The Wizard From Oz

People are always asking about Kerry.  How did you find Kerry?  She sounds like she works miracles.

A few years ago, my landlord died.  Shortly thereafter, a new landlord bought the building.  i moved in because it was a 1.7 mile (or kms, i forget which) walk to university and never left.  The building was virtually unchanged except for wear and tear.  The parking lot is a pot-holey mess; the garbage bin is never big enough.

Suddenly, changes were legion:  Big metal framed glass doors and a controlled entry system replaced the 1950s wooden-framed, open to everyone glass doors.  The hallway walls were prepped and a beige colour soon appeared.  This replaced a turquoise of such singular luminescence that i had repeatedly confided to neighbours that i was tempted to sneak out in the night and paint fish on the walls.  It was not unlike living in an aquarium.

The sound of lapping water ended at my doorway.  That was the entry to the Twilight Zone pr, to be more accurate, that CHAOS Zone.

Only people who have lived with decades of clutter will understand that CHAOS stands for "Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome".  i, like some of my fellow clutterbugs and littermates and dust buddies, had become expert in showing half a face through a barely cracked door.  And don't let me kid you, i know at least two people who wouldn't answer their doors at all:  Not for the Pope, the late Ed McMahon nor the Second Coming.

Therefore, the trepidation i felt when i discovered that the landlord was randomly replacing windows in apartments might be understandable.  The windows were all...the...way...across...the...room -- the room full of stuff.  Plus two other sets of windows across other rooms full of stuff.

Inevitably, i received due notice from the Super:  The landlord would be installing new windows in a week's time.

Cataclysm.  Shockwaves.  A mental tsunami.  What on earth to do?

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, i remembered that a friend had created a website for someone who helped "around the house".  The business' logo was the familiar image of Rosie the Riveter.  i made a call and subsequently received one.  The voice belonged to someone who sounded no nonsense, down to business, cut-to-the-chase.

When she came to the door, Kerry reminded me of a cross between our beloved, knowledgeable and efficient camp director and the ever-energetic and prepared Miss Hathaway, secretary to the banker in "The Beverly Hillbillies", right down to the cuffed, tailored shorts, sleeveless, tailored blouse and everything but the whistle on a lanyard.  She looked over the top of her glasses at the sign on my door.  She repeated the surname several times.  She then prefaced it with my first name and repeated them together several times, as if searching her memory.

We walked down the inner hall of my apartment and looked into rooms.  We had made it almost to the end of the hall when she had a flash of recognition and shouted my childhood and adolescent nickname and surname together, asking if this was accurate. This added even more to my nervousness about circumnavigating my mess.  "Yes...", i answered.  She asked if i knew someone with a somewhat formal first name and more familiar surname -- for privacy's sake, i'll use the fictitious, "Elizabeth Jarvis".  "Elizabeth Jarvis...Elizabeth Jarvis...  Beth Jarvis?!! i fairly shouted.  "Yes!  She's my younger sister."

Outwardly, i was asking more questions: surname, where is she now? etc., etc.

Inwardly, i had spun out of control.  Words were appearing on a ticker such as used to flicker in Times Square:  "SHE KNOWS EVERYONE IN THE SMALL TOWN WHERE I USED TO LIVE.  HER MOM WORKED WITH MINE.  THEIR LARGE EMPLOYER IN THE SMALL TOWN WAS A GOSSIP HOOKUP DWARFING FACEBOOK!!  EVERYONE WILL KNOW HOW MESSY I AM!!!"

"Beth" was a friend from late Gr 7 on.  We had both been implants to the small town where we'd live until secondary school ended.  Her family had come to Canada from Australia and her mum chatted with the Aussie lilt.  Someone in their house collected stamps and, in particular, first day covers, something which was completely unknown to me previously.

The very good news is that Kerry is very loyal, does not suffer fools gladly and, after a lifetime in helping professions, she knows exactly where the line is and precisely where her tipping point rests.

In the course of a few hours, we managed to clear paths to each of the windows.  The windows were replaced (almost entirely from outside, which made us laugh).

That was about two and a half years ago.  Since then, every so often (the frequency has changed), we launch into our routine of sort, toss, move, swap, donate, recycle, etc.  STUFF has gone and less stuff has taken it's place.  i've also reconnected with a secondary school friend and discovered what an interesting elder sister she has.

Goodbye Bobby and Civil Wrongs

i had prayed so hard. It wouldn't be like when President Kennedy had been killed. This time, his brother had made it to the hospital and was still alive when i awoke in the morning.

But he did die.

That weekend, we drove to Detroit for Dad's cousin's wedding. i remember getting a big lump in my throat and feeling vaguely sick and sad when i saw the graphic of the American flag crossed with the Canadian one. It wasn't the usual thrill i felt at crossing the border.

i was young but i knew what Bobby Kennedy stood for. i knew of a clash over civil rights, though the "struggle" was theoretical to me. Before multiculturalism became public policy in Canada, before it was a strategy, it defined our neighbourhood. The parents of our babysitters had come from Holland after WWII. There were neighbours from Italy, India, Poland, Germany, Lebanon, the United States, etc. My most envied friends went to Arabic school on Saturday mornings, had a hookah in the living room and a grandmother who made wonderful bread one tore like paper and rolled to eat. Ethnicity was something like clothing -- one more thing folks wore. A friend at school was Cree, had beautiful almost-black hair and the same name as my mother.

English wasn't a language or a culture; it was, almost literally, white bread -- something which had no flavour till you added bits of something else.

A few weeks earlier the world had stopped when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Heck, i was a veteran of "assassinated" at the age of eight -- set up for a lifetime of stomach lurching when "News Bulletin" appeared on the TV screen, conditioned to wonder "Who has been shot now?"

We shopped at Hudson's, Mom's downtown Detroit store of choice. She bought me two dresses and had me wear the sailor-styled one i liked less to the wedding. Vacationing in Detroit was as commonplace as visiting a cottage: Trade motel pool for a lake, a Pontiac for a motor boat, hopscotch for crab-walk soccer, Vernors' factory tours for the Port Elgin bakery's Chelsea Bun lineups. Simple.

Dad was the ultimate wedding prankster: i helped him put IBM filings in the top of Roy's car, in the books on the floor, etc. i sat with my cousin, Leslie. (In our family, until 1968 i had to go to third cousin to find a female my age!) Her mother cried through the ceremony and we puzzled about what makes grown-ups cry at happy things.

Rice was downright confusing. Where were the happy flutters of confetti? Rice crunched beneath our feet, was sickly and pale coloured. i thought of the times i had picked up Mom's wedding dress for a peek and had confetti fall in tiny showers on my face.

After a meal at the church, we headed back to the house on Lesure. All the grown-ups were in the dark, slightly damp basement. Leslie and i escaped into the warmth outside her grandparents' home.

We played games without toys. Talked, walked, skipped. A girl who lived on the street came to play with us. She was either the same age as me or as Leslie, who was a year older. She had the familiar name of someone i knew. She was dressed like we were -- we were still in dresses from the wedding, not fancy but clean and comfy. i guess we didn't change "for comfort" in those childhood days.

We hadn't "finished" playing when we were called by an older relative to the porch. The stern comments were breathed sotto voce at Leslie: "We don't play with *those* people. Come in."

All i remember is that i felt sadness beyond sadness: This was wrong. It was not only wrong but also exactly opposite of what i knew had died that week: Hope. Change. Tolerance. A different way of being.

i sat alone in the dim light of the den, TV on, watching Bobby's funeral train, footage from the funeral and thinking of the pain, pain, pain of that week.

It would be years before i told my mother what had happened. It was about 30 years before i could say it aloud. It has been 42 years before i could write it down.

Visiting Detroit was never the same. Of course, a few years later, the family moved from Lesure Street to Farmington Hills. i asked my eldest relative why they'd moved. She said, aghast, "Why, my dear! They were practically the last white people on the street!"

Right.

Shunpiking Memories

Our local daily, the London Free Press, began an annual event when i was in "single digit" ages.

We would get up Mother's Day morning, pile into the car -- picnic lunch, drinks and cash -- and drive to the newspaper's building.  Traffic would be backed up for blocks and we would line up.  Finally, we'd come up to a sign reading "Welcome Shunpikers!" and the volunteers who would simultaneously shout directions ("Go to the second light and turn right!") and pass into the car a mysterious envelope.

It was the annual Shunpiker Tour.

Mom would open the envelope as Dad drove.  (Sometimes we'd pull over somewhere to make sure everything was in the correct order:  It ALWAYS was.)

The directions would say quite clearly where to go, when to turn, to look for the bright, yellow cards with black arrows posted on telephone polls, reminding us of turns.

The route would begin.

"Hmm," we'd say, "We're heading east.  Haven't gone this way for years!"

The route would follow back roads, though usually paved ones.  We'd never have dreamed that we could get to some of the attractions through such arcane routes.

The first stop would be some place not too far from town but somewhere we may have heard of but hadn't been.  It could be a campground, a church, a dairy, a museum, a pump house, a historical site, a greenhouse -- almost anything.  The admission fees would be waved or sites not usually public would be opened with tours offered.  Once, a stop was a hamlet of antique stores and historical venues -- all easily accessible on foot.

Volunteers would be waiting.  We'd already have had a pamphlet from the business in our information package/envelope and know what we could expect:

"Refreshments available."  Or "Refreshment stand closed till spring but cafes close by (see map)".

"Washrooms available (accessible/non-accessible)/ask staff."  "Sales not usually conducted on Sundays but will be today." Or "No Sunday sales but samples will be given out."

"Special food deal for shunpikers!"

There was usually a "Free to the first 500 mothers".  Garden places often gave out a plant or flower.

We saw Alexander Graham Bell's Homestead, a settlement built by escaped slaves in the U.S. Civil War era, a train museum, a chocolate factory, a beautiful, Gothic church and one-room school built by Irish immigrants, ate warm, home made doughnuts, hot cider, cold lemonade and hand-scooped ice cream, stood under a waterfall and collected fossils, cut lilac branches and touched an iron lung while learning about what polio had been.

We saw stained glass and pottery being made, horses being shod, watched a real, wooden windmills sails soar into the sky then walked into the mill itself.  We looked at antiques, and bought some, but always learned things we had never known before about places in our own backyard.  Bargains abounded and free experiences wore us to a very pleasant exhaustion.

A few years ago, the paper decided to stop running the Shunpiker Mystery Tour.  The outcry was met with a sop:  The paper would not do its same, former, extended and well-researched version with the sealed mystery envelope handed out to cars.  The replacement would be a part of the Sunday newspaper and people who wished to go, would go from home.

Just before leaving the Free Press years ago (when my shift was discontinued), i had the rare privilege of proofreading the information going into those mysterious envelopes.

The amount of research and preparation done had to have been staggering:  Every detail was clearly explained and participants sworn to secrecy.  There were facts upon facts, directions upon directions (always clear!) and venues upon venues.  Just imagine planning for hundreds or thousands of guests without letting ANYONE know that you were participating.

It was a grand and glorious surprise and, probably, Mom's favourite Mother's Day gift -- after children, of course.

Settling Down

As i write this, i'm trying to get one very cute nephew to have a nap.

Writer Madeleine L'Engle once said that children are reluctant to sleep because it's a tiny bit like death. Certainly, children, for whom every experience is "present" cannot foresee even a tiny bit into the future, see the need for sleep or anything else beyond this, precise second in time.

My charge has fallen asleep because he was overwhelmed with "tired" and because the sound of the keypad became irresistibly and luxuriously lulling. His last few waking moments were spent humming a soprano, staccato human interpretation of the patter of the keys: It momentarily became more compelling than the sound of trucks and cars on his busy country road.

In North America, we lead faster and faster lives. It becomes more and more difficult for something gentle to lull us into the relaxation we need.

Instead, we seem to need jarring out of our rapid ruts: A neighbourhood house fire may catch our attention where a soft breeze cannot.

Yesterday, i received an upsetting phone call. It was needlessly jarring because the person who called, on business, was worked into a frenzy before i even spoke into my receiver: There was no chance for dialogue; it wouldn't fit into his "pattern".

i have no easy answers for how one may slow down without being tossed off the conveyor belt altogether. All i can do is dip one toe off the edge and see if, eventually, i can remain standing.

Spruce's Gosling

Dad was 41 when he died suddenly. He collapsed at work after having returned just the afternoon before from a long trip.

Though we presumed he died of a heart attack, we now wonder if he might have had something like a coronary embolism.

Aside from lecturing people on the urgency for proper, personal, medical maintenance and paying early and close attention to symptoms, i'd like to add just a few, personal words:

Life is too damned short.

i came home from a really productive day to the news that Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet The Press" had died after collapsing at work.

i am a self-confessed political junkie and Russert's interviews formed for me, from an irreverent viewpoint, homilies on the American political scene. Like my dad, he did what he loved -- perhaps to excess -- with excellence. His "Big Russ and Me" was a tribute not only to good parenting but also to cherishing what is positive in one's upbringing.

My father was, in some ways, an unusual one for his times. i was his eldest child and a daughter, yet he taught me film editing, setting a manual 35 mm single reflex camera and chess playing before i was old enough to ride a bike. It made me miss him all the more before he died when he became so wrapped up in his work that he lavished more time on it.

This week, i picked up the book based on Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture". Humour, wisdom, fun in equal portions. Dad, who's spousal, private nickname was "Spruce" would have loved it.