The Stamp In My Passport

 The stamp in my passport, put there by the indifferent Immigration officer at Heathrow airport, took but a wrist flicking instant.  The next 12 months that followed were some of the happiest and transformative days of my life.  The events that took place would open wide the door to the course my life has taken me ever since. A grand journey which has lasted 50 fulfilling years so far.

 

I had my 20th birthday just a few weeks prior to flying to London and as I recall now I was fearless about facing the daunting reality that I was traveling to a place in which I knew no one.  Furthermore I was depending, in the beginning at least, on the kindness and hospitality of those who I had never met, didn’t know I was coming, and whose names and addresses I had scribbled in a slender notepad.  

Fortunately I was not traveling alone.  Johnny and I were planning on only a brief stop over in London and then head to Oxford to hopefully stay for a short time till I found a house for the band to live and practice in. The group was called the White Stains and Johnny was the drummer and I was……

To look back at it now from the perspective of 50 years on  the journey and its flimsy strategy  didn’t make much sense.  I had dropped out of college the previous Spring after lasting barely 2 years.  My brother claims that I said at the time that I had absorbed everything that school had to offer.  A statement that can be only attributed to a naive and arrogant teenager.  Yet thinking about it now after all these years it doesn’t sound that far off when compared to the events which subsequently shaped and inspired me.

By the Spring of 1972  my scholastic ambitions had withered to nothing.  I was certain that University was not offering me what I felt I really needed.  What that was was not exactly clear but it seemed that if spiritual fulfillment was not coming to me in a classroom then I would have to attempt to somehow seek it out elsewhere.

I was inspired by spiritual books like, Remember Be Here Now and Autobiography of a Yogi.  It was obvious there was still learning to be done but it would have to take place outside the traditional school environment.  It seemed apparent that knowledge of my inner self was what I yearned for. Yet how and where to do that was a mystery. It is an easy enough thing to teach your mind knowledge but how do you expand your heart’s power.

  It seemed to make sense to get some distance between myself and my home in Canada.  Spending time with my friends who wanted to perform and make music seemed to be the best potential option. If I could contribute by finding a home, for all the later to arrive band members all the better.  If things didn’t work out my fall back strategy was to head to India to find enlightenment.  Which was based solely on the convenient fact that I had an Uncle living in New Delhi.

Examining the extraordinary turn of events that took place in the first few days after our arrival still appear to me as nothing less than miraculous.  The journey had started off with the disappointing setback that our Canadian departure was delayed by one day.  What became clear only as time passed was that fate had intervened so that the trajectory of our destiny would nudge us into a fortuitous encounter on the next leg of our journey.

After leaving the airport Johnny and I made our way to Covent Garden to test out our questionable unannounced and unknown visitor strategy. I would like to recall that they were thrilled to take us in.  I am not denying there was likely to have been some impetuous youthful celebration upon our unforeseen arrival.  The outcome of which was a groggy attempt to locate the bus to Oxford the following day.  A bedraggled pair we showed up at the bus station shortly after our planned for bus had departed.

When we got on the next bus there were already 2 passengers on board.  A French girl named Ann who was traveling to Islip a town near Oxford to house sit for an American couple and Jimmy Sunderland who was heading home after vacationing in the Canary islands.  
At the time I had no idea how fortuitous it was for us to meet and how prominent a part they would play, in both in the short interval but also in the many months that sill lay ahead

What we soon learned was Johnny’s remarkable connection to them both.  Ann’s father taught french at the same school that he attended in Halifax and Jimmy announced that he had just spent time while he was on vacation with 2 people from Halifax. Coincidently both of whom Johnny knew very well and who he had in fact worked with at a drug crisis center     

It was coincidently a chance encounter that led to a profound and life altering outcome.  One in retrospect that led me to believe that most, if not all the experiences I had in the following year were guided by hands both seen an unseen.  

By the time the bus finally arrived in Oxford we had all become good friends.  Being so close to Christmas there was concern that Johnny and I had no place to stay.  So the 4 of us trekked to the address I had only to find it was either recorded wrong or no one was home.  Ann promptly offered us accommodation in the large house she was looking after. An offer that Johnny and I and eventually Steve ( who came the first of the year) took full advantage of for nearly a month.  

To describe Jimmy Sunderland’s contribution to the events that took place in the year ahead would be an understatement to call them anything less than monumental. For starters what soon became obvious was the necessity of getting a car. Something that had not been discussed or even thought of.  Jimmy’s mother as it turns out had an old Morris van she wanted to sell which I gladly purchased for the grand total of 40 pounds. It was my first car and I absolutely loved it.(I called it Biffo)  It was to be our ever dependable chariot for the full year.

Eventually many weeks later when the band had at last assembled and were ready to perform Jimmy also opened the door to my Welsh experience by finding a gig for the band to play in Porthcawl at a pub called The Knights Arms.

There was of course a lot of life lived between my December 12th arrival in London and finding the house in Hailey in which all of us lived in till late Spring of 1973.  To say in the end the great Rock and Roll experiment didn’t work out is not entirely accurate.  True an invitation to perform on Top of the Pops never materialized and there was the sobering period when the money ran out and we were obliged to take jobs working construction for 50pence an hour. But through it all we remained close and we each grew wiser in our own way.

By June the White Stains had played their last local pub.  Jimmy Hewitt along with his wife and infant son were heading back to Canada.  Johnny, Steve, and myself however were far from ready yet to say goodbye to the UK.  Particularly when there was still so much time left on our passports.  So we piled into the van and headed west to spend the rest of our time left in the country in Porthcawl.

There was no plan, we just went to Wales with the high hopes I guess that it would somehow all just work out, which of course it did.  In the beginning there were some notable misfires.  For example the plan for the three of us to live in a tent on the beach was a flop right from the moment the van got stuck in the sand.  How matters of personal hygiene were to be addressed I thankfully have not managed to retain any recollection.

This is when our savior came to the rescue in the form of Betty Moir who lived in her mother’s home on the top floor along with her 2 children Frith and Luke.  She was adamant that we stay in her front room and not live rough outdoors.  I will always be grateful to her and her family for the generosity and kindness that she so willingly offered up to us from her very large heart.

Frith and Betty

I also must give credit to Jimmy Sunderland, he of the Oxford bus ride who had introduced us all some months earlier on our first visit to Wales.

Now at this time I was undergoing some dramatic lifestyle changes.  Because of the almost total absence of meat from my diet I had become a vegetarian and was also taking fewer and fewer trips to the pub.  I had also started meditating everyday and  it was working its magic on me. I had at last found a technique that was giving me real inner peace.

At some point about now I was getting more and more familiar with Betty’s mother Phyllis who owned the house and lived downstairs with her husband John. Initially she disproved of all the raucous comings and goings of us rowdy Canadian hippies.

Frith and Phyllis

But something between us changed.  In a way that I can’t fathom as the weeks passed she became like  a second mother to me and allowed me to move into her spare room.  We became very close.  She would introduce me to Spiritualism which along with my practice of mediation would be a significant part of the map of my life during those beautiful summer and fall months living in Porthcawl.

Johnny, who had arrived in the UK along with me in December at some point that summer decided to head back to Halifax and finish his degree.  Steve who had arrived in January would stay there as long as he could. For me though as time moved along it was becoming evident  that soon I would have to decide for myself when was the right time to leave.  

I was going regularly to Spiritualist churches all over southern Wales.  Most often I traveled with Phyllis, but sometimes if she couldn’t make it I would drive alone.  Often seeing the tired miners coming home from working long hours in the pits, with their faces still smudged black from coal dust.

As the time left on my passport was slipping away I eventually decided to leave on my 21st birthday which fell on November 20th.  There were many tears when it came to my leaving, probably most of them mine.  I had connected to this Porthcawl family in a deep and profound way. At the same time it became obvious that now a new chapter was destined to open up for me back home.

Once I got back to Canada my life would take a much different change of direction. My connection to my Welsh friends gradually faded. For a few years there was just an occasional letter and Christmas card.  But I just never seemed to have time or the money to retrace my steps back to Wales.  That is until I ended up out of work in the fall of 1995. Out of the blue I was invited to give mediation classes in Cardiff. This was an opportunity I didn’t want let slip by.

My schedule was to say the least relaxed and as my birthday was coming up, so I thought, why not treat myself to a trip back to Porthcawl.  It was a circuitous and lengthy bus trip.  22 years had passed and my heart was pounding the whole way.  When I at last got off the bus so much time had passed or for some other mental deficiency I couldn’t recognize the house.  I walked up and down the block many times but just could not remember the number 10 Churchplace.

That night when I got back to Cardiff I realized that the smart thing to do would be to search through the phone book.  Sure enough there was a listing for Betty Moir which I promptly called.  It turns out she had moved a short distance away and that her brother in law, who was now living in Phyliss’s home had informed her of a suspicious character he had seen earlier that day prowling around the block. She was very surprised and pleased to hear from me after so many years.

Of course I was able to come back and reconnect once again with the whole family.  My surrogate mother Phyllis was still alive but suffering from severe diabetes.  When I saw her again after so many years I asked her permission so that I could kiss her once.  Her reply, why just once.

After this extraordinary reunion Betty drove me to the train in Bridgend just like she had done on my birthday in November of 1973.  I felt deeply the tug and pull of my love for these people and the twinkling mystery of my inexplicable connection to Wales itself. I like to humor myself by believing that in my last lifetime I was Welsh.

I will never be able to reveal if there is any truth in this just like I will never be able to answer the great what if question.  What if my flight had not been cancelled that one day and my passport had been stamped December 11th instead.  In the end it is just another unsolvable mystery to toss into the tangled clutter in the unlit recesses of  my tired brain.

My heart on the other hand celebrates and treasures all that came to pass after that Heathrow passport stamp back on December 12 1972.  The world opened up to me in ways that I could never have dreamed were possible.  My task now is a simple one.  Offer gratitude for all that has graced my life these past 70 years and be grateful for all that has yet to come.



The longest journey
Is always
The inner journey.
This journey knows no beginning
And no end.
Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 24, Agni Press, 2002








 

The Grandchildren

Melanie

One of my favorite memories was one of the times when I was going to University.  Every Christmas I would come up to Grammy and Grampys and I would put up their Christmas tree. 

Both Grammy and Grampy made a big event over it.  It would be an all day affair.  They would sit in each of their perspective chairs, and Grammy would make pop corn.

*This audio includes Michael and Tracey*

Their artificial tree was one of the first that they ever had.  I would put all the branches in.  Every ornament I took out of the box they would tell me a story about each one. 

The funniest would be putting the Christmas lights on the tree. Because most of them would be melting onto the plastic.  I would say that pretty much half the lights were melted. 

But we would always have a good chuckle.  It was probably one of the most special times.  I would spend the night.  Grammy would tell me some pretty good war time stories.  

It was a very special time for me.

It reminds me of how important traditions are.  I am trying to create that now that I have 2 little girls of my own.  I am trying to create traditions that we have each year.  So for us it is putting up the Christmas tree together.  

That is what we do even the first year when my child was just a baby.  We would sit around and put the ornaments up.  Most of it would be for me.  But it is a special time.

Michael

I am the eldest grandchild of Herbert and Mary Marshall.

I remember when Grammy used to give me back rubs.  She would use rubbing alcohol and tell me stories about the war. 

I remember her telling me that she went out partying one time while she was in France.  I guess it was near the front and she was out drinking with some of the other nurses.  They were being driven back by some of the soldiers there and because it was wartime, they weren’t allowed to drive with full headlights. 

They couldn’t see the road so well and so they went off the road and that is how she got a head injury.  I remember her telling me that story.

The back rubs she used to give to her patients in the hospital during the war.  I used to like them and my mom used to give them to me.

I used to always sleep in the room upstairs in the house in Toronto.  It was always in the room on the right.  It had a big tall bed and it wasn’t very comfortable.  And the room even had one of those pots that people used to pee in.  

I think my grandparents and your parents had a real sense of honor, and commitment to family and values.  These are the kinds of things that guide you, and give you direction in your own life and give you a moral grounding. 

I think that is very important for my mother.  Because that is obviously where she got her values.  And that is where I got mine.

The tradition I carry on I like to call the intensity of grounding that my grandparents had.

Coming here was something we had to do.  We had to come.  Family is important.  It is important to honor them.

We always did something with them every year.   There was some trip that was always the Bryants.  Either going on the house boat on Lake of the Woods, or going to Mexico

One of the last bits of advice that Grampy gave me in 2008 after the global recession.  He told me not to quit my job.

Unfortunately my grandparents couldn’t come up North for my wedding.  Which was in 2010.  Instead they watched it on skype.

*Click Below to See Rest of Report*

Precious Surprise

Bill Anderson is not unfamiliar with surprises.  Nobody of course is immune or can ever be entirely removed from encounters with the unexpected.  But at 93 years of age he has had some experiences over his many years that are just plain remarkable and a few more that were simply precious.

Recently he was generous about sharing with me some of the great and challenging moments that have popped up in his life.  Bill immediately impressed me, as he probably does a whole lot of others, that he is a true gentleman.  But there is something even more appealing about him.   I can’t help feel that he is at heart a good person, and we had only just met. 

I suspect dapper would be another appropriate adjective that fits Bill well.  We sat in a quiet corner of the Park house.  He is tall and slim and on that day he was dressed in his full Canadian legion regalia.  A blue beret perched perfectly on his thick white hair.  His mustache trimmed so neatly and a well polished cane resting against the table, which he leans on only lightly when he walks.

What stood out most about Bill though were not his words but his eyes.  They danced with the kind of brightness earned only by those who have lived their lives to the fullest and not been beaten down by adversity.

As he elegantly strolls along erect and regal onwards towards his 94^th year, his life has seen a lot of unexpected events.  The many assorted kind of things, which both did buffet and lift up his life as well.  Unanticipated moments that are probably on average, an equal blend of both the awful and the wonderful.

His life’s journey has taken him a long way from those now distant days as a young man growing up in Saint John New Brunswick.  He and his wife Betty are now retired and live in a snug little home that sits on the bluff overlooking Lake Huron in Goderich Ontario. 

Ending up there, when he started out life on the other side of the country is a curious, but not an incomprehensible journey.  One whose distance seems like a fairly routine thing today, but compared to the way of life from 90 years ago it would have been considered a radical change.  Back when 1700 km westward along the Trans Canada was a long long way.

You don’t have to talk long with Bill though to be impressed. He has a lot of interesting stories and he tells them well.  He is steadfastly polite and courteous.  His memory and judgment not too tarnished by 93 years of living.  You can tell that he is just the kind of person who did not have to struggle too much in order to find success, both in his professional career, and as a husband and father bringing up his 2 daughters in a loving Toronto home. 

When I ask him what kind of job he had he humbly jokes that he never really had to work.  He mentions something about working with wines and we leave it at that.  At the same time his smiling eyes suggesting that he feels as though his life has been blessed, in all the incomprehensible ways that life has a way of bestowing upon us its true richness.

But tragedy has a way of reaching out as well and tangling up the trajectory of even the kindest and gentlest souls.  Bill and his wife had thought they had settled down to a quiet retirement in Toronto when one of their daughters took sick and the 2 of them had to pick up everything and move to Goderich.  This little town tucked onto eastward edge of lake Huron. 

But surprises, the precious ones at least, come like a breath of fresh air.  Promises that recharge our hopes and ably remind us that life is not always about struggle and futility.  That often, just when we need it most, something wonderful comes along to demonstrate to us that life is sacred after all.

As Bill is talking to me he is wearing his full Canadian legion regalia.  A smart dark blue blazer, and on his chest he wears a serious and glittering cluster of war service medals. 

None more prominent, and or more recent for that matter, than a Legion of Honor medal. It is one of the greatest service honors and Bill received it a little more than a year ago from a representative of the French Government.   It was given in recognition of his distinguished service in the liberation of France in 1944.  The ceremony at the legion was well attended.  The Legion of Honour is a big deal and the French wanted to seriously honor those who had risked so much to liberate them 70 years earlier.  

To Bill it was the nicest kind of surprise and he really had no idea it was coming until just a few months before it happened.  Typically when asked about the medal he is modest and said, “the honor is not for me, but for those who did not come back.”  

Which of course when he does look back and remembers all those he witnessed perish in battle, is something that still manages to cause an ache in his heart.  His sincere wish during those turbulent days of war he says was that, “that every person I served with go home healthy.”  A pledge, no man would not wish for, but also one not even the highest prayers could keep safe.

Bill doesn’t talk a lot about the war with me at least.  He and his regiment landed at Normandy just 6 days after the first big wave of the invasion, which took place on June 6th.  His group saw combat quickly and also almost immediately his commander was killed in action.  At just 22 years of age Bill had to take over the command of his anti tank unit.  Eventually they would fight all the way into Germany, right up until the final days of conflict.

But I had not sat down with Bill to talk about his darkest days but instead to ask him to recall a special memory that involved my Mom, who had also been shipped over to France at about the same time.  She was a nursing sister and she was attached to a mobile hospital that was to have been set up after most of the heavy action had ceased on the Beaches of Normandy.

In a coincidence that just about defies any practical probability it turns out that both Bill and my Mom had sailed to England in early November of 1943 on the same ship, the SS Bayano.  A small-retired banana boat, which had been earlier, scheduled for retirement but instead, with the start of World War 2 had been called back into service.

Now the odd thing about this is that though both my Dad and Mom had taken part in legion activates in Goderich for a number of years, this startling coincidence had never come up.  It was only because of a simple fluke that it had even been brought to light at all. 

Bill had gone to my Moms residence to pick up a friend who was late and he noticed a number of veterans all with their medals on waiting for rides.  Bill said to my Mom, “Those are nice medals that you are wearing.” Her response simply was that she had served in the war as a nursing sister.  He then told my Mom that he had sailed on a ship with 10 nursing sisters.  

Once the facts were out it was only then that they both realized, to their mutual surprise that they had sailed to England together.  Though to be honest neither remembered the other.  Bill fondly adds that everyone treated the small group of nursing sisters like Queens.  “The men couldn’t do enough.”

“It took 19 days.  It was beautiful balmy weather.  It was a British ship, which normally had 70 passengers, but it had 75 this time.  It was all officers.  I was a lieutenant in the artillery”

Now if this were not already remarkable enough the surprises only continue.  On the way home from the Remembrance Day service they had a further conversation about where each other wass from. 

Mom: “Where are you from?”

Bill: “I said Saint John.”

There was a funny silence

Mom: “I graduated from Saint John High school.”

Bill: “I said so did I.”

Mom: “Where did you live?”

Bill: “I said King street east.”

Mom: “What number?”

Bill: “I said 203 and I was getting a little impatient.  I wondered why she would ask this.”

Mom: “My cousin lived 2 doors up the street from you.”

Bill tells me the revelation was spirit lifting.  “I was so overjoyed.”

Now there is just one small event that adds one last amazing layer to this great adventure.  Bill tells me that 35 years after the end of the war he went, quite by accident into an antique store off of Bloor St. in Toronto.  There to his amazement he found a silver cigarette box with the name SS Bayano engraved on it.  

“I asked him how much and they said $35.”

“I said that is too much, and they said, but it is Sterling silver.”

He told them that the price was too much and then they volunteered to rub the name off if he wished.   He suggested to the shopkeeper to simply leave the box as it was and left.  Never letting on just how significant a find the little object was to him. 

“Between the Friday when I saw it and the Tuesday when I bought it I talked to or had been with 3 of the people who had been with me on that ship.” To no ones surprise Bill bought the box and eventually was able to lend it to my Mom briefly before she passed away this past February. 

Earlier in the day we had my Mom’s internment service.  In another kind of remarkable coincidence it took place on June 11^th.  Just about 72 years to the day that Bill came ashore on the beaches of Normandy.  

Also there was a group of 24 veterans were there to pay tribute as my Mom’s ashes were placed into the wall niche next to my Dad’s.  It was a moving ceremony, not just for her 4 children and 9 grand children but also for all the old service men and women who marched down the gravel drive and stood at attention.  The warm Spring sun blessing us all with its brilliance and doing its best to discourage all our tears. 

At the end of the service each old veteran took off their poppy that they were wearing and placed it inside the niche beside my Father’s and my Mother’s urn. 

As Bill and I are talking, just a few hours have passed since the ceremony.  He has spent an hour or so with his legion comrades at the Park House and is getting anxious about getting home to his Betty. Bill has graciously and patiently answered all my questions that I have asked about his life and how it so interestingly intersected in such a brief and profound way with my Mother.  

By this point we are both getting emotional.  Tears have come to our eyes and his hand trembles as it rests on the table so I hold it in my own.  Bill shares one last thing before he goes. “Today I have thought a whole lot about that box and your mom.  I love knowing your Mother.  She was just great.  We go a long way back.”

Click Below to Listen:

Days Before The Snow

A great gusty wind has been pushing hard eastward across the lake all day.  The waves rolling up onto the pebbled beach come in, capped with heads of wild spray.   Just the kind that surfers ask for in their prayers, though none are here today.

The waves are rich and fat and come in clean ordered rows.  A kind of scene that you would normally expect to see when a storm roars up hard past the Atlantic shores.

This is not what usually splashes up on to the thin beach in Goderich, on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. This is also not how it looks on most late December days here in Canada.

 

 Christmas is just a day away and the thick crusts of ice that usually loll on the hard cold edge of the shoreline have not yet arrived.  

The grass is still a rich and hopeful green.  The people in town have yet to dig out their thick heavy coats from the back of closets.  A light sweater is all that you need today to brake the chill of winter from reaching to your bones, which became official, just a couple of days ago.

The Beach St station restaurant is open for the last day of the season.  The real Goderich winter will rush in soon enough.  The place so vibrant and inviting throughout the summer will be closed for winter.  The steep pitched roof, and the parking lot beside it will be layered with thick crusts of snow and ice.  Its big windows rimed with frost.

Since the Springtime hungry people have come here for its food, and for its surprising endless view out across the lake.  All from an old red brick temple of commerce and travel, brimming with a long history that had a great new chapter written when my brother moved it here.  

Now it is no longer a loved but neglected relect of a bygone era.  It brims with life and hope at least until the afternoon, when the doors will be closed and locked till Spring.

This winter, when it is still and dark and cold along the quiet edge of the lake. No one will come there except my brother Herb.  He who had the absurd inspiration to move it from its old foundations tucked up beside the hill.  There where it had not heard or seen the puff and rumble of busy trains for more than 50 years.

My sister Carol-Anne and my mother have just finished their lunch on this last day that it is open.  

It is a bright, warm, and happy place.  I do not know what they are saying.  It is a private moment and probably they are talking about not too much at all.

Just words dancing lightly in the sunlight. Little said but meaning more than enough.

Later my brother and I will take away my Mother's cheer by bringing her out to the edge of town.

It just may be the last time she comes this year to the grave yard where my Dad's ashes rest on the top shelf of this red marbled wall.

Despite the sadness she still likes coming here.  With her hand extended out towards the wall, she says before we go, "I will see you soon." 

Words to my late father now passed nearly 5 years ago.  Her speaking not to an urn filled with ash behind a wall, but to the place where departed spirits listen and gratefully receive the heartfelt cries from the earth below.

Not long ago I found a picture taken at a family Christmas nearly 60 years ago.  Taken by my camera at my Grand Mother's home in Glassville NB.  

I wonder now why no one is smiling for the picture.  What words, what event, stripped away the joy in every face, just then.  I do not know.

Just what could have happened in the moments before the camera flashed and captured this fragment of time on a cold winter night, so long ago.  So in contrast to my own happy memories of those loving days back in my Grand Mother's home.

Now the picture remains an unanswered and unsolvable puzzle.  Never to be known what caused this chorus of somber faces.  Clearly defying my memory which unhesitatingly describes a much different scene.

A tiny young version of myself is  there on the left, looking out through time from a faded black and white photograph.  I, like my family, have been caught by the bright impermanence of the flash of my little camera. 

But Christmas is not at all about the shadows that can suddenly fall upon faces captured long ago. It is about the love shared here and now.  The true smiles are not those that come from brand new things.  But what our hearts offer up to one another.

At my brother's house on Christmas morning the two newest members of this family get together and forge a loving bond.  Indya is exploring her first Christmas in this world.  One she has so recently joined last January, less than a year ago. 

Moose the dog, has seen more then a few hectic happy Christmas mornings at my brother's home, but never seen a baby there before.

On Christmas morning the full Marshall family, a rare occasion, gathers all together.  In years to come no one will look back at this picture and wonder why there are no smiles. 

 In just a few days more the snow at last blows in from across the cold lake.  The long dark days of winter have at last arrived.  They can be denied no longer. 

If you can think
Golden thoughts,
That means already
You have changed the winter weather
Of your mind.

Sri Chinmoy, Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, Part 60, Agni Press, 1984

I Want To Fly

“Sometimes you just have to smile.”

A look of contentment brightens my Mother’s face as she says this.  Outside the grey winter sky wraps around the town and offers up no particular encouragement for this unexpected remark.  Little about her life, virtually trapped in this small room on the second floor of the hospital in Goderich for more than 2 weeks and counting has been uplifting or hopeful. 

The inspiration that fueled this comment is unknown, its source mysterious and untraceable.  Perhaps to be found down one of the long dim corridors of her mind. One that has seen much of its brightness and clarity vanish.   But whatever its source the feeling of contentment is welcome here. An experience that has been all but absent from her life for such a long time.  It is a small victory considering all that she has endured of late. To be lifted up by even a fleeting moment of happiness is no small thing. 

She then follows this first utterance with one of the expressions that she has used so often in her life. 

“I think I can I think I can.  Do you remember the little train engine trying to climb the hill?”  It is a line taken from a classic children’s story.  One that she has recited to me so many times, particularly when I was a small boy and thought something I needed to do was just impossible.  

I reply by making the toot toot sound of a train whistle and answer back with the concluding line of the story, “I thought I could I thought I could.”  That is what the little engine exclaims when it at lasts reaches the summit after pulling the heavy train up the long steep hill.  All things considered she really has climbed a long hard hill over the past few weeks.  One, that none of her children, or even medical staff thought possible.  

Over the past 2 weeks some small sweet portions of her life have been gifted back to her.  Like a capricious tide some measure of strength has drifted back to her limbs.  Each morning now, if you place it in her hand, she can bite down on small bits of buttered toast.  Though she cannot open her eyes much or even really see.  Just days ago an IV dripped into her arm and she barely had strength enough to suck water up a straw. 

But more importantly her mind now seems able to gather up at least some small grasp of her current reality.  One that does not compare with the independence that she had just a few months earlier.  But definitely this version of her life is much superior to those anxious days just a few weeks off, when her life seemed on the verge of drifting out past the far flung frontiers of this world.  

Feeding Me

“You never thought you would be feeding me.”

My Mother says this.  Her eyes closed, sitting wrapped in a frayed white wooly blanket.  She is perched, just a little bent to one side in an upright chair.  The dull grey winter light touching the side of her face.  I have just tilted half a spoon’s worth of vegetable broth between her lips. 

She is right. 

Nothing about this scene would I have ever imagined in this well ordered life of mine spent for many years so far away from here.  But in this moment now there is no distance.  

Time has changed us both so much, and in so many ways.  I am no longer an anxious little boy clutching at her hand and crying out for her all comforting embrace. 

She is 96 and the flame of her life flickers dimly now.  The intimate connection between Mother and son transformed into a manner now new and unexplored to us both.

Yesterday her slender young Doctor, with dignified streaks of grey that swept across the temples of his dark brown hair said, “Mary, you are slowing down.”  

She nodded to this, even though she may not have heard it all or even seen his face.  Her eyes closed so often now.  Her scattered thoughts drifting across the deep sea of her precious memories.

Even a young Doctor has seen lots of little frail old ladies sitting awkwardly in hospital chairs and grasping at their fading lives.  Coming to terms with this new reality as great portions of their world start fraying and dissolving around and about them.

I dip the spoon into the bowl, navigate a circuitous course around soft lumps of carrot and potato.  Delivering then a clear warm spoon of broth to my mother’s lips is after all such a simple thing to do.

What is much more difficult is digesting the immensity of what this moment means.   To measure this small act against all that she has done and sacrificed for me is impossible. 

Her love for me cannot be contained.  Maybe all children catch a glimpse of this when they serve their mothers is some small way.

Winter has come

Yet the flower still grows

Waiting, patient

To scatter its seeds up into the wind

You Never Know Where You Will End Up

There is not always a simple plot line to all our life's little adventures.  A convenient beginning that then leads on to some clear and interesting story.  One that can be summarized, by just a few descriptive lines or paragraphs.

We all have memorable experiences.  Maybe just a few of which might interest others, if we can just find a way to breathe life into our memories.  Both the ones that happened minutes ago or ones that we have to dig deep from beneath our past.

Because I live in such a different sort of world, it is always a unique experience for me each and every time I take that long trip north to Goderich.  A pretty little town on the shore of Lake Huron.  A place, that for lack of a better description, I call home.

Going for a walk with my brother and his dog on my last day there.  It was one of those many cold snowy days that they seem to have a lot of.  Sometimes it takes a little extra push, just to get outside and get a little exercise.

You could say it is a place that not much happens, but if you had been here on August 21, 2011 you probably wouldn't think that way.   If you had been standing smack dab in the middle of town that afternoon most likely your life would have been dramatically changed.  You would have had an adventure that could not be explained or you could tell in just a few words.

This is a picture of the tornado that swept in off the lake that afternoon, and than knocked down nearly everything in its way, right up through the middle of town.  The weather service had predicted thunderstorms but certainly not this.  They knew only 10 minutes before it raged in off the lake that it was in fact an incredibly destructive storm.

I have heard a lot of the big and little stories that happened here that day.  Even now, all the bits and pieces have not yet all been conveniently put back together.  Recovery from something so huge as this is not ever a quick nor a simple thing. Some peoples lives will never be the same.

For now, in the short brisk days of January, the place is simply cold and quiet.  Or at least it seems so to me, especially when the snow squalls blow in off the lake almost for days on end.

There is always lots of snow shoveling, snow blowing, and quiet, and also probably not so quiet cursing going on because of that. I think that if I had to do this every day I would go just a little crazy.  But I suppose we all have to eventually get to used to, and accept where we are supposed to be, and then go on and do what we have to do.

Back out on the trail with my brother and his dog we managed to make it all the way across the Menesetung bridge.  Once, it was the only way in and out of Goderich for the CPR railway. Now it is just for hikers, and for those who want to get an incredible view of the surrounding countryside.

From the middle of its span there is a spectacular view of the Maitland river stretching out below.  Which somehow, whenever I try to take a picture in winter, simply doesn't come out.

I like this one better.  It is a picture I took while running early on a summer morning in July.  I ended up following the trail for a few miles, and then found my way back along the highway that leads into town.

 I am back at my other home now.  Far away from all the endless snowy Lake Huron days.  A little of that weather though seems to have followed me home to Queens.  The city has recently been caught up in a lengthy spell of severe cold.  Which looks like it won't release its grasp of the city for at least another day.

The main reason I make this trip to Canada is to visit with my Mom.  In less than a month she is going to be 96 years old.  She lives in a assisted living home in Goderich.   A place she could probably have never even imagined when she grew up on a small farm near the tiny village of Glassville New Brunswick. More than a thousand miles east of here.

She has had lots of adventures in her life.  Some that can be summed up nicely in just a few words and lines and others of course, that have no real story, but are simply the stuff that makes up who she is.  Before I left her the other day she surprised me though and told me a long story of how it once was.  When she and my dad once were living in a small rented room, just after the war.

I cannot recall just how or why her thoughts shifted back to this time and place.  What push or nudge took her so far back in her life.  Somehow a part of her mind simply shifted and she began to recall all the little details that made her words paint a picture in time that was real and vibrant. 

It was almost as though it had been just days instead of more than 60 years.  It was the moment in her life when she had been married just a few years, and not too long after my oldest sister Bette was born. 

She surprised me with just how much detail and with how much clarity she could remember.  I don't ever recall her ever telling me this story before.  Just how difficult things were when she first came back from serving as a nurse with the Canadian army in Europe.  How in those days it was nearly impossible to find a decent place to live. Or at least it was in Saint John New Brunswick.

As we left her apartment, so that I could take her downstairs for lunch, she carefully closed the door behind her, making sure that it was shut tight.  She said, "When you leave, you never know where you will end up."

Her hand paused for just a moment more upon the door and then came down and joined the other, firmly holding on to her walker.  Which she now pushed forward, as she made her way slowly down the long corridor.