stretching logic and sanity to fit the theme.

Okay. Carry on. Any minute now, a car will hurtle down the driveway and new visitors will arrive, and I'm using up the sanity I have left. I'm going to lie down and hum inside my head for awhile.

Shortlist!!

The shortlist for the CBC Literary Awards was just announced. My creative nonfiction piece, "All I Can Say," is there!

Or rather, here!

I know everyone says this, but in my case it's true: getting this far is all the honour (with a "u" because it's a Canadian competition) and excitement I could hope for. To me, this recognition means I was able to get out of the way of the story enough that the exceptional people in the story (my Deaf friend Eric and my mother) touched other readers.

I had some outstanding help from the writers in Thunder Bay (including my husband) who gave me feedback that helped make the piece a million times better than it had been.

Eventually, that piece will appear in print somewhere. I'll keep you posted.

Traditions

My parents were married on Christmas Day in 1942. Each year, the present-opening extravagannnnnnza included a moment for opening anniversary cards and gifts--as I recall, given mostly by my father to my mother.

It was mostly a non-event for us kids, except for their 25th anniversary, when my sister organized a system whereby we "donated" portions of our allowance and pooled our nickels, dimes, and occasional quarter to buy a silver bread tray.

And of course, the more years my parents accumulated as married partners, the more important their anniversaries became. The more I understood relationships (or truthfully, the more I understood that I knew NOTHING about successful relationships), the more I admired theirs.

Two years ago, my husband and I stood on our beach and made a new marriage. I'm enjoying developing new traditions to celebrate that commitment--traditions that match our marriage.

The second anniversary is traditionally the cotton anniversary. In our marriage, the whole second year has been devoted to empty space. Not the kind overhead, where the stars and planets and birds live. The kind in attics and basements and closets, oh my. The kind that is now mostly dry, thanks to hours replacing roofs (though we're not quite done with the re-roofing).

On our special day in celebration of our year of empty space, we will go to the dump. It is not only an ordinary "take the garbage and recycling to the landfill" day but also a day when we will use one of our two annual "cleanout" days. We have the rolled roofing from the bathroom to get rid of. Also the aluminum eavestroughs. Plus an old cracked toilet.

It's exciting to contemplate. And I can't wait to see what the coming years bring.

Turn Around...

Early May is a "perfect storm" of remembrance days for my family. My mother's birthday was May 3; she died near midnight between May 7 and 8; Mother's Day is always in here somewhere.

Because I live where she grew up, in a place she loved, I think about her often even though she died nine years ago. I'm fortunate because to me, as time passes, she is becoming all different ages. She's more than the failing woman she became at the end of her life, the strict disciplinarian from my childhood, or the interesting woman I knew in between. She's a baby, a confident child. A young scholar. A young wife.

At the family home in town.

Posing at the big flat rock just around the corner from our family
camp, which is "just over there" from where I now sit.

Receiving her Ph.D. in mathematics from Radcliffe (really Harvard) in 1941.

Young marrieds. You can't see this, but my grandmother wrote
"And so, they lived happily ever after"
next to this picture.

And so they did, pretty much.

At the Crapture, I became custodian of a lot of family papers. I have grand plans for these papers. Someday. However, at the moment, I tend to lose time reading around in a five-year diary my grandmother kept from 1934 through 1938. It's fascinating to me in no small part because I see my mother's relationship with her own mother.

In 1938, my mother was in Boston at graduate school, away from her own mother for the first time. Money was scarce and travel difficult, but my grandparents managed to bring my mother home to Port Arthur for Christmas that year.

On December 23, 1938, my grandmother wrote "Friday--Jeanne arrived at home--beautiful and beloved."

It all makes me think of that Kodak commercial from the 1960s. This one:


Someday perhaps I'll have the technical chops to replace the images with scenes from my mother's life. I'll add it to my Grand Plan list. For now, I just enjoy being in touch with all the ways in which my mother was beautiful and beloved.

Who's the Canadian?

Have we learned … that courtesy ranks with courage? Do we know how to be good losers? Do we know the power of kindness, the joy of work? Do we appreciate the influence of example, the worth of character?

Sounds positively Canadian, doesn't it? As if the person who said it came from a country and tradition that celebrates peace, order, and good government. A country with an international reputation for politeness, multiculturalism, dependability.

Only it's not Canadian at all. It was written by a real all-American boy, a sixteen-year-old from rural Illinois.

It's from my father's high school valedictory address--Odgen, Illinois, 1933, a small farming community in the middle of corn and soybean fields. And this quote pretty much describes his approach to life. As the twig is bent and all that.

My mother was the one born on this side of the border, in what was then Port Arthur and is now Thunder Bay. But perhaps I'm also "Canadian" from my father.

The photo below is one of my favorite pictures of my father. Extended family assembled in Oklahoma to celebrate his 90th birthday. It rained.


Theodore Lee Agnew, Jr.
December 21, 1916 - April 15, 2007

He was a gentleman and a gentle man. Smart. Methodical. Reliable. Always aware of the example he set, and he set a fine example most of the time.

And best of all, he could irritate me exponentially: his behavior could annoy me beyond all proportion to his actual crime. But not only that, other people thought he was uniformly fabulous--so cute, such a sweetheart, what would we do without Ted?--and that made me feel bad about being irritated while exacerbating the irritation.

He was a real person, living proof that courtesy isn't unknown in the U.S., just as it is not a uniquely Canadian trait.

So yeah, I'm half Canadian. On both sides of the family.

A Cerberus called Hubris

Last week, I made an offhand remark (on Facebook, actually) that I regretted. I've been mulling it over ever since. With just one comment, I was prideful in three different ways. Note that the title of the post includes "hubris," which is a thing made of things: an inflated, prideful term for "pride." Note, too, that when I use the term "pride" in this post, I really mean "egotism," but "pride" sounds better. And hey, my blog: I get to paint myself as I choose.

Here's what happened. My brother had said that Bush's final address reminded him of Louis XVIII. In an addendum, he explained that the Bourbons, after they were restored to the throne, proved that "they had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing."

Pride #1: Family. My first response was an unconscious reaction: a cringe, because "God my family is so weird." I am from a place and an era in which being smart was totally uncool. I grew up before Urkel, before MacGyver, before geeks banded together in their geekiness and found self-esteem. I grew up with Gilligan (the clown is the star) and the Professor (a marginalized weirdo), with the Bradys (angst over nose size, not grades so much), with Charlie's Angels--Kate Jackson, "the smart one," was generally accepted not to be as sexy as the others.

Actually, I didn't watch much TV, because my family was "weird.' No flipping channels (though of course remotes hadn't been invented yet and thus neither had the verb); I had to ask permission to watch a specific show. Usually, I had homework to do. And I actually preferred reading, though I didn't read with any plan or reflection and thus didn't gain much from the experience.

In any case, here my brother was "outing" us again, to the world. I could just hear the snickers from my grade-school classmates: "Louey Who?" My brother couldn't just keep quiet and attract no attention to us as we tried to navigate the shark-infested social waters of this community. Sheesh.

Upon reflection, I realized that this cringe was a form of pride. Sure, my family was kind of strange, but we were by no means the only "weird" family in our town. It was a university town--tons of professors and their kids were our classmates. We weren't all that weird and, although we were smart enough and my siblings were certainly academically very successful, we weren't geniuses. Certainly not of the type to make a John-Nash-style breakthrough (or, thankfully, experience his demons). After 30 years away, It's probably time to just get over myself.

And more disclaimers: Oklahoma is a fine place in many ways. Its residents, some of whom are my relatives, are warm-hearted and kind. The state even has its share of intelligence, both inside and outside my family. In my own defense, I would say that the state as a whole still doesn't seem to value its intelligent citizens to the extent that it should, and I imagine that its residents could agree with that statement, I hope without taking offense.

Pride #2: Country. Which leads me to my next response: "Geez, brother, who do you think you are?" It continues something like this: I knew you when you were nobody, just a kid in diapers, and now you're all big for your britches? I remember when you did this, that, and the other embarrassing thing, so don't you be thinking you're all something. I know better. We all do.

None of which is literally true, of course. I'm the youngest so remember none of my siblings in diapers and have no idea what their childhood trials were, other than the family "weird" vibe.

But that attitude--who do you think you are, I got your number, you can't fool me--is also a form of pride. It says, in essence, "I'm better than you." I first encountered the attitude in Arkansas in reference to Bill Clinton. He was governor. Everybody knew he'd run for President. Nobody thought he'd get there, because who was he, after all? Who were his people, his family, his wife (a Yankee!)? What right did Clinton have to power like that? Bad enough he was governor, with a "pedigree" like that.

But the country rhymes. As Arkansas thought of Clinton, so the rest of the South thought of Arkansas--it had been the frontier where you sent the scalawag sons, those who had struck out and run up debt in the "civilized" states of Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas. How dare someone come from that nothing place and aspire to something?

And as the South thought of Arkansas, so the rest of the country thought of the South--a southern accent is a guaranteed guffaw. TV characters who are hicks, regardless of where they live, have that accent. Case in point: Larry, his brother Darryl, and his other brother Darryl lived in New England and let Bob Newhart be funny, but they were straight out of the Ozarks.

Clinton, of course, found success. But by the time Gore was running against Bush, smart was definitely "out." For the past nine years, intelligence in the U.S. has been labeled "elitist." The cunning, ruthless, and power-hungry have had their time, while marginalizing thoughtful analysis, information, and the wisdom that perspective brings. Ignorant and proud of it: that's us. While I dislike that attitude, some of it apparently rubbed off on me.

President-Elect (for one more day) Obama seems to be making it cool to be intelligent. Let's hope that intelligence isn't put on the pedestal formerly held by ignorance.

The actual answer to the question "who are you?", in relation to my brother, is that he's a historian, specializing in Eastern Europe with a firm base in all of European history. In fact, he's the top international non-Czech expert in Czech history. He has a legitimate platform from which to compare the Bourbons and Bush. Where I have fragments of experience and make wildly generalized statements from those bits of life, he is a genuine scholar. He actually knows what he's talking about. (But it's still my blog.)

Pride #3: International. My third response to my brother's comparison: "Please don't dignify Bush by comparing him to anyone else, anywhere else, at any other time. He is uniquely awful." From living in Canada, I can now see even THAT response as a jaw-dropping form of pride.

News flash: The U.S. is unique--JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER COUNTRY. In other words, the U.S. is no better and no worse than any other nation at any other time in history.

We all have a friend like the U.S. When you have a health problem, hers was worse. When you apologize for something, she's sorrier for a larger transgression. When you achieve something, she did the same thing earlier or is on the cusp of a better achievement if she could just settle down with her sketching pad. When you have an irritating morning, her morning was evidence that the universe is out to get her.

This friend doesn't understand that in your story of your life, YOU are the protagonist. She thinks SHE is the protagonist in all the stories everywhere. And similarly, the U.S. thinks she is the protagonist in the world's story at any given moment. Billions of people in other countries might be living a totally different story. What if we listened to them--and, gasp, learned from them?

So yes, compare away, brother. I see the similarities between Louis XVIII and Bush. Let's talk about other similarities to other countries at other times. Let's see how others have recovered from similar predicaments. Let's learn from others' experiences, so we don't have to make all the mistakes ourselves. Let's use our native intelligence, combined with an international perspective, to do some analysis and gain wisdom.

End of soapbox. Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett, and it's a big one. I need to rest up.

Leak-Free At Last, Leak-Free At Last!!

I could also call this "A man, a plan, a credit card, a few trips to Home Depot, a bunch of sweat, a roof."

But truly, I am rejoicing to the point that "hallelujah" blots out all else.

Saving the 80-year-old structure my grandfather built has been wearing on my psyche since I first really understood that the structure was vulnerable. So, somewhere between ten and fifteen years.

During the first five years, I had to learn to take responsibility. I'm still working on it, but I made huge strides during those years. For one thing, I learned to ask hard questions about legal and financial matters (though baby steps, as it turned out). And like that there.

During the middle five years, I had to learn how to do things. Those years were the hardest--actually into the sixth and seventh years, I still despaired. Any project I undertook to make the place feel less forlorn--painting inside or outside, clearing mouse habitations from various places (ick), spraying against ants eating through the roof--were ultimately undone by the leaking roof.

But before anything could be done about the roof--which actually was replaced maybe ten or twelve years ago, but not properly--we had to figure out how to resolve issues with the building's foundations. Thanks to the weight of a piano over the course of fifty years, the entire back section was sinking into the ground. The front sleeping porch was sliding off to the right, and the bathroom was falling off to the left.

However, the world is a different place today. Since the summer of 2004, I have known that eventually this day would come. We have addressed the issues of the foundation (and when I say "we," I mean Roy). The roof is on (also Roy) and new flooring (ditto) is nearly ready to accept the piano, I hope for 50 more years. Now the tasks I undertake, like painting flooring, aren't equivalent to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Yes, there was more responsibility-taking along the way. Yes, there has been more learning how to do things. But the biggest thing I've learned is that it is possible to find solutions to issues. As a wise woman used to tell me, you always have choices; you may not always like them, but you always have them.

But possibly the biggest lesson I've learned is the true meaning of "labo(u)r of love." And what a gift THAT has been.

Sunrise! Yikes!!

This morning, I woke up early. Either a mosquito was buzzing around in the bedroom, or I have been hearing mosquitoes buzzing around so much that I hear them even when they're not there. Regardless, dawn was approaching, it was just after 6, and I was awake. So I got up.

I noticed that the sun wasn't up yet. Downstairs, I put on coffee, got Roy's camera, and went out onto the deck to watch and take pictures of the sunrise. About 6:40, I let the spruce partially obscure the direct sun and took some pictures. I haven't downloaded them yet.

Once the coffee kicked in, I was surprised. Sunrise at 6:40, though earlier than the 7:30 sunrise I was happy about in May, and far earlier than the 8:40 sunrise of early November, is later than waking at 4 to golden (though still pre-dawn) skies, as I did in mid-June.

Time is passing. (I know. Stop the presses.) Sometimes I think life was easier when I really thought seasons changed all at once, even though as a kid I found those dates on the calendar confusing. "Autumn" in Oklahoma gets rolling in November; spring sometimes pushes up crocus in January or February (and frostbites it in April). Although I've tried to become more aware of the exterior world in which I live, it seems physically impossible for human beings (at least this one) to perceive daily incremental changes in seasons.

So perhaps mornings like this one function like birthdays or other milestone days. Maybe their job is to call attention to something and let me be aware. I appreciate the opportunity to be mindful of time's passage. But it does engender a "yikes!" or two, and I don't dread winter's approach, truly.

It's just that--well, that time is passing. Perhaps it's happiness that, in part, causes my mixed feelings about that. After all, when the present is so fabulous, it's hard not to cling to it, even though the future promises to be fabulous as well.

Incon-ceeeeevable

For a long time--more than forty years, to be more precise yet still coy--I knew this place only in the summer. I had seen a few pictures of northwestern Ontario in the winter, but basically, winter here was an intellectual construct. It was something I knew existed, but it was not real to me.

Sort of like firing a weapon in self-defense. Opening a retail store and selling things to customers who want them. Winning the lottery.

Here we are at the beginning of August, the time when my family traditionally showed up for our three weeks of camp life. It's this time of year, the explosion of summer at its most full, that is "normal" to me. And other times of year now seem, as the subject line suggests, inconceivable.

Yet the rest of the seasons, and the transition times, have been fully real in the years that I have lived them. They were real at the time, but seem less so now. How does that work? Looking at yesterday's picture of snow, paging through my stored photos of the other seasons--even pictures of May and June this year or previous years I've been here--I see scenes that I recognize. If I try hard enough, I can remember things about them.

But, even though I lived them, those seasons don't exist for me in the same way that this place, today, does.

These are the days when you know why "growing like a weed" is so true that it became cliche. When new growth on the trees stops and all the greens deepen from lime and celery to forest (and there's a reason they call it "forest" green) and mallard. When ducklings and goslings become harder and harder to distinguish from their parents.

Other seasons feel different. I do remember telling my husband, back in February or March, that summer was inconceivable. Wrapping in layer upon layer to go outside, choosing which mittens I needed, wishing for more pairs of wool socks--those activities were "normal." It seemed impossible that I would soon (in the grand scheme of things, "a few months" is equivalent to "soon") sit in a tank top and shorts in a rowboat.

But, probably because of those forty-odd years, summer remains more essentially real than winter, even though it's shorter. Like the academic calendar I use to organize my internal "new year," it's imprinted at a deep level.

I have spent a lot of my so-called adulthood considering aspects of my upbringing. Some I save; some I discard with relief.

I wonder if my internal sense of this place will eventually change its default setting, so that winter is the "normal" season and summer is the glorious aberration. If it does, it will happen at a level beyond my control. I don't think I can create a process analogous to "overcoming my upbringing."

I don't necessarily want to try--but I do want to pay attention. Because this setting, these few weeks, are a glorious time. And if they lose their default status, I'd like to say goodbye.

This Morning

Today, January 1, represents the ultimate in invisible-yet-not-imaginary lines. When I woke up this morning, it was snowing, just as it was last night. (That's snow from January, 2006, at left.) The morning chores have been the same today as they were yesterday. Morning TV is still on its holiday (meaning fluffy) schedule, just like yesterday and the previous two weeks. Aside from turning a new calendar page, an activity that actually happens at least twelve times a year, today isn't all that different from yesterday.

But it's also completely different. We've crossed an invisible line. For me, the "new year" in January is a mental construct. Yes, it approximates a new season, the switch from gathering winter darkness to the approaching light of spring. But autumn, with its release from the heat and humidity of Oklahoma summers and its new academic year, has always been the real "new year" for me. The solstice has less meaning in my personal history than the equinox, so it's harder to adopt as an emotional new year.

But this year may be different. This year, the change from 2007 to 2008 has more meaning. Last year was excellent for me in many ways (wedding) and hellish in others (father's death and dissolution of the family home). Of course, I'm not alone in having good moments and bad ones in 2007--it's been a difficult year for many soldiers' families, for example, and for families in occupied territories, and even for some families in Thunder Bay. My own highs and lows in 2007 were perhaps more extreme than those I've experienced in previous years, but each year has them. It's unreasonable to expect that 2008 will be radically different from the norm--say, 2006 or 2002 or even 2009.

Unreasonable or not, though, turning over the page of my calendar to one that says January 2008 creates in me a new sense of optimism. At last the 2007 Dickensian year, with its estates and its deaths and its improbable happiness in the face of it all, is finished. A new year is beginning. And in 2008, as in 2007 and every year, the deepest shadows and most blinding flashes of brightness both bring rewards, even when I forget to look for them.

Boxing Day

Happy holidays, everyone--including today. The post-holiday shopping season started today up here, but many people (including those who work at my gym) have today off. In fact, the gym was open until noon on the 24th but is closed all day today. Boxing Day is serious business north of 49.

We have had enough snow here in the past few days to repair damages from the rain that took out much of our previous snow. The skiing today was good. There's only one tree newly down (joining about ten others on various paths), and it doesn't completely block the way.

The turkey carcass has been cooked to within an inch of its life and is now resting comfortably in a garbage bag; the soup and stock is safely stowed in the fridge and freezer. Holiday treats have disappeared, for the most part. Those that aren't gone by the time I'm doing dishes tonight are outta here, too.

Sons and ex-husbands have headed home; babies have returned from their other households. Post-holiday trips, either home or for family visits, are underway.

In other words, the holidays are over (for the most part) and we all survived them.

In a year like this one, it just doesn't get much better than this. No matter what side of the border you're on.

Inside? Outside? Part Deux, Squared

This year, so far, has had its moments. It's the kind of year in which your father dies AND you get married.

Today is proving to be no exception. It's only 10 in the morning. I saw my husband off to an all-day meeting, a process that required me to be awake several hours before I was ready. Then I settled in to spend some quality time in the house. I'm still recuperating from the trip, and what I need is some quiet time. Instead, what should I hear but a distinctive scrabbling noise.

This house is a nice house, a real live house--no cottage or "camp." It is, therefore, INSIDE. However, my office is in the walk-out basement. We have known, because we have seen, that rodentia of the squirrel and mouse variety can get in somehow, though we have thought we have plugged their ingress points. The weather is cooling off and now is the prime time for rodentia to come scouting for winter warmth. I could have done without company today, however.

As I mentioned, I'm still recuperating from the trip south--and east, but mostly south and mostly from the part of the trip that was due south. In other words, Washington DC was fun. They were having a solar home competition (see photo) on the Mall. The monuments were still there, as were the museums. I had a lot of fun with my friend in my favorite city.

Then came the Oklahoma part. Although I also saw a couple of friends during that long week (really 10 days by the time we got home), it was mostly work-work-work. And it involved dealing with family and memories.

Twenty-four boxes (and an envelope) containing my mother's papers made it to Austin, where the Mathematics Association of America archives are housed. Probably 50 (nobody counted!!) boxes of my father's Methodista made it to Oklahoma City University, where we hope they will be pored over by scholars interested in the esoterica of Methodist politics. And some 20 more boxes are ready for Oklahoma State to pick up in their second go-round of "all the rest of Daddy's papers."

Through it all, the five of us acquitted ourselves well. We got snappish at times but hey, we were tired. We all worked hard. We divided our parents' belongings in ways that made us happy. One recurring theme I heard was "I want someone to want that, so I'll take it if nobody wants it, but if someone wants it, please take it." I know that many objects that I associate with my parents are safe in the keeping of the family, and that's great.

What I didn't know (OK, I knew, but I didn't think it would affect ME) was how hard the work would be, physically and emotionally (another form of inside/outside). I've slept a lot since we got home late Tuesday. I was looking forward to a restful day today. But that scrabbling...

I have a "thing" about rodents. I can handle seeing bears on the porch more easily than I can contemplate sharing space with a squirrel or mouse. Therefore, I will spend the day, which happens to be my birthday, hanging out in town--either in my apartment or at a Starbucks. Or both. Someplace that's definitely inside, without rodents.

Because 2007 is continuing as it started...as a year in which your father dies AND you get married.

Now? Then?

This week, CBC Radio is running a five-part series on memory called The Once and Future Past. I caught part of last night's show, which was apparently devoted to the moment you recall something. The interviews touched on false "recovered" memories, the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the general suggestibility of memory. The program also mentioned post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mostly to distinguish it from the other topics it was covering last night. Of course, that's the part that was the most interesting to me.

From what I understand of PTSD, it's very different from being haunted by memories of something. It's more like being unable to distinguish between "now" and "then." Instead of remembering something, you re-live it.

I doubt I've had experiences traumatic enough to "count," on some cosmic counter, as PTSD. But I think a lot of what we slap labels on is actually just an experience that's at one end of a spectrum of experiences. Perhaps PTSD is an extreme form of an experience that some of us more boring people also have in a milder form.

Here's why it's on my mind.

When my father was sick in Tucson last spring, my sister and I drove regularly from her house to the hospital and the rehab facility and finally, once, to the hospice facility, all in the same campus of buildings. We did it for nearly a month before he died. We got really good at it. We learned what to carry with us (bottles of water, address/phone books, pads of paper, extra pens, cell phone chargers). We learned how to find the ER, the 400s, the surgery waiting room which doubled as the waiting room for the CCU, the place with the bad espresso, the in-cafeteria Starbucks, the Schlotzky's. We learned visiting hours and how to get in after visiting hours.

We learned to cope with myriad new realities at a moment's notice: my father was sick enough to be hospitalized, then suddenly critical, then slowly mending, then definitely recuperating, then experiencing setbacks, then holding his own, then suddenly dying. It was an intense experience, and a rewarding experience, and one I hated but wouldn't trade for anything.

This past weekend, my sister hosted our elderly aunt for a weekend's visit. They went to a fancy wedding, and my aunt tripped and, as it turned out, broke her nose. An ambulance came and took her to the same ER where my father had been. My sister called me in the wee hours, understandably distraught at packing her bag again with address/phone books, pads of paper and pens, water, cell phone charger. She didn't want to get into the car and make that drive again, to park in the lot again, to sit in the same ER again, to see the same hospitalists, to listen to a patient under sedation ramble incoherently, to be across the hall from a dying patient, to hurry up and wait, to wait some more while our aunt was admitted.

Was she re-living our March/April trauma? It sure felt like it to her. Yes, she knew that what she was experiencing was "now," and that her experience with my father was "then." She knew in her head that she wasn't back there in that time, but that logic didn't really register. It didn't feel like it. It felt to her as if the line between present and past trauma blurred. Whether that "counts," on that cosmic counter, as PTSD is immaterial. There are degrees and degrees of flashbacks, and she was having one. I was sorry not to be there to support her, but I wasn't sorry to miss out on the experience.

Her experience has made me more aware of how much of my life I spend in some other time--whether it's whining about the previous value of the loonie and running mental calculations on what I would get for this U.S. check if I'd had it a year ago, or worrying about whether I'll be able to cover for a receptionist on Tuesday without seriously screwing up. Obviously, those experiences aren't PTSD. But my own lesson from the experience is that I could stand to live more in the "now," and less in the "then," whether present or future.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

P.S. I could say that our aunt's story ends more happily than our father's. But I'm not so sure.

Our aunt is safe at her home, where she still lives alone. Her daughter, son, and daughter-in-law are conferring about her general health and future care. Their journey is just getting started. At the very least, they'll need keys to her house, plus permission to attend her medical appointments and know her medications. What they could use is a good dose of courage to ask the tough questions about her mental status. And then they'll need a backbone of steel for the road ahead.

Meanwhile, my father died in April, firm in his faith and surrounded by love and laughter. Perhaps that's the best ending to his story, if his story had to end at all.

Trash or Treasure? Jewel or Junk?

Today I got to see The Crapture from the other side. I worked at the church's Fall Fair. Antique dealers rent tables in the assembly hall to sell "real" "antiques," while the church sells "better" donations from its members. Nothing on our tables was more than $5, and most treasures were $2 or $3.

It's an odd feeling to see a vase that used to be in your living room sitting on a table with glassware sets, the odd bit of crystal, silver-plated serving trays, and other general housewares.

I've worked a few garage sales in my day. I've known before that there's no telling what people will buy. But I learned it again today. A young couple with a child of the "let me down!" age bought a special picture frame. It has places for those small-sized school photos. Maybe they start taking those in daycare or junior kindergarten; if not, that family will be waiting awhile.

A woman I know bought a stained glass wall hanging that I didn't want to bring from Colorado but found in my stuff anyway when I unpacked it. I knew she'd like it and I'm glad it found a home where it will be appreciated.

One shopper who spent quite a bit of time at the "real" antique dealers' tables also bought a large blue stoneware horse from us at the "bargain" tables. I was glad she bought it; that horse had a lot of personality and I was afraid it would start talking to me. And what would I do with a big blue horse? As I carried it out to her van, which she loaded down with several boxes and bags full of stuff, she said she'd just finished her Christmas shopping. I wonder what the horse recipient will think of her taste in gifts. I hope whoever gets that horse likes it.

Oh, hell. I wanted the blue horse.

Pride or Hubris?

After yesterday's crowing entry, disaster struck. Or, more accurately, a gale passed through and a tree struck--only the ground, fortunately. It was about ten feet from the camp and about a foot from the car. Both of us were safe. But it was still pretty freaky to hear a huge crack and know what was happening and be completely powerless to stop it.

I started thinking about the hubris of imagining that I can direct the way my presence changes the landscape, even here, where I am most intimately connected with the land. Me? Pfff. Nature holds all the trump cards.

I don't often quote the Christian Bible, especially the Old Testament, but this is Ecclesiastes Chapter 1, Verses 2b through 4: "All is vanity. What profit hath a woman of all her labor which she taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever."

I'm of the generation that currently cometh. I follow two generations that came to this part of the North Shore to build and rebuild and build again. I hope another generation will come after me. If not, that's OK: the earth abideth forever.

And should another generation get too big for its britches, she'll send a birch tree down to remind them who's boss.

Boundaries Internal

So I went to that other wedding yesterday. Mine.

It was very small--just family and a few friends on the beach at our camp, fewer than 15 people all together. It was the perfect ritual in an informal but meaningful setting with important people there.

It got me wondering where I would draw the line between "single" and "married" for me and Roy. It turns out to be one of those invisible but not imaginary lines. Yesterday's ceremony solemnized our vows in a very public way. But he and I have also been married, on the inside, for some time.

On a purely prosaic note, this morning at the gym the conversation turned to cell phone holders. I started to say, "My boyfriend has the kind..." and realized that now I say, "My husband." I enjoyed that.

In fact, I'm very happy to be officially married. I look forward to our lives together. And although this wasn't my first time to marry, it will be my last.

Ritual and Meaning

Back in Canada on Friday, I went to a wedding Saturday--that of my fiance's daughter. Some elements of the ceremony were traditional, even formal. It was at a church, the bride wore a heavy white gown and a veil over her updone hair, and they signed a certificate, which apparently is a picture-taking occasion in this country. They also had a reception, where they cut two cakes (chocolate and white).

Other elements of the ceremony were less traditional. The bride's oldest son (age 7) walked her down the aisle and did a Bible reading. The middle son, age 4, carried the box with the rings. The youngest, age 13 months, walked partway down the aisle with the bridesmatron and refused to go farther under his own power. The minister also asked the boys if they were OK with their mother getting married to this man. (They are. Everyone is--they're great together.)

Oh, and the cakes were Hot Wheels cakes. The two older boys got to pick the kind of cakes they wanted, and that's what they wanted. Vroom, vroom.

The best part of the wedding that it was exactly right for this family. It was meaningful. The silly moments and laughter didn't detract from the very sincere vows that the entire family made.

Which is not to say that large, ultra-traditional weddings, in any faith tradition, are necessarily without meaning. Many people find comfort and meaning in using the same words as their ancestors to make identical vows. It's impossible to gauge the depth of a promise from the outside, whether the bride is barefoot in a meadow or veiled in a cathedral.

I'll be at another wedding in less than a week. It will be on a beach, with just a few family members present. It, too, will be perfect for the couple. The wedding cake will be Nanaimo bars. I know, because I'll be the bride.

Beginnings

My father was born in a small town in central Illinois that hasn't changed much since his birth. My mother was born in a slightly larger town, now part of a large city, in northwestern Ontario. They met in graduate school. They got married and had five children, of which I'm the younger daughter. My mother became a U.S. citizen before I was born. So technically, I'm all-American, apple pie, baseball and yadda yadda. After all, I was born to two U.S. citizens.

But my heart has always belonged in Canada--more specifically, to a few acres of real estate about 15 miles outside what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Superior. Here, the family has two cottages, or "camps" in Northwestern Ontario-speak, that date back to my mother's childhood in the 1920s. My partner lives in a lovely home between them, on property that originally belonged to the family but which my mother sold in the 1980s, in part to finance the addition of plumbing to one of the camps. Currently, we split our time between his house and my apartment in town, though summer finds us mostly at the lake.

When we were children, we came to these camps every summer. My mother needed to be here, partly to escape the heat of her Oklahoma home, but also because being here refreshed her. The icy water and whispering birches spoke to her spirit, as did the mundane challenges of primitive living. On a wood-burning stove, she whipped out dazzling meals; she painted inside and outside walls, hauled water, and chopped wood with the rest of us.

Through the years, I came to share her need to be here, but my life's path continued to wind through the U.S. Finally, in midlife, I arrived, suitcase in hand, to stay. I belong here.

Moving anywhere is painful--leaving behind the familiar, even for new, exciting opportunities, means saying goodbye to part of one's life. Moving to a foreign country, no matter how similar the cultures, has its own challenges. I often wonder if the similarities make the differences even more acute. And then I start to wonder how similar our cultures are, anyway.

There you have it: a bit of who I am, and a bit of what I contemplate.