Monday was like Christmas. I Skyped with Jay at 6 in the morning and opened the big box of treats that he and May had sent me from Korea and the Philippines. It was full of snacks and salsas, a book about the cooking and culture of the Philippines and clothes, 2 ‘ajama’ (grandma) hats to keep my face from the sun, a diaphanous white blouse and a bright shawl covered in orange and yellow suns. I’m a lucky mom.
My shins are still marred with dark scabs from biking, but this has been one of my most sedentary weeks. I think the body needed a break. It’s Sunday and I didn’t even go on the hike today. It was supposed to be in the mountains near Revelstoke, but again was cancelled because of deep snow on the trails. The email from the man who was going to lead the thing informing us that it was called off and that we were invited to join him on what he described as an unappealing alternative, was so convincing that I opted not to go for the first time since I joined the club. My new physiotherapist would approve. He’s a funny man with a New Zealand accent, I think, who seems to be a good physio. He told me in the course of my initial treatment that in his 5 years in Vernon he’s come to the opinion that it has a very militant population of would be athletes between the ages of 55 and 75. We had a laugh sharing stories about our encounters with such people. He told me that a patient he’d had this week, a man of about 58, was so desperate to have his back problems cured and over with quickly so that he could return to mountain biking that he screamed and accused him of being a quack with no capacity to independently diagnose a problem just because he had said essentially the same thing the man’s doctor had, that this was a serious back problem that would not be resolved in a week. I told him of the tartars I’d met in the Vernon outdoors club, some of whom are at least 75. I was glad I was wearing long pants and that he was only looking at my shoulder so that he didn’t see my barked shins that reveal my efforts to join the group of aged jocks. I’m now following a regimen of easy exercises for the rotator cuff, which I hope will work because Dr. Jones says that unless the patient is really in pain and inconvenience because of rotator cuff injury, they don’t operate after age 65. I already don’t have much pain, and I have good movement but very little strength. I went on two moderate bike rides this week. One around the area of Coldstream, beautiful country that once was a huge ranch, and one to a beach on Lake Okanagan where I sat on the shore and read.
I still read the local paper, ‘The Morning Star’ which is delivered free 3 times a week and is wastefully full of fliers. But I’ve found some deals on things I need to get settled and also learned of local events by doing so. This time it was the Philosophers’ Café on Thursday night that caught my eye. It was held in a woman’s home, but she told me that it had originally been started in a local café that went under. There were about 30 people there, and I enjoyed it. Two men spoke about their pilgrimages, one walked for 2 months around the small island of Shikoku off Japan on a circular, Buddhist pilgrimage with his son, and the two of them went together on the Camino de Santiago. Both spoke insightfully and presented slide shows that had very apt sound tracks.
On Saturday, I worked with Vernon’s version of David Glover, a gregarious Yorkshire man a friend told me about who is a jack- of- all- trades. It was great. We hung all the pictures I’ve been moving from one spot on the floor to another for a couple of months. Then at 5 I dressed up and went to the Filipino Fiesta 2011 at the Vernon Rec. Centre. It was fun. I met a woman who’s a volunteer clown. She also was there alone, so we ate and watched the show together. The food was spectacular, full of what the book I got from Jay and May would describe as ‘umami’, which I think means bring- your- mouth-to life flavor. Everyone was dressed up, and the entertainment was just that, whether very good or merely a valiant effort, it was entertaining.
Filipino women, brightly dressed and hard working. Mercy, in pink, is the woman I met at the Immigrant Services Office. She sold me the ticket.
Women of a certain age doing the Itik-Itik dance which has something to do with ducks, I think. The fiesta queen and princesses are in the background.
Women doing the Philippine National Dance, the Tinikling. It's like a cross between skipping Double Dutch and the sword dance of the Scots. They hop and skip delicately over and between sticks that are being rhythmically banged together. It looks exhausting and dangerous enough to appeal to the Vernon Outdoors Club. But their costumes are much more beautiful than my hiking gear.
Women having a good time dancing to pop tunes from the 60s and 70s
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