Poetry in animation

About three years ago, our beloved Pic a Flic closed forever, and sold off a lot of its ecletic collection. We were able to secure a number of our favourites, about 30 DVDs. 

Younger daughter got to work in their animation section, and chose, among other things, a couple of National Film Board of Canada collections. I think she finds them soothing, like a cocktail before dinner.

It occurred to me, while she was re-watching them recently, that I pay precious little attention to the soundtrack of animated shorts, the images are too distracting, I guess. 

In the 1993 Academy-Award-winning Bob's Birthday, for example, there are several arresting images. And I should warn you, this cartoon got censored in the United States. (Nothing enough to get it censored in Canada, but you'll see what I mean.) It was only when younger daughter had this on a few weeks ago, that I realised that Bob recites excerpts of two poems.  You hear him murmur "There is a garden in her face" (written by Thomas Campion and published in 1617), as he gazes out at his dental assistant, who is losing the war against aphids. 

At the very end, blissfully unaware of the social havoc he has wrought, he recites the final three lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's sonnet "The Poets", while waiting for his wife in their car.

All of which seems to indicate the importance of revisiting books, movies, poems, and animated shorts, if you want to catch the details you missed.  Or am I just as oblivious as Bob?

Collective bargaining

About five years ago, a book store fortuitously appeared next door to the coffeeshop, replacing a wine store.  I'm not a wine-drinker, so I was thrilled.  

It's a bit like a Tardis, looks quite tiny from the outside, as you climb the entrance steps, which are painted to look like book spines. (The titles change every few months.). Inside, is much what you'd expect: books on one side; small gift assortments, i.e. bookmarks, reading glasses, cookies, etc. on the other.  But beyond, are two large rooms:  one for used books, and a much larger day-lit room with new books, games, journals and other stationery.  (My particular weakness.) At the end of a corridor with cards for every occasion - some of them quite rude - is a closet stuffed with jigsaw puzzles. There's a puzzle exchange every few weeks; people line up for it.  It's that kind of neighbourhood.

In December, I buy stocking stuffers.  The rest of the year, I mostly buy cards, stocking up every month or so.  Recently, I lay my choices on the cash register counter, in order to rustle up my loyalty card.  The cashier totted up my selection and mulled over what collective noun would work best.

"A kindness of cards?" I suggested.  "No, wait!  A communication of cards!"  She was clearly taken with the former.  I prefer the latter.

Positive identification

Sometimes, on very rare occasions, I arrive at the coffee shop early, before it get really busy, which means it's quiet enough to hear the music on the tannoy.

While waiting for my order, I strolled over the speaker in the southwest corner, holding up my phone to ask quietly:  "Hey Siri, what is that song?"

"Naming that tune," came the answer, followed by "Sorry, I don't seem to recognise that song."  I tried again. No dice.

I returned to the pick-up counter to claim my mocha, and ask the barista, but an older fella (well, older than me, anyway), was picking up a complicated order, then requesting a spoon, and the song ended.

Back at my table, I heard the song again, which rarely happens, and made a beeline back, where my Birthday Buddy Barista was now busy steaming milk.

"I like this song, and Siri can't tell me what it is."

"Mac DeMarco," he replied, without a beat of hesitation.  "It's called 'Nobody'."

"Matt?"

"Mac. M-A-C."

"No one?"

"Nobody."

"Wait a minute," I cried.  "It's printed on your shirt!"

"It's my favourite teeshirt."

"You could have just pointed!  You had visuals!"

Back at my table, I entered the song into my "Liked" playlist on Spotify, and looked up Mac DeMarco.  Born in Duncan (60 kilometres north of Victoria) in 1990; grew up in Edmonton, where I spent my early childhood.  A Taurus -- just like the Birthday Buddy Barista and me.

Doing it for Demeter - Part Three

Demeter was advanced in years when she died, and made quite extensive notes about twenty years ago about her memorial service preferences.  It was a time when she was attending lots of memorial services at her church, and it must have been frequently on her mind.

As a result, it was much upon my mind as well, as she mailed documents and poems to our house in Hades.  I often thought fleetingly about what I might say at her memorial, and imagined it would be about my loss and how each of us loses a different person when a particular loved one dies, because we're all multifaceted in our relationships - never the same person to those around us.

I wrote about this in my blog a decade ago, when I attended the memorial of a friend's husband, and wondered at the varied perceptions of him, reflected in the testimonials. Which one was accurate?  All of them, in a way.

As it turned out, I, as the eldest child, was assigned Demeter's eulogy, and that's a different business, because it meant I had to tell my mother's life story in ten minutes, which didn't leave much room for going on about my own particular sense of loss.

I was actually pretty grateful for that.  I was also grateful for what I'd learned from being a hospice volunteer, and making family history presentations for BIFHSGO.

Hospice taught me many things, but chiefly, that grief may be universal, but it is not, by any means, identical, and varies wildly even within a single human experience.  I didn't journal at all in the week preceding and following my mother's death.  When my entries resumed, they contained a certain amount of sorrow, guilt, and rage -- not always, and not always at the same time.  Fortunately, I knew this was not abnormal, because a tenet at Hospice was:  "Anger is a secondary emotion."  

The primary emotion isn't always grief -- but it often is.

Doing presentations for a family history society is good preparation for taking on a eulogy.  You have to be organised, clear, reasonably entertaining, and accurate.  

But not too accurate.  That's why they call it a "eulogy".

So, just as I had for my presentations, I wrote in chunks, edited, and reshaped.  I read it out loud to myself, and timed it.  I pushed aside the rage and irritation, knowing it was the grief talking, and repeated to myself:  "I'm doing this for Demeter."

The rage and irritation was, of course, largely a result of how Double Leo Sister was manifesting her own grief, i.e. almost frantic over-busyness, not only wanting to run most of the memorial service, but fretting about emptying and cleaning up Demeter's condo.  (Demeter owned her condo outright, and there is no deadline to vacate it.)

DLS was anxious to bring friends with her from her up-Island community to help with the condo-clearing, friends whom I don't know, and who did not know our mother.

"You've done so much already; we want to take some of the burden off you," DLS declared.

I kept my retorts to myself.  I was doing this for Demeter.

I engaged in defensive condo-clearing ahead of my sister's arrival for the memorial service.  I knew I couldn't sort through everything on my own, but I had some idea of where Demeter's private and personal stuff -- her toiletries, her journals -- were stashed, and went in for ninety-minute sessions to dispose of some items and to ferry others out of the reach of relative strangers.  It made me feel better, anyway.

And I hit pay dirt.  Not only did I find photos, documents, and keepsakes that brought my mother's life more sharply into focus, but I found the Once Upon a Lifetime workbook, and an accompanying notebook - two items for which I'd been searching diligently since Demeter's death.

Still available online!

Back when I had two really young children, I had somehow snatched an opportunity to browse at Bolen Books one afternoon, when this item caught my eye. I believe I gave it to Demeter as a Mother's Day present. I was not prepared for how seriously she took it.

She meticulously answered each question (except for the military section - she didn't serve) over the next few years, using, as suggested, a supplementary notebook in order to go into detail.  She added and updated over the next decade.

I now had a tool to help me step away from myself and my perceptions, and steer the eulogy towards what she thought was important.  At least I hope I did.  She would have had some feedback and corrections.  Fair enough.  It's her story.

Delivering the eulogy promised an extra benefit.  My part would be first, after the minister's introduction and the lighting of the chalice.

So, I found myself, sitting in the front row of the sanctuary, listening to the pianist play "Suo Gan", and for the first time since my mother died, suddenly feeling overcome.  

I sternly put my tears aside.

I'm doing this for Demeter, I thought.

Swimming while sitting down

They've been experimenting with the occasional "light classical" playlist at the coffeehouse, a bit of a break from the boomer tunes, and nineties nostalgia. I half-listen while I work at "my" table, having stolen it back from another interloper in my bid to become The Coffeehouse Crank -- I have quite a bit of competition for that title. 

 I slowly become aware of the piece that's currently playing:

  

When I was very little, my mother would play classical music, the "programme" type, because she knew I loved stories; although I would add my own stories to the music, if none were available.

A favourite was Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of Animals (1886), for obvious reasons.  My mum would read out the comic verses that accompany each animal, composed by Ogden Nash in the late 1940s:

The swan can swim while sitting down/ For pure conceit he takes the crown.

He looks in the mirror, over and over/ And claims to have never heard of Pavlova.

Being four, my reaction was immediate and indignant:  "Mummy! Stop laughing!  The swan is sad!"

Now, I'm the one who's sad.

The music plays on.  She's everywhere and inextricably within.  Someday, this will be a comfort.

Earring aid

She's one of the incoming summer wave of new baristas at my coffee shop.  She's very young, and statuesque -- and she likes my earrings, which are creamy ovals with lavender cloisonné flowers at the centres.

I tell her my mother bought me a pair years ago, and I loved them so much that they fell apart, and after my mother died, I silently asked her permission, and squirrelled her slightly different variation of the earrings away, wearing them to her memorial service for good luck.

I must have made an impression, because 90 minutes later, when I'm dropping off my coffee cup at the rear sink, she asks my name, and in return, I ask her hers.  It's Tamsin, though she has to repeat it -- I fancy I hear the narrowed vowels of a New Zealand accent, which somehow remind me of cone-shaped tubes.

"Tamsin!" I exclaim.  "That's the female form of Thomas!  I've always liked that name!"

She tells me her sister had a room-mate named Thompson.

"Tamsin and Thompson?  How confusing for your sister!"  I hastily add:  "She probably recognised you, though!" 

It's probably time for me to go.

I'm pretty sure the staff is encouraged to address regulars by name, but I feel seen all the same.  It's rather nice.

Sic transit gloria mundane

Screen capture from TheKenContinuum YouTube video - May 16

I picked up a new habit during the past year.  Riding buses and walking.  Virtually.

It started with the YouTube videos of Wanderizm and Walk From Home.  I'm pretty sure they're the same person, or at least working in tandem.  Their graphics are the same.

Wanderizm features (mostly) double-decker bus rides in the Greater London area, although she/he (I think it's a she, but it may be a they) takes the occasional stroll.  Walk from Home (whom I'm pretty sure is a she - I've seen her shadow), like Wanderizm, makes unnarrated journeys throughout London neighbourhoods, and parks, but on foot, of course.  

I think the idea is that you can pretend you're the one strolling or perched in the front seat atop a double-decker.  It's the certainly the attraction for me.  Sometimes, I pull a chair to within a few feet of our bigscreen television to assist the illusion of actually being there. 

Oh, don't look at me like that.

I love the quotidian aspect of it: students returning from school, parents dropping off kids, people striding to work. A large section of my heart is in London, now that elder daughter has made it her home for over half a decade.  I take virtual trips near her flat and work, and scan the surroundings hopefully.  Haven't spotted her yet.

Also, a chunk of my family history and that of the Resident Fan Boy is in London, so I explore those neighbourhoods too.

It's oddly addictive.  The videographers sell the "ambient" aspect of it, possibly with ASMR in mind. No tingling for me, I'm afraid.

While never tiring of London - in keeping with Samuel Johnson's view - I have ventured elsewhere, exploring cities I've never visited, such as Amsterdam and New York.

However, I've been particularly drawn to a city in which I have lived -- Toronto.

YouTube has two notable videographers who march around Toronto (or cycle, or take transit), and they've become celebrities, judging from the greetings they get from passers-by:  Johnny Strides and The Ken Continuum.  I'd say they're thirty-somethings, and they're so Canadian, they make me giggle.

Unlike their British counterparts, they provide a running commentary, including what they know (or guess) about the city's history, and snide comments on sidewalk cyclists, and bad driving.

Recently, I was taking a virtual stroll with "KenContinuum" along Broadview Avenue in Toronto, as crowds gathered to watch the sunset at Riverdale Park East, sitting on the grounds that slope toward the Don River on a Victoria Day long weekend.  Apparently, this is a year-round thing.  I'd never heard of this, but I only lived in Toronto for the first year of my marriage, and my observation at that time was that no matter how obscure the niche or interest, you could usually count on a good turn-out, and sunset-watching is hardly an obscure pastime.

This crowd was mostly young and diverse - lot of parents with young kids, and couples on dates.

"The Ken Continuum" eventually wheeled around and headed into the gathering dark, past the old Don Jail, through the Riverside neighbourhood, the eastern end of Toronto's Chinatown, and eventually into the Regent's Park area.

Regent's Park??? I thought. At night?  Is he nuts?

I was a home support worker, while the Resident Fan Boy finished law school at U of T, and my heart would sink when I was assigned Regent's Park -- a grim and impoverished maze of old apartment blocks.  As he walked, "The Ken Continuum's" running commentary included a mention of Regent's Park's old "dodgy reputation". It's now largely rebuilt - apparently with a few grimy remnants to the north - and is a patchwork of new buildings, new shops, lots of green space and recreational areas, including an aquatic centre, glowing in the dusk.

I watch these virtual walks with a gentle pull of nostalgia, but the Toronto I remember is largely gone.  The memories are a young woman's memories.  That bus has departed.  I decided to step out into the evening of my own neighbourhood for a stroll.  I didn't record it. 

Even in the midst of life

It seems when you're in love, all songs are about love, and when your heart is broken, all songs are about lost dreams.  When you have children, the songs you hear echo all the feelings you feel.

And then there are times like these, when lyrics bite into me, yet provide hope and a odd sort of comfort.

 

Did you know these were Roger Ebert’s dying words?

It’s all an elaborate hoax

He looked ever peaceful/ He looked ever young 

Accepting his moment that soon would be done 

He wrote in a note/That he passed to his wife /As he felt him shedding the skin of this life 

It said "There is a vastness that can’t be contained /Or described as a thought in the flesh of our brain 

It’s everything, everywhere, future and past /Dissolving forever in an eternal flash "

 

Worth no words to say that he loved her so much/ His hands seems to pass through whatever it touched/ And the credits that rolled listed all of God’s names /As images floated away from their frames 

 Did you know these were Roger Ebert’s dying words? 

 It’s all an elaborate hoax

- "Roger Ebert" by Clem Snide

Doing it for Demeter - Part Two

There is a certain amount of power struggle in all family occasions, but particularly in the events and ceremonies surrounding a death.  Grief is a very personal thing, and people tend to assert ownership:  who has suffered the greatest lost, where one is in the hierarchy of mourning, all exacerbated by emotional intensity.

In my years as a hospice volunteer, I often had a front-row seat to this.  I remember puttering in the small open-plan kitchen at Victoria Hospice one late winter's afternoon, when two warring factions of a soon-to-be-bereaved family exploded into confrontation in the lobby.  I froze, and don't remember if I had the presence of mind to run to alert the staff, but they would have heard the shouting anyway.

I was determined to avoid similar scenes in the weeks leading up to my mother's memorial service, knowing how much it would have upset Demeter -- and knowing how easy it might be to trip the wire.

It didn't take my non-existent powers of prophecy to predict that Double Leo Sister would want to run the show.  I am, after all, a survivor of both her weddings, both ambitious pageants with items, displays, performances, and minute details being continually added, up until the last possible minute.

This means I was not particularly surprised when DLS didn't log in to the ZOOM meeting for planning the service with the minister.  She said she slept through it:  "I've been through a lot."

The minister forwarded transcripts of the meeting to her with handy-dandy ways to add comments and annotations; DLS said she'd been "denied access to the files".

To be fair, she's always had a deep distrust of (and impatience with) computers, ironic, given how important they are in the lives of the men in her life, two Zoomer sons and a husband in IT.  Even before the internet took over, she had a self-proclaimed phobia of paper.  This was her justification for never responding to letters, and must have made record-keeping for her work a nightmare.

As someone who's known her since her birth, I'd say she simply doesn't want to be pinned down, but I'm hardly an objective witness.

Her computer-literate husband and younger son eventually ironed out the "denied access", after I'd copied and pasted notes to send through email.  I tried to explain that the church group for Demeter's neighbourhood would, by tradition, being organising the food.  She told me she would provide the food -- just as she had done for her best friend's memorial service, which she had put together during the pandemic.  

By this time, seventy people were expected, so I quietly made arrangements with the volunteers anyway, most of whom I knew from my own days with the church, which DLS had left as a teenager.

My mantra became I'm doing this for Demeter.  I said it under my breath and repetitively.

DLS was now heavily involved in designing display tables for the reception, which she hoped to use as a conversation "activity", to "get people involved".  

I decided not to say that, at late afternoon on Valentine's Day, those people kind enough to show up would probably want to go home, and set about my most pressing duty -- writing the eulogy.

And someone paved me over

Stephen Colbert went out with a bang.

It seems ever since the announcement last summer that CBS had decided to pull another Smothers Brothers-type smother (saying it was for financial reasons, of course), the Late Show has been steadily inching off the rails, getting crazier, and more defiant as the remaining weeks wained.

As a result, I was almost hesitant to watch last night's finale. 

However, Colbert's previous gig The Daily Show posted a video of Colbert's "funniest moments" - which indicated that Colbert has a history of being a bit off the rails in terms of his humour: ribald, outrageous, and darkly satiric. (Also scatological and quite a bit off-colour.) 

I must have missed most of this because I had young children at the time.

The last Late Show was pretty damn surreal, featuring a stream of celebrity interruptions, a last-minute "cancellation" by the Pope, and a surprise interview with Paul McCartney.  This last item was pleasant enough, but I felt a dropping in the pit of my belly, as I saw Sir Paul reach out to the host's desk for balance as he made his way to his seat.  (McCartney turns 84 next month.)

After a couple of ominous green flashes, accompanied by rumbles and static, everything and everyone got sucked up into a wormhole.  Colbert got spat out into a dark room with a tumbled chair and a ghost light. 

He began singing, accompanied by Elvis Costello, former Late Show music director Jon Baptiste, and current Late Show band leader Louis Cato.  It was a song that sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.  It turns out to be "Jump Up", a rather obscure ditty by Costello, that's nearly fifty years old. 

I much prefer the Late Show version; they should record it.

For a grand finale, Paul McCartney lead everyone in "Hello/Goodbye" - including the Late Show staff and Colbert's family.   Really appropriate. 

Then they went for a bit of a St Elsewhere ending.  Also quite appropriate.

I'm posting a Late Show YouTube video of those two closing songs, but you'd probably better watch --before CBS smothers it.

Everybody's talking like they can't sit down/ And looking like they can't stand up/It must be the latest style/ And they've seen a lot of things that you never see/ Back on the mile up to the hanging tree

Some people can't keep their fingers clean/ Just clicking their heels to the beat of the scene/ Trying to keep current until the first edition of last night's obituaries

Jump up, hold on tight/ Can't trust a promise or a guarantee/ 'Cause the man 'round the curve says that he's never heard of you or me

No tombstone would ever surprise me /When I'm locked in a room about half the size of a matchbox/ Got holes in my socks/ They match the holes that I got in my feet/ I put my feet in the holes in the street/ And someone paved me over

I was a statue standing on the corner/ Tell me, how else can a boy get to see those pretty pleats?

Candidate talking on the radio from the "Cheaters Jamboree"/ It must be their latest fool/ 'Cause it's a two-horse race, and he changes bets/ Like it was just another brand of cigarettes

Some people judge, then they just guess the rest/ They can't understand, it don't mean that you're blessed/ They oughta catch the express, next stop nowhere/ That way you can't forget

Doing it for Demeter - Part One

Memorial services have more in common with weddings than you might think.  

There's food and flowers, speeches, the complexity of dealing with family politics, and the minefield of other people's feelings - with the added complication of planning all this while in a state of grief.  (In our case, because of the size of the sanctuary, there were also RSVPs, which took some delicate explaining.)

Four months after my mother's departure, I'd like to write about Demeter's memorial service - probably in a few parts - mainly because it's far less painful than writing about her death, especially the week leading up to it.  This is a shame, because I know from experience that the details of anything in life, even events you think you'll never forget, get lost to time (and everyone will remember it differently, anyway) - which makes me want to make notes in self-defense.  

But I can't face it. Images ambush me upon waking in the middle of the night, or moving through my day. Maybe I can write about my mother's death in a year or two.

But Demeter's memorial service went well, considering. 

We got pretty good reviews.  And I didn't kill anyone.

I knew Demeter wanted a memorial.  She'd left detailed notes.  Not out of self-aggrandisement, which wasn't Demeter's style at all, but out of the belief that funerals and memorial services are a great help in grieving and healing.  She left a great deal of leeway in what we could do, because she understood that death rituals are for the living, but left suggestions to ease our decisions.

Because she'd been a long-time contributing member of her church, we had the benefit of having the church and minister, with little in the way of fees.  

The date was settled quickly, because our American cousin was anxious to attend in person, and of the dates made available by the church, Valentine's Day worked, for all concerned.

That meant I had to compose an obituary.  Obituaries are eye-wateringly expensive.  I figure the reason that grieving families go for the term essays is that if you're skipping a service - usually at the deceased person's request, I hasten to add - you can better afford to fork out hundreds of dollars.  (Come to think of it, "no service by request of the deceased" is kinda like an elopement, isn't it?  That is, if we're sticking with the memorial service/wedding comparison.  We don't have to.)

We were having a service, so I went for economics and brevity, thinking about what I look for in an obit (particularly as a family researcher), i.e. confirmation that, yes, this is indeed the person you thought it might be.

I composed a briefish three paragraphs (still damned expensive) saying where Demeter had been born, where she had grown up, where she had worked, and the names of her immediate family.  This information also supplied the three surnames she'd used over the course of nearly ten decades: her maiden name, her married name, and the name she chose for herself for the final third of her life. The all-important date and place of the service.  Demeter was convinced, in her final years, that no one would come, probably because so many of her friends had predeceased her.  (She was wrong.)

I should have splurged, and added "No flowers, please".  I didn't think we'd get any.  (I was wrong.)

The challenging bits came next.

I'll have a think, marshal what compassion and diplomacy I possess - don't laugh - and get back to you, okay?

Suggestive sidewalk

I was shaking off the grogginess of the afternoon by strolling over to Demeter's building to pick up the mail.

When I noticed the instructions on the sidewalk.

I'm very suggestible.

So I jumped, tiptoed, swerved, popped, and balanced. 

 Within reason. 

 For no reason.

A child flew past me riding in a star

This turned up on my "Liked Songs" on Spotify this morning, while I working on something else. 

 I must have "liked" it ages ago. 

 I don't recognise it. 

 But I like it.

There once was a note pure and easy/ Playing so free like a breath rippling by/ The note is eternal I hear it, it sees me/ Forever we blend as forever we die  

I listened and I heard music in a word/ And words when you played your guitar/ The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering/ And a child flew past me riding in a star

As people assemble/ Civilization is trying to find a new way to die/ But killing is really merely scene-changing/ All men are bored with other men's lives

We all know success when we all find our own dream/ And our love is enough to knock down any wall/ And the future's been seen as men try to realize/ The simple secret of the note in us all

"I shall be silent, but under protest."

I got a rather odd gift for Mother's Day from the Resident Fan Boy, although not quite as odd as the Holocaust Encyclopedia he got me for my birthday, some years back.

Years ago, when we were relatively newly-weds, I took him to see The Seventh Seal, one of my very favourite movies.  He fell asleep.  I was appalled.

This gift is a Criterion DVD.  There's a commentary, which I have yet to access (and an essay by Woody Allen, which I plan to ignore), but I decided to watch it a couple of nights ago, marvelling in the crispness of the re-mastered black and white print.

Like all good art, I see something different every time I revisit it.  I think the last time I watched it was in 2020. Being set at the time of the Black Death, it made harrowing pandemic viewing.  Now, of course, the ever-looming presence of the black robed and hooded Death (Bengt Ekerot), who stalks the Knight (a very youthful Max von Sydow) and his companions between chess moves, is particularly piercing, following my own recent loss.

However, I saw other details that escaped me, even after repeated viewings.  This time, I noted that Jös (Gunnar Björnstrand), the knight's sardonic squire, carefully and protectively shifts his body over his dagger, as he sleeps, awkwardly outstretched on a stony beach in the opening moments of the film.  I notice his cat-like defiant hissings behind the Knight's back, after being given an order.

I think of the actors, all dead now. 

And the Resident Fan Boy?  He nodded off. Again.

Owl through the morning

It was younger daughter who spotted the owl, clinging to the edge of a gable roof of one of the older, more gingerbready houses on Vancouver Street.

It took the Resident Fan Boy a bit of searching to realise that she wasn't referring to a carved owl, but a very real one, grasping a baby squirrel, which, I hope, was dead.  (I wasn't there.)

The owl was being loudly harassed by a quartet of crows, intent on seizing its prized bit of protein, one or two getting close enough to get in a vicious peck.

"Oh, is that still going on?" inquired a passing couple.  "This has been going on since four this morning!"

As younger daughter and the RFB gazed, the owl finally had enough and vanished in a flurry of feathers.

It was way past its bedtime.

Coming down is the hardest thing

It was déjà-vu all over again.  The pavement hurtling up to meet me.

See, I'd received word that my prescription for my latest kidney infection was ready at our favourite pharmacy, where they know us by name and even let us slip ahead in the queue for vaccinations.  (Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone.)

The trouble is, they close on weekends, and this is the Victoria Day long weekend, and I had excellent reasons for needing the prescription, which I won't go into, thank you very much.

So, I fed the cat, put away the laundry, changed, and fled out into the afternoon, clutching my umbrella, walking at a brisk pace, aided by my downloaded self-assembled Spotify playlist, which speeds me along.

Maybe that's why I suddenly found myself airborne, as my toe caught one of the uneven edges of sidewalk square, almost exactly as it did on a November evening a little over three years ago.  Fighting back the disbelief, I flipped on to my back, and saw two women running towards me from opposite directions. With John Mellencamp's "Authority Song" in my earbuds, I rolled on to the grassy verge, which provided a cushion, so I could push up on to my knees, back on to my heels, straightening my legs, and walk back with my hands to an upright position.  I beamed triumphantly at my would-be helpers, who had reached out to steady me if needed.  But I didn't.

"Man, these old sidewalks are a menace!" I said cheerily, before soldiering on.  (I hope I thanked them.)

At stoplights, I did an inventory:  road rash on the heels of my hands, and a definite sensation of a scraped knee under my (thankfully) old trousers.

I told my sad story to the pharmacist, who urged me to ice my hands and knee when I got home, which I did, of course.  I did the last time too, but was clearly not nearly as badly injured as I was three years ago.  There were two pink patches on the damp washcloth I'd wrapped around a baggie of frozen mashed pumpkin, and placed under my left elbow as an afterthought, when I realized it was a bit sore.  It had been scraped despite the fact I was wearing a fleece top under a fleece jacket, so it must have taken the brunt of my fall.  

I marvelled at lack of severity in my injuries, though.  Was I cushioned by the anti-left bag slung across my left side?  Did I bounce?  I certainly didn't hit my head or face this time.  By bedtime, two light burgundy bruises had appeared at the base of my big toes.

Oh, and the antibiotic started working almost immediately, thank goodness, or this really would have been a long weekend.

Here's the late great Tom Petty, singing "Learning to Fly", assisted by the Heartbreakers, Stevie Nicks, and the crowd at the 2006 edition of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee.

Well, I started out down a dirty road/Started out all alone/And the sun went down as I crossed the hill/And the town lit up/The world got still.

I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings/Coming down is the hardest thing.

Well, the good old days may not return/And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn.

Well, some say life may beat you down/Break your heart; steal your crown.

So I started out for God knows where/Guess I'll know when I get there.

Cat carton

While walking to the coffee shop (I do that a lot, so sorry for keeping mentioning this), I spotted a nice medium empty cardboard box on a corner.

I spent a chunk of last month searching for, re-assembling, and generally coveting medium cardboard boxes because I was donating Demeter's books to the annual Times-Colonist book drive, and my mother was a voracious reader.

I ended up with 19 boxes of books:  my Friend of the Right Hand transported 16 of them, and one of Demeter's merciful neighbours kindly fitted the other three into her car, alongside another neighbour's 3-box donation.

At the coffee shop, I mulled over whether I should take the abandoned box, seeing as the book drive is long over, and reasoned my recent experience indicates that containers are hard to come by -- and there are at least a boxful of books left in Demeter's apartment.  I figured that if the box was still there, I was meant to take it home.

It was.  I did.  I shook out the grass and leaves and insects first.

At home, I put it out where I would see it and remember it.

Now I don't have the heart to move it.

Not so great expectations

 So this is the kind of day I had.

I rose, with every intention of heading down to the coffee shop, but halfway through my preparations, I felt a familiar pain in the lower right half of my back.  I had a kidney infection last summer that sidelined me for three weeks, and this was pretty well how it got started.

The Resident Fan Boy phoned our nurse-practitioner clinic when it opened at 8:30, and was told that we couldn't book in an appointment for three weeks, and all emergency appointments for the day were already taken.  

We had been rather expecting this, so the RFB called the Urgent Care Clinic and was put on hold, the automated voice telling him that we were 19th in the queue.  

We had been rather expecting this. He handed the phone to me, so I could listen to the muzak, while he went up to the laundry room.  

About five or ten minutes later, *my* phone rang. It was the nurse-practitioner clinic, double-checking my problem, and telling me that I could have an appointment at 11:30.  I rather suspect someone had checked my chart.

Saw the locum, accompanied by a fresh-faced student nurse, and she sent me across the street to LifeLab with a requisition for bloodwork.  The technician told me, that since I didn't have an appointment, it would be a 50-minute wait.  They saw me in 80 minutes.  I'd been rather expecting this and had brought a book.  Got through three chapters.

Walked home and nearly got run down in a lit crosswalk by an older gentleman driving an SUV.  He, of course, had been watching left for traffic, while making a right turn, somehow failing to notice me, or the four other pedestrians crossing from the other side.  Fortunately, I had been watching for him, because I rather expected this.

Surrounded

 

Ten years ago, on a miserable grey afternoon, I took younger daughter to the Mayfair cinema, which was opened in 1932 in Old Ottawa South, and we watched The Lady in the Van, based on Alan Bennett's play of the same name.

In case you missed it, the playwright Alan Bennett had an elderly unhoused lady living in his driveway in Camden (northeast of Regent's Park in London) for fifteen years between the mid-1970s and late 1980s.  He wrote a play about it after her death, which starred Maggie Smith, and she took the same role in the film.

Younger daughter seemed quite taken with it, but sad.  She said it reminded her of her grandmother, who, I hasten to add, was never unhoused, delusional, or hygienically challenged.  Every now and then, younger daughter took the DVD out of the library, as she did this month.

Yesterday, I watched it for the first time since my mother died.  (I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but this is probably going to be a steady part of my life for a while, as I work through things.)

I sat through it, and despite the lack of parallels with my own mother's final years, I felt bludgeoned by the isolation, the vulnerability, and the piano-playing.  I'm told that both my grandmother and mother were proficient pianists, but never heard them play, because both flatly refused to play for an audience.

Bennett was in the process of losing his own mother at the same time he was the unwilling host to the lady in the van.  In the film, he's consulting with a doctor in Yorkshire, after his mother breaks her hip in her nursing home.  The advice the doctor gives him is almost word-for-word what the emergency doctor told me when Demeter fractured her pelvis one week before she died.

I went out for an early evening walk to recover.  When I came home, we watched the season finale of Call the Midwife, where Sister Monica Joan, in her nineties, is dying of kidney failure.

There's just no escaping it.  The reminders are everywhere, like a milder form of PTSD.

One promise away

Now Hear This is a PBS programme that I've been following for a couple of years with mild interest.  It's a sort of musical travelogue in which conductor and violinist Scott Yoo, often accompanied by his wife, flutist Alice Dade, pursues a given musical theme - a composer, a genre, a geographical setting - and engages in less-than-spontaneous interactions with various experts.  It's good fun and reasonably informative.

I'd deferred on the last episode of this season, "The Iceland Sound", because I didn't think it would be to my taste.

Oh gawd.  It was ethereal.  Much of the music reminded me of the majestic, soul-filling composition by Kjartan Sveinsson that closes out the credits of the film Echo (Bermál), the Icelandic film that made such a deep impression on me during the pandemic.

Two highlights of this episode: 1) an "impromptu" (nothing is impromptu in this series) jam on Icelandic dulcimers called langspil. 

The music starts at about the 2:20 mark. 

The female musician in this clip is Jófríður Ákadóttir, who is kind enough to her international fans to record and perform under "JFDR".  Later in the programme, she sings one of her songs, accompanied by high school students in a "clarinet choir", a clip that isn't online, although you can live-stream the series if you contribute money to PBS, something I resumed when the Creature stopped federal funding.

However, the video for the JFDR song is available:

 

Once an orchid sat/ in a silver night and/ solemnly waited/ Slightly breathing/ Touched its glistening/ tear, only one dream away from/ a perfect birth/ One promise away from birth/ One secret away from/ One dream a--/ One kiss away from life/ from a life/ from another life/ from another life, you know

Then when the sun rose/ in a newer lighting/ Lay his wings on her/ warm with his kisses/ and touched her light feather/ just so they could breathe again/ Just so they could feel the pain/ Just to be reborn again/ 

Then when I said/ Sat his wings down/ Yearning for our love/ Yearning for our love/ one dream away

I really loved the version with the clarinet choir. Icelandic students apparently get their musical education one-on-one on their chosen instrument, because music is so highly valued.  I can't help but wonder what life is like for those who lack musical aptitude in Iceland, because I was certainly never that good.  Is it like life for un-athletic kids in North American schools?

Share and share unlike

For the first couple of decades of our respective lives, Double Leo Sister and I were so unalike, and so seldom seen together, that many people mildly acquainted with us were unaware that we were related.  

This has changed steadily as we have aged and we're pretty similar now - at least in appearance and mannerisms, if nothing else.  

About five weeks ago, in the wake of our mother's death, I handed an Ancestry DNA kit to my sister.

Shortly afterwards, she managed to break her humerus and tear her rotator cuff. (This was just what happened, not cause-and-effect.) 

At any rate, I was pretty sure she had forgotten all about the test, and was preparing to remind her when she was down-Island, that if she really wasn't interested, she should give the kit back, because it's pretty damn expensive.

No, she said, she'd tested and furthermore, had heard back weeks ago.

No sign of her in my DNA matches, nor in those of my mother, whom I tested five years ago. 

You're thinking of all those stories, aren't you?  Those news items about people getting a DNA kit for Christmas and discovering, with a shock, that they're not related by blood to those they grew up with?

We should be so lucky. (I'm joking, but I think it crossed both our minds.)

Apparently, Ancestry now requires you to turn on match-sharing before it becomes visible to your matches, which, I guess, is a good idea, but it makes me wonder how many other matches I'm not seeing, because it's clear that most people take the tests to get the nebulous ethnicity estimate  --"estimate" essentially means "guess", people -- and don't bother with the matches at all.

Anyway, my brother-in-law, the Jolly Not-So-Green Giant, figured out what icon to switch, and there she was:  "Full Sister" - a slightly lower number on the centiMorgans she shares with Demeter, with nearly twice the segments that I have in the DNA match with Demeter.  Also, her ethnicity estimate is quite different than mine, which happens to be way more similar to my mother's - interesting, but in the long-run, not that significant.  Double Leo Sister has clearly inherited a different set of DNA from our shared ancestors; that's how DNA works -- it's more random that you might think.

Have I lost you yet?

I tried to talk about all this with my sister and brother-in-law, but like most people, they're really not into family history research, and they soon changed the subject. My sister is into Creative Anachronism and stained glass.  My brother-in-law is into computers and fantasy novels.  I'm not crazy about any of that.

I let them chat about these things with the Resident Fan Boy, while I started using my sister's shared matches to identify even more of our mother's and my shared matches.  

They went home early.

A jolt of Java

I've claimed my favourite table at my favourite coffee shop early this Sunday morning, rather thrilled to beat what is likely to be a steady stream of mother/child combinations.

There's one of those just ahead of me in the line-up, a young mum with a tiny tow-headed ankle-biter of indiscriminate sex.  She's sat him/her (them?) on the counter while she places her order, and while the barista has turned to plate a pastry and the mum prepares to pay, I spot, with a flash of horror and panic, the TTHAB hoisting the mother's coffee mug, full of fresh hot coffee.

"NO!" I gasp, just restraining myself from lunging.  (There's another customer standing between us.)

Alerted, the young mum calmly takes the mug from her offspring, and places it on the far side of the cash register.  I'm semi-collapsed against the display case.  There will be little need of caffeine this morning after that adrenaline rush.

"Happy Mother's Day," I breathe.

Unamusing musings

Tomorrow, birthday season drifts to a close at our house, with younger daughter's birthday.

As I carefully put final preparations into place, it occurs to me that, among the cards I received for my own birthday this year, not a single one was humorous.  

Everyone seems to have donned kid gloves for me.  I suppose I should enjoy it while it lasts, though I can hardly take joy in the reason.

Stacking chairs - and saying my prayers

 

You left your heart in the jungle 

Ripped off of your red bicycle 

I didn't know you then 

But it feels significant 

I gave up everything 

I learned 

Just to follow you down that dirt road 

You better hold my hand 

There is no map for this 

When the wheels come off, I'll be your spare 

When the party's over, I'll be stacking the chairs 

When the world turns on you, I will be there  

Sleeping is boring, you don't need a bed 

Your thoughts tick loudly in your head 

And I know you now 

I move in time with them 

I'm wrapped up in all thesе weird theories 

Running in circlеs, chased by bees 

You uncover tracks 

And stop the madness

In my absence -- and hers

The year following a bereavement is littered with stumbling blocks. Holidays and anniversaries catch at you like brambles.

But you probably know this.

So this weekend is a double-whammy:  Mother's Day.  And younger daughter's birthday.  This is the fifth time since younger daughter's actual birth, that both have coincided, but it's the first one since Demeter died.

We'll be okay.  So far, we've made it through Demeter's birthday, St David's Day, Valentine's Day (the day of Demeter's memorial service), my birthday, and elder daughter's birthday.

We also made it through Easter.

I had just recovered from my very first cold in over six years. (There were a lot of things I missed during the pandemic; having colds wasn't on the list.  I bloody loved not having colds.)

This meant I didn't make it over to my mother's condo for more than five days, and on Good Friday, I was finally well enough to go and resume sorting through her things, and water her plants.

Evidently, her Christmas cacti didn't know that it was Easter.

Needing a lullaby - let's make it Canadian

Stayed up all night in Windsor station

My last hope for salvation

Was a girl with a North Star in her eyes

Slept under the band-shell stage

Every morning, under age

Waiting for the girl with a North Star in her eyes

She sends me where I want to go

Sleeping giants, and waves of snow

Looking for a girl with a North Star in her eyes

With the change, Lord, I stayed the same

No time to lose, no year to blame

Just lost for the girl with a North Star in her eyes

Wake up and watch her disappear

In the ways that you got here

Can't hold down that memory

Can't get back home

Every night I go to see her show

Dreams and diamonds, rodeos

Chase the girl with a North Star in her eyes

She was all I knew, I guess

Northern lights and a cotton dress

Sixteen years of restlessness and hungry for love

My whole life came down to this

Find a world inside a kiss

Go find the girl with a North Star in her eyes.

- Composers/Lyricists:  Colin Linden, Stephen Fearing, and Tom Wilson

Theories of relativity

I've been on one of the most peculiar genealogical journeys I've experienced thus far.

And that's saying something.  Both the Resident Fan Boy and I have weird family histories.  (I've long suspected that there are no other kind, not if you're doing your research properly.)

This latest family foray began innocently enough.

John Reid, in his blog Anglo-Celtic Connections, regularly reports when newspapers become available at FindMyPast, and some months back, one of these periodicals was from Norwood, in Surrey (now Greater London, I think), where the Resident Fan Boy's paternal ancestors dwelt in the 19th century.

So I started a search, but couldn't find entries for the surname of those particular ancestors.  Instead, I found a item in the Herne Bay Press, about the 1930 funeral of one of the RFB's great-aunts, under her married surname, of course.  She'd lived and died in Herne Bay, Kent, but was being buried, like many of her family members, in West Norwood Cemetery. It was one of those goldmine genealogical finds: supplying a long list of mourners, saying who sent flowers, and giving a hint of which family members may have been speaking to each other, in the aftermath of a family scandal.

As usual, this led to a happy couple of hours finding new records, and updating profiles.  

To my astonishment, I found the said great-aunt's death certificate, posted by a new and unfamiliar account.  

I flatter myself as being a family researcher of some experience, so I did searches of birth registrations and British business profiles, and finally identified the account as being connected to a first cousin once removed of the Resident Fan Boy.  It turned out her husband's business was a sixteen-minute stroll from where elder daughter had been living in South Wimbledon a couple of years ago.  (I'd had this cousin's father married to the wrong woman, so she was utterly new to me.)

Delighted by the discovery and the closeness of the connection, I told the Resident Fan Boy all about it that evening, and he was politely interested -- after I'd hauled out a couple of graphs to show him how he was related.

I had no immediate plans to contact this relative, but it was taken out of my hands the very next morning, with a text from elder daughter:  "Should I respond to this?"

"This" was a message via FaceBook Messenger.  It was the very cousin I had just identified!

I was startled, to say the least, and puzzled.  Why was this cousin reaching out to my daughter, and, how on earth had she identified and found her?  My tree is private, and my daughters' information doesn't appear on it, anyway.

However, I had carefully tracked this person's lineage, and she was exactly who she said she was, so I reassured elder daughter, told her how she was related, and gave her permission to pass on my email address.

Elder Daughter's Rare Paternal Cousin (or EDRPC, until I can think of something catchier) got in touch very quickly, and revealed the remarkable (and frankly terrifying ) ricochet of logic that had led her discovery of her second cousin. 

Not seeing any descendants for my late father-in-law nor his brother - Ancestry doesn't show living people, thank goodness - she did a google search and found an independent site -- with all our names...

There's a reason for this.  Years ago, when still a newby genealogist, I encountered a Texan online, who was researching one of the distaff branches of the Resident Fan Boy's family.  She was something like an eighth cousin. 

Being a novice, I didn't recognise the tell-tale signs of a rabid and ruthless researcher, and we exchanged details.  I didn't quite grasp at the time that one never shares details of living people without careful vetting.  Too late, I asked her politely to not publish or share the information I'd given in a family report I'd forwarded to her.  She got quite huffy, saying that, in all her years of researching, she'd never received such a request. 

It was only some years later that I stumbled across her "freepage" - with the FULL NAMES (sorry, am I screaming?) of my husband, children, and, worst of all, my living in-laws.  the Texan lady had appended an utterly pointless "information reheld" in brackets after each name. I was livid and wildly embarrassed, but there was little I could do, but learn from the experience. 

The EDRPC also found the page I had created for my late-father-in-law's dad at the Imperial War Museum's web site, recognising my name, then she stumbled across the Resident Fan Boy's uncle's obituary from several years ago, where both the RFB and I had left our condolences, which further confirmed our names and relationship.  

So she entered the RFB's name into the search engine with the keyword "Canada", and up came the pièce-de-resistance-is-useless:  a news item from his church, featuring not only our names, our neighbourhood, and the location of our daughters, but the name and breed of our cat!

All this, the EDRPC told me, made me think it was very likely to be all of you.

(No kidding, cuz.)

Social platforms led her to a likely variation on elder daughter's name, including being about the right age, and a Canadian living in London.  So she sent out feelers to elder daughter.

"Isn't it amazing/terrifying the details you can track on the internet!" the EDRPC messaged me brightly.

Of course, she's lovely.  Nearly all our relatives are.

We exchanged all sorts of family photos and greetings on holidays.  She's delighted to finally have some cousins, a rare commodity on her side of the family. Furthermore, while tidying up my research to share with her - which she has firmly pledged not to publicise - I discovered a possible key to yet another longtime family mystery.

But I'm not posting that here.  I'm still clinging to some of my illusions and delusions of online privacy.

Morbid curiosity

I did an odd thing the other day. It had strange repercussions. 

Having navigated the treacherous waters of adolescence before the advent of social media, most of my misdeeds, failed experiments, and plain awkwardness went blessedly unrecorded, except for those things that I foolishly put in my journals at the time.  This is probably the reason I don't go back to read those entries, so I don't recall if I wrote much about Dale.

Dale was my first kiss.

Oh, there was little that was romantic about it, apart from the thrill of its being my first kiss.  I barely knew Dale, who was a grade ahead of me.  We were both in band; he was in the brass section, and I was in the woodwinds.  I have no idea why he singled me out on a school bus returning from a band performance at a civic function on a distant New Year's Eve.  It was a French kiss, and wildly un-erotic, but I was thrilled at the concept, which seemed to bode well for the new year.

This proved to be the case -- kind of.  I was the girl Dale necked with at parties, although he barely spoke to me at school. On rare occasions, he'd hold my hand or put his arm around my shoulder while walking home.  He'd point out the make and year of every car that passed, something that didn't interest me in the slightest, but I was thrilled at the attention.  He changed schools at the end of the term, and I never saw him again.

Years later, at the annual pre-Christmas Holiday presentation at younger daughter's school, a young man did a rather peculiar presentation on biblical themes.  (It was not a religious institution.) I didn't recognise him, because he was a few grades ahead of younger daughter, but I recognised his unusual surname, and asked him afterwards if he had a relative named Dale.  He said vaguely that there might be someone in the family named Dale, but he had died "a long time ago".

I went home, did a search, but could only find the obituary for Dale's father.  It said that Dale had predeceased him.  The list of living relatives revealed that the vague young man was, in fact, Dale's nephew, so I guessed that Dale had died before he was born.

Family history research has taught me to return to searches after time has passed.  For some reason, it occurred to me to search for Dale this week.  Once again, I ran up against his father's obituary, but tried a few more times, using different keywords.

And there Dale was, in an obit published in The Ottawa Citizen. He died there in an unnamed hospital, some years before we moved to Hades.  One of the few things I knew about him, when we were teenagers, was that he had some sort of heart condition, which would turn his lips blue.  I remember a parent staying with him, when he became faint during a bikeathon to raise money for a band trip, so although I felt sadness, it was hardly a shock.

I did have a shock earlier this year, but the greater trauma of Demeter's death pushed it from my mind.  I have just remembered it while thinking of Dale.

About a week before my mother's final fall, the Resident Fan Boy and I had a couple of friends to dinner, one of whom had attended last year's high school reunion, which I had been delighted to skip.

"Don't blame you," laughed my friend, easily.  "It was great being able to chat with some people, of course, but it was a bit rough seeing that big memorial poster with the names of everyone who's died, particularly Dylan. He committed suicide, you know."

Thunk.  

I knew Dylan way better than Dale.  We were in the same grade, and often the same classes, between Grades Six and Twelve.  I've written about him in this blog before.  We were not friends. Nevertheless, I was shocked, and found myself wrestling with unpleasant memories, and imagining the impact on his children, his wife, and his siblings -- until my mother died less than a fortnight later, and I had a whole new raft of unpleasant memories with which to wrestle.

Four months on, after examining what little I knew of Dale's death, I looked into that of Dylan, wondering if by "suicide", the high school alumni meant "MAID".

I somehow doubt it.  There are three or four obituaries online for Dylan, who was  reasonably prominent.  They are circumspect about the cause of death:  "sudden".  Generally, when MAID has been used, as it increasingly is, the wording is usually something like "on his own terms" or "at the time of her choosing".  The pictures accompanying Dylan's notice show a man with pale skin laced with fine lines, and eyes rather large for his face, little resemblance to the preteen and the adolescent I remember. The obituaries are, of course, glowing testaments to his work. Again, no traces of the calculated cruelty I, and others, experienced in school.

Some years ago, at a gathering of university pals who had also attended our high school, a good friend mentioned Dylan, because he briefly lived in her community. I couldn't help myself, and blurted:  "Is he a nice person yet?"  One of the women bellowed in laughter, but my friend knew the question was genuine, and paused thoughtfully before musing: "I'm not sure..."

Dale and Dylan are both gone, and, for the time being, I'm still here, and I'm not sure I'm a nice person yet.  Letting them both go is probably the kinder thing.

Remember me to Leicester Fields

In the continuing War of the Algorithms, I've really been needing palate-cleansers. 

This latest battle is with YouTube. It's creepy enough when ads for something I've recently ordered online stalk me throughout a video I'm watching. 

However, in the past few months, it seems that the content I'm sent is narrowing alarmingly.  Even accidental pauses while scrolling though suggestions count as indications I might be interested, when I'm really not.

 

Last week, I encountered a time-lapse video, which picked a Paris intersection, and ran through possible sights seen from this vantage point from Before the Common Era to the present. Foolishly I decided to suppress my distaste for AI, and watch. It was fairly interesting, although I suspect a factor in my enjoyment might have been my not-so-detailed grasp of French history. 

I counted it as a guilty pleasure. 

Predictably, a couple of days ago, a similar video appeared in my "recommended" list -- this one showing a time-lapse view of London from someone hovering a bit back from the south bank of the Thames, looking towards Westminster starting just before the Roman occupation, and gradually, the palace of Westminster appeared (some time in the eleventh century), followed by the other familiar landmarks.

Just before the Westminster bridge began spanning the Thames in the mid-1700s, my first flash of irritation came, when the creator of this thing decided that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was not nearly interesting enough, and set Lambeth ablaze as well.

During the glimpse of the Blitz in the 1940, a bomber crashed nose-down on Westminster Bridge, something I'm reasonably sure didn't happen, as devastating as the Blitz was.

Then, instead of stopping with the present-day, the time-line veered into the 2030's and beyond, with a horrific mushroom cloud appearing in the western horizon, followed by the Elizabeth Tower, containing Big Ben, hurtling over the bridge to crush the fleeing pedestrians.

That'll teach me, I guess.

It occurred to me that, as Demeter entered her final descent last summer, I had watched fewer of my favourite YouTube channels, which would have a hand in making my algorithm go a bit awry.  Yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time retrieving a collection of videos giving me quite a bit of pleasure last spring.  They're not flashy, but they're well-crafted, and well-researched.  This one helped me pinpoint the location of an inn that one of my great-great-great-great-great-uncles ran in the early 1790s:

  

This is the work of Scott Hatton, whose Underground Map Project is to record walks between the stations, each video with a helping of local history.  They're rather like watching some of the better presentations of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa. 

Furthermore, his blog The Underground Map has assisted me in pinpointing other London locations relating to my long-departed relatives.  It features detailed local history and a rather wonderful layered map, where you can see your chosen location on maps as early as 1700.

All mercifully free of AI slop.  I've subscribed to Hatton's YouTube channel, and bookmarked the blog, which I should have done last spring, before Demeter started fading away. 

I'll be watching my algorithm carefully.

And reading more books.

It came just the same

Early this morning, I headed down to the coffee shop under branches of cherry and plum blossoms now past their prime. The petals have descended overnight leaving a ring across the grass and pavement resembling heavenly bodies hurled outward from a celestial big bang.

Spring has nearly finished arriving.  The lilacs are blooming on the corner of our street.  The plane trees, always a bit behind, are finally leafing out.  Outside our window, an ancient tree, that looks for all the world like a profile of a lady's head with upswept hair, has attracted the local urban deer.  I watched a doe, black nose upturned in anticipation, balance on her hind legs to nip off the blossoms.  This week, the fallen flowers carpet the ground, where the fawns can feast on four legs.

Returning from a recent reluctant shopping foray, I strode down the hill on Linden Avenue, and remembered I hadn't bothered to search out the magnolias.  Across the street, two blooms still clung on for dear life.

In so many ways, I almost missed spring this year.  A small part of me believed it might not come.  How can spring come, now that Demeter is no more?

But I don't, despite all appearances, exist within a Greek myth.  

Not even a Greek tragedy.

More like a human comedy.

Make that a tragicomedy.

Shades of pale

Iphis is sleeping in the bedroom that used to be Demeter's, the one he's transforming with his own art and artfully arranged banners. 

He's texted me to let me know he's had a bad night, so, not disturbing him, I stick in my Air Pods, tune into my "Liked Songs" (on shuffle), and quietly tackle the things I'd abandoned when Iphis took up residence ten days ago.

 

I brush out the detritus of dried flowers in an upper cupboard. I don't remember Demeter's being an aficionado of dried flowers, but I keep coming across them. Maybe friends gifted them; Demeter held on to things that reminded her of friends and family. 

I set up a station in the living room with a basket I've designated for recycled paper, and begin ripping up text books, because they're poor candidates for book sales or donations. It's hard work. I tear up two large old biology textbooks from Demeter's night classes at the university. I remember meeting her at the door when she hammered to get in, late one evening.  Her face was white with shock; she looked exactly the same way as she had years earlier, standing on the front steps after returning from work, where she'd received word that her estranged father had died suddenly.

The shock this time was the result of a fall on some ice at one of the more remote bus stops on campus. She'd broken a bone in her hand.  

The books are inscribed with her former surname and our old address. 

I move on to a set of Audubon encyclopedias with grimy taupe covers. They were white when they struck me, one by one, on my shoulders, face and head in my youth. Double Leo Sister, in pre-teen rage, hurled them across the room with furious grunts, like a tennis player lobbing shots at Wimbledon, in response to something I'd blurted out in exasperation, I guess. 

I rarely blurted what I was thinking, for this very reason. A few years later, she beat me about the arms and legs with a map-case. I had red welts from the metal edges for some time. 

I steer my mind to the music I love: Mozart, Mott the Hoople, Josh Ritter. 

 I go home when I'm fed up.

The mourning after

Stella is the proprietor of my favourite coffee house, a gentle lady, glowing warmly at the regulars.  She could be anywhere between 35 and 60.

She's busy at the sink in the back corner, as I drop off my coffee cup and plates, along with those of elder daughter, who is reading her Kindle back at our table, awaiting my return from the washroom.

"You'll miss her," says Stella over her shoulder.

"I will," I reply.

"It's so nice she was able to have a long visit."  The penny drops.

"Oh.  You mean my daughter."

I then have to explain that my daughter hasn't remained in Victoria since mid-December.  She flew back to London, as scheduled, on Twelfth Night.

Demeter fell, catastrophically, four days later.  We spent that day and the next in Emergency.  Double-Leo Sister came down with her husband and her younger son, who texted his cousin during the "night watch" from the private room set up for palliative care.  "End-of-life care," he told elder daughter, who phoned me at midnight.

I'd been deeply asleep, exhausted.  She told me her cousin had said to come.  "Is it all right if I come?"

"Darling," I mumbled drowsily.  "You must do what's best for you."

She arrived the following evening, having thrown her things in a suitcase, still jet-lagged from her previous flight from a few days before.

I didn't tell Stella all this, of course.  But she was chagrinned.  I assured her that it hadn't been written across my chest; she was not to know.  

While I was in the washroom, Stella sought out elder daughter to apologise. Earlier, Stella had called out cheerily to elder daughter, placing her order with the barista, saying how nice it was that she had been able to stay so long.

Elder daughter hadn't wanted to call out, across the coffee shop, that her grandmother had died.  That she had been the one alone at the bedside, when Demeter drew her last breath.

Maybe we should bring back the custom of black armbands.