Eternity is now (the flip side)

Late August is half a year away.  It was in that season in 2008 that I wrote a post entitled "Eternity is Now", about holding on to a moment and seeing an eternity in it, even as it slips away.

Here, on the other side of the sun, February seems chockfull of moments that hang around without being asked.

Hades has been socked by a winter storm bringing freezing rain, followed by rain, soon to be followed (we're informed) by an arctic front with wind gusts up to 80 kilometres an hour.

Elder daughter, as you may recall, flew in from Halifax last night because the Halifax Biometrics Lab cannot take the required fingerprints for her British visa in time.  She was forced to set off into downtown Ottawa for the Visa Application Office, and took the accompanying snap from the bus stop at about 11 this morning.

The Resident Fan Boy had work and a medical appointment.  When he showed up at a hospital on the other side of the city for the latter, they had no record of it, even though they were the ones who had cancelled last week's appointment and rescheduled him.

Younger daughter and I remained holed up at home, school being cancelled, thankfully.  When I showed her this picture, (elder daughter had "instagrammed" it on Facebook) she wailed, "Will it be like this forever?"  I assured her it wouldn't, but didn't add that it will only seem that way.

Eternity is now.

Oh, and when elder daughter returned, it was without her passport.  The Visa Application Office was sorry, but they need it for now.  Like me, elder daughter uses her passport for ID, so getting on the plane for Halifax next Sunday should be fun....

Leave it to Kafka

There were hints in yesterday's horoscope about how today might turn out:  This is a poor day to ask bosses, parents, teachers and VIPs for permission or approval.  Trust me.  Save your breath.  The response will be rejections, criticism or at best skepticism.  Someone older might question your ability or technique.  Try to sidestep this if you can. 

While this was not precisely what happened, I should have known better than to attempt to renew our passports.

I had planned everything carefully.  We had filled out the documents, included new photos and old passports.  I had birth certificates for the three of us. All this carefully tucked in a ziplock bag with the bus itinerary I had printed up to get myself from our house in north-east Ottawa to the new (to us) passport office somewhere near the Hog's Back.  I checked and re-checked while standing at the bus stop, removing and replacing my mittens.  My fingers were pink as I took my seat.  I stuffed my mittens down the front of my parka to take the chill off and tucked my hands against the skin under my sleeves until my thumbs ached less and my cuticles burned only a little.

The Passport Office is a long, low greyish structure sticking out incongruously from an older small mall.  It looks like a bunker.  It's not much better inside.  Rows of plastic benches painted a metallic silver in the centre, numbered kiosks on two walls with desks for filling forms along another wall.  The queue is by the remaining wall, of course.

I joined the line-up to have my documents grouped and my number assigned, then took a place on a stretch of empty bench, listening to the howls and squeals of half a dozen infants and toddlers.  I would have listened to my iPod, but I was in the midst of a recording of the 2011 BBC radio dramatization of Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, set in the Soviet Union of World War Two and rife with bleak institutions, heartless bureaucracy, and snow. Appropriate listening perhaps, but I was feeling alienated enough.  The only natural light came from the skylight, which was largely covered with - well - snow, of course.

I kept my eyes on the lighted panels waiting for my combination of letters and numbers to flash up.  After a bit more than half an hour, they did and I made my way to the indicated gate.  No one was there.  I peered around the partitions and double-checked the number at the station. My processor appeared suddenly from beneath the counter where she had been filing or rummaging.  She looked rather like Tina Fey on a grim day.

I carefully laid out my documents in front of her:  three filled-out applications with the newly expired passports.
"Do you have photo ID such as a driver's license?"
I stared at her momentarily.  I may have gaped a little.
"I don't drive.  That's why I use my passport for ID."
"Do you have something else with your address on it?  Maybe a bill?"
I rummaged in my bag, but knew it was no use.  I don't carry my bills around, and the Ontario Health card stopped including an address years ago, presumably for "privacy" reasons.
"Is there anything about this on the web site?" I asked in despair.
"Well, I'm not sure, but there should be.  Who are you submitting these applications for?"
"My husband and daughter."
"Do you have letters of authorization?"

My heart sank even further.  The last time we renewed, the Resident Fan Boy went in for all three of us and was done in a jiffy.  No one asked for authorization.

I had put my health card back in my bag, but she asked to see it again and typed figures into her machine, popping a small sheet with my new passport photo pasted to it for me to sign.  I suspected she was going to accept this as identification, but said nothing.  Years of dealing with school secretaries have taught me to shut up when something appears to be going through.

I made notes of the requirements for these letters of authorization which would need to be faxed, and finally tottered away, feeling squished and processed.  I quickly texted the RFB, and headed for the bus stop.  If I didn't hurry, I would miss the connection and be late picking up younger daughter from school.

My cell phone went off as I peered down the road through the snow blowing in my face.  It was the Resident Fan Boy in full  and disbelieving fuss.  I gave a few more details, then told him the bus was coming.  I don't do well with multi-tasking.

In my seat and rechecking where I would need to change buses, the phone went off again.  This never happens.  No one calls me; they always text.  It was elder daughter phoning from Halifax, so this had to be an emergency.

See, she learned last week that her internship for her fourth year journalism degree was going to be with with CBC in London.  The one in England.  The longed-for dream.  This is set for April and gives precious little time to fulfill the requirements for a British visa.

She had had an appointment with a Bank of Montreal manager that day to acquire an official letter (with letterhead, according to the stipulations) assuring the powers that be that she has sufficient funds -- especially since this is an unpaid position.  The reason  she needed an appointment is because when she went into her local bank last week and made the request, the lady at the counter thought a photo-copy with a business card stapled to it would do the trick.

However, this was not why she was phoning.  The visa application also requires "biometrics" (fingerprints) performed at an appropriate lab.  Good thing there is such a lab in Halifax -- except there are no slots available until April and the application has already been submitted.

"Well," the lady on the phone told my incredulous daughter, "we have offices in St John's, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver."  (For those of you unfamiliar with Canadian geography, all of these cities are in different time zones from Halifax.)

I had to make that transfer, and hastily told despairing daughter that we'd work something out.

Trudging up the long avenue in the wake of a cortège of roaring snow-trucks and ploughs, I thought of the radio version of Life and Fate again, with its mournful bayan theme music, and a character applying for a residence permit, only to be told by the authorities that she must have a letter from her employer.  Her employer can't write the letter without permission from the office that supplies the permits and the authorities refuse to give permission, yet demand the letter.

"How's your day going?" inquired the vice-principal at younger daughter's school.
"Kafkaesque."
She looked blank.  She teaches social studies and P.E.
When I explained, she nodded.  Ministry of Education officials had just been in.

It was only when I got home that I realized one of younger daughter's given names was misspelled -- although spelled correctly on the application, the expired passport, and her birth certificate which I had provided. The Resident Fan Boy made a note of this in the letter of authorization.

Elder daughter flies in from Halifax tomorrow.  Her appointment at the Ottawa lab is on Friday.  She flies back Sunday.  I wonder if she's considered committing a crime in Halifax so that they'd take her fingerprints.  Of course, that would probably negate the visa....

Don't get around much anymore

I hurt my knee on December 17th. I've been waiting and waiting for it to get better.



Going through my photo files for last year, because I don't have any February photos for this year, and realizing I haven't taken the dog for a walk longer than around the block since early December.
When these were taken, almost exactly a year ago, I was able to trudge with the Accent Snob through the snow for over an hour. He didn't enjoy it that much, mind you, but I could do it.


Joni Mitchell said, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
She also said, "I wish I had a river I could skate away on." I have a river, but I was never much of a skater. Not that you could skate on a river covered with snow.


What the hell. It's February. I was going to be miserable anyway.

Frozen in time

I'm posting this as quick as I can because: a) we've been viewing another possible school for younger daughter today and b) Google denied me access to my blog earlier because it thought I was spyware or something. I did my "mommy" approach to computer glitches; I switched the damned thing off at the source and started all over again. ("If you can't play nicely, we'll forget the whole thing.) That has seemed to work for the nonce, but I'm posting before Google gets cranky again. After all, I only have three days of posts to do; it would be a shame to stumble at the finish line.

A couple of days ago, I was talking about how I was introduced to the music of Dar Williams through my Launchcast station which is still playing for me here in Canada. As this shortest-but-still-the-damn-longest month draws to a close, my mind has been very much on her song "February". It's not my favourite of her songs (that would be "It Happens Every Day" or "When I Was A Boy"), but the sentiments of the song go with the Ottawa weather of this time of year which rolls from frozen moonscape wastes to dirty, agar-like slush and back again.

I found a rather nice video on YouTube set to the song, but it's very rural (as is the song, I guess), so I'll follow up with some rather more urban snaps I took early in the month and yesterday on Ash Wednesday:
I threw your keys in the water, I looked back,
They'd frozen halfway down in the ice.
They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owners,
Even after the anger, it all turned silent, and
The everyday turned solitary,
So we came to February.

First we forgot where we'd planted those bulbs last year,
Then we forgot that we'd planted at all,
Then we forgot what plants are altogether,
and I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting and
The nights were long and cold and scary,
Can we live through February?

You know I think Christmas was a long red glare,
Shot up like a warning, we gave presents without cards,
And then the snow,
And then the snow came, we were always out shoveling,
And we'd drop to sleep exhausted,
Then we'd wake up, and it's snowing.

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together.
You stopped and pointed and you said, "That's a crocus,"
And I said, "What's a crocus?" and you said, "It's a flower,"
I tried to remember, but I said, "What's a flower?"
You said, "I still love you."

The leaves were turning as we drove to the hardware store,
My new lover made me keys to the house,
And when we got home, well we just started chopping wood,
Because you never know how next year will be,
And we'll gather all our arms can carry,
I have lost to February.

It takes a lot of love to survive February, and I suspect that that particular love didn't because her new lover has made her keys for the house. That's my challenge for today; not losing to February. Oh well, it will be over soon. And then it will be the horror that is March in Ottawa. Sigh....

Feeling like an ash hole

I'm eating cold sausages and bacon rashers left over from last night's pancake feast. Ash Wednesday today, so the Resident Fan Boy will give up coffee for the next forty days and compound his sacrifice by making coffee for me after dinner. This evening, if the weather is not treacherous, he will take the dried out fronds of the palm leaves that have been stuck behind a picture frame above the computer and get smudged with the ashes at church.

In the meantime, I climb the hill to younger daughter's school, trying to take arty pictures of February devastation.As I bring younger daughter to her locker, I take the opportunity to congratulate Guardian Angel on her award.
"What award?"
"The book review award."
"I won an award?"
At this point Russian Prodigy, a rather nasty piece of work who has been known to speak to younger daughter as if she's an imbecile when people are watching and stuff snow into her boots when they're not, appears from nowhere, fixes me with an alarmed stare and declares: "She's not supposed to know! We were told not to tell her!"
I return her stare and say: "But the parents got an email about it yesterday! There was nothing in it about it being a surprise!" Indeed, the lengthy and rather poorly punctuated message had appeared on my monitor the previous morning. Why on earth would they send such a notice and try to surprised the recipients more than 24 hours later? All the same, I leave the school under a cloud, and feeling rather upset and disgruntled, am halfway home before I remember I was wanting to take pictures of the stuff I missed en route to school.

While I'm snapping, I see a regular on my street, a book under one arm and her trusty dachshund under the other. It's a mystery, of course. The book, that is.
"They end well," she shrugs apologetically. "That's why I like 'em, I guess."
"Yes," I say, being a P.D. James fan and of not much else in that genre, "Justice prevails."

I wind up in the coffee shop to scribble and sort. I'm re-examining two of my favourite books about writing, both by Henriette Anne Klauser: Writing on Both Sides of the Brain and Put Your Heart on Paper. She's since come out with two more books and all are available at my library. A guy in one of the booths making business calls is intrigued and asks if I'm a writer. "Not for money," I smile ruefully. I've just read in one of the books: "The difference between a writer and an author is Page 53."

The coffee shop seems to be tuned to an easy-listening satellite station this morning; they're playing The Carpenters and that ghastly "I Am Your Lady" song from the Eighties, which would easily make the Songs I Loathe list. Before I'm driven out, though, a James Taylor ditty that I do like comes on (I don't like all of James Taylor's stuff, but he did write some lovely songs), and it just happens to be another one of the songs Launchcast sent me when I first began listening to my station. Here's the video for it, and check out who's singing back-up! Feeling a little less ashen, I make my way into the salty morning.

The Wall

. . .But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. . . . - Desiderata, Max Ehrmann, (Sept 1872 - Sept 1945). Copyright 1927.

Ten more posts to go on this NaBloPoMo thing. The last thing I want to do this morning is to post, but if I don't write something, this overloaded day will trample me and I won't get anything blogged. Do you know when you wake up one morning and you know you have the flu? This morning I woke up with a bad case of black despair. It will pass. Desperation is a luxury I can't afford. I'm taking double doses of evening primrose oil, grasping the lifelines of FlyLady and any positive thought I can catch without crushing. I'm having an interview with a private school for younger daughter today. I don't know how we'll afford it or even if it's not going to be a huge mistake. Then we have to meet elder daughter's teachers this evening. Prayers and warm thoughts welcome.

Beware the Ides of February

Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons; wise men never try. As it happens, I have an excellent reason to by-pass Valentine's Day. I actually fell in love with the Resident Fan Boy on February 15th, so we ignore the 14th and exchange hostages chocolates and/or cards the next day. Actually, saying I fell in love on the 15th is misleading. That was merely the evening (some enchanted) that I knew for sure. The preceding three weeks had been a slow increment of evidence. About a week after I'd met him, for example, I saw him walking toward me across a crowded room the third floor of the UVic library, and a small voice piped up inside my head, from somewhere behind my left ear: "He's....tall..." (My limbic system didn't make those kind of comments about my other guy pals.) We'd go for 3-hour lunches and not realize how much time had passed. On the evening of the fifteenth, we met at a University of Victoria eatery of the time call The Raven's Wing, where you could get cheap chewy rare steak with garlic bread and a salad. We'd met, ostensibly, so I could analyze his handwriting (one of my old party tricks), and I remember being oh, so aware of how close he was, as he leaned over to watch my work. While I talked, I spit out a bit of salad, and he being the gentleman that he is, pointed at the green blob and said "What's that?" I returned to the library on my own to (ostensibly) do more homework and found myself in the deserted women's washroom in the basement of the library singing. And that's how it begins. And that's how many people think it should stay, forever and forever and forever. It doesn't, of course, because love eventually has to to move from where it's something that happens to you to where it's something you must do every day. So it's especially appropriate that we don't celebrate Valentine's Day, the day of flowers, romance, sex, and love songs. There's nothing wrong with the aforementioned (God knows), but popular culture seems to think that that's all there is. No. We celebrate the day after. This was one of the readings at our wedding and I think it says it best: When Love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the North wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so he is for your pruning Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns to you his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. And these things shall love do unto you that you know the secrets of your heart, And in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's Heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of Love's threshing floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. For Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For Love is sufficient unto Love. When you love you should not say " God is in my heart", but rather " I am in the heart of God." And think not that you can direct the course of Love, for Love if it finds you worthy, directs your course. - Kahlil Gibran I have been on the threshing floor of the days after. Most women with children know it all too well. It ain't pretty, although there is much startling beauty. And as Rick Redfern once said in the comic strip Doonesbury: "The world needs grown-ups, Zonker."

Hello my baby frog

Yesterday's thaw melted layers of snow away and like an archeological dig took our front yard back in five weeks back in time. The needles left from the Christmas tree that waited forlornly for the chipper after Epiphany are now resting on top of the snow as if the beaten balsam was hauled away only yesterday, and a paper coffee cup that someone apparently tossed by our porch sometime before Christmas slowly emerged from the snow bank throughout the day. Today, the temperatures have plummeted back to -12 Celsius, and the streams of water leaking from underneath the drifts have frozen into hazardous C-shaped patches of ice across the sidewalks.

I've been traveling back in time too. Despite the pain of reliving past Februarys, (that's why they call it "nostalgia" - νόστος nostos "returning home", and άλγος algos "pain" ), I have been unable to resist following February from about 1989 to now. Some events I remember, some I have forgotten but the entries bring them back, and there are things I don't remember even though I made a note of them at the time, a shame because they are happy memories that I wrote down to preserve. One was of watching the Resident Fan Boy standing in a beam of afternoon sun streaming into our bedroom. I was sick, and he had taken elder daughter to the park and was enthusiastically regaling me with their adventures. Another was of returning home down the boulevard from a Shrove Tuesday dinner at Christchurch Cathedral in Victoria on a clear night under a sky brimming with stars. Elder daughter, about three or four at the time, was balancing along the walls and singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star". Little gems of life that have been pushed completely from my mind, but they must have happened; I wrote them down. I watch myself moving sightlessly through the past towards my present. I can't help but feel compassion for her, my hopeful, clueless past self. She won't know what hit her.

Here's a memory I hadn't lost. To understand it, you may need to see this classic Warner Brothers cartoon from the 1950s:

It's a cold February afternoon without the slightest hint of melting, our first winter in Ottawa (I don't recall a Winterlude thaw that year). Younger daughter is four, and I'm still raw and wounded from the result of a team assessment by the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario the previous month. February means phone calls, forms, slipping into the basement to cover my weeping under the hum of the washing machine. And consultations. On this particular afternoon, the consultant is a Speech Language Pathologist, making a home visit to observe younger daughter. She turns up during lunch, and younger daughter is doing what she does best --- under-performing. One of the aches of having a special needs child is being forced to see the little person under your care through others' eyes, particularly professional, assessing eyes. Every beloved quirk becomes a symptom, every endearing idiosyncrasy becomes a note on a pad and later, a line in a report. My heart sinks as I hear younger daughter murmuring to herself in unintelligible syllables. At one point during lunch, the SLP remarks brightly, "That sounded like noodles!"

"She can say 'chicken noodle soup', I say as lightly as I can manage. But I know I'm Just-a-Mother-in-Denial. After lunch, the consultant pulls out her bag of tricks, and tries to guide younger daughter through some matching games involving animals and numbers. She also attempts to get younger daughter to join in the various verses of "Old McDonald's Farm". Finally, she packs up, smiles encouragingly at me and leaves with a few supportive comments and suggestions.

"May I have some chicken noodle soup?" asks younger daughter. That evening, she will inform her father that she "played wit' an'mals an' money", and, sitting on the stairs after an outing, launches into several verses of "Old McDonald's Farm" with all the animal noises. I shovel the walkway, singing under my breath: "Send me a kiss by wi-yah; Babee my heart's on fi-yaaaah..."

("Ribbet," says younger daughter. Everywhere a-ribbet, ribbet?)

February makes me gibber

One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place is that I spend the first few weeks of the new year doing a quick rundown in my journal of the past year. It gives me a snapshot of a given year month by month, and each year, it seems to take me longer and longer to do. Last night, I decided to glance at some of these yearly rundowns, focusing on the February of each year (and perusing some actual February journal entries while I was at it).

Bad idea. The basic impression I got was that I was way happier, even in bloody February in the years when I first began keeping track. Is the unexamined life really not worth living, Socrates? Sometimes I think that the refining fires of suffering would be a lot easier to take, if I could actually see some improvement in myself as a person....

Drastic measures are needed. I checked my Facebook page where my favourite songs are on rotation, and I'm choosing three of the five of today's featured songs to cheer me up.

First, "New Age Girl" by Deadeye Dick. I never watched the movie Dumb and Dumber so never heard of this song until The Q radio station in Victoria had an Alphabet Weekend while I was packing up the house to move to Ottawa. This was early in the weekend, under "D", of course. I can't embed it, but I can give you a slightly higher quality link.
Rargh!

Next we have some Can/Con. I love this number by Jeremy Fisher(né Binns) who was born in Hamilton, Ontario and spent some time on Vancouver Island where I grew up:
She runs guns; everyone wants guns; she runs guns everyone wants -- there she go-hoes!

Now I don't care much for the Deadeye Dick video, and the Jeremy Fisher video is kind of cute. Both videos are new to me, although I've loved the songs since I first heard them. However, "Downtown Train" by Tom Waits is a classic, both as a song and as a video. What do you think?


Now, isn't that evocative? I mean, I've never been to New York, but this says "summer night in Brooklyn" to me. Longing, yearning, beautiful.

Okay, I feel a bit better. Maybe tomorrow I'll summon up the courage to tell you what this is all about. Maybe not.

Thy will be done

I've found it somewhat difficult to blog this past week, not for lack of opportunity nor topics, but I really don't want to turn this blog into a moanfest. Which is a challenge during February in Ottawa. The sad thing, February isn't Ottawa's worst month; it's worsted [in no particular order] by July, August, April and March. And January. Actually, June and September aren't that much fun either...

Whoops! This is sliding into Moandom. Anyway, how do I battle the miseries here in the Nation's Capital? Well, for one thing, there was an interview of David Tennant by Catherine Tate on BBC Four today. It was much too short, but thanks to the "Listen Again" feature on the BBC website, I can listen to it for the next week, providing our computer doesn't pack up which it's showing signs of doing...

Erggh! Sliding, sliding... So, um, David Tennant. Imagining David Tennant would find me fascinating. Self-delusion. Very very good for February. Uh, in a related and slightly related vein, finding well-made and witty Doctor Who fanvids on YouTube (or just well-made and witty).

You think less of me now, don't you? What else? Well, I bury myself in family history research. It is fortunate, in the midst of a rather bleak week both meteorologically and spiritually, that among the many queries I get online about my family tree (seriously, I get one or two a day) came a message from a distant cousin of my husband's who is interested in seeing my collection of wills downloaded from the National Archives. Fortunate, because after two or three years of gathering dust, these wills are finally being transcribed. I take myself down to the coffee shop with my trusty (and rather beautiful) magnifying globe to decipher "secretary hand". Now, you might say that wills are boring, legalistic, and morbid, especially ones from the eighteenth century. Only the middle term applies and one can ignore a lot of that in favour of all sorts of family shenanigans. The latest one I've just completed is one of my favourites so far. The Resident Fan Boy's 5xgreat-grandfather was feeling rather under the weather in the late spring of 1773, so decided it was time to make out his will. It's a very meticulous will, dividing the tablespoons and teaspoons between his two surviving daughters, making sure his wigs and shoes would be delivered to his brother after the funeral. Two sons get the money, livestock and land. Trouble is, he had three surviving sons. Three days after the first will, he drew up a lengthy codicil giving a sum of money to the third son, to be handed over seven years after Papa's death. In the meantime, eldest son is given the pleasant task of paying out three shillings to naughty son every Saturday Night. No other way. Or else all is forfeited. Crikey, I wonder what naughty son did? He shows up in later wills, administering and providing for his relations.

You think I'm an absolute dork now, don't you? Ah well, I always was. I leave you with another of my greatest comforts: music. Here's my favourite Elvis Costello song, sung by Aimee Mann of 'Til Tuesday (with EC on backing vocals). And there's a Doctor Who theme with it. Lovely.