Memories and Melancholia

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here and I’m sorry for that readers—I was working on a major writing project that took up all my spare time outside my day job.

But today I have a fever and am home sick. And what comes with fevers are always those strange hyper-real dreams, you know the ones where you think you are awake they are so tangible? I had one of those today about my mom and it brought me back to the years I was looking after her while slowly losing her to dementia.

Also woven into these dreams were the poems of Ulrikka S. Gernes, a Danish poet, who read at the Vancouver Writers Festival this past Saturday. Her poems have been singing in my head ever since. They surfaced in my fevered dreams like ocean glass and I wasn’t so sad to be sick if you want to know the truth.

She writes in her book, Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments,  that “Melancholia has a wide spectrum of nuances and tones and it often evokes a heightened sensitivity.” I felt these nuances today, the curtains drawn, quilt pulled up, dreaming of my mother, her small dog Max, her brittle collarbone against me as I held her towards the end. Don’t think ‘depression’, it’s just a daughter missing her mother when she’s sick. People like to make more of these things than they are—just human moments we all experience and sometimes the way into them, to really feel them, is through a fevered dream.

Ulrikka’s says she will “forever defend melancholia; it has an inherent power to sharpen certain senses that are beneficial to art, to life.” I couldn’t agree more. Herewith, a little poem that came from my memory dream with my mom and her little dog Max and myself towards the end when she was slipping in and out of the now and I was trying to pretend everything was just fine and hold onto her.

Moustache 

I look at your dark moustache as your coffee cup dangles

From your bony fingers, smoke curling into the air

through the dust as it floats

Through a shaft of morning light.

The hairs move like cheerful whiskers,

black and wiry, poking down into your cup

as we talk about the dog , how he likes to bark especially hard

at the man in the motorized wheelchair.

You tell me you sometimes duck your head

under the window to avoid him

or let the dog out to attack his wheels.

This was some time ago but I don’t bring it up.

I help you walk to the bathroom, undo your pants,

let you down slowly onto the toilet

then slip out for a second so you can be alone.

Okay? I say then come back, place your hands on my shoulders

And pull you up. We laugh a little as your pants drop

To the floor and I have to balance you and pull them up in one motion.

I close the lid on the toilet and sit you gently back down.

I’m going to dye your moustache okay?

You seem a bit embarassed but not sure why and

cluck at the dog to come and he circles then sits down at your feet.

I mix the Jolen powder and cream together and apply

the white paste to your wiry scruff.

I set a small kitchen timer for five minutes.

I lean back against the sink and tell you about my son.

He’s four months old now. You exclaim oh oh—

Most of the time you forget he’s been born.

Sometimes you remember and admonish me,

saying  of course, of course.

I take the face cloth and gently wipe the paste off then

take you to the mirror. You’re not sure

what you should be looking at but smile at me as though

I have just given you the news we were going on a holiday.

You will have no memory of this tomorrow.

I will hold it inside long after you are gone

like a snowglobe

shaking it whenever I need you.

 

On mothers, imperfection and love

It is Mother’s Day and I’ve been very blessed with a son who not only took me to lunch but to an art gallery then dinner! Can you imagine doing all that for your mom? I know. But it isn’t all bliss on the parenting front. In fact, being a mother means your worst self will be scrutinized and commented on for as long as you are alive. Your children, in all their innocent and not so innocent honesty, will bring you face to face with your shortcomings like no one else.

Recently my son said he felt like I didn’t teach him enough tasks and that I was annoyingly positive. Well, there you are. But as I ruminated on my failings at 3 am, I thought of my own mother and her imperfections and how they now endear me to her even more. Where once I was a critical 20 something I am not a not-so-smug 40 something who can, with empathy and love, look back on some of situations I was in with my mom and hold them close as cherished memories instead of damning her for being, well, human. To that end, I wrote a poem about a time when, in today’s politically correct world, my mom would have been seen as lax or worse, negligent. But I see it very differently. I my son will too some day.

Imperfect Mother

It is the imperfections of my mother

I hold dearest—

The time for instance when turning off of

West 16^th near UBC in her red Beetle the

door beside me swung open and since it was the seventies

I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt

and I went with the door, grasping the handle to

avoid the road rushing below me.

I looked back at my mother who

while still turning with her left hand lunged across to snatch my

flimsy t-shirt with her right and pulled me back into the car.

It was a one shot deal but she managed it. The door banged shut as

she completed the sharp turn and we kept on driving as though

I hadn’t just about fell out of the car and onto the road.

 

A block later a small eruption of laughter burst

From my mother. It made me clap my hands together

In gleeful loopy agreement of what I wasn’t sure but

The sun was streaming through oak leaves as we drove

Creating a beautiful pattern on my mother and I kicked my legs

Out from the edge of the sticky car seat to the radio played

 

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

 

I could say my mother was negligent

I could get maudlin, drink myself silly

Recount her imperfections that had caused

My life to zig zag like a silverfish on the run

 

But then I remember how she didn’t pull over

And fuss and fawn and make a big deal of

My near death fall and how years later this

Would give me courage when real death

And real heartbreak would pull me pull me down

 

And I would swim up to the surface, clapping my hands

Ecstatic for life’s small moments of survival.

 

*Song lyric from Summer in the City by Lovin Spoonful, 1966.

 

Books, Bras and Coming of Age

I am working on a digital story series called Summer Reads with some writers (many famous, lucky me) and I’ve asked them to write a memory piece on a book that changed their lives one summer. Then I’m going to film them reading from it. So it will be a sweet little interactive experience when I’m done with it. But my interaction designer and story partner said, ‘just send me exactly what one of the pieces will look like‘ as she is prone to do (being precise and logical).  I always forget that she isn’t wired into the pictures that appear in my head. So to that end, I wrote one myself. Enjoy.

*****

I was eleven years old when I read Judy Blume’s ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.’ It was a book my friends had read before me so I was pretty late to the Blume party and often felt self-conscious at sleepovers when quotes from the book were read out loud with a display of tween pride mixed with a nuanced air of a just blooming (no pun intended) awareness of sex.

But my house wasn’t the kind of house where you’d ever find Judy Blume. No, in my house you might find Steinbeck or Lord of the Rings or Farley Mowat or more commonly, technical manuals on how to make your own kayak, weld, or build a boat engine. Owning a Judy Blume novel would have landed me in some serious trouble in my household and so on my bike I went to the Kitsilano library. I slid the Blume between books on Ancient Egypt (I was after all doing a book report on Sphinxes) and some innocent looking P.D. James mystery books for my mom.

Nothing happened when they scanned the book. No alarms, no ‘Are you old enough for this material young lady?’ from the librarian. I was scot-free and peeled out of there on my scuffed up second-hand Raleigh straight to the beach with my literary contraband. That day under a willow tree at Jericho, I saw my own world, a secret world hidden from my parents and my nine brothers, unfold like a mirror where I could see mood for mood, experience by experience, a character just like me, even with the same name, the same internal struggles and worries and physical doubts I was having that I couldn’t share with anyone in my world.

My father had just died from a long illness and I was adrift in a home with no rules or structure or even a parent. My mom had essentially checked out. When I did get my period that year it was alone in a bathroom with no supplies and no one to tell me what to do and it was terrifying. Judy Blume’s Margaret became my surrogate sister and Judy my surrogate mother. As I flipped the pages hungrily, with french-fry and vinegar-soaked fingers staining each page, I half expected a flock of priests to descend on me from my local Catholic church and rip the book from my pre-adolescent hands but no one busted me and I read the entire book in one uninterrupted day at the beach.

That night at Sharon Bideshi’s sleepover I quoted effortlessly from the book, skimmed scented grape gloss across my lips and posed in my faded hand-me-down Queen t-shirt, and admitted I’d bought a bra by myself that didn’t quite fit. Then we all mimicked the book’s now-famous mantra and exercise ‘we must, we must, we must increase our bust‘ and I peed my pants a little laughing so hard. I’d unhinged myself from my family, the church, and perhaps even childhood. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was but it was a better place that included boys, bras and makeup. And still a little bit of God for good measure.

A State of Remembrance

Remembrance Day. It’s always a way for back to my father for me. He died when I was just ten years old and I never knew much about his time as a Spitfire pilot in World War II. He didn’t talk about his personal life; his inner thoughts remained out of reach, as much as his hugs and encouragement to me and I felt on the other side of an immense lake of indifference that I would never cross before his death. At all times he was a man, to me anyway, of decisive action and booming presence until his last few years, when his heart began to fade, and his health declined. He was then a shadow, often asleep in his easy chair in the den, with his head rolled to one side. We were never, ever to wake him so we tiptoed and whispered and I remember often wondering if he was still breathing. It wasn’t if, it was always when and it came as no shock when he finally passed away.

Yet at one time, he fought two Luftwaffe in a dogfight over Italy and was shot down then crawled to refuge in an Italian farm where he recovered and eventually made life-long friendships. The image of him as a pilot, spinning through the air with two German aircraft gunning for him never matched up with the weak and dying man who filled the role of father to my young self.

Today, though, in remembrance, I honour his young, brave self, sailing into the enemy sky, a Canadian boy from the Prairies with a huge heart and generous dose of red hair and gritty Irish nerve.

Lest we forget.

The Danger of a Metronome

When I was little, I had to take piano lessons with Sister Margaret. Sister Margaret was our music teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Help on West 10th avenue in Point Grey. Sister Margaret was terribly old. I used to go to lessons in the convent where she lived, just a few blocks up from our house on Crown and 11th. I remember I would be incapable of studying the hard Conservatory lessons and would divert her attention by making up elaborate stories and punctuating them with dramatic notes on the piano.

At first she tried to reel me in by putting the metronome on. As soon as the sharp, precise, demanding tone of the metronome began I sat listlessly on the bench, slumped over, but checked out. To Sister Margaret’s credit, she noticed the effect and stopped the metronome at once. Instead, she embraced my stories and even ignored the Conservatory lessons entirely. (My poor mom, she’d hoped I would follow in her footsteps and be a great pianist.) Most of my stories began with a deep rumbling of bass notes. Usually paired with a storm, a boat, a maiden followed by a heartless family and then a hero would enter. Standard 6-year-old drama stuff.

Sister Margaret delighted in my hour-long story sessions but as the day of the big recital got closer we both guiltily realized that I had little prepared for a performance. She chose an easy one for me which was Bach’s ‘Air’. I had to work hard to memorize it and it was my first experience of  ‘cramming’ for something. It would, of course, become something familiar to me as I got older.

On the day of the recital, I played my little piece but twice forgot where I was to go next and the air around me was devoid of Bach’s light, lilting notes, as I remembered words instead of musical notes and the lines between the bars and the plot made for a fumbled and awkward performance.

Yet, at the end of the year Sister Margaret threw a party at the convent for all her students and she gave me a beautiful Beethoven sculpture, finely wrought in wood, that had always and forever been on her piano. I could feel the sharp stares of her good students furrowing their brows at my fraudulent profile as I accepted her gift in front of everyone. We had an understanding. I think it was that, out of all the students, I was the only who came with the specific purpose to entertain her. And that purity of purpose meant something to her. I think anyway. I was always deeply grateful for her understanding I wasn’t the metronome type. It gave rise to a life of storytelling.

To this day, I can see a metronome type coming towards me at a hundred paces. I used to always think those types were right and I was wrong but as I get older, I am standing up for myself a little more and telling them to put their metronomes away and just listen. Listen to the story for a moment. It really does have its own, fabulous, transformative rhythm.

The Patterns of Life

The other day I was in a thrift store and stumbled across an old collection of dress patterns. It brought me back to the days when my mother and I would drive down to Gold’s Fabrics at Arbutus and 12th in Vancouver. My mother could sew and knit and despite trying to teach me numerous times, I resisted and instead suggested I just be her model. My mother was quite an accomplished  seamstress and spent countless hours at the sewing machine creating outfits for me, and sometimes my sister, various household items like curtains, and repairing the clothes of her large family in order to save money. The dresses she made for me, despite my creative direction however, never turned out the way I wanted.  I never had the heart to say I didn’t like it as she beamed up at me from cutting a thread off the hem of the finished dress. But I knew in my heart that was how it would always be because of our trips to Gold’s Fabrics.

We would walk in and to the right of the heavy glass doors were row upon row of drawers of patterns organized by designer. At the front were Simplicity, McCall’s, and Butterick, and other what I considered ‘average’ patterns that my mother liked to frequent. At the back were the more expensive patterns; this is where I skidaddled to in my hand-me down clothes and dusty flip-flops I may or may not have inherited from my brother.

I dove into those drawers and pulled out each package, turning it gently over in my hands, looking carefully at the evening dresses, the styling of hair and makeup of each illustration and lost myself in Vogue’s chic style. Sometimes my mother would come around and poke her nose over my shoulder and make her usual tsking sound and sometimes, if I pointed out how she could, if she tried, easily fashion a gown for me, she would start walking away saying with a small shake of her head, “oh no, no, no” as though I had just asked her to drive me in a convertible to the moon.

I realized I was up against a mountain that wouldn’t move. There was no swaying my mother over to my haute couture world. She was seeking simple, cheap, easy-to-make and I was hoping for Chanel. Sometimes I would try to persuade her to jazz it up with creative buttons or ribbon or coloured zippers which could be found for miles in the centre of the warehouse-size store. She would laugh as though my request was absurd and sometimes I found my foot coming down hard on the linoleum floor in my frustration. This would make her tsk again and say, “Margaret, you have champagne tastes on a beer budget I’m afraid.” This was always her go-to phrase when she felt I was reaching too far. As in a fuchsia zipper or rhinestone button.

Maybe it was because my mom grew up on a farm and lived through the Depression. Maybe because, despite living in Point Grey in a big house, she never had much money. Or maybe she was a simple woman who was content with what she had in life, something I am only now in my forties seeing the value of:  life as it is rather than life as I imagine it in my head.

But just to be clear, I’ll never be a Simplicity woman. I’ll always be Vogue.

The Meaning of an Ice Cream Sundae

It was the way my brother made me an ice-cream sundae. He was clear: this wasn’t the time to hold back or go cheap. It was so rare in my world to think this way. The church told us to sacrifice, apologize, kneel down. Repent! My parents told me to be quiet, be happy with less, and do not covet what others had. Even our food was about holding back: no salt, flavour, or fat because my dad was dying of heart disease. It was a world that begged me to be something I was not and I had to hide my inner self that dreamed of being in the theatre and living life as an artist.

When my brother Leo made ice-cream sundae’s he did so with abandon. He defended his right to excess in a world of lack and control. Sundae-making with Leo only ever occurred with the parents and older siblings out of the house and it would be just me and my two brothers who made up the bottom of the family. When we ate those sundae’s we did so with complete glee and abandon. There were no rations; we could have as much as we wanted! It had a kind of Lord of the Flies feel to it during those afternoons with Leo and the ice cream. We’d stepped over the boundary of constraints and into the world of flavour and laughter and joy.

Leo never judged me. He wasn’t threatened by my big drama, unbridled love of adventure, or storytelling obsessions. He saw life as an ice-cream sundae: full of possibility, delight, and simple pleasures. I would always come back to his house from travels afar to feel that same feeling I had as a child. It never left. I always felt free and loved in his presence for exactly who I was.

It’s been seventeen years to the day since he was tragically killed in a biking accident. I always say, there was life before Leo died and after Leo died. It changed me forever. I can’t pretend I feel any better about losing him now all these years later. I would give anything to share a sundae with him again. I’d pour extra chocolate sauce and load up on sprinkles. I wouldn’t scrimp or hold back. I would live in the moment and smile back at his wide, toothy, lovely smile and tell him how much I loved him. And thank him for loving me.

Real rock gods play with heart

Recently, I’ve been reading a memoir by the Wilson sisters from the band Heart and reminiscing about the past. A friend (and fan) gave it to me because we shared a deep love of the band when we were young. It perfectly captures the era of rock in the 70’s and the struggles the Wilson sisters had in breaking into a male-dominated business.

When I think of growing up and the music that played in my home, it was not the music of my friend’s homes. I would go to a sleepover and see a full size poster of Sean Cassidy on my friends wall or Abba and it felt like an alternate universe to me. Who were these people? The Guess Who, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Nazareth, Deep Purple, Bad Company, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Aerosmith and later AC/DC–these were the bands that were played in my house. Big, snarling, theatrical, posturing, operatic: bass lines that changed your heartbeat if you got too close to the speakers, anthems that made you feel riotous and rebellious and bonded with everyone else who listened to them. I remember we had a little dance at the end of the year in my elementary music class and I stood beside the record player, looking at the selection without recognizing much of it. A boy put on Bee Gee’s and I looked up and started laughing. I asked him if he was serious, did he really like this group? I wanted him to say no, because I’d liked him, but he said yes and that was the end of that crush.

It was around this time that Dreamboat Annie came out. The moment I saw two women on the cover, then heard Magic Man, with Ann booting down the door of male rock in suede boots, I was hooked. As far as most of us assumed, they were Canadian. Of course they weren’t; they just dominated the Vancouver music scene and had recorded the album at Mushroom Studios on West 4th Avenue which had put Mushroom and Heart both on the map.

The songs of Dreamboat Annie had poetry in them and moments of soft, melodic voices and twelve string guitars that allowed my young self to escape into the world of the Wilson sisters, whose talent soon got noticed by the world and the album went platinum. Ann for me, was a new kind of woman I’d never seen before. In songs like Kick It Out and Barracuda there was a swagger and toughness that until that point, had largely been the domain of the rock gods who were all men–Robert Plant, Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey–but Ann’s vocal range and power just exploded and gave us young female fans a new hero.

I would skip out of my all girl’s private school and go to my friend’s house, who had two older sisters, one of whom was a Heart junkie. Her room was like a shrine to them and I was ecstatic to find it was all Heart, all the time in that basement on west 8th avenue in Point Grey. There would be many late nights where the record needle would be gently picked up and put back to a bar or an octave or a word Ann would sing and we’d talk about it with grave respect. In those days, Ann and Nancy often did radio interviews to promote their albums and we’d lie there listening to the interview like we were hearing from the oracle of cool. I will never forget my first Heart concert at the Pacific Coliseum when Ann somehow managed to sing louder, harder, faster than the records ever hinted at. My 13-year-old mind was never the same.

A few years later, my brother started singing in our basement with a few friends. I was a little jealous because I’d hoped to be like Ann and start my own band but it turned out that while I could hold some notes, and had a little power, I lost my pitch along the way. He, however, was pitch perfect. Our lives soon centered around jamming in the basement. It was all rock, as loud as possible, played through rented amps from Long and McQuade. And as the amps got bigger and bigger, so did the sound. Sometimes I’d be walking up my street and hear the guitar, kajung kajung then the bass, thud thud thud and the drums thwack thwack wailing away and high above coming into the fray would be my brother’s voice, howling some Lynrd Skynrd song.

His band evolved and got better and better and I started to hang out at real gigs which no matter the pay, were always packed full of all the same faces that had hung out and jammed in our cold, dirty little basement space. There were other kids from our neighbourhood that were also in bands and they started playing around town and getting some attention from the local press and appearing at the famed Town Pump. The place had been a restaurant and for some reason I remember that they had windows with stuffed animals in them. I swear there was one of a mountain lion. But then it evolved into the hub of live music in Vancouver.  I was underage for a long time at the Town Pump. I became expert at wrangling my name onto the guest list so I wasn’t harassed for ID. Being on the guest list usually meant free beer and backstage access which helped as I had no money in those days. My brother’s band, The Pasties, had a strong following in Vancouver and for a short while, it looked like Geffen Records was going to back them and then it all kind of fell apart. But I never stopped being a fan. Pasties gigs were always ridiculously fun because it was like our basement transplanted to a club where everyone knew each other yet somehow now my brother was being paid for singing and large flats of beer were being sent backstage. Being small, I had to stay clear of what was now called the Mosh Pit. I was once accidentally knocked into the air and across the floor at the Commodore Ballroom and bailed into a table. It didn’t help I was in 6 inch heels but I stood up, brushed myself off, and watched from the sidelines, as close to the Marshall stacks as I could.

My mom at this time was in her late 60’s and given the choice, would have preferred to sip a G & T, listen to the CBC, and read a good mystery novel but here we were, coming in at all hours of the night, playing thundering rock downstairs, or sitting in large wayward groups on our roof in the summer sun, looking out over Vancouver and acting as if we owned it. My  dear mom accepted everyone that walked through the door. I’d come up from the basement sometimes to find someone having a beer with her, talking loudly over the guitars and drums and my brother’s sprawling vocals, having a meaningful conversation and I would just shake my head and wonder why they were hanging out with her. Many years later, I still have people tell me how much her acceptance of them meant to them. I didn’t see it then, but I think her non-judgmental, open door philosophy probably was one they didn’t experience at home.

I had gone to university and returned to Vancouver and got a job working at the Arts Club theatre. The job lent itself to attending late night music gigs because I wouldn’t have to get up until noon or later for work. But something was changing in the scene, and it seemed everywhere I looked friends and friends of friends were nodding off as we stood watching a band and many OD’ed or worse, had died. I hadn’t been around hard drugs before and had no clue why all these people were so sleepy suddenly? I was truly ignorant of what was happening.

I was a huge fan of the band Tank Hog at this time and  who, from the second they started playing, would graft your pulse to theirs and you wouldn’t come down from the excitement of their sets until very late in an after hours bar. They saw a fair bit of success but the internal strife (and drugs) didn’t help their situation. Still, I think of them as some of the most talented musicians I ever met and had the pleasure of seeing live.

Nirvana became the new Zeppelin and grunge music came in to the Vancouver music scene in a big way. Being so close to Seattle, there was a lot of influence on our culture and my fashion shifted to dresses from thrift stores, Doc Martens that never left my feet and jet black hair cut in a Louise Brooks style bob. Then, through a bizarre series of events, I won a Green Card in the annual lottery the US holds and moved away from Vancouver. I never really went back to the music scene after several years away and lost touch with the music scene and my friends in it. Fast forward many years later and I am returned to my hometown where I’m now seeing some of those old familiar faces play around town (including my own brother Alan Doyle) and it’s kind of great to see some of those talented musicians not only survived the 90’s but are still going strong as musicians who just love to play for the sheer joy of making music.

Oh, in case you never heard of the band Heart, check out out this early recording (nevermind the terrible quality), just imagine yourself back in the era when rock gods were real.

Lessons from the deep end of Empire Pool

I’m 4 or 5 and sitting in the ‘dog seat’ in the back of my mom’s red Beetle. We’re driving along UBC boulevard and by the blur of trees I think we are going quite fast. No matter. My mother is confident in her abilities to get out of any ticket and had in fact been pulled over on this very road, cried convincingly to the officer, was reprimanded and let go. More likely the officer looked at the 6 or 7 children jammed into her small car and thought, poor thing and let her go.

I’m the little girl at in the bottom, middle of the picture.

We’re going for swim lessons at Empire Pool. I am nervous because all of my clothes are hand-me-downs and while I do have a new swimsuit for the occasion I have old, brown flip-flops that could have been a brother’s, shorts from the neighbour’s daughter down the street who was by all accounts a super-model by age 9, and a t-shirt that is for certain about to be torn into pieces and used on someone’s car in the garage.

I’m excited all the same. Any opportunity to sit in the sun and swim in a real pool makes me happy. I love the beach but the salt water up my nose makes me stumble out of the ocean like a character from a horror film, blindly searching in the air for my towel and curling up in a heap on some other family’s blanket.

Our class is lined up along the side of the pool when I join. Why am I late? I feel a blush develop. One of my older brother’s had told me, ‘you’ll never be a poker player if you blush like that, shows ’em what you’re thinking.‘ Why I had to prepare for poker playing I did not know but I took his advice and wrangled my embarrassment under control. Our teacher was very tall and slim, some might say gangly, but I could see it was a sporty, professional athlete kind of length to her and it gave me confidence she would be a good teacher.

We slipped into the pool and  just held onto the sides and kicked and did simple movements to get used to the water. Our teacher stood above us in her one piece Speedo and loose, softly faded cotton shorts that were tied with a rough string and slipped down her thin hips as she strode along the edge of the pool shouting out to us, “Good job, keep it up! Yes! That’s it, that’s it, kick, kick, kick!” I knew I was sweating in the cool water trying to do a good job kicking and kicking and kicking.

The following weeks were a series of similar exercises and I grew a little bored. When were we going in the deep end? Growing up with daredevils, I was used to a high-level of adrenaline. I watched in awe as divers plunged into the blue sky above me from the 10 meter board. At home later, my brothers would talk about the various stunts they’d seen or done from the same board. I didn’t admit I was still in the shallow end.

The following Saturday we lined up under the warm sun, not yet hot as it climbed towards its noon zenith. She calmly announced we were going to the deep end to learn how to tread water. This was it. The big time. Sink or swim. We followed her along the wide pool deck towards the end of the pool. Here you could see the daredevils back flipping off the boards, cannonballing and roughly pushing each other into the water. More my kind of world and mostly made of boys which was the norm for me with nine brothers. Our teacher gave them a look of disdain.

“Please stay in this area only as this is a busy pool with lots of divers and we don’t want to be in their way.” Well, neither did we! She announced that we’d be tested today on our treading abilities and timed. A lump formed in my throat. I had to pass. I imagined the scene back home when word got out I couldn’t even tread water, never mind dive off a board.

We swam out from the edge and began to practice our treading. I was treading well she said, shouting over the mayhem of boys behind me, “Hold your head up, that’s it, pretend an invisible string is pulling your head up, up, up!‘ I kicked like crazy but my body felt so heavy, heavier than it could possibly be in real life, pulling me down into the deep end. My legs flailed and searched for respite. I couldn’t touch the bottom. Panicked, I quickly swam towards the side of the pool and reached out for the wet cement.

Our lissome teacher bent over to see if I was okay. I brushed her off and said, ‘just taking a break!’ and smiled optimistically up into her sunny face. Reassured, she went on to another student. But I wasn’t optimistic. I was sure I would drown during the test. I began to think of excuses. Sudden stomach cramps? I was late for an appointment? A doctor? What could I come up with on a Saturday in July? Frantic and irrational, I tried to wave her down though she didn’t see my tiny arm whirling out of its shoulder socket amidst her brood of beginners.

I could see no way out. I pushed away from the edge and joined the other swimmers. She counted down and the test began. I was already exhausted. I longed to lie down on my towel. She yelled out encouragement, pacing up and down the side of the pool like a real coach and I focused on her sandy blonde hair moving from side to side, her long arms clapping and waving to us, her lean legs tensed into tanned muscle as she squatted at the edge and screamed “nearly done, nearly there!” My chin was now touching the water. I was going under. Soon my head would be covered. She likely wouldn’t see me for a while as I dropped to the bottom of the pool where I would lay unconscious.

A loud, shrill whistle sounded and through my wet eyelashes I saw a blurry figure clapping wildly and gesticulating at us to come back to the edge. I used what was left of my limp limbs to make it back. She must have sensed my struggle as she came and firmly took my hand and pulled me right out like I was a foam kicking board. I beamed up at her and she bent down to my face and said ‘good job‘ and briefly put her warm, powdery dry hand on my shoulder.

Later, my mother would pull out the paper octopus shaped award of achievement that said I had passed the course. The teacher had written nice things about me on each leg of the Octopus. My brothers hooted and screamed and made fun of my little octopus but I didn’t care. It was like a gold medal to me and I carefully placed it inside my Babar book next to my bed. I knew I would never grow up to be sporty like my teacher but it felt wonderful that night to lie in bed knowing I could survive in the deep end.

The castle of memory, the present of learning

This past week I slept two floors above where I used to work. It was odd. As I walked past my old office I had a flood of memories and mixed emotions. Stranger still was being there at night. Hearing the sounds of the deep forest behind me and the going’s on of the university campus at night. The clear sound of songbirds in the early morning with no urban soundscape to muffle the lovely notes of a forest waking to the day. The greys and greens and mossy damp of the castle quietly slumbering before its inhabitants arrive for work and beyond, the ocean lapping in on the edge of this university that has been in my life for over half a decade.

As I walked to my classroom in the morning, I thought how different my experience was an an employee versus now. I feel the lightness of freedom, and while it does come at a price (no government benefits, no days, as in ever, where you can coast through, or attend a two-hour meeting that goes nowhere, or go to a potluck party for a colleague), I realize with every step that my freedom is, above all, the most important thing to me because it allows me to teach in a way that was not possible before as an ’employee’.

In the classroom there are moments when I look into the students eyes and see the connection between what I am saying and their understanding of it. This makes it all worth it, the moment of interaction around an idea, where we journey from the beginning of the day to somewhere else by the end. I’m never really sure if we’ll make it. I’m never really sure if the students will come with me. I’m never sure if what I’ll say will have any meaning for them. All I can be sure of, as I walk into the classroom, is that I will give my entire being to it as long as they entrust me to be their guide for the time we are together.

It’s a truly beautiful campus when the lens you look through is the one you were meant to see with. If you ever have a chance to visit, be sure to wander the gardens. They are extraordinary and I guarantee you will find inspiration there. Hatley Park is a National Heritage site in Canada which is often overlooked when folks come to visit Victoria. If you are able, visit in late May when the Forsythia is in bloom and walk the walled Rose Garden.  The scent will linger in your imagination long after you are gone.