Never the twain shall meet

I was terrified to go in for my appointment -- and not just because of the thunderstorms noisily rolling through the neighbourhood.

The only appointment I'd been able to secure was at 7:45 pm. Ignored at the door of the Apple Store, as younger people skipped past me and collared the "Geniuses" in their blue polo shirts, I remembered that my appointment was actually for the "Genius Bar", so I headed for the back of the store, and scanning the long table, tried to catch someone's eye.

The person who finally noticed me was named Mark - a nice change from the Jasons and Joshuas with whom I'd been dealing all week as our house was being dismantled in search of asbestos. Oh, please don't ask...

I informed Mark that the battery in my five-year-old laptop had died, and, being in the middle of a move, it wasn't a propitious time to replace it.

"What about an iPod?" he asked, brandishing his own.
"But I watch movies on my laptop."
"Oh. What do you use?"
I could see him politely stifling his bewilderment as I extracted a small square out of my computer bag.
"I don't stream; I watch DVDs - yes, I'm a dinosaur," I told him.

He set to punching keys and exclaiming at some of the weird stuff it apparently was doing, while my heart sank. As he poked and prodded, he asked me where we were going. I told him Victoria, and he mentioned he'd been west. The last time an Ontarian boy told me this, he said he'd been to Winnipeg, so I decided to pursue another topic.

"Yes, it will be different, because there's no Apple Store in Victoria."
He pulled out his trusty iPad to prove me wrong.
"See? Union Square."
"Union Square? That must be new," I said uneasily. "Do you have it on a map?"
He squinted at his screen, and shrugged. "Uh, that's Vancouver. I guess you're right."
"I am, sometimes."

He mentioned he'd never been to BC (I could have guessed that), and that all his German relatives think that British Columbia is Canada: "Ach! Lake Louise!"

I paused diplomatically before answering.

"Well....Lake Louise is actually in Alberta, but I know what you mean. My British relatives can't get their minds around the fact that it takes three or four days to go to the West Coast by train."

Using something called SMC - he showed me an article on his iPad which presupposes knowledge I do not have - he magically resusitated my battery, and didn't charge me.

Making my way home under clearing night skies, I decided that he'd definitely made up for not being a geography genius.

Bowing out

It was a first and final sort of evening.

I hadn't seen the National Arts Centre since before the completion of the extensive renovations in honour of the Canadian sesquicentennial, so I was eager to see it, especially after months of hiking around the outside of the building, entering the back down a temporary wooden staircase, and making our way back through the corridors and stairs - to say nothing of long trudges to the sole ladies' washroom on the main floor to join line-ups comprised of three different audiences from the Studio, the Theatre, and Southam Hall during intermission.

Well, they were trying to improve on a Brutalist building from the mid-1960s, so the new and improved NAC looks like a 1960's airport lounge. Even the washrooms - very efficient, although a challenge to find the towel dispensers - are like airport washrooms, long double rows.

We were determined to see this concert, because it was Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, followed by Appalachian Spring, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: in short, a dream concert, and likely my final NAC show.

We were in the second row of the amphitheatre, due to not renewing our subscriptions, after years of being in the orchestra section near the front. The biggest difference was being able to see beyond the first row of the actual orchestra.

As the Fanfare started up with the crashing drums and cymbals knocking us back in our seats, I noticed, with a thrill of joy, how many women were in the orchestra. Out of three trumpets, two were women; three out of four French horns were female musicians. I remembered a girl in my junior high band playing baritone horn, and getting featured in a local paper because this was so unusual.

The percussionists were all male, of course; that never seems to change. I saw the man in charge of the gong backing into it to mute it, before reaching behind to strike it again.

Then, Appalachian Spring, with the single mellow clarinet. So beautiful.
I focused my binoculars on individual musicians and, toward the end, found the face of a lovely young woman listening, her cheek against the frets of her viola.

It took me a moment or so to realize who she was.

At the interval, I checked my programme. It was the Russian Prodigy, on an internship to the NACO. She must be beginning her Third Year of her degree.

This left me struggling with ungracious feelings throughout Beethoven's paean to the human spirit.

Oh gawd. Do mothers ever forget or forgive those who have been less than kind to their offspring?

I forced myself back to the music.

The second movement of the Ninth has always reminded me of a bustling Victoria (as in 19th century, not the city) household in the morning, with a bossy paterfamilias. Actively avoiding looking at the RP, I trained my binoculars on the kettle drummer, who is required to provide odd accents and rumbling. I could see his lips move as he counted and counted, poised to spring.

During the third movement - which, ever since I was a little girl, I've envisioned as a forest stream in the moonlight - I watched the grimly grey chorus waiting in stillness on their risers and the woodwind section, willing myself not to look below where the Russian Prodigy plucked and bowed, front and centre. As my imprisonment in Hades glided to an end, the past seventeen years kept cycling back to haunt me.
During the final movement, the chorus blossomed from shadowy sullenness into individuals, coming alive behind the youthful, smiling, and flashily-dressed soloists. I noticed two women in tuxedos amongst the tenors, saw passion and concentration.

When the bows came, the audience whooped extra loud for the chorus. I don't think it was just because of numerous friends and family attending.

Java jive

At younger daughter's favourite Second Cup on Metcalfe Street, she retrieves her bright wallet out of the precious purse given to her by her godmother years ago - she won't part with it - and goes up to the counter to order for herself, checking carefully to see that I don't follow, but summoning me to check to see if she has the right amount.

After a diplomatic pause to allow her to pick up her order, I approach our favourite barista, and tell her we won't be back.

When I go to pay, she refuses my money.

"I admire you so much," she breathes.

Thank goodness she'll never know the truth.

Lucky one

Perhaps one of the best Christmas gifts I got this Christmas was an accidental one. Elder daughter introduced me to an app called "Shazam". No doubt you've heard of it -- I certainly hadn't. It's the thing that has been missing all my life. When a song is playing in a coffee shop and I want to know what it is, I just bring up "Shazam" on my phone, and have it "listen". Then, eight times out of ten - it's not perfect - it will not only tell me the song, but it will identify the artist, even if it's a cover version.

No more planting myself as close to the speakers as possible, making notes of what lyrics I can decipher, then waiting until I can get somewhere where I can Google them.

So far there is one song I've "Shazam"ed twice, mainly because I don't watch those "find the next pop star" sort of television competitions. This one is by a fellow named Logan Staats. He's from Brantford, Ontario (the Six Nations, actually), and he was on something on CTV called the Launch. This song keeps coming up on CBC Radio, and makes me say "Who on earth is that?" Now I have an app for that.

Romancing the stones

A number of overlapping viewings meant that younger daughter and I had to be out of the house for two hours at midday -- which beats the not unusual three-hour or five-hour banishments, which include the Accent Snob, who, for obvious reasons, can't be left in the house while critical strangers tramp through it.

My neighbour had told me that, despite my impressions to the contrary, you can take dogs to Beechwood Cemetery, so off we went on a glorious early autumn day. The colours were late, after a rainy (indeed,floody) spring and summer and unseasonably hot September.

We entered the cemetery by Poets' Hill, and I noticed how many of the formerly blank book-shaped markers that curve rather preciously at the crest, now have names and dates on them. As we moved into the older part of the grounds, younger daughter began reading the stones, one by one, so I held back the Accent Snob to allow her to approach.

A lady who had been sitting in her car asked us if we had family in this stretch of hill. Her husband was buried here a year and a half ago, and she remembered he regretted not having a grave for his father, so he could visit. She decided to make sure he had a marker for her to visit. She lived far away on the edge of Greater Ottawa, and didn't get in often to tend to his flowers.

I told her about Archibald Lampman's sonnet and about Tommy Douglas' gazebo at the western end of the cemetery, looking toward Parliament Hill. She had heard of neither the sonnet nor the gazebo.

We slowly made our way back. I began to fear that younger daughter would feel compelled to read all of the thousands of monuments. I stood by with the anxious Accent Snob, and thought of my Friend With Whom I Had Coffee, whose mother had died that morning. And I thought of visiting graves. The Resident Fan Boy's parents have graves we can visit; my grandmother doesn't, and I doubt Demeter will.

This doesn't trouble me. There are many places that remind me of my mother and grandmother. None of them are in Hades.

The damn fool who shot him

If you like Hamilton and Doctor Who, you'll like this. If you don't - or you've had it up to here with Hamilton parodies - you won't. Either way, it's bedtime.

Box step at dawn

When I think of the final months of 2017, I will think of this song, and being pulled by the skipping baritone saxophones into a strange little dance amongst cardboard boxes on the carpet, as the light brightened beyond the curtains. As usual, I like the song rather better than the video, which looks rather like a car commercial.

Footnote (write of passage number forty-seven)

The first thing I see is what I take to be a hand.  It's stretching out of the stroller parked in the bay a few seats ahead of me, the digits are curling to grip the rim.

That's when I realize that what I'm looking at is the foot of a really young baby with really, really prehensile toes.  What I mistook for a chubby wrist is, in fact, a chubby ankle.  The foot kicks back into the air to join another foot, and tiny hands grasp pearly pink toes.

The mum, propped against a window, leans over to coo.  She is snazzily dressed for a new mother - a little black dress cinched in impossibly tight with a wide leather belt, as if to say:  "See?  I'm just as slender as I was!"

She rings the bell in deepest darkest New Edinburgh, near the expensive houses that look out over the Rideau River.  She pushes the stroller toward the front door, but is instructed by the driver to back out, for safety's sake.

She apologizes profusely and turns, heading up the aisle past my seat.

I gently say to her, "He meant 'back out', not 'back door', while the driver is calling back much the same thing.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sorry...." she gasps, flustered.  The stroller is huge, and she knocks a sippie cup loose against the railing, grimacing in embarrassment.

I'm startled to see another pair of baby legs, as she retreats in confusion -- these are much longer and larger -- the stroller is two-tiered.

My goodness, I think.  Irish twins?  No wonder she can't think straight.

And maybe she's really, really hungry.

Rideau redux

I found the Resident Fan Boy, stressed, suffering from a cold, distracted, wandering around downstairs, muttering about calling the Accent Snob's vet - our dog was facing a battery of tests following a weight loss that had strangers commenting on him in the streets.

It soon became clear that I'd be walking the Accent Snob alone.

"Aren't you glad I'm up?" I asked the RFB grimly.

Setting out into the predawn, I decided I would be heading east enough times that day, with several viewings scheduled necessitating all residents be out of the house, include the canine one.  I bent my steps west under a moon in its final quarter.

The summer and its heat had lingered on, but suddenly, it was autumn.  The colours had waited until late into the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend to show themselves.

I walked through the maze of New Edinburgh streets in the half-light.  The sun had yet to clear the horizon.

I passed houses with lights partially on - usually in the back where the kitchens are.  No one else on the streets, save another dog-walker, whose terriers snarled and lunged at the sight of the Accent Snob across the street.  The woman hurried them into her driveway.

My fingers began to sting at the tips -- another sure sign of an Ottawan October.  Our gloves were all in storage awaiting the move west.

I pressed on toward the mist-shrouded Rideau River.  Now I was being passed by joggers, cyclists, and more dog-walkers. A woman with two black greyhounds greeted me:  "It's nice to see you again."  I suspect she recognized the Accent Snob, not me.  We used to encounter her quite a bit on the Putman stretch of the walk, which I was skipping that morning.

I crossed a deserted Crichton Street, seeing, all of a sudden, a convoy of vehicles bearing down on me from the Vanier Parkway traffic light.

The morning sunlight was touching the tops of the taller houses, but not the sidewalk.  At 7:30, the sunrise for my latitude and longitude was fifteen minutes ago: cars backing out of driveways, and figures with carrier bags emerging from houses.

I disappeared into mine.  I did not walk along the Rideau again.

Keeps me up at night

It's been one of those days. (Plleeease don't let it be one of those months...)

Time to jump into the refuge of music. When I think of the latter part of 2017, a couple of songs will probably bring it back quite clearly.

Here's one of them, by Fionn, who are twin sisters from White Rock, BC. They are, of course, very pretty, so the dilemma they describe is not quite what I experienced as a young, certainly-not-conventionally-attractive woman, but I can empathize all the same. Most women, if not all, have experienced fellas who can't quite grasp the concept that females are living, thinking, feeling beings.

Not that being one tonight is a particular comfort.