I Love My Room

 I love my room. My bedroom. The room that is almost a journal through my life that you could read if you just knew how to  interpret its colours and contents. It contains entries made since moving to Texada. There are precious things from my glassy life-before-essential-tremor as well.  

This morning I awoke facing the wall on which hangs a seemingly unrelated collection of items. At first I focussed on a slumped glass piece by Melanie Rowe. To me, it is a hybrid of mask, breastplate, necklace made of irridescent jewel tone feathers forming the mask with chains of suspended irridescent beads below. Two of the chains are finished off with quartz  crystals.

The crystals take me back to my archaeology ambitiions when I had just completed my first field school on the dig that explored the soil under what became the parking lot of the Fraser Arms in south Vancouver. I was then hired by a UBC team who were exploring a site in the village of Musqueam. Just below the soil in “my” pit was a layer of red ochre that took tedious days to carefully remove. When I got once more into the soil beneath the ochre, “my” pit proved remarkably artifact free with one exciting exception. I unearthed a large quartz crystal that is now housed in the Museum of Anthropology at UBC.

Then I started wondering about why I’d grouped the four items as I had. It had been an unconscious decision. What ties them together? 

A SIMPLE SOLID MAPLE DRESSER

I was sitting in my bedroom chair cuddling the cat this morning and admiring the beauty of my small maple dresser.  It has a history.  It once lived in a patient room at the Reddy Memorial Hospital in Montreal.  I think it may date from the 1920's if I remember correctly what Mom told me about it.

Mom was a nurse at the Reddy in the mid-fifties when the hospital admin decided that wood furniture was not as germ-freeable as metal and they disposed of said furniture.  Mom took this dresser.  At the time it had the standard red finish of maple furniture of the period.  When I inherited it I decided to strip the red finish and I am so gald I did.  The grain is so lovely and with a clear finish the warm golden colour of the wood shows to great advantage.  I love this dresser.

It has three drawers and one false top drawer that lifts from the front and folds back to expose a writing desk whose base pulls out to form a generous writing surface.  The back of the space is pigeon holes where stationary and writing instruments can be stored.  I have actually used it that way to write letters and cards to friends.

This dresser evokes memories.  My bedroom in Vancouver all pink and purple and green with a luxurious grape coloured rug.  It really was the "Room of One's Own" that Virginia Wolfe wrote of.  I covered the ceiling with glow-in-the-dark planets and stars.  It is the room where I woke to the news of 911.  Where I fell asleep to Book Time on the CBC.  Where I kept treasured gifts from glassblowing friends and a framed rose embroidered by Mom.  Where I wrote to far away friends and family.  A sanctuary.

The Reddy Memorial is where I had my appendix removed when I was ten.  I don't know how Mom knew something was amiss.  I don't remember feeling any pain or having nausea.  But she took me to the doctor and I was diagnosed with appendicitis and scheduled for surgery.  It was a close call apparently as my appendix burst on the operating table.

Mom was my post-surgery nurse.  In those days a patient wasn't encouraged to get out of bed for at least 24 hours.  For some reason Mom had me up and walking to the bathroom less than 12 hours after my surgery.  It wasn't one of those neat three inch incisions either.  It was six inches long so I had a lot of sutures.  And none of the modern pain killers either.  I remember the pain accutely and I remember crying with the intensity of it.  But instead of the ususal week long hospital stay I was home in four days and running around within a week.

The Reddy is where I was hospitalized when I was 13 for a serious kidney infection.  It was thought that I might have to have it removed.  Fortunately they were able to clear up the infection with what antibiotics were available in 1955.  I remember having to have an intraveous pylogram and in order to prepare for it my bowels had to be cleaned out.  I was supposed to drink some ghastly concoction.  I think it was Epsom Salts.  In any case, I took one tasted and absolutely refused to drink the stuff. No amount of persuasion could change my mind.  So out of revenge, I do believe, the nurse who couldn't get me to drink, instead gave me 9 enemas! She was really annoyed with me.  But truly,  I would still choose 9 enemas over drinking that awful stuff.

I still have both kidneys.  The one that was infected is lumpy and bumpy apparently but every now and again I have to have a kidney function test and so far everything is operating admirably.

The Reddy Memorial is where my first child, Scott Bradley, was born.  I remember the surprising intense discomfort of the labour that was dilating my cervix.  But my membranes would not rupture. The team was worried that Scott would suffer if I didn't allow them to rupture them which I finally agreed to.  Mom was present during the birth and the last thing I remember is her eyes, usually a grey green, being icy blue and peering at me over her surgical mask.

All the memories the desk evokes.  I am definitely getting old.

SONGS OF STARK REALITY

Blake had his Songs of Innocence and Experience.  I am proposing to write a series of little ditties under the heading Songs of Stark Reality.  One goes like this:

I'm a little brown cat
sitting in the window.
A little brown cat watching how the wind blow.
There's a bird in the maple tree.
If I were outside
there'd be no more he.
O I'm a little brown cat sitting in the window.
Miaow miaow miaow.

Or this:

There are snakes at the bottom of our garden
happy keeping all the slugs at bay.
Out near the garden wall
you sometime see them crawl
but only 'cause they're trying to run away.
There's a mower with big noise and whirling knife blades
and sometimes accidentally it chops
a little snake in two
which makes me feel quite blue
'cause I hate slugs that lunch upon my crops.

Sometimes reality gets too stark for me and today is one of those days.  It is a headshaking day indeed.  I simply do not understand how such unmitigated fools get to run the world.  And even more puzzling, why we let them continue to do so.  Blowhard pronouncement from the leaders of the country to the south of us on the Iraq situation.  The likelihood of our own fools giving the nod to Enbridge.  It is all in the name of oil with the added "be afraid, be very afraid" threat of economic woe.  But doesn't anyone else see that if all the money  invested in oil companies was invested in alternative energies, we wouldn't have the huge reliance on oil and thus the wars over its accessibility?  Yes, we will probably always need some oil.  But with alternative energy sources, not nearly as much as we do now.  And what about all the money that will be spent, not only on arms and armaments and personnel to protect oil resources, but on the lawyers' fees that will go into the court challenges over pipelines?  I know there are better uses for all that money.  Sigh.

But there is one spot of hope shining for me today.  This morning I heard about a teacher at a middle school in Victoria who has developed a music notation system, based on colour, that enables children with a form of dyslexia that makes it impossible for them to read regular notation actually learn to play music on any chosen instrument.   What a wonderful thing!  And a fine example of the change for the better that one individual can make.  This is the human spirit we need.  Not megacorps making the rich richer.  Not big governments riding roughshod over the world.  Just small changes that bring joy and quality of life to people in their day to day lives.  That is what really makes people happy.

THE SECRET SOCIETY OF SARDINE LOVERS

I have decided that I belong to secret society.  I love sardines.  I have done since I was a kid.  Those nice big fat sardines that are canned in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick.  A hark back to my roots, as it were.

I only know one other person who likes sardines.  But he prefers those scrawny little Norwegian brislings. No accounting for taste.

When I was pregnant for my first child I craved sardines.  A lunch of sardines with mustard on toast and a 7-Up became a regular ritual.  Then many years later I would sometimes take a sardine sandwich to work for lunch. Admittedly they do have a strong odour but the only person ever to complain in our lunch room was someone who would have benefited greatly from eating them herself.  She had inherited high cholesterol and the omega-3 and polyunsaturates in sardines would have been good for her. Sardines do not taste as strong as they smell either.  But I digress.

Back to the secret society.  If only one other person admits to liking them, how come both varieties are always in stock on grocery shelves?  There must be hundreds and thousands of other sardine lovers out there buying them.  But not once have I seen another shopper reaching for the telltale flat can.  Not once do I remember seeing  a can of sardines in another shopping basket or on a check-out counter.  Thus my conclusion that I am part of a society so secret we do not know the many other members.  Okay sardine lovers.  Time to stand up and be counted. There is no shame in eating those fabulously healthy little fish that are chockablock full of calcium, protein, vitamin D, selenium plus the aforementioned omega-3's.  And the icing on the cake so to speak?  They are Canadian!

REMEMBERING PETE AND SOLO

Jim made chicken salad for lunch today. I was suddenly transported back to a restaurant on Monk Boulevard in Montreal and became again an 8 year old girl who was captivated by the icecream making machine in the window of what I grew up calling "Pete's Restaurant". I would always stop in front of the window on my way home from school and watch as the green pistachio or tan maple walnut icecream 'pooped' out of the pipe into containers that would then be put in the freezer for sale in cones. One very hot day, I was convinced I was not going to be able to walk the last 3 1/2 blocks to my house without a drink of water. I don't know what posessed me but I went inside and asked the man at the counter for a glass of water. The man, whom I later knew as Solo, graciously and gravely presented me with the coldest most refreshing drink of water I remember ever having drunk. This for a while, short or long I don't remember, became a ritual.

Five years later. January in Montreal. Elvis had just appeared for the first time ever on the Ed Sullivan Show and Mary Yersh, Kay Frate and I were giddy with it. We walked down the middle of snowy Springland Street in the tracks left by passing cars, giggling and nearly wetting ourselves with laughter over Mary's very excellent, very funny immitation of Elvis' performance. We were going to Pete's for vanilla cokes and to play some of our favourite tunes on the juke box. Pete or Solo made these specially for us from the fountain Coke machine and a dash of vanilla.

Some years later Pete's had moved right to the corner of Springland and Monk Boulevard. Its official name was the Ville Emard Restaurant. I was pregnant and had cravings for their oh so yummy chicken salad sandwich which I phoned ahead for and went to pick up on a fairly regular basis.

Who were these men, Pete and Solo? I know almost nothing about them. Not even their surname. I think they were brothers. I think they were Greek. They were young men when I stood watching the icecream machine 60 years ago. If they still live they are now very old. But the thing I do know about them, and the most important thing to know about them is that they were good men. Hardworking honest new Canadians who treated an 8 year old girl with dignity and respect and who continued to do so for all the years I continued to frequent their establishment.

The last time I was in their restaurant was in 1996 when I was visiting another childhood friend who lived in the neighbourhood. We went for barbecue chicken. Pete was behind the counter, greyed and very handsome in his later years. He claimed to remember me. And maybe he did.

CELEBRATING BATWINGS

I'm talking those flabby flaps that develop on women's arms as they hit middle age, not the leathery appendages of flying mice. Until this morning I felt pretty negative about them. Lots of yuccckk factor. I haven't worn anything sleeveless in over twenty years!

I used to have really nice arms, firm and shapely. So I started thinking back to when that was. It was when my kids were little enough to need picking up. That period of my life lasted about ten years spread over three children. So I started imagining I was talking to a grade 11 class of girls about body image in one's later years; about how easy it is to criticize looking older and to buy into the youthful image that western women seem to want to retain forever. In doing so I've reversed my attitude toward my own growing decrepitude. Here's how.

I started remembering. The six to eight feedings a day, the naps, the "uppy uppy Mommy"s, the into the car and out agains, the too tired to walk any mores, the cuddles, the book readings, the rockings. Such happy precious memories.

From now on when I look in a mirror I will no longer see those old bat wings. I will be remembering love and the babes these arms embraced. Along with my stretch marks and soft belly, they are the badge of being a mother. How can I not celebrate that?

Rutting buck sees red. Challenges approaching scooter.

There's a blacktail buck on Saltspring this morning with a roaring headache and there's a fellow with a story to tell his grandchildren. Picture a ferry worker riding his red scooter along a peaceful wooded road on his way to an early morning shift on the Queen of Nanaimo. His headlight is on, his windscreen is up, his gloved hands grip the outstretched handlebars, the motor is roaring gently. Out of the woods trots a buck who, seeing the oncoming challenger lowers his antlers and stands his ground. Ferry worker flies head over buck ending up sprawled on the road with a badly broken ankle. Blacktail buck collapses for a moment, gives his head a shake, gets up and trots back into the woods. Another rival vanquished.