Many friends and a wedding

It’s 11:15, Wed., July 30, 2014, and I’m already in the VIA Rail station in Ottawa waiting for the train to Toronto which won’t arrive for over an hour.  When I was a kid, I was amused by grandma Liddle who would be sitting bolt upright by the door in our house in Fort William, looking prim in hat and gloves ready to be driven to catch the train for Winnipeg, at least an hour before dad thought he should drive her to the station, but here I am just as bad.  Mela and Don did their best to hold me back. but I was so obviously unable to settle to anything after breakfast that Mela drove me here a full hour before she had planned to and now I’m happily waiting for the train secure in the knowledge that I am within a few feet of the departure gate.

Before I say anything about my trip east, I will announce that Jay and May are married.  Jay informed me when we talked on Skype.  He is so busy doing all the paperwork necessary to get the whole gang to Canada that it was well into the conversation before he mentioned the fact that they had taken that step as one of many things they are busy with.  It was a civil ceremony, but we will have something more festive when they get to Vernon.  Coincidentally, I had found my grandmother’s wedding-dress, the one mom and I were also married in when I was going through mom’s stuff with her as we prepared for their move.  I told Jay that May could wear it if she wanted, she’s the only person I know now who could, but I won’t insist she do so.  I was just happy to see it again and I will keep it for a while.  After moving mom and dad, I’m determined not to collect too much stuff.

I may be like my grandmother in certain ways, but I just did a very 21^st century thing.  I boarded the VIA train using an iPhone to verify my ticket.  I proudly opened my email inbox, scrolled down to the VIA ticket confirmation email, opened it and had it scanned. Presto!  I was on the escalator heading for the train to Toronto. However perfection eluded me as usual.  I had immediately replaced the iPhone in my backpack only to discover once I got to the train that I had to show it again in order to determine my car and seat numbers.  This meant stepping aside to let others enter the coach while I fumbled in my pack, got out my purse, removed the phone again, opened email, etc.

I had a wonderful eventful yet restful visit with friends in the Ottawa/Wakefield area.  Caroline and I walked all over her neighborhood with Roxie, Gabe and Susanna’s little white cokapoo.  We had good visits and meals, looked into some details for the wedding and ended up at Mela’s on Friday for the WWW gathering at Mela’s.  That was the usual gabfest and feast, at the end of which, I stuffed myself and all my luggage into a small car with 4 of my wild friends and was driven to Barb Steers’ home on the shore of the good old Gatineau River.  I had fun with her in the summer heat, swimming, kayaking, floating down the river on inflatable chairs and biking.  We kayaked to Smith’s one night for mohitos on their dock, a swim and dinner on the deck.  We exchanged stories of family and friends and I saw Marilyn’s new works which are a very creative move in a new direction.  Archie lent us a headlamp so that we could find our way back to Barb’s in the kayaks in the dark.  It was really fun paddling in the dark.  I biked and kayaked past our old homes a few times and was overcome by waves of joy because I have such wonderful memories of the years we spent building and living in them and sadness because those times ended sadly and too soon.  I ran into more old neighbors than I had even hoped to see and Barb had organized some reunions, so it was a good return on the whole.

Mela picked me up at Barb’s and we drove to Cordula’s for another gathering of the WWW.  This time I was happy to see Miche too.   She had not been able to come to Mela’s because she was looking after Katia’s daughter Anna who flew to Canada from Dubai to spend 3 weeks with Miche and Paul.  We swam in Cordula’s new pool and talked, laughed and ate well as we always do.  The evening ended with a glorious sunset behind the trees that fringe the field behind Cordula’s house.

I spent the last phase of the trip with Mela and Don.  She had said they would spoil me after my busy time in Victoria, and they did.  We ate almost every dinner outside in the garden.  Blake and Margaux joined us one night.  Mela and I took our time touring the Dore exhibit at the National Gallery one day and another day we walked around among a group of art installations in a field at the Experimental Farm.  Each artist had worked with plants to make a work that would change with the season.  One of the artists, a friend of Mela’s met us at the farm and gave us a tour.  Mela lent me her bike one day so that I could ride along the Ottawa River bike path to see Linda.  We had a good visit in her garden and she took me out for a very tasty lunch of fish and wonderfully crispy fried onions.  Danbrook picked me up at Don and Mela’s this past Sunday.  We drove to dinner at the Baughan’s.  It’s become a tradition to have dinner with them every time I return to Ottawa.  Caroline makes great snacks and food in general and Geoff and Megan join us.  I’m always happy to see young friends.  It reminds me of Jay and the fun we had visiting as a family.  Megan has a good job in HR, a position I have admired for its women’s networking system ever since Caroline found her first job in HR.  I met Geoff has a new girlfriend, Sarah, whom I met for the first time.  She’s lovely. 

The event around which the timing of this trip was determined was Gabe and Susanna’s wedding.  I was happy to have a minuscule part in the preparations.  I sat one evening with Caroline, watching a movie and stitching the last part of the border of the magnificent quilt she made as their wedding gift.  Mela and I also spent an hour or so with Caroline in the area of Mud Lake near Mela’s, gathering Queen Anne’s Lace and other wild flowers that Caroline later transformed into the bouquets for the bride and her maids.  The wedding itself, at Mariposa Farm east of Ottawa, was wonderful.  The ceremony was held outside, the guests were led by the farmer on a tour of the place as the pictures of the wedding party were taken and the dinner was superb.  The duck confit rivaled the Peking Duck we had in Beijing.  The ceremony itself and the speeches during the dinner were especially personal and meaningful.  The commitment of the couple to each other and of their families and friends to them was moving.

Mela and Don at Gabe and Susanna's wedding

Gabe and Susanna walk down the aisle, just married, watched by Albert, Caroline and Mara

Susanna and Gabe at their wedding dinner, toasting Jay and May's marriage

Urban biking again.  Mela's bike leaning against the spider in front of the National Gallery in Ottawa

Linda in her back garden with one and two thirds of her three dogs

Queen Anne's Lace

Victoria Pride

Bill and I took a time out while moving mom and dad to watch the Pride Day Parade in downtown Victoria.

The most flamboyant 

Very different fairies

Food for thought

Heading back to the mainland

Back East

I’m sitting in seat 4D, an isle seat, in West Jet #512.  We’re flying at 31,028 feet in the clouds heading to Toronto.  I was hoping to get a window seat so that I could look at the flooding in Saskatchewan and Manitoba as I did two summers ago, but as I hadn’t bothered to choose my seat in advance, I was lucky to at least get an isle.   For one hopeful moment I thought I might be able to move to a window seat in the row ahead because there was nobody in it, but the stewardess said that it would cost $45.00 because those are the expensive seats with more legroom.  I opted for saving the money and watching the ravages of flooding on the CBC television news.

 Mo and John drove me to the airport.  We had breakfast together at Tim Horton’s and then they left and the fun began.  The buckles on my sandals set off the alarm at the baggage control so I had to walk out and back through the scanner arch barefoot.  I then repacked my backpack after having removed my laptop for inspection and carried on to the departure spot with just enough time to go to the washroom and line up to board.  As I was flying in Canada, I didn’t expect to have to show id.  Wrong.  Fortunately I had brought my BC license so was able to show that.  But the name on it is Janet and my ticket was in the name of Jan.  Three years ago, this was the problem that the woman who issued my BC license after a long procedure of applying for and producing birth and marriage certificates had warned me about.  “ You should not have this confusion of Jan and Janet in your papers.” I had dismissed her comments as being a bored bureaucrat’s lame attempt to instill fear in me and add an element of importance to an otherwise repetitive task.  Now I was discovering that whether she was bored or not was beside the point; one should never underestimate the capacity of the system to force one into consistency.  I had to go to another desk where another woman took all my stuff, changed the name on my ticket in the computer, issued new tickets, tore the baggage stub off my original tickets and handed me everything.  No real problem, but a bit of a production.  Now I’m happily sitting in the air conditioned if a bit cramped comfort of an economy West Jet plane.  We have already crossed the Rockies and most of Alberta.  It was all cloud covered but I’ve been watching our progress on the little map on the screen on the chair back in front of me.  Yikes!  The big man sitting there just pushed his high priced seat back and almost jammed my laptop into my stomach.  It’s changed the distance between my eyes and the screen, so my progressive lenses are not correcting my vision of the screen as well as they should.  Perhaps I should have paid the $45.00 to upgrade. 

I guess I’ll shift to reading a complicated kindness by Miriam Toews.  As usual I’m reading a book that most people read years ago.  It’s an outrageous adolescent take on a Mennonite community.  Nomi is a female Holden Caulfield.  She’s very perceptive and the book is often funnier and quirkier than Catcher in the Rye , but they are both a bit too self-conscious and contrived at times for me.  Maybe I spent too much of my life teaching kids that age.  I always find them entertaining but tiresome after more than about one  hour’s exposure.  I’m reading the book in one hour blocks and finding it very funny and well written.  

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!  Bill arrived this afternoon.  Perfect timing.  I awoke this morning feeling low for the first time since I arrived on June 17.  I’ve been stretched physically, mentally and emotionally throughout this time but never felt that the whole thing was futile until today.  I went to the old place to pick up some final things and was feeling a bit more positive as I drove to Shannon Oaks but when I entered mom and dad’s apartment and saw they had done nothing, I dropped again.  But then a wonderful woman at the front desk helped me connect the television and get rid of the pile of empty boxes and scrunched newspaper.  Now we could see the place for the first time.  It’s quite spacious.  I helped mom and dad get used to the remote.  Dad was not able to concentrate; he drifts off more and more these days.  I hope that once the level of stress is lowered he might be less agitated and more able to focus.  Mom was a better pupil but I went one toke over the line with her when I tried to show her how to use the remote guide.  She’s used to getting a written guide in the ‘Times Colonist’.  She tried to pay attention to me but when I got her to push the buttons she was even worse at it than I was when I was trying to learn how to text on the iPhone Jay gave me at Christmas.  I’m a passable one-thumb texter now, but I don’t think mom has the same incentive to learn that I did.  She remains happy punching in the numbers for her favorite channels and watching the shows she knows at the times she’s used to.  But things were looking up.  Then the phone rang.  It was Bill.  I hadn’t known when he was coming, so when I heard he was just east of Hope my spirits soared. 

I returned to mom and dad’s old place to have lunch and a rest as I waited for him.  He arrived with 2 cold beers in his cooler.  We opened them in unison, and he proposed a toast to Jim who would have found so much humor in this episode of the Boyce family soap opera, in which people who are better at thinking and talking about possibilities, the fewer actual facts that are possessed the better, try to fumble their way into action and do something that people usually do as a matter of course.  We drank our beer, talked and wandered around the apartment like kids happy to be alone at home without parents setting the tone.  Then I dropped him at Shannon Oaks to have a first visit with the Ps alone.

As I drove to Vic West, KD Lang was singing Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ on the radio.  It brought tears of sadness, joy and relief to my eyes.  Now I will spend a quiet night and get up early to watch Eugenie Bouchard in the women’s finals at Wimbledon. Bill and I will meet at the Oak Bay Starbucks tomorrow at 9:00 to continue the soap