Short days

It’s 3:30pm and already the sky that has been grey all day is darkening.  It was dull and frosty as I walked to the rec. centre this morning at 8:00.  When Lusia and I left there at about 10:30 after our sauna, swim, steam bath and scrub, slush was dropping from the sky.  For the first time we didn’t look at each other, take in a deep breath and say, “That feels good.”   Because it didn’t.  It was cold and wet and the sidewalk was so slippery we had to shuffle like geishas to keep from falling.  As we drank our Americanos things dried up a bit and the hit of caffeine raised my spirits, so the walk home was fine, not too pleasant, but I’d rather be here than in Buffalo at the moment.   And all things considered, I think I’d rather be here than in Philadelphia too. 

I went to a very funny production of “The Barber of Seville” (live from the Met) at the Cineplex last Saturday morning.  Isabel Leonard who played Rosina and Christopher Maltman who was Figaro were really funny.  The sets, costumes and timing were wonderful.  As soon as the crowds die down I’m going to go back to the Cineplex to see Mockingjay-Part 1.  I saw the “Hunger Games” at Jay’s and really liked them.  Jennifer Lawrence is always worth watching.  I loved her in “American Hustle”.  I’m reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare 1599  by James Shapiro.  It’s Al’s book.  He gave it to me, or I ‘borrowed’ it ages ago and started to read it but didn’t finish.  I’m starting again because I’ve forgotten most of what I read.  It’s very detailed but goes well with my project, which I haven’t worked on in ages either but which I’m back to in this inclement weather, trying to organize all the quotations I marked when I reread Shakespeare’s plays in the year or 2 after Jim died.

It’s 4:10 and dark.  Time to turn on the lights and think about dinner.

Part of the Japanese Garden in Polson Park that I walked through on my way to the Cineplex on Saturday.

Nov. 17 and still no snow

The leaves have fallen, the temperature’s dropped but still there’s not enough snow to ski.  This will be the first winter since I moved to Vernon that I haven’t been skiing before Nov. 15^th.  Oh well, it’s sunny, and I certainly have had plenty of time to prepare for the snow.  I’ve even finished the Christmas baking: the dark fruit cake from the Joy of Cooking, which I modify every year (this time it has more rum and pecans); speculaas that I learned to make from Florence and a new shortbread.  I have used Terry Keough’s recipe for years and really like it, but this year CBC Radio One was raving on about how great the winning shortbread in their last year’s contest was and how you have to bake it at least a month early and let it mellow.  I had time on my hands and I fell for the hype.  It was rather grainy when first baked, but it is wrapped up and sitting in the fridge now, aging to perfection. 

I phoned dad yesterday morning to wish him a Happy 95^th Birthday.  I sang the song all the way through as usual, and he joined in for the traditional chorus of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ as he always does.  Then we usually have a good laugh, but this time there was no laugh and the rest was not good.  Mom was doing the wash, so he was alone and very upset.  He repeated a few times how she was not well and he couldn’t do anything.  This has been his theme for a while now, but usually mom pipes up that they are still managing.  As she was not there, he couldn’t seem to get his mind off his worries.  I asked, as I have many times since I helped them move in June, if he had spoken to the nurse who stops by to see him from time to time about taking the necessary steps to get on a list for a place with more care.  She had mentioned this to me and to them in June, but they have done nothing.  He said that even when she was there last week to see him after a fall he hadn’t said a word about extra care.  I keep thinking that they will ask when they’re ready and that if I initiate a move, mom, at least, will disagree, but perhaps I am going to have to go to Victoria and do something because they seem incapable of anything.  I’m not going to phone them again until tomorrow so that they have a chance to discuss the situation, but I wonder if they will. 

To end on a happier note, last weekend Jay and May found and bought wedding rings that they both like, so now they have the outward and visible sign of their marriage.  And I went to a concert at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre last night.  It was the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra together with ‘musica intima’.  The last work, ‘Dona nobis pacem’ by a Latvian composer, Peteris Vasks, was especially wonderful.  The strings and voices blended together to fill the room with an eerily peaceful sound.  The audience remained silent for almost a minute after the performers had stopped playing and singing.  Then they rose and clapped for quite a while.  That is most rose.  I later saw two acquaintances in the foyer; they hadn’t liked it. 

A cartoon from "The Morning Star" that made me laugh because that's the solution Jay and I have for all the technical problems we encounter.

A shot from the black rock where I walk when there are no hikes and bikes and not enough snow to ski.

November 11, 2014

November 11, 2014 has been brilliantly sunny.  The temperature is -1 at 3:00pm and should fall to -3 tonight.  I walked to the Remembrance Day service at the Kal Tire Centre this morning.  By 10:30 the place was almost full.  As usual, the service was well organized and very moving at moments.  One of the speeches was rather tedious and sabre-rattling, but the community orchestra and singers, highland bands and brightly uniformed members of every military and public safety group in town created an overall atmosphere of mixed solemnity and celebration of lives lost.  Two of the participants, probably the youngest and the oldest, provided the highlights of the ceremony.  The young girl who had won the elementary school war poetry competition read her poem.  It consisted of several poppy metaphors.  In one of them she said that the poppy is a suitcase that opens easily, with a glance, and out tumble memories in a jumble of joy and sorrow.  The whole poem was quite unique, with more assonance than alliteration and none of the usual painfully strained rhyming couplets. The man was a 94-year old veteran of WW2 who was laying a wreath in memory of his comrades.  After most of the wreaths had been laid, he was introduced.  He walked up the long isle carrying his, a young soldier at his side.  As they approached the memorial, the whole audience stood up and clapped for quite a long time.  I was moved to tears. War is hell.  It should not be glamorized and young lives should never be sacrificed at its alter.  But it seems right to remember comrades and fellow human beings who died in the horror of combat before they could experience the joys and sorrows that make life on earth so dear.  Dad also is 94 and although he can no longer walk as independently erect as that man did, he holds his head up with the same sense that some things are right, others not, and that attention must be paid to the former.  

The Honour Guard at the Remembrance Day Service with the Vernon Community Band in the background

Nov. 10, 2014

Anthony Hopkins was in Vernon today, and I missed him.  What makes it worse is that he was spotted and photographed in Starbucks and at The Bay in The Village Green Mall, and I was in the same mall except at the liquor store and Save On Foods.  RATS!!!! He’s in a movie that is being shot in Enderby, a village just east of Vernon.  Aside from that, not much is happening here.  I drove Mo and John to the Kelowna airport this morning; they are going to spend 3 weeks in Oaxaca.  Then I went to the mall to buy rum and other ingredients for the annual Christmas cake.  I made it this afternoon; it’s in the oven now.  I sent a small Christmas package to Jay and family before going to Mo’s.  So now I’m almost ready not just for winter but also for Christmas.  It takes a while for a package to get to Incheon, but I am a bit early.  I seem to be expecting a call to Victoria at any moment.  That combined with my usual preference for being early rather than late and the fact that I want to be free to ski if we get snow has got me trying to complete all chores before the snow flies.  The winds of change blew in yesterday and completely denuded the trees in the back yard.  I've been enjoying walks to the Black Rock lately, but I'm ready to ski. 

Dad will be 95 on November 16^th. 

New graffiti on the wall around the abandoned water reservoir at the top of Black Rock and a view toward Swan Lake on the east side of Vernon.

Fiction and real life

The first step of three this week in the winterizing program is being taken now.  Mark from Brown Mechanical Services is in the basement looking at the furnace.  Then he will tackle the fireplace, which will be a more difficult task I think.  I shut it down and turned off the pilot light last spring when I couldn’t get it to light and haven’t touched it since.  On Wed. I go to the doctor for a checkup, and on Friday the car gets its pre winter tire change, fluids check and general preparation for crossing the Coquihalla in mid Dec. for Christmas in Victoria with mom, dad, Barb and Terry.

Or will I be heading west earlier?  Mom and dad sounded terrible on the phone last night.  It’s all dad can do to dress himself and push his walker to meals.  If he can’t do these minimal things, he can’t stay at Shannon Oaks.  Then what?  Mom is still suffering the pain of post herpetic neuralgia every day and now she has the worry of Lymphoma.  She will have the first bout of radiation on Wednesday and is very upset by the idea.  They have always been so proudly self sufficient that they can’t accept their increasing dependency.  In some ways they waited too long before going into a seniors’ home so when they finally got there they have been physically unable to take advantage of its many programs.  Of course dad would have had to be dragged to such ‘hail fellow well met’ gatherings but mom would have enjoyed some of them and made friends for both of them as she has always done.  She’s what my friend Jane’s husband would call a ‘jolly hockey stick, that is when she’s not depressed beneath words.  Of course it’s very expensive where they are now, so they couldn’t have afforded to live there for twenty years.  I waited until they asked me for help with the move to Shannon Oaks and I’m inclined to do the same thing this time even though I don’t know what we’ll do about getting one or both of them into a care home because most of those have waiting lists of at least a year.  I know that if dad gets hospitalized again because of a fall he will be moved to a temporary care home as soon as he no longer needs a hospital bed but that could mean that he will be in a different location than mom and that will be hard.  I also know that they are frozen into inaction by the fear of exactly that happening.  They are waiting for something to happen so that a decision is not required, holding on for dear life.  And life is ‘dear’ when you’re that old, in the sense of costing every bit of energy you have every minute just to keep doing the most basic things.  I felt quite low after our last talk but I don’t know how to help them because as sure as I suggest something, mom will have a good day and think I’m rushing things.  She can still be pretty buoyant at times and then there’s no influencing her.  Or have I just given up?  If this were my novel and not our lives, I would resort to a good old ‘deus ex machina’ to solve the dilemma.

On the topic of novels, I have finally joined a book club.  Its members refer to it as the ‘sailing’ book club, a group of women who met sailing, so I expect some windy discussions.  Their numbers now include hikers and bikers, which is how I got to know some of them.  I’m sure we will all be full of hot air, and as each person brings an appetizer and $5.00 to cover the hostess’s purchase of wine for the event, the discussion should be lively.  No matter what happens, I am already glad I joined because the book we will discuss this Thursday evening is Ragged Company by Richard Wagamese.  It’s the first book of his that I have read and I love it.  He’s right up there with Alice Munro when it comes to being a medium for the transmission of the voices of the people he writes about.  And funny.  And humane.  He lives near Kamloops now but comes from a reserve near Thunder Bay.  His descriptions of the great outdoors are beyond my words to describe.  I’m now reading Indian Horse and it’s also great.