Archives for January 2018

I really had no idea how much this week meant to me until today. Until I put it all together. And when I did, I realized that this was a week of anniversaries, of days that really changed my life.

On January 13th my wife’s parents got married. Diane (French pronunciation please) was a television producer for Radio Canada and Valerie’s dad, Dave was a performer. It’s hard to imagine now but a lot of the most important English entertainment at one time came out of Montreal. So a stridently Quebecoise television producer fell in love with a tete-carree Anglo from British Columbia. All because of Expo 67. My wife was born a few years later in Montreal and she is the single most influential person in my life in the last 23 years. The only reason I am alive.

January 14th is the birthday of my father’s second wife. Her name is Dawn and she comes from a rural-ish backround in Kenora, Ontario. She was with my dad for about the last thirty years of his life and she is the only reason he lasted that long. She has a beautiful soul and a generous spirit and she’s the closest thing I have to a mother these days, though she feels much more like a friend. What could be better than a mother who feels like a friend?

January 15th. Yesterday was Martin Luther King Junior Day. Almost every aspect of social consciousness and compassionate awareness that I have absorbed came out of my study of the fifties and sixties. It might have been folk music, it may have been JFK speeches, it may have been movies about resistance. It was about Jackie Robinson and MLK and Ali and Malcom X and Dylan. There was a time when popular culture changed lives for the better. I may be too old now to see it. I hope it’s still happening. But MLK was ground zero for all of this. If he wasn’t the first, he was the most important.

January 16th was my maternal grandfather’s birthday. In 1900. He lived in the horse and buggy age. He heard and saw TV and radio before us all. He watched movies go from silent to talkies, from black and white to colour. He fought in the Great War, when aeroplanes were weapons of mass destruction, only to see them become transportation to take him and his wife across the country to see his daughter and grandchildren. He lived in the age of ice trucks and lived in the age of space travel.

He heard Babe Ruth home runs on the radio and saw Gary Carter home runs on TV.

This week not only changed my life, it was just about everything that created my life.

Each of us has weeks like this, even if we are not aware of them. But today, I am aware.

I was channel surfing on New Year’s Eve when I ran across Anderson Cooper chortling on his CNN special. My mom used to love Anderson Cooper and while she was usually shocked by Kathy Griffin, my mom couldn’t help but laugh right along with Anderson at the outrageousness of her humour. Hearing his giggle reminded me of my mom, who used to call Anderson her boyfriend. And knowing that Kathy Griffin was no longer there to make him laugh in the way that spurred my mom to giggles made me a little melancholy.

My wife and I spent most of the evening in the living room. We listened to music and Valerie read while I tended to the fire. I didn’t feel like reading so I searched where I store fireplace accessories, the kindling and newspapers, looking for an old crossword puzzle to do. I found a Saturday edition of the Toronto Star and uncovered a whole section of puzzles. I didn’t know why I had a Saturday Star because I don’t buy that paper in Ottawa. It was dated April 2014. Almost four years old. And then my wife reminded me that was the month when my father died and I’d bought that paper for his obituary. I had saved the obituary long ago but the paper remained in my living room for years unbeknownst to me. I did the puzzles tonight and I burned the rest. One newspaper provided me with a short summation of my father’s life, a few hours of fun diversion and fuel for the fire that helped keep my wife and me warm on a cold winter night. Over the span of almost four years. I’ll miss newspapers when they’re gone.

We drank sparkling wine and ate seafood and had cheese fondue. To light the burner I grabbed some matches from my desk. It was an old box of wooden matches from a restaurant I worked at for a long time. On the box was a list of all the restaurants in the company. I think three or four of the eight are now closed. And I thought of all those people who worked so hard on New Year’s Eve for so many years. Myself among them. I wondered what they were doing tonight. I’ll never forget what a slog it was. Even in the best of times. Respect.

I saw on-line that some of my old musician friends were playing NYE gigs. I don’t know how guys my age can still do it. I never liked performing, mostly because I didn’t feel like I was good at it but also because I never felt comfortable doing it. I guess some people have it in their blood and some don’t. I never did. I can’t help but remember though the rituals of a gig. The smell of the black magic marker I used to write out the set lists. The banter and the words of encouragement before the show. The sense of brotherhood, sink or swim. And there’s the unique moment on stage when you know you’re doing well and the feeling is shared among you not with words but with a simple smile. For those still doing it, who still love it, you are very lucky indeed.

And so here we are on New Year’s Day, a time when we reflect upon that which we’re leaving behind and look ahead to what will eventually unfold. It’s only natural to think of the end of a year as a time when we’re turning a page in our lives just as we turn the pages of a calendar. But really it’s just another day in a long line of days. The past is never far behind and the future is only a night’s sleep away.

Yesterday, my memories were stirred by a matchbox, a newspaper, the smell of a magic marker and the sound of a stranger’s laughter. And I can only imagine what I may experience tomorrow or next month or next year that will evoke something in me further down the road. I have no way of knowing what might trigger my future unexpected reminiscences but I look forward to finding out.

Big memories have a strange way of re-surfacing in little ways.