Smoke screen

 

I venture into my mother's condo for the first time in a while.

My nephew has occupied it for the summer, which is fine - it lowered our insurance premiums for a bit.  The problem was negotiating each time I wanted to go in to sort through my mother's stuff.  I didn't strictly have to, but everyone needs privacy.

With his departure, I can now drop in when the opportunity arises.  This first time, I limit myself to watering the plants.  

In my mother's tiny greenhouse on the balcony, I discover fifteen joint stubs in a tin.  I don't think this has anything to do with my nephew; I'm pretty damn sure this is his mother.

Last February, I caught Double Leo Sister lounging in a deck chair on the balcony, and firing up.

I explained to her at that time - gently, I think - that condo bylaws, pretty well across the province, prohibit smoking anywhere on the property, and that cannabis consumption, even gummies, is not allowed, period.  It's to do with insurance and property values, I think.

Double Leo Sister hasn't lived in a condo for seven years, and cheerfully told me she was unaware of the regulation.  Fair enough.  I didn't say anything about my bewilderment that someone who has lifelong issues with asthma - to the point of steroid treatment - would subject her lungs to smoke of any kind.  It was the eve of my mother's memorial service, and my sister is, after all, a Double Leo.  I'm not crazy.

I just hope my mother's neighbours don't bring it up.  What do I tell them?  That I've told my sister about the bylaw, and that she doesn't care?  I suppose she thinks she can afford not to care; she doesn't live here.  

But I do, and the inhabitants of my mother's condo will continue to be my neighbours, even after we've sold her unit.

I drown out my rage and resignation with music in my earbuds, which mitigates the silence and encroaching emptiness of my mother's home, as things vanish, bit by bit and piece by piece.  As she did in her final months.

Transient

Another summer slips away.  For the past few days, the setting sun streams directly through our dining room window, as it does with each equinox.

This autumn came swifty and stealthily, on the heels of a blessedly temperate summer here in Victoria - heaven knows what the next summer will be like.  Part of this autumn ambush is due to the lateness of the Labour Day long weekend, as late as it can be, with classes not beginning until the second week of September.

 

This probably explains what I encountered chalk drawings ringing the corner of Hilda and Chester.

Chalk drawings are not unusual in this neighbourhood.  The kids in our building occasionally illustrate the lower parking lot, and some pint-sized resident artists further up Chester frequently pastel the pavement between rains.

However, I suspected visiting children are responsible for this latest batch, brightening their grandparents' sidewalks with a final parting blast of estival festival etchings.

Apparently this mob has vintage video game fans in its membership.  Perhaps a parent? (Or even a grandparent?)

As I turn the corner, I realised that an attempt has been made to cover the entire block down to Oscar Street.  Someone taken two pieces of chalk and created a snail trail to connect a cluster of images near the far corner. 

By the following morning, the couple who live near the end of the block had once again been watering the sidewalk, in their continuing attempt to refresh the ancient plane trees. The southern images had washed away, but the rest remain, albeit a bit faded and trodden upon.

For now.

Hello young lovers

"Oh get a room," I think crossly.

Love's Young Dream, hogging the Second Best Table at the coffeehouse -- a cute blond girl with a tousle-haired boy, clad in similar hoodies, huddled together at the same side of the large table, which they're using mainly for elbow-support and little else, as they compare cell-phone screens, leaning into each other and giggling.

"I think they're rather sweet," says The Famous Writer, who frequents the cafe at the same time I do most mornings.

Yeah, they're bloody adorable.  I recognise the hallmarks of a new semester romance.  I suspect they're postsecondary, judging by how late it's getting.  They probably have a 9:30 class.

It's not like I don't remember what it's like:  the losing track of time, the unawareness of other humans in the vicinity.  They could be doing this at a smaller table, preferably outside.
 

TFW knows I prefer the table he has, and graciously notifies me when it is free. I tell him that this table feels like a safe harbour, just like the last months of the year feel like a safe harbour to me.

TFW takes this as a cue to recite: "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulne--"

"Oh gawd!" I cry.  "My husband intones that at me every damn October!"

TFW retreats smartly.  

"Keats was a genius," I call after him, futilely.

Afterwards, I set out on foot, having just missed the bus, which was, of course, five minutes early, as the returning bus rolls by, being, of course, five minutes late.  It's fine, I have plenty of time, and the morning is cool and pleasant.

The horse chestnut trees that line Cook Street are festooned with light green baubles.  From a distance, you'd think the leaves were sun-dappled, but it's an overcast day.  Close up, the spiky fruit looks mace-like and menacing.  Within a week or two, they will begin to plummet: hard knocks to the head; the glossy brown chestnuts encased within the prickly projectiles will be like marbles underfoot, rolling, slippery..  

Rather like falling in love.

Sign of the times

I learned what Lime Bikes were when I started using YouTube to virtually ride on London buses last year. The streets were swarming with bikes, many of them with bright green carrier baskets. I quizzed elder daughter about them, and she explained that they were rented e-bikes. You pick them up at a designated spot, and drop them off at the racks closest to where you want to go.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the City of Victoria had entered into a contract with Lime, and with dizzying speed, neon green racks have spread throughout the city, not without some controversy.  Lime operates out of San Francisco, and it's an impolitic time for an American company to set up in a Canadian city.

Increasingly, though, I've been noticing more of these bicycles, moving with alarming speed through our neighbourhood. Some riders sport the trademark bright green bike helmets, which are required by law here. (Bike helmets, that is -- not necessarily green ones.)

The other evening, I spotted a new station on Linden Avenue on one of my regular strolls.  From a distance, I could see a fellow standing by the small cluster of racks and e-bikes, fiddling with his phone, because you need an app to access the service.  He hopped on, bare-headed, and had disappeared down the hill, as I approached the sign. 

I saw someone had left a sticker, and crossed the street to read it.

Well, as I said, there has been quite a bit of contention about this, particularly as some areas on the edges of Greater Victoria have Canadian bike rental companies, which means you have to switch your bike when you reach some municipal borders.

And the timing was indeed unfortunate.

I walked out this evening.  The sticker had been removed.

Update - September 14th, 2026:  The sticker is back.  This may turn out to be a microcosm of the trade war...

The road to nowhere

I remembered the anniversary on the day, but was a bit too dragged under to write about it.

Rather like 25 years ago, as it happens.  

I went to check my journals of the time, and I'd written nothing in September 2001.  I hadn't written much that year.  We had just finished our first year in Hades, had lived in our house for barely eleven months. Elder daughter had been designated as "gifted" during the previous school year, and younger daughter had been "identified" as being "at risk"; her developmental challenges hadn't been officially tied to autism -- likely because she was a girl, and girls on the spectrum present differently.

With the new school year just started, we were trying to adjust to our new realities.  Because I'd read Ira Progroff's book on journalling, I did managed a yearly rundown, which I'd write in patches in the opening months of the new year, so my record of September 2001 was set down some six or seven months after the facts.  Re-reading it this morning, I was struck by how many details I'd forgotten.  Memory is a nebulous thing:

"I walk to Rideau Street from the nursery school, where I have dropped off younger daughter on a sunny September morning, and remember the Rideau branch of the library won't open until 10.  It is 9:15.

"I decide to have breakfast at the Ale House* at the entrance to the Byward Market, arriving at William Street about 9:30.

"Whitney Houston is playing, and the recently-installed large TV screens are tuned to CNN.  The American news has been full of Condit and the missing intern**, so I ignore it.  The subtitles say something about a highjacking.

"Suddenly, the music is turned off, and the sound from the screen is on.  I think I'm witnessing the aftermath of a terrible accident, until the waitress tells me two planes have hit the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

"'Two??' I gasp, my mind reeling with the implications, as my eyes take in the images.  Before I can grasp anything, we're told that a plane has hit the Pentagon, then that another plane has crashed.  

"My food arrives; I wonder whether to eat.  People are coming in off the street, clutching cell phones.  One young idiot laughs abrasively:  'They're going to WAR!!'

"We watch, transfixed, as one tower melts away, then the other.

"I stagger to the library, and learn that there's been a bomb threat at the Parliament buildings.  

"The Resident Fan Boy is home when I get there; his office is right next to the American Embassy. I don't recall picking up younger daughter, but I must have. We spend the day tuned to the CBC.

"The events have hit Ottawa hard; lots of Americans live here, and with the high tech industries centred here, lots of links with New York.  In the evening, I climb the long hill to my elder daughter's school for a meeting, only to find the building locked and dark. Several pupils are the children of embassy employees.

"Flowers, stuffed animals, poems, pictures line the fence at the American Embassy that week, along with scores of candles."

The sidewalk and curb by the American Embassy were, within days, blocked by huge concrete blocks, later replaced by bollards. It took a little longer for passports to be required to travel into the States - before, we only had to present proof of Canadian citizenship - but airline trips anywhere, even within Canada, were soon transformed into slow-moving, drab queues, complicated by new rules administered by antsy airline security employees.

People continued to die in acts of genocide and terrorism around the world, but the States were now permanently scarred and suspicious, hugging their grief and rage like talismans.  

And here we are.

* Became the Highlander Pub a year later, now an eatery called "Pure Kitchen".

** Chandra Levy, a young intern working in Washington, DC, had disappeared the previous May.  Her remains were found in an urban park a year later.  There had been a media frenzy for much of the summer, mainly focussing on her alleged affair with California Congressman Gary Condit - who apparently had nothing to do with her murder, but the incident ended his political career. 

Standing in the shadow

 

Photo by Canadian photographer Andrew Yee in Toronto

I told the Resident Fan Boy I'd scout ahead for a view of the partial lunar eclipse, seeing as we'd gone up prematurely the night before. 

Out on the roof before 9 pm, unmistakeable, the shadowy red/black orb with a gleaming white-gold top.

I texted: "YES!", seconds before our hall neighbour suddenly appeared in the bright rectangle of the doorway.

"Can you see the eclipse?" she inquired.

I gestured excitedly to the south-east, just beyond her viewpoint.  "Are you kidding? Just come and see!"

(To be fair, it seems most people aren't sure about their compass directions.)

As she texted and phoned her parents, the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter arrived, and I guided them a little further along the fenced walkway, where there was a gap between two trees.  Younger daughter gasped.

About half a dozen people turned up, with their phones alight, alas, but they soon turned them off.

As the western horizon darkened, the stars pierced the indigo sky overhead. Younger daughter murmured, "I'm looking for Orion."

"Oh, that's a winter constellation; you don't see him in the summer."  I pointed to the north-east.  "See that 'W'?  That's Cassiopeia."  I turned to the high west.  "And that's the Big Dipper.  Can you see the handle?"

We waited for the peak of the eclipse, the stars multiplying and burning brighter. Then the RFB and younger daughter, shivering a bit in their summer tops, withdrew. 

Wrapped in my fleece jacket, I leaned on the narrow walkway's rather rickety railing, gazing eastward at the shadow of our planet across the moon, and listening idly to the small mob of relatively youthful friends mis-identifying the constellations.

Jigsaw justification

I've been wasting time on an online jigsaw puzzle site, but I justify it with the education I'm getting.  I find myself drawn to the artwork ones, a lot of which are pretty damn twee, but there's also a plethora of Manet, Monet, Dürer, Botticelli, and Van Gogh.  

Especially Van Gogh. 

Tons of Van Gogh.

What fascinates me is how the bits of the puzzle - as I pull them together without referring to the organic original image, thank you very much - are just almost indistinguishable blobs and slashes of colour, or images that I fancy are there.  The closer I come to completing it, the colours become stronger and the elements clearer, and the lines more exact.  Are my eyes doing the work of bringing the art into focus? Or is it my brain filling in, much as it does when I'm listening to far-off familiar music, that I can't fully hear?

The finished picture is almost unrecognisable from what I have imagined at the beginning.

Is that how great artists work? Placing the lines, strokes, and colours just so, to let the viewer knit them together?

I came across a Van Gogh I didn't know.  It was brilliant - clusters of strong colours, looking like a bouquet of bright flowers.  As I worked, it became a scene of workers in a yellow field, with oranges and greens and a golden sky.

The painting turned out to be The Red Vineyards near Arle - and apparently, it's the one work for which there's a record of Van Gogh making a sale.  It's now in Russia.

I love it.  

Perhaps I'm not wasting my time.

(Yeah, I probably am.)

Drawn like a moth

Garrison Keillor, who has taken gentle, Minnesotan swipes at Unitarians for years, put this up on his blog/newsletter/column/whatever it is this morning:

How many Unitarians does it take to changed a lightbulb?  -- "Unitarians believe that incandescent and flourescent and neon are equally valid paths to light, and if, in your journey, you feel the need to change your lightbulb, we will come to your home and recite a poem about radiance and perform a dance about the rising of the sun."

I grew up Unitarian, and still consider myself one.  

He's not wrong.

However, I won't be coming to your house to dance around your lifebulb.

Although I do have one that needs changing...

Long distance call

I dreamt Demeter phoned me, something that she rarely did in the last four or five years of her life, because she had become so deaf and was bamboozled by the buttons.

I was in a corridor somewhere when her name flashed up on the screen.  Disbelieving, I fumbled to answer it.  She was asking if she could still come over on Thursday, the day she usually came to our place for dinner.  The last time she was at our place was the first Thursday of last January, before she fell for the final time.

I told her that, of course, she was welcome, as usual. Then I looked around desperately for the Resident Fan Boy, for somebody, anybody that I could tell.  To ask if I were crazy, if anyone else's dead mother had phoned them. I saw Stephen Fry, but decided not to bother him, although I was rather comforted by seeing him, because it was assurance that I was indeed dreaming.

I awoke to a dark bedroom, feeling a little spooked.

Thursday came.  

I was tempted to set another place at the table.

She didn't show up.

You can blow with that

 "Red-misting" a bit today, and trying not to give the stranger in question rent-free accommodation in my brain.

Here's a possible balm:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Richard E. Grant (@richard.e.grant)

I showed this to the Resident Fan Boy, who didn't get the cultural reference:

Music for possibly the weirdest wedding anniversary ever

This wedding anniversary did not turn out as planned. 

Maybe I'll tell you about it later.  

Nuthin' tragic.  

Certainly educational.

Meanwhile, Canada Day is bearing down upon us - it promises some weirdness as well - so I offer this dreamy ditty from Toronto-born Abigail Lapell. Everywhere we go, you know everyone, people say hello/ Every time you call our song starts playing, on the radio /

Has it been a year or two?  Will it be cotton or leather? 

Mercury and iron, carbon, silver, bind us together/ 

Diamonds are a dime a dozen, take my hand/ Take my hand and don’t stop running

Happy anniversary, one more year/ Frozen in amber, for eternity /Oh darling, oh my dear 

Has it been a year or two? Will it be cotton or leather? 

Mercury and iron, carbon, silver, bind us togethеr, together

Everywhеre we go, you know everyone (Happy anniversary)/ People say hello (One more year, frozen in amber) 

Every time you call our song starts playing (For eternity, oh darling oh my dear)/On the radio

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 loss, 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, be 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.