Bookish

After he helped Ter and me move by hauling countless boxes of books up the stairs to our suite, my then thirteen-year-old nephew declared, somewhat belligerently, “I’m getting you guys an e-reader for Christmas.”

I have one, but it’s safe to say it won’t replace hard copy books in my life. There’s nothing quite so relaxing as a rainy day, a pot of tea, and a fat, luxuriously-written novel. I must confess to being more discriminating in my book selection these days; space is at a premium at home, not to mention the scarcity of reading time after a day at the office relegates my mental capacity to something akin to a squashed apricot. Still, I love to read. I love books, real books; magical, wonderful, lavishly written books about characters who compel me to think, feel and live their lives with them. Books inspire me. They take me to faraway places. They introduce me to new friends and villainous enemies. They teach me things. They stretch my imagination. It’s true what’s been said about reading: “One who reads lives a thousand lives. One who doesn’t read lives only one.”

I’ve read bodice rippers and murder mysteries, high fantasy and pulp fiction, biographies of mediocre people brilliantly written and autobiographies by brilliant people who couldn’t write worth a darn. I’ve even dipped a toe into poetry and, under duress, tackled the occasional non-fiction tome. But the point of this post stems from a curious dawning about the last few books I’ve bought:

They’re about books.

Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 is a one-off with a specific message (I’ve only just started it, so I can’t pontificate on that message - yet). Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library is a steampunky/alternate fantasy series that revolves around a place where important fiction from multiple worlds is collected and stored in order to keep those worlds connected and balanced (easier said than done, of course). It’s rollicking good fun in four volumes so far; as usual, I discovered the fourth first and had to rewind to get the background.

What gives? Why am I suddenly discovering books about the importance of books? Farenheit 451 is older than I am, but The Invisible Library was published in 2015. Have books always been in danger? Maybe so. Every time technology advances, the fear of books losing their worth seems to rear its head. Radio, TV, the internet, smartphones, you name it – each one of them has been perceived as a threat to literacy and books in general.

Literacy is definitely under fire, but books? Paperback or hardcover, the printed word doesn’t seem to be going the way of the dinosaurs anytime soon. While touted as the solution to packing Thomas Hardy around in your backpack, e-readers have hardly replaced those weighty beauties of old. Yes, they’re convenient in transit, and mine sure came in handy at the hair salon yesterday, but overall, I still see tattered pocketbooks in play at Starbucks. What a relief. As a writer, I needn’t fear imminent extinction. Technology has provided a vehicle as portable as those beat-up paperbacks, but some things can’t be replaced. Books are important. Books are a comfort; a tangible, sensual means of taking a trip without leaving your comfy chair. And browsing through amazon’s Kindle store is not nearly as pleasurable as browsing the shelves at your local (emphasis on “local”) bookstore.

Find the perfect escape, make that purchase and carry it home. Brew that tea and curl up on that couch, lift the cover, smell the paper, run your fingers over that title, turn the page … and disappear into another life.

Mother of the Bride

The hoopla, hysteria, and controversy surrounding Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle this weekend has been exhausting. Whether or not you cared, you were inundated with information about her family and speculation about the gown, the guests, and the gospel choir—all parts of a ceremony that was touted to tip royal tradition on its ear, as if the bride being an American divorcee of biracial heritage wasn’t enough to raise both eyebrows and hackles among the British aristocracy (and beyond).

Naturally, Ter and I got up at crap o’clock to watch it on live TV. Neither of us wanted to risk stumbling onto reviews of the dress before we’d seen it ourselves, though I confess I was more curious to see what the groom was wearing. He’d looked so fine at William’s wedding in 2011 that I couldn’t imagine him outdoing himself on Saturday, but he was, in a word, dashing.

Anyway, the gown was surprisingly modest, the guests were a pageant of taste that inspired everything from applause to oh-my-gods, and the gospel choir was riveting. From start to finish, the event planners nailed it. Poor Harry looked about to faint more than once; if not for Meghan holding him tightly by the hand, I feared his knees might have gone on him. I suspect the bride is generally more confident than the groom in any wedding, given that he’s a supporting player while she is queen for a day.

Not so on this occasion, though. The Queen was the queen and the groom a royal prince. That’s competition for any bride, but this particular one handled it pretty well. Besides, as the broadcaster stated, “She entered the chapel as a commoner and left it as the Duchess of Sussex.” A pretty good trade-off for sharing the spotlight on her special day.

What can her mother think of it all? This ordinary woman, a social worker from California, journeyed alone to the UK for tea with Her Majesty, and sat by herself while her daughter married the world’s most eligible bachelor in front of a gazillion witnesses. What in the world must have crossed her mind during the ceremony? Love, naturally. Pride, obviously. Some consternation, I imagine. After all, her only child is now a member of the British Royal Family. That must be like losing your labour of love to a corporate giant, though with this merger, you have to wonder what’s in it for her. Meghan’s life will never be the same, but Meghan will be fine. Harry’s family will circle the wagons to keep her safe—but what of Meghan’s mother? What becomes of her now that her daughter is a duchess?

I thought she seemed a little sad at times during the ceremony. She held herself with dignity and maternal pride, and though tears are expected from the mother of the bride, I couldn’t say for sure that hers were all for joy. When she returns home, leaving her child behind, what happens to her? Can she resume a normal life, or will every move she makes be scrutinized and critiqued, reflected back on her daughter and vice versa, for the rest of her days?

She raised Meghan to make a difference, but I doubt Meghan’s mother saw this coming. Who would? And as the Duchess of Sussex rides into the future with Prince Harry at her side, I sincerely hope that her mother can live in peace, unmolested by the media and/or opportunistic friends. I hope that she finds comfort in her community and joy in her inevitable grandchildren. I hope that her daughter’s destiny gives her no cause for stress or sadness.

I wonder if Doria hopes the same.

“Ghost Story”

They tore down her house. She disappeared for a wink and when she returned, it was gone. An empty lot, littered with wreckage from the home she had known, welcomed her like the gap in a grin left by a knocked out tooth.

So many years, so many memories. Shades of those who had gone before, of lives intertwined by blood and circumstance, bonds formed over decades—all destroyed in a day.

She recalled neighbours in the suite below her attic penthouse: the tech boys hauling their big screen TV into the yard for playoff barbeques; university students burning the midnight oil while cramming for exams. She had banged on the floor when the stereo got too loud and slammed her closet doors to let them know they weren’t alone in their space. Her favourite had been the brown-haired girl who had shyly smiled but never said a word as she passed in the stairwell.

Gone; all gone, and now where would she go?

Time has a funny way of passing. Too soon, she came back for a visit and found the gap in the street’s housing smile filled by a new construct, out of character with its neighbours and occupied by a family of immigrants, her attic penthouse replaced by a little boy’s bedroom, blue with sailboats painted on one wall.

She sat in the armchair near the window and watched over him while he slept. One night he woke up and looked straight at her. She smiled. He blinked twice, accepted her presence, and went back to sleep.

It’s not the house, she decided. It’s the people within it that make it a home.

Ghost Story (Preface)

I’ve heard it said that we don’t have history in Victoria. We have nostalgia. Whichever it is, we definitely have ghosts. I know because I lived with them at Rockland. For seventeen years, Ter and I shared our heritage suite with phantom freeloaders who probably considered us to be the interlopers until they got to know us. Okay, until they got to know Ter. She’s the more attuned of we two; I lived in blissful ignorance for almost a year before she confessed to encountering the red-haired kid the day after we moved into Number 16. Completely freaked out, I demanded to know why she’d said nothing at the time.

“Because I didn’t want to freak you out,” she replied.

I’m fairly sure my Freak-O-Meter would have hit the apex no matter when I was told, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because we’d signed a lease, but I was grateful that she had seen the little guy first. I didn’t see him until sometime later, when we got new neighbours and I spied him flitting into the kitchen from the corner of my eye. I’ll always remember the shock of that bright red hair.

There were other entities, too, though I never saw them. They felt more comfortable revealing themselves to Ter, who respectfully acknowledged their presence and went quietly on her way. As well as the red-haired kid, there was a young girl in the long dress and an older boy with dark hair. We called the three kids “Harry”, “Ron” and “Hermione” after the trio in the Harry Potter books. The house had served as a girls’ school, then a boys’ school, so we reckoned they must have been students. Some years in, we learned from a neighbour that the house had also been an old folks’ home. “That explains the old woman,” Ter remarked, at which my Freak-O-Meter spiked again.

“What old woman????”

“I don’t know who she is, but she’s pretty bitter,” was the nonchalant reply.

Yeah. Ghosts. Whether by history or nostalgia, Victoria has them.

A co-worker’s mother recently sold her house. It’s not a heritage house, but it’s the house my colleague has known for her entire life, so there was a legitimate fear that the new owners would tear it down for development since that’s what seems to be happening in this city of late. It bothers me for more reasons than the architechtural oddities popping up like mutant mushrooms throughout the neighbourhood; and while I sympathized with the potential loss of a colleague’s childhood home, I am most distressed by what happens to the ghosts.

Where do they go? What do they do? Are they tied to the structure or the land? I guess it depends on the ghost, but the conundrum sparked the writing exercise that is tomorrow’s post.

Enjoy.