Chilly welcome

In 1994, my brother Rich surprised us all with the news that he, a confirmed bachelor in his late '30s, was finally getting married. He had been travelling in Chile, and had fallen for the daughter of a dentist. Richie always had sensitive teeth. Before the sudden engagement, he and Monika decided to trek together through the Andes mountains, sleeping under the stars and watching the UFOs whiz by. Monika later told us that this nomadic wandering between two unmarried people caused a serious rift between her and her devoutly Catholic parents. For a time, she was persona non grata which must have been unimaginably painful for someone whose life revolved around family.

But parental disapproval softened, as the two lovers decided to get married. Rich called to tell me the news. I could hear bright chatter in the background. “I'm hanging out at Monika's,” said Rich, his voice gurgling with laughter. “Family is very big here. Her family is very warm, very close. Her grandmother is here. Some of her cousins. They're all talking about their periods.”

The weather couldn't have been nicer in Santiago in early February when Rich and Monika took their wedding vows, surrounded by Monika's parents, grandmother and cousins. A feast was laid out in the garden, and the younger children chased each other excitedly, weaving in and out among the grown-ups. The sun shone and a mild breeze stirred the leaves of the nutmeg trees. Everyone knew that Monika had bravely set her gaze on a life with my brother in faraway Vancouver. It's not certain if the family talked about the necessary adjustments: Rich was not the neatest of persons, while Monika was quite particular; Monika's temperament was hot and fiery, Rich was famous for laughing away life's troubles. And what about the weather? From Santiago's mild climate to Vancouver's rainy winters, during which the standard weather report sounded like a broken record: “Ten degrees and raining.”

Airline tickets were purchased. First stop would be Toronto, then Vancouver. Rich asked if he and Monika could stay with John and me for a few days until they made their way to Vancouver. He wasn't certain about the flight's arrival time, and, anticipating delays with immigration – Monika was coming with a non-resident's visa – we planned that they would take an airport shuttle, which stopped at a subway station not far from our home. We would pick them up there. 

The day they were to arrive dawned clear, sunny – and bitterly cold. It was one of those winters before climate change replaced Toronto's snow with rain. During that winter of 1994, we regularly woke up to the outside thermometer registering minus 20 degrees Celsius or even lower. It took forever to bundle up before stepping outside: long underwear under our jeans, turtleneck sweaters, fleece jackets, down jackets, wool hats and mitts, scarves wrapped around our necks, thick woolen socks inside heavy winter boots.

We drove to the Wilson subway station, the blue Honda sedan sputtering in the cold. The heater was just starting to throw out some lukewarm air when we reached the station. John parked the car in the lot across from the subway, and we walked over to the entrance and waited inside. Every time someone opened the doors, a blast of frigid air tore at our ankles. We were grateful for the many layers of clothes, even if we looked like characters out of a Michelin tire ad.

After about five minutes, I caught the sight of my brother's head with its familiar tousled brown hair, rising into view on the escalator. A slim raven-haired, olive-skinned beauty stood behind him, her large black eyes darting around.  She wore tight black jeans, fashionable stiletto-heeled ankle boots and the skimpiest black leather bolero jacket I had ever seen. No hat. No scarf. No gloves. We rushed forward and enveloped them in downy hugs, then took their large suitcases and headed for the door. Monika tiptoed outside. As the cold air rushed to greet her, she tried to pull her jacket closer around her thin frame. She looked up at the dazzling blue sky, then, in broken English cried out, “The sun, he shine – but so col'!”

By the time we crossed the intersection and returned to the car, her teeth were chattering. We quickly drove home. I turned up the furnace thermometer to 28 degrees C. The first order of the day was to brew a strong cappuccino for both of them, and then I headed upstairs to my clothes closet. Spare long johns – bright purple, courtesy Mountain Equipment Coop. A purple zip pullover to match. A blue fleece neck warmer. A green fleece jacket. My blue down jacket. Red fleece hat; padded black mitts. Thick grey woolen socks. Two pairs.

Monika put on every last stitch of clothing, even the down jacket, hats and mitts. Gone was the fashionista: she looked clown-like in the vivid clashing colours. But at least, and at last, she was warm.

On boredom

“What makes you bored?” I asked David and Maureen. They looked at me blankly. We were sitting on the long benches on either side of their eight-foot library table that has hosted meals and conversations for more than 30 years. A chicken stew simmered on the stove. Maureen tossed the salad. John straddled the bench next to me. David poured the wine.

“You know, bored,” I repeated. “My writing group's assignment is about boredom. So I've been thinking about what makes me bored. I never get bored when I'm by myself, or walking in the woods. I get bored when I'm with other people. Which is shocking for someone who's a life coach.”

Maureen sprinkled fresh strawberries over the salad greens. “I get bored when someone goes on and on,” she said. “A motor mouth.”

David looked puzzled. His amber eyes narrowed and took on that piercing look he gets when he's thinking. “I sometimes get bored when I'm doing something completely repetitive, like banging nails into fascia. I just tell myself, keep going.”

John stood up and yawned. “I get bored by conversations about boredom,” he said, and ambled off into the living room.

Digging deep into my crusty memory, a handful of boring scenes finally swam into focus. When I was 17 or 18, I travelled to Holland and stayed with various relatives. I remember one visit to a distant aunt and uncle where there was nothing to do. No cousins around. No English books. No card games. We sat on stiff upholstered couches in a large sparse living room, trying to make small talk. My uncle hid behind his daily newspaper. My aunt fidgeted, then went to the kitchen to lay out the cold supper, which we ate in an awkward silence. I counted the minutes until I could decently escape.

Boredom can have consequences. One day in home economics class in high school, our teacher Mrs. Wolsley droned on about how to make up a bed properly. You folded the foot end of the top sheet over the bottom one in such a way as to create a crisp triangular pleat that fell neatly down the side. It was called a “hospital corner” because that's the way nurses were taught to make up hospital beds.

As Mrs. Wolsley earnestly passed on this bit of arcane knowledge, my best friend Lois Ghent rolled her eyes at me and we began passing a note. 'Mrs. Wolsley's nose looks like a pig's.' 'Her nostrils are big and crooked.' 'No wonder she doesn't have children, even though she's married!' We snickered and passed the note back and forth.

The next day, Mrs. Wolsley asked Lois and I to remain after class. We sat down, puzzled. What did the old cow want now? She laid her closed fist on the top of her desk and and then opened her hand. There lay our note: lines of blue and black ink stabbing the three-hole ruled paper. I gulped and turned fiery red. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lois, head bent, long brown hair hiding her face.

In a mild voice, Mrs. Wolsley told us that these words had hurt her. That was all she said. We left her classroom feeling appalled at our careless cruelty. Lois and I wrote her letters of apology, but the incident often nagged at me. A few years later, at university, I was making an evening gown to wear to a gala and dance to which a boy had asked me to attend as his date. A tight-fitting off-the-shoulder pattern lay ready to be cut out of vermillion velvet. But which way to pin the pattern pieces: with the velvet nap running up or down? I couldn't remember. I phoned Mrs. Wolsley, even though it was the middle of the day and long distance charges applied. Long minutes ticked by as the high school secretary went to find her. When Mrs. Wolsley finally came on the line, I explained my predicament. “The nap should run up,” she said. I thought I heard a note of pleasure in her voice at being called, long distance, for her advice. And even though she never knew it, to this day I take pleasure in making neat hospital corners.

In all fairness, I suspect that I too have been boring from time to time. I remember talking with my cousin Titia's husband Henk at a family gathering in Holland several years ago. The room was filled with aunts and uncles and cousins – many of whom I did not know well, along with family friends I had never before met. I glommed onto Henk, peppering him with questions about his volunteer projects. At first he replied enthusiastically, but finally he backed away, saying, “I really should say hello to some other people now.”

Looking back, it's been difficult to find many examples of boredom – and my friends agree. Perhaps it's because boredom blurs things, washes away memory's bright colours. Or maybe our lives are just way too busy for boredom to take root. I remember going for coaching during a time when I was trying to overcome deeply ingrained workaholism. My coach, Anne, assigned this exercise: every weekend, three hours of unstructured time. “No flipping through the to-do list,” she ordered. “And no reading – that's an escape. I want you to tune into yourself and listen. What would you really like to do? Maybe you'll be lucky enough to get bored and experience what springs out of boredom.”

The first weekend after this coaching session, I spent several minutes aimlessly wandering about outside. I finally sat down on the ground and began playing with the large flat flagstones left over from the building of our fireplace. Three hours of total absorption later, I had placed five stones in what would become an unfinished path to our front door. Needless to say, I wasn't bored.

But what is it about being with other people that causes boredom to seep over you like a thick fog? What exactly is it that's boring? One-way conversations. No interest in what I might have to say. Someone who is blind to reading signs of eyes glazing over. A feeling of being trapped in time in a never-ending tape loop of the same thing, repeated over and over. Blah, blah, blah. Boredom leads to restlessness and wandering thoughts, to stifled yawns and tapping feet. Boredom brews resentment and cynicism. Boredom is an ennui with what is, and with whomever is sitting or standing in front of us.

It strikes me that I get bored when people don't live up to my rules – that there should be mutual interest, that one should sensitively include others. Give and take is one of my rules. Plus, give and take leads to connection, which is the sine qua non for me. The point of good conversation, of lively teaching, of meaningful exchanges, is to connect – isn't it? What would happen if I abandoned those rules? Would boredom transform into something else?

“I'm going to try something new,” I said to Maureen and David. “I never get bored by trees – there's always something fascinating to learn about them. The texture of the bark, the shape of the leaves, the play of light among the branches – it's endless. The next time I catch myself becoming bored with someone, I'm going to say to myself: 'what kind of tree is this person?' “

David stared at me in silence, then guffawed. “Good luck!” We sat down to eat.

Food Adventuring

When it comes to trying new food, I've always leaned to the cautious side – a trait I inherited from my father. He was a traditionalist. He believed that cooking was best left to the women. Except for breakfast, which he made for himself each morning. He put a small pot on the stove, measured in milk and oatmeal, and left it to simmer while he read the newspaper. When it was ready – and if it hadn't yet burned – he plopped the “pup” as we called it, into a bowl, added a generous heaping of sugar, and washed everything down with Maxwell House instant coffee, sweetened with three spoonfuls of sugar.

My mother's love for food might have kindled an adventuresome spirit, had it not been for the hard years of raising seven children while trying to make ends meet. Dinner was something to made quickly at the end of a long, tiring day. Quantity was more important than quality. And it had to be cheap to feed a family of nine on my parents' squeezed income. After driving hours around the countryside as a visiting nurse, my mother arrived home hungry and tired only to face husband and various children slouched in the living room, waiting for her to get dinner started. No wonder her mood turned sour, and her tongue sharpened. Could one of us at least get up and peel some potatoes? Pot lids were banged, frying pans were slapped on the stove, someone was yelled at to set the table.

Our typical weekday dinner consisted of a large thin steak from a cow that my father had butchered. My mother fried it in margarine, the meat's fatty edges curling up. Seared on high heat to cook faster, the steak always ended up tough. My father sliced it thinly, then forked two or three slices onto each of our plates. We did away with ceremony, putting the cooking pots directly on the grey arborite table. Boiled white potatoes, boiled peas, beans or corn drawn from the store of frozen vegetables harvested from the garden, and without fail, a large orange Melmac bowl of applesauce. According to Dad, applesauce was an essential food group. In the summer, a green salad brightened the table, along with asparagus, broccoli and cauliflower fresh from the garden. Dessert, or “tuitje” as we called it, might be a slice of purchased pound cake, or a few slices of canned peaches or pears over a scoop of neapolitan ice cream.

Sundays called for a slightly more elaborate meal. Sometimes we ate pork chops with red cabbage flavoured with cloves; or a rabbit stew with mashed potatoes and a can of creamed corn. The rabbit, like all our other food, was home-grown – a couple of cages in the garage held floppy-eared black and white bunnies munching on the lettuce my father refused to eat, calling all salad greens “rabbit food.” Sometimes my mother would make old-fashioned Dutch comfort food, like Stampot, which for some reason we called “hutsput.” Imagine a mash of onions, carrots and potatoes, boiled together with a large curl of Kolbasa sausage. Our neighbours probably considered hutsput and some of our other meals adventuresome: boiled heart, boiled tongue, and fried liver and onions. Ordering out or dining out was a rare adventure. Occasionally, on a summer Saturday night, my father would let us pick up a bucket or two of Kentucky Fried Chicken. We dug into those greasy chicken thighs and truly believed they were “finger lickin' good.” Once a year we were treated to supper at the Pineview Family Kitchen on Highway 9 where we feasted on hamburgers and fries, or hot beef sandwiches – a thin slice of beef layered between two pieces of Weston's white bread and covered with thick gooey canned gravy, with mashed potatoes and peas on the side.

If anticipation can be called a part of adventure, then birthdays were the ultimate adventure. As the birthday person, you could ask for anything you wanted for the evening meal. But no matter whose birthday it was, the request never varied: my mother's french fries. A couple of we older children helped Mum peel an entire 10-pound bag of potatoes. We cut each potato into long thin strips, and then Mum took over, dunking a metal sieve filled with potato strips into a deep pot simmering with hot fat. There were two dunkings: the first one, about eight minutes long, cooked the rawness out of the potatoes. 

The second one took just a few minutes and finished off the job, turning the strips golden brown. The end product could have won awards: crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside – even when plastered with ketchup. But it took hours at the stove to transform a bag of potatoes into enough fries to feed the hungry hordes. The birthday celebrant also had his or her choice of dessert: chocolate eclairs; a marbled white and chocolate cake; or a tart lemon meringue pie.

After leaving home, I remember one of my first forays into unknown food territory. I was newly married. My first husband David and I lived in an upstairs apartment in downtown Toronto. One afternoon, my friend Martine sat cross-legged on the red and cream patterned carpet in our living room. Light streamed through the red and green patchwork squares of my home-made curtains. Martine peeled a furry brown fruit about the size of a large egg. It drab exterior belied a shocking interior: spokes of fluourescent green radiated from a creamy white centre surrounded by flecks of tiny black seeds.

“Want a piece?” Martine held out a plate, coins of the green fruit arranged in a circle.

“What is it?” I asked, tentatively.

“A kiwi,” she replied. Then, seeing my face, “You've never had one before?”

I shook my head. I wasn't confident about ingesting a fruit that looked so bold, so exotic.

“C'mon, it's delicious,” Martine urged. I reluctantly picked up a piece and slid it into my mouth. Tart and sweet burst upon my tongue, the smooth pulp dissolving into tingling aftershocks of flavour. I took the plate from Martine.

“This is...” I mouthed a second, and then a third slice, “wonderful!” Martine laughed.

Not all new food adventures were so wonderful. I remember my first Thanksgiving at David's family home. His parents were third-generation Scottish farmers who lived in an old stone home near Perth, Ontario. On this holiday, we were coming to the end of our early afternoon dinner. The turkey and stuffing, the gravy and cranberry sauce, the butternut squash, and the mashed potatoes had been cleared from the table, making way for the pièce de résistance – Mrs. Poole's famous pumpkin pie. I had never before eaten pumpkin pie. Mrs. Poole believed I was in for a treat, and handed me an inordinately large piece of pie on a blue Wedgwood plate. A surreptitious examination revealed a texture and colour that reminded me unpleasantly of the contents of countless diapers of my siblings when they were babies. But everyone around the table was digging in, so I maneuvered a small corner of the pie onto my fork and popped it into my mouth. I nearly gagged. A sharp taste of cinnamon and nutmeg fought with the cloying flavour of pureed pumpkin. Meanwhile, my father-in-law was passing around a bowl of whipped cream as garnish to the pie. I heaved an overly generous mound of cream onto my plate. With infinite care, small bits of pie drowned in whipped cream made it down my gullet. I was the last to finish.

“Another piece?” asked Mrs. Poole.

“No thanks, I'm full to bursting,” I lied, “but it was delicious.”

These days I leave the food adventuring to husband John. “Shall I surprise you?” he asks. “Sure,” I reply. Over the years, the reluctance in my voice has almost completely faded. John bounces up the stairs to find a recipe on the Internet. An hour later I sit down to something delicious: from the best spaghetti sauce I've ever tried, to spicy eggplant in a black bean sauce over Udon noodles, to a smooth chicken curry flavoured with coconut milk. John has proved to be a fine cook, and his adventures happily please my taste buds.

Left to myself, I'm my father's daughter, updated for the times. My daily breakfast? Oatmeal – made with water, not milk, but simmered for the same 20 minutes required of my father's pup. A handful of defrosted raspberries as topping and everything washed down with a frothy cappuccino. No sugar.

Amo Catullus

Catullus, courtesy The Daily Omnivore

I come from the generation that still studied Latin in high school. If you were in the Arts stream, you had to take Latin in grades 9 and 10; after that, you could choose between Latin or typing.

Miss Kipfer was our Latin teacher. During that first class in grade 9, I looked her over and judged her poorly. She was short and stocky. Rosy cheeks in a plain face. Short dark brown hair with a slight wave, thick black eyebrows framing small brown eyes. She wore knee-length navy wool skirts and loose polyester floral print blouses, sensible brown or black oxfords on her feet.

Fresh out of university, this was Miss Kipfer's first posting. She made it very clear to us that she would brook no insolence, and kept us on a tight leash. No whispering as we squirmed on the uncomfortable gray plastic chair desks. All homework neatly completed and handed in. Mandatory participation in declension and conjugation drills. Vita, vitae, vitae, vitam, vita, vita -- nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative cases of the noun Life. Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant -- forms of the verb “to love”. We hated Miss Kipfer.

One dreary afternoon, as we bored our way through yet another declension, someone whispered something crude and everyone tittered. Miss Kipfer had been writing on the blackboard, her thick back to us. She swung around, glaring. “What was that?” she demanded. We fell silent. “Who spoke?” she continued. Nothing. “I want to know who spoke and what was said,” she repeated. Silence. Miss Kipfer put down the piece of white chalk, crossed her arms, and planted herself squarely in front of us. Her stern mouth tightened.

“Close your books,” she ordered, in a voice cold as ice. “We will stay here until you tell me what was said and who said it.” We did as we were told, shutting our books and our mouths. No-one spoke. Neither did Miss Kipfer. Like a brewing storm, a sharp-edged tension filled the room. Long moments passed. We held our breaths.

After an eternity, Miss Kipfer let out an impatient snort and stomped toward the door. “I am going down the hall,” she said. “Don't dare let me hear one peep while I'm gone.” She opened the door and left it wide open. Normally we would have made faces and started whispering, but we knew that she had the ears of a bat. We all sat frozen as statues. Several minutes passed, and then the double click of heels on the terrazzo floor announced Miss Kipfer's return with our principal, Mr. Carleton. He was as short as Miss Kipfer, and slightly stockier in his rumpled blue suit and red-striped tie. His daughter Anne was in our class. He ignored her.

“It would make things a lot easier for everyone if the person who spoke out before would speak up now,” sighed Mr. Carleton. He paced up and down the aisles, stopping beside each person, including his daughter, before moving on. “Were you the one who spoke?” he asked each student. Our code of silence held. One by one, we shook our heads. Miss Kipfer stood behind her desk, arms re-crossed, and grimly watched the proceedings. Finally, after receiving one final shake of the head from the last person, Mr. Carleton walked to the door and turned to face us. “I'm very disappointed in this class,” he said. “You will all receive a detention of 30 minutes during your lunch hours for the next three days.” And with that he left.

I can't remember if we resumed our lesson, or finished the period in silence. But one thing was clear: Kipfer was boss. She never suffered the slightest discipline problems after that. But how we detested her, and often griped about how we couldn't wait to quit Latin after grade 10.

When Grade 11 came along, many did leave Latin for good. But a few of us decided that Latin was the lesser of two evils: declensions and conjugations were slightly more interesting than banging out endless repetitions of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on the old black Underwood typewriters in the classroom down the hall. There were fewer of us – only 12 students instead of the 25 from the previous years. In grade 12, the class shrunk to 10, and then in grade 13, only seven remained.

By some miracle, things had changed. We had noticed a slight softening of the Kipfer armour in Grade 11 – on some days, we caught a glimpse of a smile. Perhaps it was because we had chosen to stay. Then in Grade 12, as we moved beyond the structure of nouns and verbs, we began translating Latin literature – Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Ovid, Caesar. This led to conversations – in English -- about what we wanted out of life, and then, to our surprise, about going to university, growing up, dating, and love. Miss Kipfer became human to us, and we became, I think, endearing to her. By Grade 13, our band of seven loved those classes. We often spent a good 30 minutes out of a 50-minute class period in deep conversation, triggered by our homework translation of some Latin text. Then Miss Kipfer would glance at the clock and exclaim, “My goodness! We'd better do some Latin.”

One day, we were plodding through a section of Caesar's memoirs. Miss Kipfer watched our eyelids droop as we surveyed yet another battlefield from the ramparts and considered various bellicose strategies. “Caesar was a military genius,” Miss Kipfer prompted, and we rolled our eyes at her. Instead of becoming offended, she laughed. “It's pretty boring, isn't it.” All seven heads nodded in unison.

She placed her hands behind her back, paced back and forth in front of us, and then came to a stop. She turned and faced us resolutely.

“All right, class. Tomorrow, we're going to read something a lot more interesting. Poetry. Specifically, the poetry of Catullus. But there's one condition.” She paused and her face became stern. “You must never – and I mean it – never, ever tell your mothers.”

We looked at her in amazement. What was so dangerous about Catullus?

The next day we found out. Miss Kipfer handed us about a dozen poems from the series called Carmen, or “Song”. Together, we took Carmen 2 and began translating. Passer, deliciae, meae puellae: “Sparrow, favourite of my girl...” The poem was about love and desire. In fact, all the poems were about love and desire: Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus: " Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love...” Not only that, but very few of these poems were what one would call chaste. As we stumbled through our translations, we discovered a world of gay love, prostitution, passion, and above all, love in all its delights and sorrows. No wonder we were not to tell our mothers.

The following day, Miss Kipfer announced a special project. A Latin poetry translation contest was underway: did we want to participate? We did. We each chose a poem – one of the less racy ones, Miss Kipfer advised – and spent several classes translating and reading both Latin and English versions aloud to one another. This was so much more exciting than boring old Caesar, not to mention declensions and conjugations!

I selected Carmen 13, in which Catullus begs his friend Fabullus to treat him to dinner (and wine, women and song) in return for a perfume unlike any other in the world. I was captivated by the poem's earthy sensuality and especially the last lines, ...I will give you perfume..../ which when you smell it, you will ask the gods,/ Fabullus, to make all of you one great nose. I was such an innocent that the details of the erotic suggestion never hit home. I like to believe Miss Kipfer didn't have a clue either.

When we deemed our translations ready, Miss Kipfer bundled them together and sent them off to the jury. Several weeks later, she distributed a booklet containing the winning entries. Much to my surprise, my translation had earned an award of merit. I received a charming blue-black tile depicting the goddess Athena – although I did wonder why her name was inscribed in Greek and not Latin.

At the end of that year, I left high school and Latin behind. I don't know what became of Miss Kipfer, although someone told me that she happily married Mr. Heffernan, the shop teacher. She remains one of the bright spots in my education, someone whom I learned to love and admire, someone whose beauty revealed itself slowly over time.

Translation Anonymous, courtesy Rudy.Negenborn.net

A close call

Some people are blessed with solid common sense. I'm not one of them. In fact, there have been times in my life when I've been exceedingly stupid.

I remember one such time, late September, 1998. It was the afternoon of the first day of my masters' program in applied social sciences at Concordia University in Montreal. Our professors had just given our small class its first assignment – a scavenger hunt. They thought it would be a good test of our collaborative problem-solving skills. A handout listed the objects we were to find and present to class the next day.

Not only was I stupid, but I showed no aptitude for collaboration. Instead of pairing up with someone, I volunteered to go out on my own to Mount Royal, the city's magnificent hilly park and pick up two items: a paper napkin from the restaurant at the top of the park and, a plop of manure deposited by one of the horses from a nearby riding stable. Since I was staying overnight with a friend who lived fairly close to the park – or the Mountain, as everyone called it – the logic seemed sound.

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when I drove through the Park's entrance gates. The sun was leaning toward the Mountain's ridge. I parked my tinny grey Chevette in a lot about halfway up, and decided first to head for the top of the mountain to get the restaurant napkin, and then pick up horse manure on the way back. I wore a long blue linen wrap skirt, a loose white shirt and weatherbeaten Birkenstock sandals. Over my arm I carried a Holt Renfrew shopping bag in which was a child's bright yellow beach shovel for picking up the plop.

Looking back, it's easy to enumerate the evidence for my stupidity. First, I had never before walked up the Mountain, and so had no idea where the restaurant was actually located. Second, I couldn't read the park map to save my life: it looked like a maze of intersecting lines that wove back and forth. Third, I didn't factor in the time of day. Dusk falls early on the east side of the Mountain, which is where I was. Tall shade trees and thick bush line the serpentine roads and intensify the shadows. Fourth, of course I got lost, as I always do no matter where I am. I have gotten lost on the 11^th floor of the Turnbull Building in downtown Ottawa.

Mount Royal by artist Paul Beique

After a good hour of walking up the Mountain following the winding roads, I became ever more confused while searching in vain for signs depicting the restaurant icon. No-one else was around and the shadows were deepening. Suddenly, in the half-light, a man leaped out of the shrubbery to my right. He threw me a wolfish grin, crossed the narrow road in a sinewy lope and disappeared into the bushes on the left. I abandoned the goal of finding the restaurant and turned back down the Mountain. It was at this point that I noticed that the scores of beaten earth paths branching off from the road – and not a road sign in sight. I rounded a corner. Like a bad dream, the very same man sprang out of the bushes again and crossed the road just feet from where I was walking. He stared at me intently before disappearing once more.

Raw fear flooded my body. A cold metal claw started to carve away at my insides which had disintegrated into a roiling, black ooze. My heart was frantically trying to escape my chest. Two thoughts scurried like rats in my brain: one said, “How could you be so stupid!” and the other said, “You are going to be killed.”

I forced my legs to move. Some blurred shapes shifted in the distance: a family! I hurried to catch up with a man, his wife and two children. “Do you know where the parking lot is?” I asked. They looked at me blankly, not understanding the foreign English tongue.

I cast around desperately. Coming towards us was a jogger in a white mesh singlet and light blue nylon shorts. “Excuse me,” I said, and he slowed down, bouncing up and down, glancing at his watch. “The parking lot?” I asked. He pointed down the road and without a word, began to leave. I hitched up my skirt and jogged quickly to keep up. My feet banged away in the Birkenstocks and the useless Holt Renfrew bag slapped against my thighs.

“Down this road?” I gasped. “Isn't there another parking lot halfway up the Mountain?”

The runner shook his head. “Just take this road all the way down,” he said. “The parking lot's down there. You can't miss it.” With that, he fired his booster jets and tore away.

I stopped and caught my breath. Doubts fogged my mind. I distinctly remembered parking halfway up, not at the bottom. But maybe I was mistaken. I scurried down the road. At least it was lighter here, and there was the calming roar of traffic. The road curved around the base of the Mountain. There were no sidewalks, so I had to hug the side of the road carefully while cars sped past. At last I did reach a parking lot. It was definitely not the lot where I had left the car, but to my relief I saw a telephone booth.

“Annie!” I cried as my friend answered her phone. “I'm lost!”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I don't know!” I wailed. “I'm somewhere at the base of Mount Royal, in a parking lot, but it's not the right one!”

“Voyons donc,” said Annie, exasperation in her voice. “Look around. What street are you on?” I poked my head out of the phone booth. No street signs were evident.

“Mary Lou, calm down,” said Annie firmly. “Is there anyone there you can ask?”

I looked around once more. Yes. Parked halfway across the lot was a black Subaru, with the front passenger door open. A man sat slumped in the driver's seat. Outside the car, a woman paced back and forth, her arms crossed tight against her chest.

I said goodbye to Annie, hung up the phone and began to approach the couple. Just at that moment, the woman stopped her pacing and turned to face the man. “You loser!” she screamed. “I hate you! Get the fuck out of my life!”

You can understand why I hesitated. Who in their right mind would want to interrupt such an intimate moment? Desperation pushed me forward.

“Um, excuse me,” I inched toward the woman. “Um, I'm lost. My car is parked at a lot halfway up the Mountain, and I don't know how to get there. Um. Would you know how to get there?”

The woman swept her angry eyes my way, contempt for her man now merging with disgust for the whole human race. She sighed hugely. Why, why was she doomed to be surrounded by imbeciles? She turned back to the open car door. “This woman's lost,” she spat. “Can you drive her to parking lot A?”

The man shrugged himself upright and reached for the ignition. “Get in,” the woman ordered me curtly. I made for the back seat but she blocked the way and pointed to the open door. “Up front.”

So there I was, in the front seat with her estranged man while she glowered behind me. Acrid tension filled the air. “Oh, you're such angels,” I prattled, my words scattering into the thick silent gloom. I finally shut up. The man drove up the Mountain, eyes fixed on the road. After several interminable moments we arrived at the entrance of a parking lot – the parking lot that faced south-east, the parking lot that I now christened Nirvana. I pointed out my little Chevette at the far end. Just ahead of us, a large silver bus blocked our path as it patiently swallowed a long line of tourists returning from a scenic look-out. The turn signal in our car ticked steadily, its annoying beat adding to the tension. At last, I couldn't stand it anymore.

“Thank you, thank you,” I burbled. “I can easily walk from here.” I opened the door and got out. My two angels stared ahead stonily. “Goodbye,” I chirped. “I hope you work things out! Goodbye – and have a happy life!” I shut the car door and bounded across the pavement.

Goodbye, Tante Benine

"And now I'm going to die,” said my Tante Benine in a matter-of-fact tone. Her small, capable fingers straightened the edge of her red and black tartan dressing gown. She sat in her favourite gold upholstered armchair opposite the hospital bed lately installed in the bedroom. Behind her, slate blue drapes were drawn back. French doors opened onto a balcony lined with window boxes of bright red geraniums. Rain pelted the sweeping manicured grounds surrounding the house.

In April of 2011, Benine had been diagnosed with bladder cancer. Up to then, she had been a vibrant, healthy woman in her mid-70s. Less than three months later, the cancer had spread rapidly. Nothing more could be done. At the beginning of July 2011, I flew to Holland to say goodbye to this special aunt of mine. It was now mid-afternoon on Thursday, July 14; Benine and I were saying our adieux. I would return to Canada the following morning.

It wasn't as if I had known her for a long time. I remember the occasional visits she and her husband Frans made to our farm in Mount Forest.  A photo exists of Benine standing in front of our farmhouse. During the 1980s, I had a couple of opportunities to go overseas on business, and stopped in at Benine and Frans's home near Arnhem for family gatherings. Benine was always in the background, serving food, milling with guests. Our lives went their separate ways. Then, in 2008, she sent my mother a manuscript consisting of letters that her older sister Hans had written in the late 1940s while in Canada housekeeping for my father who worked as a farm manager. My mother agreed to translate the letters. I offered to edit and polish. Benine and I exchanged a few e-mails – friendly, family-oriented, nothing more. But then, in one of those e-mails, she remarked on the lack of a role for women in the Catholic church. In my reply, I asked her what she meant...and so began the blooming of this late friendship between aunt and niece. Benine was blessed with a lively curious intelligence that took nothing for granted. We explored our views on religion, God, the psalms, poetry and music. We talked about what it meant to be human, and mused on the balm of forgiveness. We shared news about family, trips, and other day-to-day goings on. I asked her about her volunteer work with refugees; she asked me about my visits to the dementia patients in the local hospital.

Just as I reached out to her, so she reached out to me. When I visited in 2009 to celebrate the publishing of her book of Hans's letters, we walked through the tall beech and oak forest that banked their house. Her dog Aafke ran on ahead, her small black and white body hugging the trail, her nose to the ground. “You feel like a sister to me,” Benine said and the air felt fresh and sweet. She told me what it was like growing up in the war. Her sister Hans was a wonder in the kitchen, transforming scare food supplies into tasty soups and stews. Benine rarely saw my father, one of her older brothers. He spent the war working on their parents' farm in the north of Holland, a good day's travel by bike to the family home in Arnhem. Benine and I learned more about each other later, leisurely sipping coffee at a local café. I loved her sparkling blue eyes, her crooked front teeth, her wide child-like grin, her eager, roving mind.

But on this visit, little more than two years later, Aafke and I walked through the woods by ourselves. Earlier in the week, Benine had come down for lunch in the garden. It had taken her more than 10 minutes to descend the 15 stairs from the bedroom to the main floor. Each step required a pause and several breaths while she leaned on  Frans's arm. Midway down, she stopped for a long time, gazing out the tall paned glass windows at the forest, her eyes drinking in the view of the towering trees. 

 

An entourage ushered her into the garden. Frans and daughter Benien supported her on each side. Tutti, the cleaning lady who had been with the family for 30 years, carried the lunch tray. I opened doors and moved chairs out of the way. Benine stepped carefully, frail as a bird, her lips set determinedly. At last she rounded the corner of the house. Her brother Frits had just arrived for a visit. He stood to greet her. A cluster of lawn chairs, padded with bright green cushions, faced out onto the large sloping lawn and the tangled edge of the lily pond. The fountain splashed. The air was golden.

Benine lay back in the chair, and looked intently at the faces around her. Aafke settled down at her feet. With family circled around, she ate a lunch of brown bread and herring, washed down with her daily glass of buttermilk and sweetened with some fresh cherries. Her eyes brightened as the talk swirled around her. She stayed in the garden close to an hour; then, it was enough. The long trek back through the living room, up the stairs. One last gaze at the forest. Then the slow march to the hospital bed and finally, the sweet ambush of sleep.

It was the last time Benine sat in the garden, the last time her feet touched the earth.

Now, as the afternoon darkened and the sky wept, we talked about her life and her coming death. I couldn't connect the dots. Benine looked like someone recovering from a bad flu, not someone who was dying. The only hint of illness showed in the subtle plumping of her cheeks from the medications, and the faint yellowed skin on her brow. And the catheter's plastic tube snaking underneath her robe to the bag clipped to the metal bed frame. And her fatigue. She could sit in a chair for perhaps 20 minutes, hardly more.

"I'm no longer the person I was,” she said, shaking her head in puzzlement. “That person – going by bike into the village, doing all kinds of things. I've changed completely. I'm now an invalid, a sick person, someone who has to be taken care of. I accept that. But I'm no longer the person I was.”

"Are you at peace?” I asked her. “Yes.” The reply came immediately, without hesitation. “More than I've ever been before.”

Still, death was a mystery to her. “No-one knows what will happen,” she said. “It grows more mysterious the closer I get to it. But I've never been one to get all worked up about the future. I will take it as it comes.” She distinguished between faith and hope. “I'm not one to have blind faith. But I hope, like the psalmist says, that I won't fall into nothingness.”

There was a long pause. We considered the vase of pink and white sweet peas on the rolling hospital tray table. “I've had a full and satisfying life,” Benine smiled at me. “Seventy-six years. A privileged life. I've been able to do what I wanted. I married a nice man. I have four beautiful children, eight beautiful grandchildren. I've had my own interests, lots of travel. I've been fortunate, and I feel very grateful.” 
 

Half an hour had passed. She rested her head against the chair back and closed her eyes. I rose from my chair. Benine opened her eyes. “Wait,” she said. “I have something for you.” She picked up a gold pendant with a delicately carved ivory embedded in amber. Her mother had given her the necklace on Benine's 16^th birthday. My throat filled as I held my hand beneath hers, and felt the amber connecting me to my Tante, and through her, to my Oma. 
 

I gazed at her as she had gazed at the forest. “Come to me in my dreams,” I whispered. She laughed. “I will, if I can,” ever honest and practical.

She died a year ago today, on the morning of August 10, 2011. Everything about her lies in the past tense. I can no longer say, “she laughs,” “she writes,” she speaks.” Now it is “she laughed,” “she wrote,” “she spoke.” Language buries her. My mind seesaws between 'before' and 'after'. I will never receive another e-mail from her. I will never again look into her lively blue eyes. I will never again see her eager wide smile. I will never again hear her lilting Dutch-accented English.

I woke up this morning and looked out the window at the green forest, at the oaks and beeches, smaller and more densely packed than the ones in Benine's forest. Good morning, God: my daily mantra. With a half smile, I wonder if God has tucked Benine under his brilliant gold wing. And then it comes to me: I have no idea. Benine has become part of the mystery. I hope that her soul has found its home in the all-consuming ecstasy that the mystics speak about in their poetry. But, at the heart of it, I simply don't know. I can only imagine and hope. Hope and imagine. 
 

A dump truck rumbles by, its deep throaty bass contrasting with the sharp razor cries of the blue jays. Mist lies heavy on the fields after the night's rain. The day's schedule rolls through my mind: an important meeting in the afternoon. I don't know how it will unfold. I can only imagine and hope. I can only stay open to the unknown which surrounds us as thickly as the air we breathe.

Hello, sweet baby

I've never been a mother. Big sister, yes. As the eldest of seven children, I spent much of my early adolescence washing diapers, feeding the 'little kids', and generally making sure that they didn't kill each other. As a result, my relationship with babies has usually been somewhat utilitarian.

But from time to time, a baby's charm bores a hole right through my heart.

The other day, I was standing in line at Pipolinka's, our village bakery. A family was eating lunch at the one of the round café tables lining the wall. Two young, dark-haired children munched on croissants. Their mother sat breast-feeding their infant brother. Their father stood in line ahead of me. He wore wrap-around sunglasses and a fitted black hat on his head. His face was tanned and unshaven, and sprouted a little tuft of beard underneath his lower lip. While the children remained eating, the mother rose from the table and, with the baby still in her arms, joined him in line. She was dressed in loose layers of sage and tan cotton. Her steady green eyes were set far apart in a wide Slavic face. Her brown hair was roughly cut as if for expediency rather than style.

She hooked her young baby underneath her arm, turning him outwards so that he was facing me. The baby wore an orange and purple jumper. His smooth, plump legs and feet were bare. He looked at me, then grinned widely, displaying toothless gums and a soft pink tongue. I grinned back and smooched the air. Giggling, the baby jiggled up and down, arms and feet pumping. We fell into the bright blue pool of each other's smiles.

Philippe the baker came out from behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. He leaned his thin face towards the man. They exchanged a loose hug. He greeted the mother warmly, then extended his arms to take the baby. As the child lay in his arms, Philippe bent his head and snuffled its scalp, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. He gently kissed the baby's head. I wanted to do the same: to drink in that tender, dizzying scent of innocence and joy.

For Huda, and her baby, Kareem.