Music therapy

An impossible day. Well, clearly not impossible - I got through it.

Due to a delayed grocery delivery, I found myself at Demeter's at 2 pm trying to serve and clean up after lobster bisque without running water.  I only remembered when I went to fill the kitchen sink that there was a scheduled water turn-off for Demeter's building that afternoon.

As I was boiling pots of water to clean the dishes, and trying to wipe up sticky umbre soup drips without scalding my fingers, a waltz tune drifted into my addled brain, along with snippets of song.

I realised it was The Story of Celeste, something I hadn't heard since I was quite a little girl.  It was written and performed by Paul Tripp with an orchestra, back in the days when there were quite a few of these kids' stories with symphonic orchestras making the rounds and being recorded.  Tripp also wrote the rather better-known Tubby the Tuba, but as a little girl, I thought Celeste's waltz tune was just the most beautiful thing ever.

It's a Cinderella story, with Celeste, an orphaned tune looking for an owner, being locked up by the cruel Miss Squeak (a clarinet), who detests tinkly tunes.  Celeste, of course, finally wins the heart of Prince Cello, and becomes his tune. So she can belong to him.  And he can play her. 

Okay, perhaps it's wiser not to look too deeply into this story, but the music is lovely.

Close to tears from fatigue, I left Demeter's and ran into her neighbour, who told me what a good daughter I was, and thumped me approvingly on my injured arm.  

I didn't cry out, but staggered home to see if I could dig up the recording I remembered.  YouTube didn't fail me.  It's about fifteen minutes of your time, if you have it:

Now all that's left

Earlier today, I was waiting to Skype with elder daughter in London, when the CBC flashed up in my newsfeed. Christine McVie, the other (and original) female vocalist and pianist in Fleetwood Mac, has died.

One of the perks of babysitting in my misspent youth was access to the music collections of others. 

This song, written, played, and sung by Christine McVie, became one of my lifelines in troubled times. Not because of the lyrics, which are your standard "longing from a distance" kind (perfect for adolescence), but for the soaring melody and full-bodied setting. 

If we can't hold on to the artist, thank goodness we can hold on to the music.  

I'm dancing to the music 

Of a simple melody 

And I wonder are you thinking 

Of a single memory

And I know when I see them swaying 

I can hear myself saying:  

Come a little bit closer 

Because I remember the time 

When you held me in your arms  

And you wanted to be mine 

Everything good, everything gold 

Now all that's left is a sweet memory 

If you love me, let me know 

Why don't you show me which way to go? 

Please don't leave me all alone 

Because I can't make it on my own 

And I know when I see them swaying 

I can hear myself saying:  

Come a little bit closer  

Because I remember the time 

When you held me in your arms  

And you wanted to be mine 

I may be wrong, but that's where I belong 

Why are you just a sweet memory?

Trapped in amber

Some news events are like amber; what we were doing on a particular day is trapped and preserved by the golden sticky resin of a catastrophe.  

I'm hardly the first person to make this comparison, but when the setting sun of late August/early September throws amber light, divided by lengthening shadows, it comes to mind.

I was thinking about it this evening, although the particular memories stalking me through the streets in our neighbourhood are actually from August 30th, not August 31st, 1997, because here in Victoria, we're nine hours behind Paris, and eight hours behind London.

It was a particularly early Labour Day long weekend, because September 1st fell on a Monday that year, and elder daughter, then aged five, would be going to school for the first time on the Tuesday.

After dinner, I made my way down to the local shops, on an evening much like this one, albeit slightly warmer.  I can't remember why.  Perhaps to pick up ice cream for dessert?  We were forever running out of things, with two young daughters.  The news reports about an accident in a tunnel in Paris were just starting to filter through.  They were vague, suggesting that Diana, Princess of Wales, had broken her leg.  

As I walked through the alternating light and shadows, I mused that this had been a close call:  Just imagine how awkward it would be for the Royal Family if the difficult Diana actually died.  

By my daughters' bedtime, the reports were becoming grimmer.  I was braiding elder daughter's hair when the confirming newsflash came through.

And yes, it was a shock.  She was so damn famous, so omnipresent.  As the United Kingdom awoke to the bulletin, we went wondering to bed.  I arose the next morning, thinking I might have dreamt it and slipped downstairs, so as not disturb my sleeping family, turning on CBC, and seeing the coffin being unloaded off a private plane, draped in the royal standard.

During the surreal week that followed, we settled into the brand-new rhythm of a school year, watching in snatches scenes that were sometimes touching, sometimes maudlin, and often way over the top.  

I found the sardonic words of the opening song of Evita playing, unbidden, in my mind:  "Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right . . . quite a sunset, and good for the country in a roundabout way/We've made the front pages of all the world's papers today . . . . why all this howling, hysterical sorrow?  What kind of goddess has lived amongst us?  How will we ever get by without her?"

I wasn't unmoved by the tragedy, you must understand.  However, four people had been in that car, and the one person who had survived had also been the one person wearing a seatbelt, and he'd been in the front passenger seat, apparently the worst place to be.

Yet, the questions kept repeating:  "How could this have happened?  What will we do in honour of her?"

I don't think it's facetious to suggest a suitable gesture would be to wear your seatbelt.  It would be fitting, in every sense.

Moving through the amber, I find myself returning, not to the old house on the street with no west exit, but to our condo.  I pass chalk drawings on the sidewalks.  The neighbourhood children have been busy this summer.  And because I'm feeling 1997 so keenly, each rainbow stroke drags on my heart.

It's been twenty-five years.  So much has gone.

But I have still have loved ones, so I check before crossing the street.

(Wear your seatbelt.)

Standing room only

For the first time in months, I shiver slightly, and battling my surprise, pull on my fleece jacket.  It's not even Labour Day yet.

I find myself remembering a very chilly morning in late January.  

A lady was standing by the coffee-house window counter, gazing out at the winter drizzle, as I set up my journals at my accustomed table, idly wondering why she'd chosen a spot within six feet of the tables.  

In those mid-pandemic days, the stools had been taken away from the raised counter, because they didn't work well with social distancing, nor with the constant sanitizing then required.  Still, if she wanted to stand at a counter, there was an identical one on the southern side, where, from May 2020 to May 2021, there were no tables at all.

I decided to ignore her, and strolled to the bar to pick up my mocha, and as I was setting it on my table, preparing to take my seat, one of the young baristas approached the lady and gently asked her to move.  She offered her a nearby table, saying something about the need to sanitize.

In response, the standing-room-only lady stalked out.  Clutching her coffee and sandwich, she glared back into the window that faced my table.  I gazed steadily back; she was clearly muttering about the injustice and embarrassment.

I then wondered if she thought I summoned the barista.

Difficult December people

There have been a number of key December birthdays, in my family -- none of whom are living now.  It occurred to me this morning that my grandmother would have 120 years old today.

Heavens, she would have been annoyed!  Towards the end of her long life, she was getting weary of living, as piece by piece, like books being removed from a shelf, the things she enjoyed were taken from her: reading, knitting, music...

Mind you, my other grandmother would have been a bit over 123 years, had she lived to today, but I never knew her.  It's odd, thinking how people I actually knew, who were parts of my life, would be impossibly old now.  It's even worse for the Resident Fan Boy, whose parents were well advanced in age by the time he was born.  My late father-in-law, another December birthday would be 111.  My father, also born in December, would be well into his nineties.

Evocations of these difficult December people glow like the Christmas lights, not bright enough to read by, but strong enough to draw me to a standstill.

Colder chests

As I continue to build my Spotify account, I stumble across moments. A few days ago, I mentioned here a song I'd almost forgotten about that reminds me of my young motherhood days. Yesterday, I suddenly remembered a song from my earlier days in Ottawa.

I used to volunteer at the library at the elementary school where my daughters attended. When elder daughter was there, the librarian was a twenty-something who actually introduced me to Launchcast.

This song, recommended to my Launchcast account about fifteen years ago, reaches into me like a hook, and I can clearly see the study in our house on Springfield Road, feeling the aloneness and the grey cold outside.

Older chests reveal themselves
Like a crack in a wall
Starting small, and grow in time
And we always seem to need the help
Of someone else
To mend that shelf
Too many books
Read me your favourite line
Papa went to other lands
And he found someone who understands
The ticking, and the western man's need to cry
He came back the other day, you know
Some things in life may change
And some things
They stay the same
Like time, there's always time
On my mind
So pass me by, I'll be fine
Just give me time
Older gents sit on the fence
With their cap in hand
Looking grand
They watch their city change
Children scream, or so it seems,
Louder than before
Out of doors, and into stores with bigger names
Mama tried to wash their faces
But these kids they lost their graces
And daddy lost at the races too many times
She broke down the other day, yeah you know
Some things in life may change
But some things they stay the same

The case against clairvoyance

The Resident Fan Boy and I are trembling on the brink of another major wedding anniversary -- but not this year. Next year.

I post a wedding photo on Facebook each June, in part to preserve photos on the internet, so I decided that this year, not being a major anniversary, but a sizeable one - they get bigger annually - I should skip the usual ones of bride and groom, and go for a shot of the guests.

I chose "before-and-after" shots of the moment that I, having been made to turn my back, threw my bouquet. In the first, the single ladies, all either born in the same year as me, or just a couple of years before or after, are standing in wait. In the second, Double Leo Sister is spiking the bouquet like a volleyball into the arms of a woman due to be married in a month.

And now, years later, I find myself gazing at the young women in their pretty summer dresses, remembering that, of the crowd, only one woman remains single. (She's school principal and a proud aunt.) Another died a dozen years ago. Of the others, about half divorced their eventual husbands; three married twice.

I look in the background, and see my aunt, and others who were middle-aged and older at the time -- all gone now; and a young man with his cup of coffee - years before losing a son to suicide.

Prescience would be such a burden, particularly at weddings.

Memory: lost, retrieved, elusive, concussive

Younger daughter and I have been taking watercolour lessons over the past year. As a result, I'm becoming a wee bit more familiar with the materials required and the ones which I prefer.

Recently, I dropped into Island View Print, which is the most convenient art supply store, relative to my haunts and wanderings. We've been painting long enough to begin running out of supplies, and I've developed a liking for a brand of paper called, oddly, "The Langton". Demeter picked a pad of it up from Island View Point about seven years ago. It's difficult to pinpoint or even describe why I like it. It's soft and giving (does that make sense?), and I think what I manage to produce somehow looks better on it.

I had looked it up online, and it's there, but doesn't look readily available, so I asked the nice fellow in the shop about it.

He shook his head regretfully.
"I doubt they make it anymore."

He directed me to the watercolour paper shelves, to see if I could find something to my liking.

To my astonishment, I spotted the familiar green cover in the bottom shelf. I extracted it and waved my trophy at the assistant in delight.

"You must have found the very last pad we have!" he exclaimed.

I was cradling it triumphantly as I advanced to the cash register, when I saw a lady with a familiar face enter. I smiled warmly at her; she also smiled - politely - and proceeded into the store.

I finished my purchases, and was juggling my treasures while trying to retrieve my cloth bag from my knapsack. The lady came up to pay for her supplies, and placed a card on the counter, explaining she was a teacher - for a discount, I guess. And I was juggling, struggling, and thinking: Jessica? Jessie? Last name?

I would have tried to surreptitiously read the name on the card, if I hadn't thought this would be a rude and disturbing thing to do.

By the time I'd stepped out to the bus stop, I was sure I had known her from my teaching days at the university. We had become quite good buddies. I'd even been to her house in my days of early motherhood.

But she showed no signs of recognition, and I hesitated.

At home, I rummaged through my journals, and found her. The journals told me her last name, and that she'd visited me in the hospital after I'd given birth, and that she and another friend became estranged.

I'd forgotten all of this. I'd even mentioned the estrangement in passing at the time, no doubt certain I'd remember the details without writing them down. She'd clearly drifted out of my life with the birth of younger daughter, and I hadn't even noticed.

Writing things down helps, but it doesn't always prevent the fading away.

You think you'll remember. You won't.

Junior hierarchy

Earlier this week, I lay in bed, trying to drift off to sleep, disturbed by the coverage I'd seen of Christine Blasey Ford testifying against Brett Kavanaugh, thinking of the courage this takes, a woman speaking out against an influential man, and, as a result, being exposed to accusations, ridicule, and threats.

I wondered if I'd have the courage. I doubt it. I can remember incidents in my girlhood and early womanhood, none as egregious as that failed rape Dr Ford was talking about, but disturbing enough.

Then, unbidden, the incident of Sam the Soccer Ball floated into my consciousness. I was either fifteen, or about to turn fifteen, so roughly the same age as Christine Blasey was when she was attacked. (And yes, I believe she was attacked.)

Our junior high was small, and thus not as clearly "cliqued" as the enormous high schools of the United States, but there was a vague sort of hierarchy, based mostly on looks, grooming, and economic standing.

Near the top, you'd find someone like Dylan.

I wouldn't describe him as popular exactly, but he was athletic, intelligent, and musically adept. He lacked the clumsy, thoughtless cruelty of the average adolescent boy. His brand of unkindness was sly and calculated, usually conducted where there were no witnesses, or only those he wished to impress.

He also had the gift of charm and flattery - which he turned on and off like a tap. I had been on the receiving end of both the charm and the meanness, mostly the latter. Through the sting, I couldn't help but notice his skill.

Somewhere in the bottom layer of the hierarchy was Sam.

Sam was relatively new to the school, unlike Dylan and me, and like Dylan and me, was in the school band, as about a quarter of the students were -- it was a small school of about 450 students.

Within a very short time, Sam was completely isolated. Within our tiny school, word got around that he had made a pass at someone in the mostly-male trumpet section where Dylan, of course played one of the first positions. From then on, Sam was a pariah. To this day, I don't know if he was actually gay, but homophobia was a predominant feature of this early adolescent bunch: a mild aversion amongst the girls, and a visceral hatred amongst the boys - a cover for the abiding terror of being treated the way schoolgirls were, and are, treated daily. They didn't view it that way, naturally.

One morning in late winter or early spring, I was packing up my instrument at the close of band period. As a clarinet, I sat in the lower tiers of the band-room. The trumpets were higher up, in the centre, in front of the percussion section. The room was emptying out, but there were still a dozen or so stragglers, chatting and getting ready to go. Our teacher had left.

I heard a sudden racket, and looked up into a surreal scene taking place just above my eye level.

Dylan was kicking Sam like a soccer ball from one side of the room to the other. Sam was curled up and rolling like a hedgehog.

It took me several seconds to register what I was seeing. I was frozen in shock, not only by the violence, but by the fact that Dylan was doing something so violent and so out in the open, which was not his style at all. His attacks were usually verbal, and on the quiet.

Peering down through the dim corridor of the years, I'm not sure exactly what I said, but I remember shouting, almost involuntarily and certainly without thinking, something like: "Cut it out! What are you doing???"

And Dylan stopped. He glanced at me blankly, and, as far as I can recall, simply walked away. I don't even know what Sam did next, or even what I did next.

I have no recollection of triumph, just of disbelief.

Dylan became a doctor. I have no idea of what became of Sam.

No scents

About this time last year, I was collapsing back into bed on a daily basis.  I had what I presume to be a variation on the flu that was going around.  (I hasten to add, I'd had my shot.)  I heard a lot about this virus (or whatever it was) that winter and into the spring, as it hit friends and acquaintances.  A strangely debilitating bug, that didn't seem as bad as it was, presenting a new symptom each day.  Every time I swore I was getting better, I was felled by a sore throat, then, the next day, a racking cough, followed by congestion,  then shakes...

For nearly two weeks, I didn't have the energy for much more than television - a depressing prospect in the daytime.  I was never more grateful for the Turner Classic Movie channel, and their annual "31 Days of Oscar". Last winter, they picked films with wins and nominations in rather esoteric categories, such as Best Song or Best Makeup, so I saw a raft of films I wouldn't ordinarily have seen.

When my strength finally returned, I had a lot of catching up to do.  As a result, it wasn't until last April until I noticed that my sense of smell had vanished.

Generally, the loss of a sense is unmistakable.  You notice instantly if you lose your sight or hearing.  Loss of touch is something else missed the moment it happens.  Losing the sense of taste will register pretty damn quick.  But the sense of smell?  That can drift away unheeded.

My first clear memory of the realization occurred on elder daughter's birthday.  She adores scented candles and gleefully brought them to me to sniff.  I don't recall being surprised when I couldn't smell them, so I must have been faintly aware of the absence of scents.  I had continued to be somewhat congested since my illness.

Then May came, and I couldn't smell the lilac.

Smell is connected with taste, and I began to realize that I wasn't always aware of spices the way I had been, but on the whole, I could taste, and still can.

I'm wondering now if my brain is filling in the gaps, the way you can "hear" a familiar song that's far away, or covered by other noise.

As the year has progressed,  I've come to a fuller and sadder comprehension.  I can't smell the sea - once a recurring joy of returning to Victoria, and now poignantly ironic now I've returned for good.

All roses are fragrance-free.  At Christmas, the lingering odors of tourtière, mandarin oranges, and evergreens do not linger for me. The aroma of toast, baking bread and cookies -- gone.  The Resident Fan Boy has given up the ritual of bringing me the bag of freshly ground coffee when it's first opened; there's no longer any point.  I can't smell the rain on the streets - I only know that the outside air is odorless, while indoor air smells vaguely metallic.

When I use a powerful cleanser, or bleach, I feel only a strange tightening in my nostrils.  I worry a little about not smelling smoke, and find myself paying extra attention to personal and domestic cleanliness, because visual clues are all I have now.

Mostly though, I feel a resigned sense of no scents.

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.

Hat trick

The Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter returned to Hades yesterday, leaving me here, for only the third time in seventeen summers, alone to savour rather more solitude than I'm used to.

In a way, it's intoxicating. Despite devoting a section of each day to Demeter, I am largely free to go where I will.

In a way, I'm rather forlorn. I enjoy my unfettered state, yet I find myself looking longingly at families wandering together through the streets of Victoria, aware as I am of the griping about fatigue and hunger that is the inevitable byproduct.

So I find myself remembering a snippet of sweet memory from about sixteen years ago. Elder daughter, who was about nine or ten at the time, needed a summer hat, but was now old enough to resist. I grabbed a moment in a shop to have her try on a few, the time being limited by how much her younger sister could stand to wait.

I think it was the third hat, a simple beige affair with an artfully shredded brim. It touched her crown, and I saw the sun rise in her face.

Long after she abandoned it in favour of pre-adolescent hatlessness - she refuses to wear a sunhat to this day - I kept it safe and treasured the memory of that brightening smile.

Ideas are like stars

I've just had a significant birthday.  Or is it an insignificant one?  It leaves me with a zero at the end, anyway.

As an antidote, I pulled together songs that came out in a year that ended in "7".  For 1997, I chose "Ideas Are Like Stars" by Mary Chapin Carpenter, a song that, for me, doesn't belong so much to 1997, as it belongs to 2001, and my first winter in Hades.

I'd just acquired the CD A Place in the World, and younger daughter had just been "identified" as having Special Needs.  This song would come on, and I'd have to dive into the basement to smother my sobbing.

While searching for videos, I came across a new recording Mary Chapin Carpenter has made, with an orchestral score and choir.

Today Joseph is sitting alone, with occasional nods to the waitress
She tops off his cup while she's snapping her gum, making her rounds on the lunch shift
Counting out coins, he leaves them arranged, in neat lines and circles and arcs
She just stares at the tip that spells out her name and ideas are like stars

And yesterday pedaling down 4th Avenue, between the stalls and the bookshops
The sepia tones of a lost afternoon cradled a curio storefront
And inside the air was thick with the past, as the dust settled onto his heart
And here for a moment is every place in the world and ideas are like stars

They fall from the sky, they run round your head
They litter your sleep as they beckon
They'd teach you to fly without wires or thread
They promise if only you'd let them

For the language of longing never had words,
so how did you speak from your heart?
Yet here is a box that swears it has heard that ideas are like stars

Tonight Joseph stood out in the yard, as Debussy played from the kitchen
Celestial companions `til mornings first lark, shone overhead and he listened
And who was that shadow there by the gate, who was that there standing guard
It was only loneliness, and loneliness waits, and ideas are like stars
Ideas are like stars.


I've since learned that the Joseph in the song refers to American artist Joseph Cornell, and have found a video featuring the original 1996 recording, with images of Cornell's artwork.

French braid

Running out of time again. This picture was taken eleven years ago, during one of my "used years", as it happens, although it doesn't look it. This was back in the days before I blogged, when younger daughter still permitted me to do her hair. Demeter knitted the cardigan.

Multi-level journalling

Last October, I couldn't for the life of me remember what younger daughter had worn for Hallowe'en in 2006.

I've kept journals since I was ten - not particularly consistently, mind - and ever since 1990, in the aftermath of one of my "used years", I've done rundowns of individual years, which involves a quick précis of each month in a given year.

Recently, I got four years behind, but I'm stubborn, if nothing else, and spent the past spring and summer catching up.

Why do I do this?

Ira Progoff was the creator of the "Intensive Journal method" in 1966 and about twenty or thirty years ago, "Journal workshops" seemed to be all the rage.  I never attended one -- they're kinda expensive -- but we were going through a rather dreadful period in our lives, beginning with The Resident Fan Boy losing his mother and his job in the same week, a few months after we had taken on a mortgage.

I heard about Progoff from the Volunteer Coordinator at Victoria Hospice where I was myself a volunteer. I took any part-time job or contract I could muster, finished with my master's programme, then purchased the book, working through the exercises of dream recording, meditations, and micro/macro journalling.

Did it help?  Sort of.  It gave me a focus in the maelstrom of continually dashed hopes.  After nine months of agony, the RFB got a job with the federal government and our long inexorable path to Hades began.

But I can't blame Progoff for that.

To oversimplify the process, you don't really keep a linear sort of journal.  Your writing sessions become a sort of lens:  sometimes you write about the minutiae of the day; sometimes you skip waaaaaay back and look at a year, or sequence of years, looking for patterns.

The only Progroff practice I have really stuck with is my "yearly rundowns", which I'm not sure is even a Progoff practice, but it's based on those months of journalling his way.

Some years - the "used years" - are torture to write down.  I recently did a "decade rundown" of the years from 2001 to 2010, and was astonished at how much I'd forgotten, and how painful it was to remember some of it.  I have to wonder sometimes if I'm not simply re-injuring myself.

However,  I can't just let my life and my memories of the early lives of my children slip away into a blank, and that means the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. Lately, remembering that the  Progoff journalling  process involves several levels of journalling, I've been carting around between three to five journals:  one for daily "free writes", one for keeping track of my time, one for my genealogy scribblings, one for dreams, and, oh yes, a separate journal for the yearly rundowns.

It turns out that the "rundowns" are proving to be really handy way of figuring out when something happened.  On a prosaic note, the RFB recently wanted to know when we had the roof re-done, for the insurance records.

And younger daughter's 2006 Hallowe'en costume?  I hadn't written it in the rundown, nor had I written it in my regular journals, nor had I taken a photograph at the time or mentioned it in my correspondence.

It occurred to me, months later, that I could try asking her.  She's living on the spectrum and has severe memory issues, but not for everything.  She told me, clearly appalled that I'd forgotten, that she had been Peter Pan.

Respect

There are two wonderful kinds of music experiences.

One is falling in love with an artist or a piece of music, the other is rediscovering a piece of music or artist through an extraordinary rendition.

In the summer of 2005, an international fundraising event called "Live 8" was televised, and among many, many performances, the one I remember is by two artists I've never been that enthusiastic about, and a song I've never particularly cared for.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that Sarah McLachlan and Josh Groban are talented singers and I know that McLachlan's "Angel" is a song that means a great deal to a great many people, but it was this moment in Live 8 when I stopped what I was doing to listen and marvel. It didn't make me a fan of either nor of the song, but highly respectful of all three.

Chalk shock

When I was in Grade Five, we had a Welshman called Mr Jones for Math. When you raised your hand, he would query, "What is it, vach?" If your answer was wrong, he would scoff, "No, that's not it, you silly girl!"  Somehow, this was not wounding, couched in his Welsh accent.

In fact, his aura was a happy combination of gentleness and sternness; I don't recall anyone acting out in his classroom.  If you weren't paying attention, he'd pelt you with a piece of chalk, a bit of a shock to his Canadian students.

He also clearly loved math, and a teacher who loves his/her subject has won half the battle. My mother enjoyed hearing tales of Mr Jones.  Growing up in British schools, she'd been pelted with her share of chalk, and she passed along a multiplication trick from my grandfather (another Welshman): If you're stymied when the 11x sequence gets past 9, simply add the two digits of the number to be multiplied and put it in the centre. So, for example, 11x23: 2+3=5, put it between the digits of 2 and 3 that make up "23", and you get 253. Try it with a double digit number times eleven.

Mr Jones was incredulous when I told him, then openly delighted when he found it worked.  It takes a Welshman to astonish another Welshman.

The school year rolled around to spring, and some bright spark came up for the perfect April Fool's trick to play on Mr Jones.  His class was after morning recess, which afforded the opportunity for every one of the thirty students in his class to locate and pocket a piece of chalk. The ringleaders set up a lookout at each door at the end of the cloakroom, then ran to take their places.

The instant Mr Jones appeared, he had to duck out under a hail of chalk.  When he came back in, he was laughing, saying it was the best trick ever played on him.

Our principal, an ex-military man who had us march in PE and addressed us by our last names, was not so pleased.  The next day, two students were appointed to make a public apology at the beginning of math class.  Mr Jones listened politely, in some bewilderment:  "It was a splendid joke," he protested.

My math progress varied widely with the teachers I encountered over the years.  If I had had a teacher like Mr Jones every year, I do think I would have made steady, if unspectacular, progress.

Goin' somewhere?

I woke up this morning rather dreading the day -- I've actually been dreading this day for some time.

However, the afternoon ended with the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I making the long return by bus in sunshine that just about gave warmth, having made some decisions for the coming year. Whether we've made the right decisions probably won't be revealed to us for some time. Months, maybe. Years, probably. Days, if we're really unlucky.

When I got home, there were pumpkin pies to be made for tomorrow's pre-March-Break potluck at younger daughter's school. Well, they'll be getting one pie; the other was for tonight's dessert, because it would be cruel to make pumpkin pie and deprive elder daughter. While they baked, I folded laundry and ran smack into a memory from my own last year of high school.

It was the Christmas talent show and the last number in the darkened gymnasium was performed by a couple of brothers who were in the drama club with me. I remember them as being delightful, open fellows with a stinker of an elder brother who had, thankfully, graduated the previous year. Strumming guitars with ease and energy, they sang a ditty I'd never heard before, about going to see a film about Gunga Din. There was no internet in those distant days, so it took a while before I found out it was a Bob Dylan song, although from the sound of things, the brothers had based their setting on the version by the Byrds.

The following cover sounds a lot like how I remember that grey December afternoon. It was, as far as I recall, my last happy memory of high school.

(Singers Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, are, of course, the former lovers whose story is told in the motion picture Once.)

A not very shaggy dog story

This is one of the stories I was telling elder daughter after her lost dog adventure:

When I was about twelve, I used to go on long walks down the railway tracks after school.  It was a long-disused route that roughly followed the Trans-Canada Highway, and it was beautiful, lined by dense trees and rock faces.  If you walked far enough, the landscape opened out into meadows where I didn't venture after I discovered they were full of enormous spiders.  This was usually where I turned back.

I was reaching this point one sunny afternoon when, directly in my path, sitting on the railway tie, was a tiny black Labrador puppy, nose in the air, and howling for all he was worth.  The minute he saw me, he sprang to his feet and trotted up to me, tail shaking.

"No, no," I protested.  "Don't follow me; go home!"  Undeterred, he pursued me, and after a while, I gave in and picked him up for the long stroll home.  He promptly fell asleep in my arms, and I fell into my accustomed rhythm, stepping along the rail ties, the late afternoon sun on my back as I cradled the tiny black bundle.

My mother was home from work when I got back, and the cat was most offended by what I had brought in.  The puppy frantically drank the water we set down in the kitchen while my sister and a playmate descended upon him in paroxysms of joy, shrieking and crooning endearments.

I don't quite recall how we got the information -- maybe it came via the playmate, maybe my mother made a few calls --  but it was not much later when we made the trip down our street and across Helmcken Road to a small hobby farm which we could see from our backyard.  I knew the family slightly, vaguely remember the kids as being a bit obnoxious, and I was annoyed that my sister had commandeered the puppy I had rescued.

As we walked up the driveway, we saw what appeared to be a herd of Black Labradors, at least a dozen of them, each one a carbon copy of the little lost dog.  Evidently he had wandered away from his brothers and sisters and no one had noticed.

Not long after we moved away from the neighbourhood, the small farm was sold and the huge complex of the new general hospital was built on the site.  It seems odd to think of my twelve-year-old self standing dazed, relieved, and just a tad resentful, close to the spot where my daughters would be born.

The woman with the caterpillar eyes

It was probably almost exactly thirteen years ago on a slightly overcast Saturday during our last June in Victoria. The Resident Fan Boy was home for a weekend secondment, having gone ahead to begin his new permanent job in Hades. I remained behind, getting elder daughter through her final days of Grade Two, and frantically cleaning between viewings from prospective home-buyers during which I had to hustle younger daughter into a stroller and vacate the house. We hadn't seen the Resident Fan Boy for about a month and would not see him again for another five weeks when he would come back to escort us to our new province and city.

I was overtaxed; he was jet-lagged. That's probably why we thought taking the girls to the Oak Bay Tea Party with the accompanying midway at Willow Beach would be a good idea.

It wasn't so bad at first. The RFB took elder daughter on the rides. Younger daughter was too small to join her sister. Besides, for the past year she had developed a habit of melting down in anything involving crowds. I thought it had something to do with her father's frequent absences -- she had started having night terrors early on in his first secondment nearly two years before -- but I had made an appointment for later in the month to have her assessed by a speech pathologist.

I knew I had to get younger daughter to a washroom before setting off on the long bus-ride home, so I set up a rendezvous point with the RFB and elder daughter, and led younger daughter to the pavilion. I don't quite remember when she started screaming. Maybe it was the long line-up, maybe it was not knowing where her father and sister had gone, but by the time I got her into a cubicle, she was yelling blue murder. I tried to soothe her, but I knew there was a point when she was beyond my reach and I could only wait for her to subside. Somehow, we got through the business, and I beat a hasty and embarrassed retreat, aware of the many eyes on us and that the RFB and elder daughter must be wondering what on earth had become of us.

A woman stepped into our path.

"Why is she asking to be left alone?"

"Because she's had enough of here and she needs space," I replied wearily, scanning the crowd for an opening, but this woman was not budging. She was standing very close to me and what I chiefly remember about her was that she had blond hair (standard for Oak Bay) and dark-green eye-liner with one odd little hump on each side, like two little caterpillars.

"Well, I'm a mother and I'm concerned."

I couldn't believe my ears. "So am I!"

"I have three children and none of them ever behaved like this!"

"Well, good for you, lady," I called back, quickly steering younger daughter, who had calmed down quite a bit by this time, into an available gap in the milling bodies.

I wonder if Caterpillar Woman thinks back on this incident at all. If she does, it's no doubt with some self-satisfaction in confronting an evident child abuser. When I remember her -- and I try not to -- I think of her three children who never "behaved like this". I hope they saved all their acting-out for adolescence and made life a perfect hell for their perfect mother.