Animated graveyards -- shudder

I like family history. 

I also rather like Hallowe'en. 

What do the two have in common? 

Graveyards. 

This is a charming animated chronicle of cemeteries, which may be a shade oxymoronic. It even had some things that I didn't know, e.g. that burial wasn't always an honourable treatment of the dead.

There appear to be links to other related features, possibly by the same creators. I'll have to check them out, when I have some copious free time, which may take a while.

Reasons for loving October

 

Yesterday, I was musing (and whining just a bit) about sad Octobers, but I was reminded yesterday evening why I love the month. 

Nearing the end of a brisk and beautiful day, so I took some brisk steps down the hill, where I was reminded that, although Victoria can't match the autumn palette in Hades, we don't do too shabbily in fall colours.

And our autumn lasts longer than two weeks.

As I headed back up the hill, I saw and heard something I haven't heard for over two years:  musicians at one of the coffee houses.

Stuck like a dope with a thing called hope.

Why must you go and make this decision alone?

Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) has haunted me through the seasons, but mainly in autumn. 

Eleven years ago, I saw elder daughter off to university and his song "Oh, Very Young" nearly did me in.

Later, as school became more of a trial to younger daughter, "Don't Be Shy", the song that opens the film Harold and Maude, became my prayer for her.

One year ago in early October, after nearly six months of sheltering with us from the pandemic, elder daughter left Victoria, stopped in Ottawa at a friend's empty condo to pick up her things, then flew to England.  She had given notice on her Ottawa job a few days after the death of the Accent Snob in October 2019, planning to fly to the United Kingdom the following spring, in pursuit of a long-cherished dream: to live and work in London.

Then the pandemic hit, and she came to us instead.  Not so secretly, I was thrilled to have my family members close and safe.

Elder daughter, however, was itching to go.  She continued to work online at her own job, after negotiating a contract, but, as the months passed, she wanted desperately to make the break for which she'd planned and planned, especially as her work visa for the UK was sifting away like sand in an hourglass.

Finally, unable to bear it, she purchased plane tickets.

The morning of her departure, I awoke at 2:40 am, when the Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter had been up for about forty minutes.  I lay quietly until 3:15 am, remembering the long-ago October crack of dawn, when my father departed for the final time.  I had written a tearfully detailed entry in my diary, then, not much later, meticulously blocked and blotted out every line, unable to bear having the record of my preteen grief.

Back in the present, I rose and cleaned myself up a little bit, putting in eye drops, then carefully drying, lest elder daughter think I'd been weeping.

I found her perched tensely on "her" end of the couch, claimed during her not-quite-six-month stay with us.

"Dad," she murmured.  "Please call the cab."

The Resident Fan Boy returned shortly after 5 am.  COVID protocols had barred him from waiting at the airport.  He curled up on the bed and wept heartbrokenly.

I rose and headed for the coffee shop, feeling as if the earth was pushing back on the soles of my feet, and I just had enough strength to push back.

I sat at the table, looking out at the sun beginning to hit the tops of the trees, and Cat Stevens pounced, with a song I've heard for years, with lyrics that now stuck into me like nails.

And, finally, I began to weep.

But, you know, I've been a mother for a while now.  I can weep silently, my body still.

Nobody noticed.

I always thought I liked October.  Maybe stuff like this would be worse in an unkinder month.

Shortcut

On this day, last year, we left our house in Ottawa for the final time, moving into a hotel for our final days in Hades.

Younger daughter and I have discovered that, if you make your way to the Sunken Garden at Butchart's in late October, you can have a taste of an Ontarian fall -- without the rest of the Ontarian year.

Artist and artisan

So I was heading up Cook Street this morning, and was startled to see this mural on the side of the dry-cleaners next to Wong Grocery.

How have I missed this? I asked myself, before noticing the painter on the scaffold.

I walked to the foot of the structure, and called up to the lovely young lady at work: "Was this always here, or have you just put it there?"

She gave me a dazzling smile. "I've just put it here! It's not done yet; I'll be adding to it!"

"Wow! And I'll be watching out for that!" I said, before marching on, as she wishes me a good day.

I think the figure is meant to be Chinese Canadian, although the hat that she's wearing looks a little like a Coast Salish cedar hat.

October in Victoria. I love it.

Not so much a gallop as a trot

When I was a youngish girl, not quite a teenager, it was my almost daily habit to walk a long length of railway track behind my house. I was young, vigorous, and unafraid, and I would cross the middle of a unsided trestle high above Helmcken Road, and then stepping on the ancient railway ties, go for miles, although it probably wasn't much more than a kilometre or so. Did this for three years, and although I met with a handful of adventures, only met one creepy guy and got one tick - not at the same time.

That's the Bay Street Bridge through the berries

Some years later, they transformed the old unused line into a network of paved trails, leading from Vic West all the way to Sooke - easy for walkers to do sections, and safe cycling, as well.

A few years before we left Victoria for Hades, they rebuilt the old Selkirk Trestle, which links Vic West with the neighbourhood of Burnside across the Gorge Waterway.

Southern half of the Selkirk Trellis, taken from the middle hump

And yet, despite returning to Victoria for seventeen summers, I never made it over to the Selkirk Trestle, although I'd seen many beguiling pictures of it.

I was determined to right that omission today. CBC Radio informed me that it was "perfect autumn weather", and I had carefully checked my route, because Vic West is one of a handful of Victoria neighbourhoods that is unfamiliar to me, even though I lived in Esquimalt for years.

For the first time, I made my way over the new, silver Johnson Street Bridge, which, amid much controversy, has replaced the blue one. I turned right on Harbour Road and six minutes of trotting past industrial areas brought me to the winding path that hugs the shore looking out over the Upper Harbour, just below the Bay Street Bridge.

Harbour taxi

Pick-up points for the tiny Harbour Taxis double up as look-outs; they seemed to be doing a reasonable business taking Japanese tourists to and fro.

And kayakers were having a lovely time, ignoring the roar of machinery near Rock Bay and a pile of crushed cars sparkling in the clear October air.

I noted the locations of restaurants for future reference, and was grateful for a clearly indicated and well-timed public washroom, but on the whole, I was startled at how residential this leg of the Galloping Goose is. It's lined with colourful condominiums and apartments. Every picture I've seen of "the Goose" is quite rural-looking, and there have been a few news reports over the years of muggings and sexual assaults in the quieter areas.
I, however, was surrounded: by dog-walkers, stroller-pushers, cyclists, young families, snow-haired seniors, tourists and, of course, joggers. It wasn't crowded, y'understand - just not isolated.

Northern half of the Selkirk Trellis, taken from the middle hump

I reached the Selkirk Trestle much sooner than I'd expected. It's a long foot-bridge which curves across the Gorge, and has a hump in the middle to permit boats to pass underneath. You do have to watch out for the bikes - just as on any shared pathway. The bicycles do come zooming through, including one gentleman, who was old enough to know better, with his eyes glued to what I swear was his cell-phone in a special holder. He seemed to be swerving toward me, and he sort of glanced up casually, and frowned slightly, as I flattened myself against the railing.

The Gorge Waterway stretches way into the west

From the south end of the trestle, I could peer west into my own past. As a nine-year-old newly arrived in Victoria, I lived a couple of bridges down the Gorge, in the Craigflower area. (You can't quite see that from the Selkirk Trestle, but I know the Gorge quite well.)

From other angles I could gaze back to towards Victoria itself, shining behind a dazzling reflections of the sun in the water, or I could simply look down at the odd scales created by the shadow of the chain-link sides of the bridge.

Ancient arbutus

I had resolved to return home via Gorge Road, and had used Google Maps Street View to find the off-shoot from the trail on the Burnside side.

You can click on this to enlarge it.

As I climbed the rather steep path past yet more apartments and condos, I was confronted with this whimsical mural. (It wasn't until I got home that it occurred to me: Oh, yeah! A galloping goose!)
Take a closer look at it, yourself. One of the crows is real.

Midterminal illness

This sunny October Sunday morning, two blond Amazons have set up a study station looking out westward from Moka House. When they stand next to their high stools, they need to position themselves to avoid hitting the hanging lamps.

Their textbooks, blazing with multi-coloured tabs at the edges, are propped against the window. Their laptops (or tablets with keyboards, who knows these days?) are open to even more scanned pages. Their work-area is cluttered with thermoses, cups of various sizes, and glasses of water. They're clearly here for the long haul.

Along the south wall, a quartet of young men, each at a table of scrubbed wood, seated on a long bench that can accommodate plug-ins. Three stare fixedly at their respective laptops; one is hunched over his phone. One huddles in a grey hoody, and one blocks out the world with headphones.

Ah, mid-October in a town with a university and a community college. There is tension and concentration in the air, which I remember comfortably from a distance. I leave them to it.

Are potatoes actually vegetables?

"I haven't seen potatoes like that in years!" the man says.

He's walking behind me and I think he's talking to younger daughter who's always a couple of paces to my rear. Maybe I should just re-name her Euridyce for this blog.

"I used to deliver them to the First Nations depot up north," he continues. Younger daughter has caught up with me at the light. I catch her eye, and she grins.

The man catches up with us as well. He's wearing a backpack over a sleeveless shirt on this brisk October morning. He doesn't appear to be looking at us, but his sunglasses make it hard to tell. I surreptitiously check for a blue-tooth or earbuds, but no, we seem to be his audience. When I hesitate, trying to decide whether to cross the street now or a block later, he also halts, turning his back on us.

There's the fruit and vegetable delivery truck we've just passed; he's still talking about it: "I was up north, with the First Nations. It was years ago."

Abruptly, he starts talking to the traffic signal.

"C'mon, change! You've been red too long!"

I guess we're off the hook.

When we alteration find

"Samhain", I just learned today, translates roughly into "summer's end". As cold as the last week has been (I've been finally driven into wearing coats and capes), this afternoon was sunny and warm. I popped down to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for our infamous "Witches' Fingers". The store was a zig-zagging of carts, each with at least two pumpkins in them.

As has become my tradition in NaBloPoMo's, I've spent a bit of the month going through past journals and checking ancient Octobers. As when checking past Februarys, Septembers, Marches, etc. (October is the seventh month I've NaBloPoMo-ed), this has been an ambivalent exercise. They don't call it "nostalgia" fer nuthin'. It can hurt to look back. So much has vanished forever.

Each time I go diary-diving, I check to see if a theme emerges. It turns out that October is a complicated month. Several possibilities ambush me: "stress", "momentum", "in progress", "aftershock", even "haunted".

I've always thought of October as the month when we establish equilibrium; after the adjustments of September, we hit cruising altitude.

My journals tell a different story. I look at samples of our schedules, particularly when the girls were in preschool and elementary school and wonder how on earth we coped. I see myself sinking under the load of keeping things up and running by myself when the Resident Fan Boy was in another province. And I see worlds crumbling around us: someone close to us had an abortion in a bygone October; another friend lost her pregnancy in another October. A baby born next door died in less than twenty-four hours; we received word that a marriage we had thought impregnable had fallen to pieces.

A theme for October?
Shift?
Careen?
Lurch?

It's not all bad, of course. October is cool and colourful and there's the thrill of a long line of Hallowe'ens: my childhood ones and those of my children.

And the sweet, long-lost memories of my girls as very small children. Elder daughter was, at age two, having such a good time at Sunday school that she ordered me to "Go home!" She then decided to soften the dismissal: "Go home, dolling..." Younger daughter in a past October when she was about four or five, snuggled into a towel that had been warmed up for her in the dryer: "Mmmmmn...you love me!" Seeing me looking thoughtful that same month, she tucked herself next to me on the couch: "Don't worry, Mum, it will be all wight..."

And as this present October slides away forever, I find myself thinking of one of my favourite poets, Phyllis McGinley, musing about her own teenaged daughters many years ago:

Neither my friends nor quite my foes,
Alien, beautiful, stern and clannish,
Here they dwell, while the wonder grows:
Where in the world did the children vanish?
Prince, I warn you, under the rose,
Time is the thief you cannot banish.
These are my daughters, I suppose.
But where in the world did the children vanish?

Phyllis McGinley: I should write a post about her, some time...

Cantaloupe tonight; dad's gone afar...

The Resident Fan Boy is not resident tonight; he's off to a conference in Montreal until Friday, which means three lonely nights and four lonely days as a grass widow for me. Still, it could be worse, and it definitely was, a baker's dozen of years ago, when the RFB decided to take on a six-month secondment in Ottawa, leaving his wife and daughters (then 2 and 6) in Victoria.
Oh, he came home every three weeks, for three fun-filled jet-lagged days. This had started in September and by mid-October, younger daughter had started having night terrors. I tried to cope by transforming myself into some kind of highly organized and crafty earth-mother, trying out recipes for stews and tackling crafts to distract my daughters from their fatherless existence. For instance, one parenting magazine brightly suggested that cantaloupes would be a fun and exotic jack o' lantern variation.
Interesting, yes.
Flimsy, too.

These days, I pick the simplest food preparation I can without resorting to pre-packaged food, and keep projects to a minimum until the RFB comes home, in time for Hallowe'en, as it happens. We'll be carving pumpkins this weekend, but you're welcome to try cantaloupes, if you dare.

An awkward October memory

In all my years of living in Victoria, the thing I probably knew best was that I had to allow myself an hour to get anywhere. It's a good rule in Hades, too. In Victoria, it was because you had to travel as if you were running along the spokes of a wheel; you had to go downtown to make a transfer, then head out again to your destination. (In Hades, it's because you're battling with delays and what is essentially a tangle of milk routes.)

The Resident Fan Boy's mother died in the early years of our marriage. She was, uh, not exactly my greatest fan, but I understood the very basics of in-law etiquette as set out by Judith Martin, aka "Miss Manners": 1) feign affection; 2) show up for state occasions.

The interment of Late Mother-in-law's ashes certainly qualified as a state occasion, even though only six people were to be present: Resident Fan Boy, Bereaved Father-in-law, Far-flung Sister-in-law (the reason for the interment taking place a month after LMIL's funeral which FfSIL had been unable to attend), Rector of BFIL's current church, and Rector of BFIL's former church in whose churchyard the said ashes were being interred. And me, who was not particularly welcome, but definitely expected.

I had a teaching assignment at the university that morning and the brief ceremony was scheduled for one o'clock that afternoon. I knew I could be home well before noon, allowing myself to change into appropriately somber garb, setting off by public transit with more than an hour to spare.

Except the bus that took me down the spoke, so to speak, to downtown Victoria dropped me off just in time for me to see the bus I needed disappearing around the corner.

I didn't panic. The next bus, a variation on the bus I'd just missed, was due in half an hour. It would reach the churchyard by a slightly different route, from a slightly different direction. It would be cutting it a bit fine, but I should arrive with a minute or two to spare.

The bus in question, in accordance with the unwritten rule in bus-scheduling, was a few minutes late, just as the previous bus had been a few minutes early. I kept a calm but steady eye on my watch as we approached the street leading to the church. I had about ten minutes.

To my horror, the bus continued past my street, barreled to a timing point several blocks behind my destination and turned off its motor. In the two years since I'd last taken this particular bus, there had been a route alteration. I now had seven minutes and was considerably more than a five minute dash away, even if I hadn't been wearing black pumps.

The bus started up after the driver had had his coffee and to my despair, headed back the way it had come. This time, it made the expected turn, and standing by the exit, clinging to the rail, I gazed out over the approaching churchyard and could make out the small knot of mourners standing with heads bowed. For a few depressed seconds, I seriously considered staying on the bus, but got out and hobbled along the gravel path.

The Resident Fan Boy filled me in later. Both he and his father are notorious for showing up places early. The RFB had got it in his head that six people were attending, and in the emotion of holding the urn with his mother's ashes, did a quick mental head-count, got the number six, and when asked if he was ready, nodded. It was only at the end of committal that his father sighed heavily: "I guess she isn't coming, then?" Looking up wildly, the RFB realized that the sixth person was the assistant rector. Not me. His wife. The woman dashing up the path with a rather flushed face.

He believed my story, of course. I'm sure his father and sister didn't.

Dressed in morning

Every October I feel the pull to go to graveyards and catch wishes.

It's not as ghoulish as it sounds.

I read in a children's book some years ago that if you catch a falling leaf before it hits the ground; you can make a wish on it.

Leaf-catching is a rather strange thing to be caught doing, particularly if one is a grown woman.

Not having a car, I can walk to Beechwood Cemetery in about twenty minutes. This year, I was determined to go early in the morning, as nearly all of my past expeditions have been in the afternoon or at sunset. I set out on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving Monday, taking advantage of the fact that younger daughter has had a lift to school these mornings.

Beechwood Cemetery was not altogether deserted, even before 9 am. The groundskeepers were roaring about in their lawn mowers, vans, and earth movers. An occasional coffee-clutcher made his or her way en route to school or work. Down near the chapel, people were parking their SUVs. A long-limbed lady in black picked her way through the markers.

However, most of the time, I was on my own, snapping pictures, trying to capture the barely-used morning light. Every now and then, I would glimpse a golden shower not far away and plant myself beneath it. You really have to spot a leaf while it's still very high in the air and swoop with it. That morning, I caught seven. That's a record for one autumn, let alone one morning! I made seven wishes, three of them for younger daughter. (Judging from the events of the past week, the wishes are either coming true in a way I don't yet understand, or were poorly phrased.)

As I made my way back, I saw a man engraving a headstone, apparently sand-blasting through a plastic stencil. Wearing a hood rather like an old-fashioned hairdryer completely over his head, he crouched like Gollum on the edge of Middle Earth, surrounded by tombstones in the shape of open books, all blank, all waiting for sad stories in the drifting cloud of mist and dust.