Archives for April 2018

Every few days for the last six months or so, I’ve received notifications in my social media feed reminding me that my old high school is celebrating its 175th anniversary in the first week of May. The year I graduated from Lisgar Collegiate, the old school was marking its 140th anniversary. At the time, Pierre Trudeau was the Canadian Prime Minister, Ronald Reagan was still in his first term, and Wayne Gretzky was a twenty-three year old who had yet to win a Stanley Cup. It was a while ago.

I really liked high school. There were even things about high school I loved. Though I wasn’t a particularly dedicated or enthusiastic student, I received good enough grades to be accepted into a competitive program in one of the top universities in the country. I was pretty good at sports, I had lots of friends and on the day I graduated, I left campus feeling really good about my alma mater.

The world ahead of me seemed to be an adventure ready to be experienced, a puzzle to be solved, a treasure waiting to be discovered. It really did.

There have been anniversaries and class reunions since that time but I never felt compelled to return. I held no animosities but nothing ever really drew me back to the place where I’d spent five very important years of my life. But some time later, a few years ago, I returned on one Sunday afternoon. Lisgar had been part of a walking tour of historical buildings in Ottawa and I thought I might get a kick out of roaming the halls again one last time and I could show my wife where I’d spent my formative years. And maybe even show off a little when I pointed out my name on a cup in the trophy case. On my walk down memory lane, things looked mostly the same, though everything seemed a little smaller than I’d remembered, and while I enjoyed the experience, I wasn’t moved by it. What I felt was more like a sterile curiosity, as though I were looking upon a museum exhibit of someone else’s life. And the ring on the trophy where my name once was had been removed because it was so long ago.

So I won’t be returning to the old Blue and Grey next weekend to celebrate its big birthday. Though I send along good wishes to the old building and my fellow alumni.

I am, however, celebrating another graduation.

Yesterday, I finished a three-month residential recovery program. There was a small graduation ceremony but there weren’t any robes and mortar boards or tuxes and gowns. Instead of champagne, there was coffee and juice. There was no valedictorian but there were a few modest and heartfelt speeches. None of us had a pocketful of acceptance letters to top universities but some of us had intentions of returning to school. And there were no grand old trophies with our names engraved on them in old-timey fonts but we did each receive a coffee mug with our certificates.

                                                       My home for three months

After it was over, my wife and I skipped the limo and got into our ten-year old Hyundai and went to lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. It was perfect.

We drove home in the rain and when we arrived, I was tired. Perhaps emotionally more than physically. But I was home and I knew where I could lay my head.

I got up before dawn this morning. I watched the sun come up. I don’t really feel any different than I did yesterday just as I didn’t feel all that different on that first day of summer vacation in 1984. And the days ahead seem like they will be more puzzle than adventure. But as I watched the sun rise through my kitchen window, the future does look a little brighter today than it did yesterday. Maybe even as bright as it’s looked in thirty-five years.

 

My wife’s parents lived in a senior’s residence for a little over a year near the end of their lives. When we would visit them in Toronto, we spent as much time with them as we could and that involved us joining them for meals in their residential dining room. It was a fairly posh place as these things go and one of the little touches provided each day was a single sheet printout on every dining table titled, “On This Day”. It typically included a few historical factoids or points of trivia about the current day such as an old-timey celebrity birth or a significant milestone. Maybe insulin had been discovered or a dirigible had crashed. The four of us would go through the sheet together as we awaited our meal, reading it aloud as a means of kicking off the conversation. I was always thankful for this little exercise because my in-laws were suffering from degrees of dementia and banter didn’t always come easily.

I like this kind of trivia and sometimes when I’m bored I’ll give Wikipedia a quick search to see what anniversary might be occurring today unbeknownst to me.

On this day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, just four days after the Confederacy surrendered, ending the Civil War. Only four days after he had given a speech extolling the virtues of voting rights for Black citizens. Most Americans mourned his death, many cheered, and the Civil War has been re-fought in one way or another every day in the hundred and fifty-two years since.

 

On this day in 1912, the Titanic went down. It must have seemed like the story of the year at the time and the fact that it’s remembered over a hundred years later and that the sinking of the boat has become a common point of reference to describe just about any major calamity re-enforces the enduring nature of the story.

 

On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play major league baseball in the modern era. At the time, Martin Luther King Jr. was still a junior in college, contemplating entering the ministry, the American army and American schools were still segregated, Emmett Till was a six year old living in Chicago and Rosa Parks was still riding on the back of the bus. It was likely the single most important sporting event of the twentieth century, a moment that transcended any numbers on any scoreboard.

On this morning, today just looks like a blustery and generally unremarkable day in mid-April. It doesn’t seem like a day of any historical significance. But it’s still early yet. There may be bombs dropped today that change lives that may one day change the world. There may be an unjust murder that sparks a social protest that evolves into a political movement. Perhaps a child born today will one day find a cure for a seemingly incurable disease. Or become a great leader who will help bring peace in our time to those who wouldn’t dream of the possibility. The importance of this day may not be known or understood for decades.

Lincoln’s assassination, the sinking of the Titanic, Jackie Robinson’s historical achievement…three monumental events all on the same date, conceivably within one lifetime. It’s a helluva day. It leads me to wonder what some future version of my family will be learning about on this date as they gather around the dinner table. I like to think it will be something that will make them reflect with gratitude and wonder rather than with sadness and disbelief. I may never know, but someone will. Only time can tell. And it always does.

 

I picked up a few groceries on the way home today and as I headed to the check-out, I surveyed the various cashes. I didn’t qualify for the express lane but each of the five registers that were open only had one customer so I had no concern about missing my bus, which was to be in front of the store in ten minutes. I chose the line that had the fewest items on its conveyor belt but I made the mistake of not looking at the customer who was to be paying for the groceries.

In front of me was an older lady, about seventy-five or eighty, and the debit machine confused her, deeply and repeatedly. She didn’t know her PIN and she’d forgotten which account to use and she timed out a couple of times. When her transaction was seemingly completed (and I felt a sense of relief because I thought I would surely make my bus) she asked for a taxi to be called but she’d forgotten to ask for cash back on her transaction to pay for the cab. The cashier kindly suggested that the lady purchase something inexpensive like one of the chocolate bars on display nearby and the lady agreed. It was then up to me to choose one because I was closest to the rack. I selected a Kit Kat because I knew it was relatively soft, didn’t have nuts that could break a tooth, and it seemed like a chocolate bar an old lady might enjoy. The lady happily accepted my suggestion, completed another transaction slowly and received her money-advance. At that point, I thought I still had a chance at the bus but then the cashier left her post to walk the lady and her groceries to a bench at the front door of the store to await her cab.

I could feel my patience dissipating as I pictured the bus pulling away from my stop while I stood helplessly awaiting the cashier’s return. But something odd brought me back. Something you would never expect.

A small package of Black Forest ham.

While I’d been waiting in line, running out of things to look at, I happened to glance down at my groceries and I noticed the package date of the ham I was about to purchase. April 13th. And immediately I calmed down.

April 13th is a date that has meaning in both of my extended families. It was the day my maternal grandmother was born. Strangely, I think it was also the date on which her mother had been born. And perhaps her grandmother and maybe an aunt and a great aunt also. I’m unsure of the details and I haven’t memorized my family tree but this date is the day on which many of my female ancestors were born. It’s an oddity I’ve always remembered and try to acknowledge. My grandmother died almost forty years ago and I never knew any of the other women who shared this birthday with her but somehow it still means something to me all these years later. My grandmother Mary had ten children, more than forty grandchildren and untold numbers of great- and great-great-grandchildren. She’s someone to be remembered and acknowledged.

On April 13th, forty-four years years ago, my paternal grandmother died. I only have a handful of memories of her and a thin catalog of stories to remember her by but my father was her eldest son and I have love and affection for each of her other seven children who are my uncles and aunts. She had a difficult life. She’d been adopted, likely under circumstances all too common in the 1910’s. She had eight children and fought mental and physical illness for much of her life. My grandfather was a difficult man and my grandmother likely suffered in ways I can’t imagine. I only knew her when I was a young boy and on the day in 1974 when my mother received the phone call delivering the sad news, I held my mother’s free hand. I was eight years old and it was the first time I remember seeing her cry.

As my aunts, my grandmother Lena’s two daughters, have gotten older (much older now than their mother was when she died), I can hear their mother’s laughter in their own. I’m reminded of a voice I’d barely heard and in them I recognize the humour and spirit of the grandmother I almost didn’t know. They’ve kept her alive for me.

As I stood in line trying not to get frustrated by the older lady with the difficult bank card, I thought of my grandmothers, both long gone, and I tried to muster the patience of a grandson tending to his grandmother. An opportunity I wasn’t lucky enough to have had. But with a little imagination, I was a grandson once again.

I did miss my bus. But another came along about ten short minutes later. And for that small inconvenience, I was able to spend some time with my grandmothers. I haven’t seen them in many decades but for just a couple of moments, on this April 13th, I knew the pleasure of their company once more and for that I am grateful.

A few days ago, April 4th, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I didn’t learn about Dr. King in school. Maybe his life and his death and his legacy were perceived as being still too immediate to be taught as a matter of historical record. After all, by the time I finished high school, it had only been sixteen years since he had been slain.

History is taught by the privileged and those who had the most to lose in the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s still occupied the halls of power when I was a boy. And they still do. The content of my textbooks was written by those whose best interests were served by obscuring uncomfortable truths. And even today, as the President of the United States reads a prepared statement paying tribute to the good works of MLK, I can’t help but marvel at the irony of laudatory words coming from those who would have denigrated and condemned him in his lifetime.

Social justice is often slow to come. Sometimes it marches at a glacial pace and sometimes it carries the speed of the ocean when a meteor has unleashed a tsunami. Dr. King was one of those meteors and the waves his work created will be felt as long as ocean water continues to land upon beaches. We may not always remember what causes the waves that wash over the ground we stand on, but that won’t make the water any less relentless and we’ll feel its power even when we don’t understand it.

I read a little story this week about brick layers. The first of them goes to work each day, completes his tasks efficiently, if not passionately, and then returns home each evening. He thinks of himself as having a job and his current contract involves the construction of a church. The second brick layer works beside the first and is doing the same work but he tends to specialize in the particular needs of church construction and when he clocks out and goes home, he doesn’t think of his labour as being his job, he thinks of it as his career. A third bricklayer, on the same job site, works side by side with the first two laying brick and mortar just as his colleagues do but he has a different perspective. When he returns home in the evening, just as tired and identically compensated as the other two, he thinks of himself as having spent the day building God’s house, doing God’s work.

One hundred years from now, that building may still be standing and each brick may have been laid as expertly as the next, but the hands that did the work felt the weight of those bricks differently. Many of us are the first brick layer. Some of us are the second. And a few of us are the third brick layer. Perhaps it’s our perspective that determines the strength we have and the burdens we can bear. Maybe Dr. King was a third brick layer.

A short time ago, I thought I saw my old friend Jeoff’s face in the crowd. I quickly realized I was mistaken because Jeoff died a few months ago. I related this incident to another friend who also knew Jeoff for forty-five years and my friend said that he completely understood. That in a way, Jeoff is as present in his life now as he has ever been. And the same is true for me.

I only saw Jeoff a few times in the last twenty years of his life but I see him and hear him and feel his influence all the time now. When I hear a certain song by a band he introduced me to. When I drive by the old neighbourhood where we used to live. When I hear a home run call by a francophone baseball announcer.

It’s not hard for me to stay in touch with Jeoff, so to speak. In fact, it would probably be more difficult to avoid it. Jeoff was a force of nature whose life created a sound, a song, that echos in my life more days than not. Sometimes it’s present only as a feeling that I can’t quite name or as a memory that I can’t quite place, but it’s always near, sometimes in ways I don’t always understand. Something was tugging at my mind this week. Something in the calendar. But I couldn’t place it until this morning. Right around dawn. Today would have been Jeoff’s birthday. I remember now. And even when I don’t remember, I don’t think I really ever forget.

As this day continues to unfold, I’m getting ready to head out to do a fantasy baseball draft with some old friends, some of whom were Jeoff’s old friends too. It’s always been a little bit of a mystery to me how the bonds of childhood friendship can remain so strong over the decades. Shared experiences in informative times has a lot to do with it but I think there’s something more to it. What I’ve realized is that these childhood friendships endure because they were built upon the foundations of generosity. We were so very generous with our time. We shared it freely and without condition. It was really all we had and yet we gave it away. We built with solid bricks that were and remain weightless.

Some of the time I value the most, that stays with me forever, is the time I was most willing to give away.

Happy Birthday, Jeoff.

 

I got up this morning just before six. I didn’t have anything pressing to do and there wasn’t anywhere I was planning to go. I didn’t go to bed particularly early, maybe one a.m., but after about four or five hours, it felt like it was time to get up. I wanted to see the sun rise.

It occurred to me that there must be a word I’m unfamiliar with for the moment just before first light. Not dawn and not sunrise or any of the other common phrases I’ve heard before, but something antiquated and more poetic. A word for those few seconds that humankind has been experiencing from time immemorial. But I didn’t really want to look it up, perhaps jeopardizing the mystery of the moment. I thought that it might add to the experience somehow if I didn’t know a word to describe it.

My curiosity got the better of me eventually and I did start looking for a word that might be fitting but I didn’t have any luck. At least I didn’t find what I thought I was looking for. However, I did come across a phrase that I do like. First blush. I think that sounds kind of pretty and it just about describes things perfectly. I’ll try to remember that one for next time.

The sun is up now and and my street is quiet through the kitchen window. It’s the first of April, Easter Sunday, and the only thing to be seen or heard is the wind. I have lots to do today and likely not enough time to do it but I’m not ready to start quite yet. I won’t turn on the television for a while. The world won’t go anywhere in the next few hours and all of its problems and stresses will still be there when I choose to re-visit them. I haven’t put on any music either. Music has always felt more fitting for later on Sunday morning and the quiet of the early hours will cede to the sounds of the later day soon enough.

My wife is still sleeping. I like being the only one awake sometimes. There’s a kind of privilege that comes with solitude. There’s a connectedness, a serenity that’s found just below the din. It’s not so much peace and quiet as it is peace in the quiet.

I just saw my first dog-walker and I’m certain there are young children nearby still in their pajamas who are already tearing through their homes searching for the chocolate treasures left for them. There will be families heading to church before too long and later in the day some of them will gather around large and loud tables, celebrating re-birth. For my wife, the return of sunshine alone is a cause for celebration. For others, being able to recharge on a long weekend is sufficient reason to embrace this day. As for me, I think once I’ve had enough quiet this morning, I’ll put on a little music and then later on, maybe I’ll listen to a baseball game on the radio. It’s the surest sign of spring in my small corner of the world.

 

In the meantime, I’m going to have another cup of coffee and savour these last few minutes of my own company. I think this has become my new favourite time of day. Early morning. Peace in the quiet. At first blush.