And then who the hell was I?

I can't understand why I am exposing us all in this way . . . . Is this the tsunami that she unleashed when she went, and all of us still flailing in her wake, trying to put her together in the wreckage, and her slipping away, over and over, just as we begin to see her face? - Sarah Polley, in an email to her father Michael Polley

Looking to see what family connections there possibly could be connected to me and enjoy building hopefully a happy picture - From the profile of a recent DNA match to the Resident Fan Boy

Stories We Tell has that quality shared by all of my favourite films: the ability to draw me back, again and again, noticing new details every time; being a completely different movie every damn time.

The subject is the gradual revelation of a family scandal, and how widely the narrative varies: from those directly involved, to the those affected by it, to those who witnessed aspects of it.

We tend to screen books, music, and movies through our own uppermost concerns, so my first viewing of Stories We Tell, about ten years ago, reminded me of the myth-making and myth-busting of family research and the resulting clashes of narratives and identity.  More personally, I had a similar, but not identical, revelation in my own family at almost the same time, resulting in everyone affected having to rewrite their own family story.  I think few amateur genealogists fully appreciate the risks of their research, but this risk applies to anyone setting out to tell the story of their relatives.

Our changes in perception are constantly evolving, so a few months ago, I re-watched the film following the tsunami in the wake of the death of Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning author who died last spring. The figurative family bombshell that hit Sarah Polley's family about a decade and a half after the death of their matriarch is not of the legacy-tarnishing quality as that affecting the Munro family, but it was also deliberately kept out of the papers, initially to protect Michael Polley, Sarah's father, and then, because this documentary was being made.

Sarah Polley in the 1980s with parents Michael and Diane

Diane Polley, an actor and casting director, died in 1990, when Sarah Polley, then a busy child actor and now an award-winning writer, was eleven.  Diane had four older children:  John and Suzy Buchan, from her first marriage, and Mark and Joanna Polley, from her second marriage.  They all take their seats at the beginning of the film, like a family gathering at an intervention - except none of them are in the same room; this is footage from separate interviews, during which Sarah Polley asked each to "tell the whole story, from the beginning", as if to someone who is hearing it for the first time.  The backing music is "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver:  And I told you to be balanced/ And I told you to be kind....  

And the late Diane Polley also seems to take her place as well, via footage of an audition from the mid sixties.  But she doesn't say a word.

Someone who doesn't take a seat is Sarah Polley herself, who deliberately keeps silent through most of the film, aside from the occasional question or brief comment, and appears in the occasional re-enactment of events, but with no soundtrack. Sometimes this makes her presence seem oddly impassive, but, as her father astutely points out, she has the ultimate control over what makes it into the film.

Here, I must alert you to spoilers, if you're planning on watching this movie -- and you should.

Polley moves back and forth in time, revealing the surprises and twists out of sequence, but closer to the timeline of their discovery.  She illustrates events with authentic family movies and (*first spoiler*) reconstructed Super 8 footage, using actors.  The Resident Fan Boy didn't notice the latter, but I did, mainly because I recognised Rebecca Jenkins, a friend of Diane's, an actor who also sang back-up for Jane Siberry in the eighties.

Polley is careful to illustrate the differences in  the many narratives about (*big* spoiler) finding out the identity of her birth father. The stories are similar, but vary in small, but important, details, revealing, in particular, the biases of her father, actor Michael Polley, and her birth father, producer/writer Harry Gulkin.  At one point, Gulkin tells Sarah, with some intensity, that the story belongs to him, because he's the one surviving person who experienced it directly.  (I have to restrain myself from shouting at the screen every damn time - if the story belongs to anyone, it's Sarah Polley herself.)

One of Polley's greatest assets is the thoughtful articulateness of her interviewees, particularly her siblings, all evidently very bright people with greater comfort in front of a camera than most people.  It's particularly fun when her brothers give her a hard time, in the way that big brothers do.

Close to the end, we have another moving montage of the storytellers, this time to "Demon Host" by Timber/Timbre: All those messages you sent, clear as day/ But in the night, oh, I couldn't get it right.... The camera lingers on each bereft face: Diane's grown children, her husband, her lover, her friends, her brother.  Years later, she is clearly so missed.

Michael Polley and Harry Gulkin both died six years after the release of this film, within a few months of each other.

The unreliable narrator is a new concept for me, and I seem to be coming up against the term multiple times over the past few months.  (Don't know how I missed this while studying literature in university.) This film demonstrates that we are all unreliable narrators; human memory is just too malleable and mutable.

I think Harry Gulkin was mistaken.  The truth, while ever elusive, is closer through the mesh of narratives, rather than sticking to one voice -- even if that seems the more intelligible way.

But then, perhaps truth is never singular.

As you finally get rid of them (Rid of them!)

It's the Ninth Day of Christmas, not the Second, but it's been about sixteen years since I last posted the lyrics to this Elvis Costello ditty (co-written with Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains), and it's been playing in my head a lot this holiday -- not that anyone got drunk, I hasten to add, and we finished the tourtières days ago:

I knew of two sisters whose name it was Christmas,

And one was named Dawn of course, the other one was named Eve.
I wonder if they grew up hating the season,
The good will that lasts til the Feast of St. Stephen

For that is the time to eat, drink, and be merry,
Til the beer is all spilled and the whiskey has flowed.
And the whole family tree you neglected to bury,
Are feeding their faces until they explode.

There'll be laughter and tears over Tia Marias,
Mixed up with that drink made from girders.
’Cause it's all we've got left as they draw their last breath,
Ah, it's nice for the kids, as you finally get rid of them,
In the St Stephen's Day Murders.

Uncle is garglin' a heart-breaking air,
While the babe in his arms pulls out all that remains of his hair.
And we're not drunk enough yet to dare criticise
The great big kipper tie he's about to baptise.

With his gin-flavoured whiskers and kisses of sherry,
His best Chrimbo shirt slung out over the shop.
While the lights from the Christmas tree blow up the telly,
His face closes in like an old cold pork chop.

And the carcass of the beast left over from the feast,
May still be found haunting the kitchen.
And there's life in it yet, we may live to regret,
When the ones that we poisoned stop twitchin'.

It is a far, far better thing

Over the past couple of decades, what passes for Christmas television programming has bemused me.  As far as I can tell, some underpaid minion, saddled with slapping some sort of viewing schedule together, had assumed that, since Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, anything connected with Dickens is Christmassy:  Great Expectations, Bleak House or even A Tale of Two Cities.

With that in mind, I can pompously intone:  "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . . " when talking about this year's Christmas, can't I?

(Well I can.  You weren't there.  Lucky you.)

It was the worst in the sense that I knew it was going to be stressful, took steps to prepare and plan against that eventuality, and it was all exactly as stressful as I feared anyway.  

A house guest (delightful, courteous, and omnipresent).  

Extended family with temperaments diametrically opposed to the introverted temperaments in our household. 

An unusually deaf Demeter, plagued by a small and stubborn ball of wax in her so-called "good ear", and totally bamboozled by aforementioned temperaments. 

A daughter on the autistic spectrum, to whom Christmas is vital, abandoned for a few heart-wrenching minutes, by her panicky father on a holiday carousel.  (It's a long story, please don't make me repeat it.)

And the Resident Fan Boy, whose instinctive defence is shutting down his brain, whenever something emerges from left field, which happens a lot at Christmas.

It was the best of times in the sense that I didn't kill anybody.  I didn't yell at anybody -- except the Resident Fan Boy, and only a couple of times, at that.

The shopping was done on time, and the presents seemed to go over well.  There are still three Christmas cards to mail.  (For those of you not resident in Canada, we had a postal strike from mid-November to mid-December.). What food I managed to produce has been edible, even marginally festive.

So I really have nothing to grumble about.  My expectations weren't overly great, and my house is, in no way, bleak.

Besides, there has been very little Dickens on the telly - apart from A Christmas Carol.  The specialty channels are jammed with scores of Christmas-themed romantic movies, in the vein of Harlequin and Mills & Boon.  They play them year-round now.

Oh, joy.

Merry Eighth Day of Christmas, to you and yours.

We're on the Titanic, but we think it's the Ark

 This song, by Brandy Clark and Adam Wright (featuring Clark's singing with Randy Newman), has been on my mind since rising this morning.

It was written in 2020 and is, alas, as pertinent as ever:

Chocolate and ice cream therapy, I should think.

I wonder why nobody don't like me

Steering clear of news from south of the border, I'm taking refuge in happiness and humour.

When elder daughter was less than a year old, I had a cassette tape of Harry Belafonte's 1959 appearances at Carnegie Hall, and fell madly in love with the quirky "Mama Look a Boo Boo".  

The only trouble was, when I was pushing my baby around in her stroller, doing errands downtown, I'd catch people giving me brief, alarmed sideway glances, and realise that I'd been singing it under my breath:  "Shut your mouth, go away..."

Last week, I stumbled across this 1965 gem from The Danny Kaye Show.  

Excuse me while I shut my mouth and go away.

A prayer to the better angels

 Doom-scrolling is a crummy thing to do before bedtime.

This was brought home, once again, to me about three weeks ago, when I made the mistake of checking my newsfeeds as I lay down to sleep, and stumbled across a veteran American meteorologist named John Morales breaking down as he analysed the approach of Hurricane Milton towards the Florida coastline.

You don't want to see a grown scientist cry.  It's really unsettling.

Last night, the Resident Fan Boy and I watched John Oliver wrap up the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with a passionate plea to American voters to keep that guy from getting into the White House again.  I was startled to see that his eyes were moist.

You don't want to see a British political satirist cry, either.

My American cousin and her son have spent the past few days phoning voters in the swing states.  I'm doing my bit by steering away from newsfeeds.  I'm rather grateful that Facebook blocks news items in and out of Canada.

The RFB and I will be watching Stephen Colbert tonight.  John Oliver will be a guest.  Are we crazy?  Well, the results are unlikely to be known soon, because, after more than eight years of this nonsense, and for reasons that overwhelm and depress me, the vote is likely to be close.   

Another Republican, standing on the edge of the abyss of an American civil war, made a plea to the "better angels of our nature".

I hope I can sleep tonight.

Possibly the best thing I've ever seen on television

In a week of losses, both great and small, I offer a jewel of comfort-viewing. 

I didn't necessarily love everything Dame Maggie appeared in.  (I loathed Downton Abbey; sorry, but I did.)  However, she was usually one of the best things in any production.  

In the following, she is the only thing in the production.  Aside from the crew, the director, and the writing of Alan Bennett.  Other actors have played this role, and beautifully, but this is definitive.  As she was.

If you have the fifty minutes, treat yourself.

Informed consent

The barista asks me if I want a pain au chocolat:  "So you don't look predictable."  (A lot of mornings, I arrive at the counter and the pastry is sitting there on a plate, because they saw me coming.)

"Well, getting consent is always a good idea," I tell her.  She's laughing so much, that she forgets to get the chocolate croissant and hand it to me, even though I've paid, and is momentarily confused to see me still standing there.

"You had my consent and everything!"  I declare in mock indignation.  

I get mock-indignant so often, that I think real indignation would go unrecognised.

Things change

It was my first attempt to run down to the shops on an errand, when I spotted the two neighbourhood boys strolling up my street, clad in almost identical black teeshirts with roomy black trousers billowing out from their long legs.

I've seen them several times over the past year; one of them lives in an apartment building around the corner, and I've seen his pal at the ancient glass entry door in the morning, before they head out to middle school.  (I've also seen them hogging the courtesy seats on buses and scattering ice cream packets on the sidewalk, but, heck, thirteen is thirteen.)

That's the thing.  They don't look thirteen this late summer afternoon.  They've shot up a couple of inches, and their shoulders have broadened.  High school for them, this year, I think.

Then I discovered I'd left my wallet behind, doubled back, and decided to seek a cooler way into the village.  The sun was just bordering on uncomfortably warm, but the shadows were deliciously pleasant, with a light breeze wafting up from the strait.

So I nipped around another corner, and skidded to a halt.

For years, the City of Victoria has covered the utility boxes with historical photos of the surrounding area: landmarks -- such as hospitals and schools -- shown as they were decades before, and houses that are no longer there.

This is startling different, and the reason for it is what had been there before:

That's Joseph Trutch, the first Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, and on at least one list of "The Ten Worst Canadians in History", for his reprehensible policies toward indigenous peoples.

I had an inkling that the former utility cover wouldn't last long, so snapped this photo in 2022.  

That was the spring that Trutch Street changed its name.  The original idea, I believe, was to rechristen it "Truth Street", but then it emerged that the Lekwungen word for "truth" is "Su'it".

It's pronounced something like "SAY-it".  For over a year, the voice prompt on the #7 bus dutifully announced it, until a few months ago, when the name of the bus stop was changed to "Fairfield and Chester".  To be fair, that's the closest cross street to the actual stop.

Blossoming

Oh, I love younger daughter's watercolour paintings.

I know I'm her mother.  They're just so lush, and light years ahead of anything I can manage.

Younger daughter's art lessons ended yesterday, for another summer.  She's been taking them with the same teacher for the past dozen years, with a few exceptions for logistics and pandemics. 

As she left, she embraced her teacher.  The Resident Fan Boy told me the teacher seemed a little surprised, but that younger daughter scoffed, on the way to the bus stop:  "I always give her a hug when lessons are over!"

It's a rare thing just the same.

Just like her paintings.