“Here, hold the gate so the mama won’t get out.” Netty throws the words behind and I pick them up as I go, holding onto the metal gate that keeps the goats and the sheep inside their yard. If I didn’t know any better I’d say we’ve done this before the two of us, feeding the animals and chatting about life.
I just met Netty, she’s one of the interpreters here at Fort Langley and a happy person by all counts. The boys and I bumped into her in the big house where she showed us around and told us about the proclamation of the Crown colony of British Columbia in 1858, by James Douglas, the first governor. Talk about tingly, when you stand on the very spot where the province you live in was born. The boys are speechless and I can’t claim to be any different. i ask for her name. Netty, she says. And yours? Netty asks us if we like animals and invites us to follow her outside to the farm. We already went there, I told her, but will gladly revisit. She gives us a quick overview of the animals there and then starts feeding them. The two of us chat about farms and real life and I told her about my dream of living in a place where roosters can wake you up in the morning, tomatoes are not just grown for the fun of it and birthday cakes don’t have blue in them. She points her finger at me nodding a big yes, and then heads over to the chickens coop to let them out. In the meantime the boys take my camera and engage in a friendly chase and pixel immortalizing of the hens and their mighty rooster. Netty and I chat a few minutes and then she excuses herself for a bit. a couple of minutes later she makes her way back holding two fresh eggs. “These are for you, I just washed them. I hope your dream will come true. You should head out to the Kootenays, you’d love it there.” The eggs become the focal point of Sasha’s attention. He checks on them every five minutes, taking breaks only to run over to the sheep and goats. Definition of simple joy.
Month: June 2011 Page 1 of 2
It’s after dinner. Tony rides his bike and Sasha his scooter. We venture down the hill chatting and Sasha rattling as he rolls over bumps on the sidewalk. Most times both boys talk at once and they are so excited I don’t have the heart to stop either of them so I do my best to sharpen my journalistic ear and pay equal attention to both. Sasha has recently started to throw a few decibels more into the conversations since he figured out that the competition is strong. Take that into account of course.
The sky is spitting tiny rain drops on us as we parade the street towards the field where the baseball closing day ceremonies will take place shortly. A kid is screaming, he hates rain. Others jump in puddles as they walk by and the bystanders cheer as the little kiddies make their way to the field. Rain subsides by the time we’re singing “Take me out to the ball game” for the last time this season. Afterwards we walk to the small diamond off the playground for the last game of blastball. What’s blastball you ask? A very early version of baseball where kids age three to five wearing oversized shirts looking awfully cute line up and step up to bat one after another and then they run to a jump on a soft base that goes “squeak”. Two teams faces each other but no one wins. No, seriously. Batting, go in the field and try to catch the ball, repeat two more times and then you’re done.
One of the kids in the other team tries to hit the ball and it doesn’t work as planned. He tries again. Nope, it ain’t working. So the kid takes the matter into his own little hands, literally, and hits the ground with the bat. One, two, three times, harder each time, and the fourth brings the result he’s hoping for. The bat, made of plastic wrapped in some soft material – breaks. The kid looks satisfied, and then yells towards his mother who was chatting with other adults oblivious to what happened a couple of steps from them “it was an accident!”. The coach realizes the enormity, walks over and shrugs his shoulders as he assesses the bat. It’s done for. The mom walks over too, talks to the kid and a few seconds later she turns to the other parents and laughs “it was an accident!”… A new bat is brought in and the game resumes with parents laughing as the sorry looking bat was removed from sight. So much for assuming responsibilities for one’s actions. An unfortunate accident? Hardly. I can’t help but think of the recent events that blackened the eye of our city. Rioters expressing their anger following a lost game and cup or maybe just seizing the opportunity to have some violent fun. That’s no accident, but a scary combo that doesn’t end well. Especially when you put the bat away like it never existed…
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.