Odd and beautiful

‘Odd’ is a word mom uses a lot.  In our most recent rows, she has angrily blurted out, “Oh, you’re just queer.”  The latter word is not at all associated with homosexuality in her mind.  It is the superlative of ‘odd’.  Anyone whose opinions, inclinations or immediate responses deviate from hers and dad’s, whose have become indivisible over their 70 years of marriage, is, ‘trying to prove something’ with the express intention of irritating them and is therefore not normal, odd.  As they get older, the number of such people has multiplied to include all those who call either of them by their first names when they don’t even know them, talk in a casual overly friendly way that they interpret as disrespectful and patronizing to the elderly or who say, “No problem” instead of “You’re welcome”.  Most of the nurses and hospital staff fall into one or all of these categories, so mom and dad don’t have confidence in any of them except the doctors because most of them are male and mom and dad’s generation has an unquestioning reverence for men with a certain educational, economic or social position.  I flatter myself that I am broader minded and more understanding than they are, and of course, when I’m with them I actually seem to be so.  I also seem to be young when compared to them, which, at 66, I’m not.  And the nut hasn’t fallen far from the tree.  I am by nature and nurture inclined to be contrary. As our arguments wind down, I become merely ‘odd’.  She is downgraded by me from ‘selfish and intolerant’ to ‘ understandably upset and too quick to get angry at young people who are trying to do their best’.  We settle into, with no written declaration, a truce that is no more official than that between North and South Korea.  But I hope the two truces last as long as I am in Victoria and Jay is in South Korea.   Mom has also said, “Isn’t it odd?” in reference to the fact that since dad broke his hip and I have been living with her, the garberator and coffee maker have both ceased to function.  Well, it isn’t if you consider the age of dad, 93; the garberator, at least 40 and the coffee maker, well over 20.  I heard a young man on the CBC radio the other day singing the praises of his 10 year old Sony MP3, the oldest thing he owns and a miracle of longevity as far as he’s concerned.  He should come here where everything’s a miracle and there’s nothing odd about that. 

Priscilla and other members of the VOC on the first Tuesday ramble along the Grey Canal

The ferry crossing to Victoria

Sunset from the ferry

I walked by the ocean today for the first time since I arrived in Victoria.

Seagulls preening on Cattle Point

A garden near Willows Beach with the ocean in the background

The same garden

Again, it was beautiful.