Author: Daniela Ginta Page 90 of 99

You could say the box was a simple candy box. Black with drawing of colorful candy on the top and bottom, and the inside, drawer-like, was sliding out easily. My Mom kept buttons in it. Some as big as a snail shell, others as tiny as a baby’s fingertips. The familiar clambering sound of the buttons in the box as my Mom was moving them around to find the right one was my signal to join her. I would spread them all out on the kitchen table and search for the one my Mom needed. The ones I loved the most were the nacre ones. Thin with even thinner edges, never two identical ones, but all with the most beautiful soft rainbow glow in each square millimeter. I felt them with the tip of my fingers and you’d be right to assume that the silent adoration of those buttons marked the beginning of my love story with shells and the sea world.

The box was given to me by one of my cousins, 20 years or so my senior, who was traveling the world on a big fishing vessel. His job and the big ship took him places. The South Pole, Gibraltar and the Bahamas, south of France and Iceland. He always came back with things that both my sister and I found fascinating. Like that black box full of candy and smelling so sweetly that when you first opened it you’d think that a caramel squirrel jumped on your face and chewed on your nose. The smell stayed with the box like a faithful dog long after the candy was chewed and done with. The box always brought maps of wild places dancing in front of my eyes. The clambering noise made by my mom’s buttons was an African dance around a fire, and Moroccan horses pounding the dry roads with their hooves lifting armies of dust clouds around and kids running down streets lined by swaying palm trees.

It’s been five years since my Mom passed away. The house I grew up in is gone now. The white and green kitchen cabinet is still around, together with most of the things that were in the house, including the black candy box. It must be in the top drawer of the cabinet, sleeping there quietly with all the stories about times past cuddling in its white inside with all the buttons like baby chicks huddled under their mama’s big warm wings. One day I will work the courage to open the drawer and take out the box, shredded corners and all. The stories are still there, I know they are, and so are the memories of my mom sitting at the kitchen table mending skirts and pants that had been bitten by gnarly fences we were climbing as kids imagining that we were holding onto lianas and running away from hooting monkeys. Hidden among buttons there are summer skies slashed by lightning and screaming thunder at us kids as we’re laughing and running barefoot to hide under weeping awnings. I miss it all, stories and memories. Good thing they are all in the candy button box…
 

I love being busy. I teach and I write, I have two young boys, I work against headache-causing deadlines more often than I care to admit. And crazy as it sounds, I love it all! Except for when teaching or interviews take me out of the house and I need someone to watch the boys.

If all goes well and there are no short notices or suddenly-sick babysitters, then things are as smooth as a baby’s cheeks. If not, then it’s frantic phone calls to established and potential babysitters. And it’s when moving down the list to the very last name does not metamorphose into a real person that it starts hurting. If you’ve been there at least once you know what I mean. Lately I’ve started pushing my luck even more by scheduling mommy time. Which every mom needs, and if you’re still in denial saying nah, I got enough when the kids go to bed, well, that’s precious too. But there is something about mommy time outside the house during “business hours” that has to be appreciated. If childcare is not in the way, that is.

Through my freelance writing assignment hunt I’ve met Tracey and www.sitswap.ca/. An idea as brilliant as it is simple. The proverbial light bulb. Mommies helping mommies. They have the experience, they have the motivation and then there’s that sisterhood that grows from understanding each other. And if you ask why I write about it, well, it could be that day when I had to teach and no one was available to help and I took the boys with. We survived to tell the story, but I sure wish I had www.sitswap.ca/ to click on.

(An older post, but just as new in expressing my immense gratitude to my Dad, who typed my very first poems on an old typewriter…Because you can never say ‘Thank you’ enough times…)

Every day that he did not have to go out in the field, for work, I mean, my Dad would come home with a few typewritten pages. His work stuff that he got to type that day.

There was something miraculous about those typed words. Even the paper smelled differently. And my Dad’s fingers always had some ink on them.

Do you know the old typewriters that go clank clank when you jump with your fingers from one round landing pad to another? Letters come out one by one like odd but cute hollow critters, all lined up in a neat row on the paper and then when you get to the end of the row you pull on this lever with a swift move and the ink tank moves all the way to the left and you start again. Clank clank.

If the paper is too soft then each letter is blotchy and as it sits there all embarrassed by its lack of grace and the big mess around it you feel like you want to pet its round hollow head and say it’s OK little odd thing, you’re on paper, you’re where you should be, that was the point.

Because somehow even though you’re still a kid, the fascination that comes from seeing your words on paper is beyond all imperfections. And when all the words you’ve ever written are handwritten seeing them typed for the first time is a mighty leg-shaking experience. A good one.

The pages my dad holds in his hand today are sprinkled with my words. My poems and short stories that he typed that day. He likes them he says.

I know he’s not just saying it. By the way he looks at me I just feel these solid stepping stones of encouragement that he lays out there for me to walk on and take off flying when I’ll feel like it. I had told my Dad that I want to send some poems out to a few contests.

I am grade 10 and have been writing for quite a while now. Too long, my sister would say, let’s play instead. Up in my quince tree, writing away about the world around and the one inside. Poems, stories, my journal. I am part of a couple of writers’ groups, mostly grown-ups where everybody’s writings is dissected and poked at. My first shot at literary critique if you will. Intimidating but good.

I touch those typewritten pages for the first time and I skip a beat. I read them, fold them neatly in half and put them in an envelope.

My Dad smiles as he sees me run down the cement steps with the envelope in my hand. The walk to the post office is hopeful, how else.

The woman sitting behind the thick glass panel in the deserted post office takes the change through the small round mouse hole and hands me back the stamp. She’s probably bored with her job and annoyed with my bringing my dog in with me. Lick, stick and slide the brown envelope into the long thin mouth of red mailbox outside.

A few months later I buy the literary magazine, yet again, and this time I see my seashell poem there. The albatross one too.They’re both there. I forget to breathe.

The words are not the cute hollow black caterpillars my Dad stuck to the paper for me a while ago. These ones are still mine but they make me think of kids who leave home all rambunctious and bedhead-haired-all-day-long to go to boarding school and return all clean and well-mannered a while after.

I keep reading my poems. They’re mine alright. I show them to my Dad. We laugh, he shakes my hand, a ceremonious thing he does because hugs are reserved for other occasions. And it’s perfect. I feel all grown-up now. I show them to my Mom. She’s happy. They buy two more copies of the magazine so they can cut the poems out and keep them in the kitchen in the old cupboard with the small bible and old photos of me and my sister. For show and tell to people who stop for coffee and chat.

I took a detour from writing for many years. But I missed seeing my words dance and laugh belly laughs on paper. So I started writing again. I’ll never stray from it again. I can’t. And every time my words make it on paper, glossy and not so glossy, but published somewhere out there, all I can think of is how this whole thing started: with my Dad typewriting every one of them and believing they can fly high like the very albatrosses his little girl was writing about.

The gift of published word. How did he know?

Aside from a cloudy sky – yes, here in Vancouver people can get quite spoiled after a couple of days of sunshine and they behave as if they’ve never heard of rain – nothing is out of the ordinary this morning. Sasha bikes and Tony and I walk to school. We talk about cats and dogs. Tony wants a cat, actually “can I have two, Mom? Then we can each have one.” Provided that Sasha’s asthma-triggering severe cat allergy is no longer with him, I am willing to consider. Sasha wants a puppy, he says, but he agrees with his brother that having a dog and two kittens could be nice indeed. I try to throw some sense into the conversation before life-changing decisions are being made but my boys would have nothing to do with it. And they shouldn’t. I am guilty of fantasizing about life too, so what’s wrong with that after all. 

We pass by a sprinkler that makes yet another shameful statement for all sprinklers out there as half of its liquid bounty is wasted on the sidewalk. And it’s cloudy, about to rain, that is.
Two blocks down in between two houses I see a big hole in the ground. There used to be a house there. Small white thing. And I don’t mean small just to make you go “aww.” It was really tiny and it had tiny windows and a tiny porch at the back. I’ve never seen anyone go in or come out, but I know it was inhabited because the smoke stack was puffing all winter. Two days ago it was still there and now this big hole makes me think of a wisdom tooth pulled out and the hollow space that took its place creates another one in my heart. I got so used to seeing this little house every day, standing there like an old white-haired lady, greeting me ever so gently, and now that it’s gone, I feel like I never got to say goodbye to it and that’s plain sad.
A new big house will take its place soon and I’ll have to readjust my walking expectations as I walk past it.

A hug later Tony makes his way to school and Sasha and I turn around and head home. Past houses with perfect windowsills and lawns, past coiffed-up dogs that seem to have understood that well-behaved dogs do not pull on their people and do not ever mind others as they pass by. My fear is that with time we’ll all become so well-behaved we will live in parallel bidimensional worlds that will slide by each other but never make contact.
Up ahead on the back lane I see one of my neighbors, Mr. B, a retired fireman. He’s walking his rather scrawny, imperfect little dog, an off-white old fellow that barks when the circumstances would dictate otherwise. He was left behind by the niece, Mr. B. told me once. A big SUV makes the four of us glue our backs to the bushy sides of the lane in an attempt to let the big chunk of metal pass by. “Good thing they don’t make them bigger or they’d be scraping us all off the pavement,” I say laughing. Mr. B. is one of the few around here speaking his mind and loving it when others do so when it comes to life and such. Bashing unnecessarily big gas-guzzling SUVs is a common pleasure it seems. We’ve had quite a few good fresh conversations since we first bumped into each other on one his dog walks. I like talking to him knowing that he’ll never feed me the mellow politically correct views everyone is serving to everyone here in an attempt to match the perfect lawns and windowsills. We chat for a bit and then his imperfectly cute dog drags him up the street. It happened before and it’s a good thing, it shows that this small hippie-looking dog still has a good dose of canine pride left intact. Come to think of it, he’d be a perfect match for a tiny house with tiny windows. All of a sudden I realize that the imperfectly perfect dog is in many ways the ambassador of those good old days when tiny white houses were still loved enough to be left in place.  A big job for a little dog but I have a feeling he can handle it well by the way he’s pulling Mr. B. across some perfectly manicured lawns.
 

I’m at a beach near a place where seagull cries and frog songs hang on tall trees like one-of-a-kind ornaments. I’m sitting on rocks studded with barnacles that look more like elephant teeth than skeletons of marine creatures and feeling more and more like a barnacle myself, not wanting to leave here. In front of me the bay waters form long thin waves that carry their golden trim to the shore with gentle lap-lapping sounds. The sun is broken in a million sparkles on the water from where I sit all the way to where the bay opens up to the rest of the world. There’s tall green mountains on each side of the bay cradling its waters like a mom’s loving arms cradle a baby. It’s 5 o’clock and I know I should leave here before the sky sifts darkness over the forest. My friend and I got here before lunch after a long hike on forest trails along a lake with water so still that the upside down mountains with white peaks seemed painted on its dark glassy surface. We came to see Catharina and her beautiful place.

First we have tea in the quaint little kitchen and then Catharina takes me for a walk to the garden she’s worked on for a few years with a neighbor. The garden has teepees of sweet peas and straight arrows of green garlic, it has potatoes and herbs. There’s an army of orange poppies and purple corn flowers that sway in the hot breeze and all that bobbing pollen makes a fat bumble bee unsure of its landing skills.

We walk across fairy tale bridges with little shiny green ivy leaf faces poking out from between the beams. As we pass by a couple of houses Catharina tells me stories of each and the people who inhabited them. There are just a few houses nestled here in the bay. This one is white and drenched in sunlight and I love the way it looks like a giant daisy plopped down to its knees in that bright grass. A rundown abode by most people’s standards but its glass veranda invites to second thoughts. The air is alive with bees and butterflies and frog songs. We talk and laugh and walk through tall grass.
We cross a bridge that was built in haste Catharina says and it’s now arching down towards the fast running stream in a way that makes her feel unsafe. Still she crosses it and takes me to a big carpet of tall grass that rolls along the stream all the way into a beach with sun-bleached logs. Catharina talks of sea otters and seals that catch salmon right there, just a few steps from the beach. The salmon that make it up the fast flowing stream become bear food. With salmonberries for desert. After all, the place is all salmonberry bushes. I show Catharina how to peel salmonberry shoots, the young and snappy ones, they are good to eat, learned that from a Scouts walk in the Musqueam territory with Tony. We walk on the beach and we talk about children and schools and how learning for the sake of knowing is a dying art. And how I want to have my boys’ creative minds to grow tall and daring. She listens and then tells me this place would be good for someone like me.
We walk back to her shy little green-and-burgundy house peeking from behind old trees. We sit on the sun soaked deck and eat sandwiches and cookies and drink percolator coffee. Catharina shows us her paintings, and the afternoon breeze that tugs gently at my hair almost mistakes them for big colourful butterflies and blows them off the table. Later we talk about happiness. I can’t tell you what happiness is, I don’t know, she says, but it’s in me, I am happy. The house she lives in tells the same story, over and over. The door frames have ivy leaves and flowers painted on them, just like the door leading to the upstairs room where old dollies sleep peacefully wrapped in a rainbow-like baby quilt has birds and grass and poppies. You have to get past your fears if you want to be happy, Catharina says.

I pick up a barnacle rock from the beach and take it with me. I am usually the one telling the boys to leave everything the way they find it but I figured since the place stole my heart it’d be fair to take a rock. I’ll bring it back soon. I walk up the narrow dirt path leading to the house. On one side there’s a rusted chain with oversized oval rings hanging between short wooden poles. Rust has eaten away the metal thinning it out to nothingness and the idea of disappearing metal in a place where only living things live and die puzzles me.

I put the barnacle rock in my backpack, and a seagull feather too. Ready to go? Not really, but have to. We hug and smile. The story is just starting. As I walk back to the world I came from, dreams and thoughts fizz through my brain holding promises of crisp mornings by the bay water, kids’ laughter splashing in the stream and long quiet cricket-serenaded nights writing on a deck somewhere here, close to the heart of the place that stole my own. My arms are red and tingly from the sun that licked at them a few minutes too long while I was sitting on Catharina’s deck. There is something inside me dancing and laughing and crying. And then I remember what Catharina said after we met: here’s where I feel alive. That must be it. At 86, Catharina knows better than most of us.
 

I am getting my bike ready for a ride. It’s Sunday afternoon and the sun is splashed all over the sidewalks like a giant lemon. And if you think sour when I say lemon, I can only invite you to think yellow instead. Try it. Because yellow is good and warm, like a sunny Sunday early afternoon. See, I told you. Water bottle, gloves, shades and… take-off. I have to conduct an interview and I’m looking forward to it.

I make my way towards downtown by riding on some winding unofficial bike routes. Then it’s time to cross the bridge and I take advantage of all the new bike lanes our mayor has gifted us with. It’s nice to not have to rub shoulders with trucks or get dirty looks from drivers as I try to squeeze through tight spaces. I know, I know, biking people can be annoying, this feud between people riding on two wheels versus four is yet another one that I do not see us reaching an agreeable solution anytime soon. Regardless. The first sunny day after many rainy ones makes for a temporary truce. Bikes and cars, we all ride along crossing the bridge painted warm by the sun.

I reach my destination. Technically I am working on a Sunday, yeah you could say that. Far from a chore though. I meet the people I am interviewing, feels like I’m hanging out with friends. Not all interviews are like this. I learn new things and love it. I think of my assignment as I ride and I feel confident knowing that it’s almost written in my head and it’ll pour out on the screen when I get home.
A bus zooming by makes my bike shudder like a house built too close to a railway. Downtown rush is not my everyday cup of tea but today it makes me feel alive in a way that I should mention but not dissect. I’m riding my bike, I just had a good chat with pleasant people and I am now headed home to do what I love: write.
Not bad for a Sunday afternoon when all I expected was to collect some facts for one of my soon due assignments. It’s like flying when all I expected was to walk. Slightly dizzying but not bad, not bad at all…