Canada 150

I love it here. I love Canada. I love being Canadian. I love hearing tourists gush about how friendly we are and how safe they feel within our borders. I am gratified to know that our global reputation is as pristine as any First World country’s reputation can be. We have our problems, sure. Just ask the indigenous people whose struggle to reclaim their stolen heritage continues. Even so, we as a nation are trying to repair the damage done by our colonial predecessors in hope of making something stronger from the wreckage. We may be Canadian, but we’re also human. We can’t be perfect, at least not all the time. We just try a little harder to be respectful, polite, environmentally conscious, compassionate, sympathetic, funny, humble and supportive. Patriotism hasn’t come easily in the past, but in recent years, it’s crept closer to the forefront, and you know what? That’s okay. We should be patriotic. We live in a magical, beautiful, expansive, progressive, diverse, inclusive and wondrous place.

Though I’d like to say I am proud to be Canadian, I am more inclined to say I’m relieved to be Canadian. Pride does have a dark side. The temptation to become smug about the country I call home has increased since superpowers like the US and the UK appear to have lost their lustre, but I refuse to go there. I am proud, yes. I am relieved, yes. I am grateful, yes. But I am here not by my doing. I am here because my father who, on deciding to emigrate from England, wrote to three nations: Canada, Australia, and America.

Canada wrote him back.

Canada welcomed him, his wife, and his four kids (my wee sister was smuggled in utero). I don’t think any of us would have had it turn out differently.

Happy birthday, Canada – and thanks.

With love,

Better All The Time

Except for John Taylor, the Jaguar E-type, and Chocolat’s champagne truffle, nothing is completely perfect. It may seem so at the beginning, but in due course, flaws will become evident. Your shiny exotic sports car will start to misfire. Your dream home will develop a leaky roof. The new colleague you clicked with turns out to be bipolar. Mr. Right comes with two kids and a clingy ex-wife.

You get the picture.

The opposite is also inevitable. What sucks right now will improve. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, that big wheel keeps on turnin’ and everything associated with it is in its own present moment.

What am I trying to say here? Basically, that good stuff co-exists with bad stuff and vice versa. It’s a matter of—there’s that word again—perspective. You can find something positive in chaos and you can find something to kill your joy. It’s your call whether to seek gratitude or not, but it’s also a given that positive and negative happen at the same time. Life is never solely one or the other. It’s always both. What takes precedence is whatever gets your attention. Admittedly, some downers demand attention as part of our learning, but while we’re dealing with the human condition, we can take heart in knowing that everything around us is moving like a Ferris Wheel, some things rising to a pinnacle and others on the descent. Sure, the latter may be construed as depressing, but really, it’s not. It’s life—evolving and revolving.

Many years ago, my father quoted me a Chinese proverb (and I’m paraphrasing here): “Bad luck, like good, cannot last forever.”

And it doesn’t. Change is always happening. The trick is to enjoy the ride—and when it’s scary as hell and you want it to stop, gird your loins and trust that it will, because it will.

With love,

Little Sting

“After Dark” is Elliot Sumner’s latest single. Who is Elliot Sumner, you ask? She (yes, she) is Gordon Sumner’s 24 year old daughter, also known as Coco. Dad is also known as Sting.

If I heard this song without knowing the artist’s name, I’d have thought that someone unearthed a previously unpublished song by the Police. I can’t get over how much like her daddy this girl sounds. The song is a new wave ditty straight out of the 80s, and darned if the bass in the video isn’t the iconic beaten-up bass that I’ve seen on stage at countless der Stingle concerts over the years. I doubt that she’s trying to cash in on her platinum DNA; my guess is that she genuinely wants to be a musician, and she may even have something to call her own … except that she sounds so much like the old man, one wonders how she can possibly stand on her own merit when the comparison is inevitable.

It’s confusing for a fan, as well. I like the song because it sounds like the Police. I like the vocal because it sounds like Sting. So am I a fan of the artist, or am I simply nostalgic for the early work of her father? Is her paternal bloodline a help or a hindrance? Could be that the next generation, the one that has no idea Sting ever played in a new wave band, will fall in love with her the way my generation fell with the Police, and that would be wonderful because she, like every other child of a superstar parent, deserves success in her own right. Tackling success in the same field takes some steely resolve, though. With traits so obviously inherited from a deity, I’d always wonder if I was famous because I was talented, or was the world just honouring my father?

Parents want their kids to be happy and successful … but it can be scary when a daughter is so much like her father.

Just ask mine.

“The Day of Undying Loyalty”

My father could have been Jon Bon Jovi.

Well, not really.

For one thing, JBJ is a year younger than I am, and no matter how quirky are quantum physics, even a Master of the Universe would have trouble engineering that one.

I mean that Dad and JBJ were born on the same day—albeit thirty-one years apart. According to Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers in The Secret Language of Birthdays, anyone born on March 2 will share a bunch of specific traits with millions of others, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Dr. Seuss, Desi Arnaz, John Irving, and the latter half of Simon & Schuster.

So how is it that not everyone born on this date is a rock star, politician, artist, journalist, or business magnate? Personality plays such a strong part in who we are, and an equally strong part in what we become, but every soul is a snowflake. Give each child in a kindergarten class a box of Crayolas and watch how their drawings differ.

It’s half what you get and half what you do with it. What you get is, I believe, predetermined. What you do with it is up to you. We are as much a product of our environment in this life as we are ourselves, and our personalities dictate how we develop, how we adapt, how we endure, and, perhaps, whether or not we survive. I am unsure how much of what we are is influenced by planetary alignment at the time of birth, but I do wonder if the range of available traits depends on the astronomical tableau. I’ve heard that personality is connected to the ego/intellect, and that tells me it’s disposable, as in, we neither bring those traits with us when we come nor take them with us when we go. We might take the knowledge of how to use them, maybe to wield them more confidently in the next go-round, or to leave them in the box and try something else instead … and start by choosing another birthdate.

For the record, my father may not be a rock star, politician, artist, journalist or business magnate to the rest of the world, but in a very real way, he is each of these things to me.

Happy birthday, Dad.

With love,

PHI 7 - TOR 4

Despite the outcome, it was touch and go in the first ten minutes. Toronto sprang into the lead while the Flyers were still getting their game on, and if the Leafs had scored their third before the Flyers got their first, the end result might have been vastly different.

A wild 26 seconds saw the score change three times in Philadelphia’s favour, and after that, the Leafs seemed to quit playing. No complaints here, boy. Suddenly it was all about Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux, the twin sons of different mothers who, last night anyway, could have given the Sedins a run for their money in the “mesmerizing-the-opposition” department.

What did I do differently? I didn’t wear my jersey and I spiked my buttered rum tea with real rum, though I’m becoming less and less superstitious about my part in how the lads play. You gotta wonder on some occasions, though. They recently eked out a win against Los Angeles, a game that would have been attended by a 26 year old hard-core fan had he not been killed in a car crash the day before. His two buddies draped a towel over his empty seat in the stands. The Flyers knew about him—don’t ask me how—and either they rose to the occasion or he was pulling for them on the other side, or both. You just don’t know.

Anyway, my father called to say well done, with the wry aside that he’d been tempted to call during Toronto’s 2-0 lead until he remembered that these are the Leafs so no counting of chickens until the final buzzer sounds. Wisdom manifests in all manner of ways. And as of this morning, we’re 24^th! Hats and horns!

We’re … 25th?!

First day of vacation and I wake up wondering where I write to complain about the new format at Hockey Night in Canada. The Flames are in Vancouver tonight, but I dunno – the draw isn’t the same since Kesler’s become a Duck and I don’t remember when I last watched an early game because the broadcast team is intolerably annoying.

Then I look at the schedule and see that Philly is visiting the Leafs in Toronto. That changes everything!

A few days ago, the boys had clawed their way into 22^nd place in the league standings. Surely they’ve improved since then; they have lots of time to make the playoffs now that their losing trend is over.

Ha!

As of this morning, they’ve slid down into 25^th.

^%$&*$

I’m still tuning in at 4:00. I can’t miss a chance to see them, especially playing against the 10^th place Leafs. It is, after all, my first day of vacation and the Leafs are my father’s team. A hockey dinner of mince and tatties await, and however the game turns out, I’ll have seen my Flyers.

It remains to be seen if Dad stays in my will.

Scotland the Brave?

November 30 is St Andrew’s Day. My office calendar, rather than a Scot, told me; St. Andrew being the patron saint of Scotland, like St. George watches over England and St. Patrick is claimed by the Irish. The three crosses combined make a pretty nifty British flag … but did the Scots and Irish actually want to be part of the United Kingdom? I don’t think so …

Ter and I have been watching Neil Oliver’s History of Scotland, a ten-part series that traces the land of my ancestors from its beginnings under the Picts to the twenty-first century. From the first episode, a particular theme is prevalent: Scots are a difficult people to conquer. The Vikings tried. The Romans tried. The English tried from the day the Romans quit, employing everything from trickery to brute force and failing on all counts. The countries were united by an irony when Elizabeth Tudor died without issue and her Scottish cousin’s son inherited the English throne. The country England wanted to rule now ruled England, so the tables turned and they got cranky over how many Scots had influence in the English court. I can’t blame James VI/I, either. The Scottish nobles hadn’t been that generous with him, but neither had the English. According to Oliver, he had a greater vision for the kingdom, but the only folk who want change are the ones who have something to gain from it so he didn’t have a lot of support from his English lords. They did, however, succeed in Anglicizing the royal Stuarts to the point where Charles I was neither fish nor macfowl and my sweetheart, Charles II, was so thoroughly scunnered by the overzealous Covenanters during his exile that he visited Edinburgh but once—and reluctantly—after his Restoration.

Something else has occurred to me as the series progresses: historically, England has needed Scotland more than Scotland needed England and I suspect the same holds true today. Witness the frantic pandering committed by the British PM ahead of the recent referendum on should Scotland reclaim her independence. The fearmongering worked, but only by a small margin. The doomsday downers were prophesying economic disaster if she broke from the UK. Really? For which side? Economic disaster happens every day; it’s been a given since economics took over the world. Instability inevitably accompanies change, but eventually, all settles down and we move on. Seems to me that Scotland has always been a republic by nature—the crowning of kings served to (sort of) unite the clans under one banner against the English pig dogs, but none save the kings themselves believed they were divine. The country is rich with natural resources; it’s stunningly beautiful in the wildest ways, the people are clever and inventive; heck, the Scottish royal court was more cultured than the English in the time of Henry VIII. His sister’s marriage to James IV was sought to strengthen the Tudors, not the other way round. So somewhere along the line, Scotland began to believe that she couldn’t survive without the English.

I think she can. So do 44.7% of her resident population—and, surprisingly, my father, who has never given me much indication that he favoured one route over the other. The ex-pat was so disappointed by the outcome of the referendum that he dared to put it in writing and has permitted me to post it here. If you ever wondered where I got my gift, here’s your first hint. Enjoy.

* * *

So, now it is over and Scotland is no more.

Unwilling to take a chance on its own prowess and skills but willing to cling to England’s apronstrings and risk that the pre-vote promises will be kept by what the French once called, “Perfidious Albion.”

 It is, I think worth quoting from a well-known source of information the derivation of that phrase as follows:

“Diplomatic sleights, duplicity, treachery and infidelity with respect to promises made or alliances formed with other nations, by the government of England in their pursuit of self-interest.”

It is now, unfortunately too late to say, “Scotland beware.” You believed the crocodile tears, shameful hypocrisies and fearful prophesies of mass unemployment and rising prices made by past masters of duplicity and now must remain with bowed head and bent knee, begging for scraps which may or may not be cast disdainfully from the Westminster table.

In 1305, William Wallace died in agony … and it now appears in vain, at the hands of the English. Perhaps the first verse of a Scottish rallying cry should be re-written, thus:

“Scots wa’ hey wi’ Wallace bled,

Scots wham Bruce has often led,

Ye hiv made yer gory bed,

Noo, lie in it....an’ dee.”

I will now remove the Scottish emblem from my car.  It might leave a dirty scar, but that is only fitting, considering the circumstances.

* * *

I love you, Daddy.

Anniversaries

where the adventure began - July 1, 1984

Ter and I moved into our current abode on August 1, so our residential fiscal year ends on July 31. That means our final rent cheque for the 13/14 cycle will be cashed after today’s stat holiday. I wouldn’t mention it except it so happens that our very first mutual rent cheque was cashed on the same day thirty years ago.

Thirty years.

Yep, Ter and I became roommates on July 1, 1984. Who could have predicted that we’d still be together three decades after we signed the lease on suite 408 at the Landmark building in Sidney-by-the-Sea?

Not us. The plan—in my mind, anyway—had been to share expenses until one of us (probably Ter, who was blonde and beautiful and so freaking pulled together) found Mr. Right. The universe obviously had other ideas, since that paragon of priesthood perfection never materialized, and after all this time, I can honestly say, THANK YOU, UNIVERSE!!!

I should also thank my father, because it was his idea. Faced with the terror of acquiring another twentysomething daughter when the one he had was showing no sign of leaving the nest, he quietly suggested to me that, “Perhaps you two should think of getting an apartment together.”

Well, duh. Therein lies the danger of parents making their home too comfortable for the children—I was twenty-two, had a fulltime government job, and no inclination at all to get my own place. Ter had come back from Edmonton and was living with her folks in their ground floor apartment. She, by comparison, had been on her own since she was seventeen, so when I told her what Dad had said, she was all for it. Thus began “The Ongoing Adventures of Ru and Ter”.

Her childhood experience was in direct contrast to mine, so we each brought unique neuroses and phobias to the party. As we have grown together into adulthood, we’ve sorted through our mutual crap and found our singular magic. We have helped each other to become who we truly are. We’re not done yet, either. There is so much more growing and nurturing and sharing to accomplish, feats that couldn’t be achieved by either of us in company with anyone else. And when we operate as a team? Don’t ask questions, just get out of our way.

A popular (and horribly romantic) misconception is that a girl will marry her soul mate. This is not always so. In fact, it may be less frequently so. Soul mates come in many forms. We travel through time together and take on different roles in each phase of our progress. Whatever she has been and whatever she will be, this time out, Ter is my sistah. My teacher. My yardstick. My cool inspector. My house elf. My guru. My heavy-lifter. My bodyguard. My reality check. She says I never drive her crazy, so I’m unsure how she perceives the condition, but when we argue, we argue from ego, never from spirit. The square root of our relationship is love. Pure, positive, unconditional love.

Could either of us have survived the past thirty years with Mr. Right? Or anyone else, for that matter?

Maybe. But it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.

Pitter Pater

Back in my religious days, I recall sitting in church one Mother’s Day, holding my dad’s hand and listening to the speakers—all male—wax rhapsodic about the gloried sanctity of the women who had raised them to be the supernal specimens of righteous nobility they had become. The most memorable facet of the entire service was my anticipation of what the female speakers would have to say on Father’s Day the following month. Naturally, it made sense to me that, since the boys had been asked to talk of motherhood, the girls would be asked talk of fatherhood. I even dared to hope that I might be invited to speak about my father, and promptly began to construct my dream speech.

Well, I wasn’t asked. No daughters were. Imagine my disappointment when, on Father’s Day, the service began, we sang our hymns and said our prayers, and the first speaker stepped up to the podium. A man. Excuse me, a priesthood holder, who promptly launched into waxing rhapsodic about the gloried sanctity of the man who had raised him to be blah blah blah.

I was so mad that I’ve remembered the slight to this day.

This day being Father’s Day, I’d like to present the speech that I was not invited to give all those years ago, which I would do if I could remember any of it. A lot of time has passed since then, and my relationship with my father has adapted accordingly. A few things between us have remained unchanged, which means they must be true.

My dad is a good guy. He struggles, and has struggled, more than he’s let on over the course of my life, but I have never doubted that he loves me, wants the best for me, wants the best from me, and has been no less demanding on himself. He tells me that I once told him as a father he was great, but as a husband, not so much. Naturally, I don’t remember that conversation and it’s hardly my call anyway, but when I got in where I shouldn’t have gone, I managed to get out with a deeper understanding of life, love, and the complexities of adulthood. That’s the cool thing about my dad. I can talk to him about adulthood. I try not to, being compelled to prove myself a competent player in the game of life, but when he catches me unaware, we have the best discussions.

I learned from him to answer honestly when he asked me what I was thinking. Those drives home from work were invaluable moments to expand on our thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, you name it, we probably talked about it. True, I did most of the talking. He listened and asked questions that encouraged me think more. He dispensed advice, some good, and some that I later regretted ignoring. And some that just plain didn’t work for me—and that turned out to be okay, because as cool as my dad is, he’s not perfect. He’ll be the first to tell you so.

He’ll also be wrong. My father is as perfect as he can be, and that’s how this daughter likes it.

Happy Father’s Day.

With love,

Inner Silence

My father asked me one day if I ever stop talking. He meant it literally, but I was lying when I replied, “Sometimes.” In truth, my internal chatter rarely shuts up and it’s starting to annoy me as much as my external chatter annoys Dad.

I’ve been anticipating the Easter weekend for many reasons, one of which is my intent to slow down and be quiet for an extended period of time. For weeks, my brain has been revving at an unhealthy pace as I try to keep up with office nonsense. On my spare days off, shutting it down has been almost impossible. Today is utterly, completely mine. I’ve planned to write solidly, nonstop except for tea and pee breaks, but do you think my mind has allowed me to focus on anything for more than a heartbeat at a time? A thousand other things, disguised as pleasurable alternatives, have popped up to distract me from my chosen path. Sifting through them has sucked up more time than doing any or all of them likely would.

So this morning, admittedly out of desperation, I tried an experiment. I picked up Ter’s copy of Your True Home—the Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh and sat with it for a minute. I laid the book on my knee, folded my hands atop it, closed my eyes, and pushed everything from thought but a single question: What do I need to know for today?

Eyes still closed, I tipped the book onto its spine and ran both thumbs across the edges of the pages. My left thumb “felt” louder, so I concentrated on the pages comprising the first half of the book. My thumb ran over and over until, finally, a break in the pages appeared. I opened the book, eyes still closed, and thought, Don’t look to the right. Look to the left. I turned my head, opened my eyes, and here is the wisdom that greeted me:

Inner Silence

Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn’t mean not talking and not doing things; it means that you are not disturbed inside, there is no talking inside. If you’re truly silent, then no matter what situation you find yourself in, you can enjoy the silence. There are moments when you think you’re silent and all around you is silent, but talking is going on all the time inside your head. That’s not silence. The practice is to find silence in all the activities you do.

Did I need to hear that? You bet your sweet bippy I did. It’s the best advice I could be given, a Zen version of the paternally ubiquitous “Shut up, Ruth!” that has given me focus, something to remember as I move through my day. Achieving inner silence will help me to be here now, to find joy in each moment, and to follow my heart—at least until my hockey game starts at 4:00. After that, all bets are off.

Until then, however … silence.

Oh My Papa

Dad and wee Ru - 1968

There was a time in my teens when, every night after dinner, my father would rev up the stereo and play Eddie Fisher’s paean to paters everywhere—the sugared chestnut titled “Oh, My Papa.” I think it was his way of reminding my sisters and me (the boys had married and moved on) how lucky we were to have such a kindly, benevolent man at the head of the family ... that, or he enjoyed watching us scatter to our rooms with our hands clamped over our ears. It was sometimes hard to tell with Dad.

It sometimes still is.

While my sibs and I were growing up, our mother was almost always accessible, but Dad was mysterious and a little scary. He was so elusive that time spent with him was precious—unless you were in trouble for something. We all learned early on to walk with our hands behind our backs in case he swatted our butts as we passed. I don’t recall Mum ever threatening us with “wait ’til your father gets home”, but if he was already home …

He sang to me when I didn’t want to go to sleep. He painted me a picture of a polar bear because I asked him to, even though he had never seen one before and had no idea how to go about painting one. (I still have the painting; if I can find it, I’ll post a photo of it.) Dad painted a lot when I was a kid. I loved watching him mix the oils and brush the colours on the canvas. To entertain me—and perhaps himself—during production on a tropical sunset, he told a story about being held captive on a bad island and swimming across the ocean to the good island, pausing en route to do battle with a great white shark that grazed him with its teeth before he sent it packing (he even showed me the scrape on his leg!) Cuddling with him on the couch of a Sunday afternoon, listening to his heart beating strong and slow beneath my ear, I nearly blacked out more than once trying to match my breathing to his. I didn’t dare wriggle, either. No matter how numb I got, I stayed as still as I could for fear of disturbing his nap. It wasn’t as if he had a bad temper; I just wanted to be good so I could cuddle with him another time. Once I hit my teens, I’d sit on the end of the couch and he’d stretch out with his feet in my lap and my paperback propped on his slippers. Occasionally, he was stabbed with my nail file for nudging my book with his toes.

Dad was serious about providing for his wife and family, but he knew how to use his downtime. I learned practical stuff like how to stretch a dollar and bake a crumble from my mother (sewing, alas, never took root). From my father, I learned to dream. And write. And sing. And draw. And how to call an offside in hockey. And that it was okay to have a crush on a movie star. And that if I thought Bram Stoker wrote scary stuff, I should give Dennis Wheatley a whirl.

It seems that he and I can discuss, debate, and dissect any subject. I have talked with my father about the meaning of life, the nature of God, and how to coach in the NHL. For as long as I can remember, he has encouraged open dialogue between himself and his kids. If we are troubled, he wants to help. If we are in trouble, he will help. If all is well, he’s either relieved to hear it or doesn’t believe it for a second.

No matter how old you are, everyone wants their father to praise, commend, and/or recognize them as funny, smart, intelligent, successful adults. Dad and I have had our tussles—what father and daughter haven’t?—but like my mother, I choose to have selective recall. Besides, I have figured out that any conflict stemmed from me growing up and Dad struggling to let go of his little girl. He is thirty years and six months older than me. There was a time when three-and-a-half decades seemed unbridgeable. Not so anymore. My older older brother once observed, “As I got older, Dad got smarter.” Well, as I got older, Dad and I became a lot more alike than is comfortable for him. Turns out we’ve always been alike; it just took this long to realize—and accept—it. I’m good with it … and I hope he is, too.

Today is Dad’s birthday. Listen carefully, Pop; I shall say this only once:

Oh, my pa-pa, to me he is so wonderful
Oh, my pa-pa, to me he is so good
No one could be, so gentle and so lovable
Oh, my pa-pa, he always understood.

Gone are the days when he could take me on his knee
And with a smile he'd change my tears to laughter

Oh, my pa-pa, so funny, so adorable
Always the clown so funny in his way.

three and a half decades later

The Milkman's Son

before the Leppard show in 2005

According to my mother—who should know; she was there—it was a dark and stormy night. The pipes at home had frozen and flooded the flat. My older older brother, a toddler at the time, was staying with his maternal grandparents, so rather than help Dad clean up the water, Mum went into labour. She says she was still cold at the maternity hospital, but at least she was dry, and at the end of the night she had her second little boy, my younger older brother, the self-proclaimed Handsome One, so she figures all was worth it.

On paper, he doesn’t fit the family profile. Four of five kids were born in September. He was born in January. Four of five kids have green or hazel eyes. His are blue. Four of five kids have brown or black hair. His is auburn. In fact, he looks so much like our maternal grandfather that a family resemblance to the Greigs would have to reveal itself in personality … and I’m unsure that it does. His deadliest charm is his sense of humour – razor sharp, lightning fast, screamingly funny, and practically identical to the wit of our mother’s father.

Hmmmmm …

Wedged between my older older brother and my older sister like the jam in a sandwich cookie, he was, quite simply, the brightest splash of comedic colour in my growing up. Six years lie between us, so my earliest memories are vague. I remember a fairly active temper, mostly when I was goading it, but when there was laughter in the house, he was usually in the middle of it. He and my older sister were the perfect comedy team, recording their own radio shows on the old reel-to-reel in the basement (he asked me to provide Indy racetrack sound effects for one skit). He taught me to tackle him like a football player on the front lawn. When he wasn’t putting together models of them, he was downstairs with his pellet rifle, shooting at pictures of old WWII airplanes. He took me to my first hockey game (the Victoria Cougars vs the Medicine Hat Tigers) and drove me to the record store so I could buy my first Elton John album. He’s the headbanger in the family, gunning his electric guitar like a Sex Pistol while my older older brother favoured the folksier acoustic form of modern music. He’s crazy-ticklish. And he’s a one-man Goon Show, able to mimic any of the characters made famous by the British radio troupe of yore.

Actually, I can voice a mean Bluebottle, myself. My brother and I carpooled with Dad for the course of a summer in the early 80s; Dad drove, bro and I bantered in non-stop Goonese. My (our?) father is not a morning person, so getting him to think of cracking a smile is monumental. On those mornings, he’d sometimes take the role of ultra-slick Grytpype Thynne or the frazzled Major Bloodnok, and we’d howl with laughter all the way to town. Those hysterically happy rides to work would never have happened without my younger older brother.

A lot of good times would have been missed without him. The family trek across Canada in 1971. Riotous suppertimes when my arthritis was brand-new and raging. Attending a Def Leppard concert in 2005. Trash talking hockey with his son and recognizing his deeply affectionate nature in his daughter. I don’t recall any serious moments with my younger older brother. I’m afraid that if we tried one, we’d both burst into tears and drown in each other’s arms. A mother lode of passion is packed pretty deep within us; if avid support of our respective NHL teams isn’t hint enough, I suspect that our similar senses of humour are employed in precisely the same way for precisely the same purpose: to deflect and disarm incoming missiles that might otherwise reduce us to emotional rubble. I think sometimes that he and I are more alike to each other than we are to any of the other sibs – that’s why it seems appropriate to wish him a happy birthday today in a language I know he’ll understand:

YING-TONG-IDDLE-I-PO, bro!

PHI 4 – VAN 3 (S/O)

December 30, 2008
one day I'll transcribe the journal entry

December 30, 2013: Same outcome as Saturday against Edmonton, but a vastly different game. The Canucks are far better without the puck than the Oilers are; the Flyers had to work for this win. And I mean work. They scored first, but Vancouver got in front of them in the second period. Again, it was a 2-2 tie going into the third (kinda makes the first two-thirds of a game irrelevant, really), where that darned Daniel Sedin got credit for a rebound that went in off Luke Schenn. Luke-frikking-Schenn. Now I know why Dad thought so little of him as a Maple Leaf. He and Braydon Coburn are more help to the opposition than they are to the Flyers, for crying out sideways. Jannik Hansen had scored Vancouver's go-ahead in the second, and Giroux had tied it up in the last minute of the period, but after Sedin's goal with three minutes left in regulation, I feared for my team’s chances. Neither was I appeased by having Hansen on my pool team. I got a point from him, but augh! At what cost?

I think it was around $15.00, actually. After the third Vancouver goal, I started racking up serious penalty dollars for the swear jar. Three minutes left against a gang of defensive masters? This is when the Canucks clamp down on their lead and clog up the neutral zone. All night I watched them hound whichever Flyer had the puck, no one in orange could swing his stick without hitting someone in blue … and getting a penalty for it, %^$#*. Once again, the Flyers are the most penalized team in the league. Talk about the sins of the fathers. The legacy of the Broad Street Bullies has become guilt by association. I watched a bunch of minor infractions on both sides occur within a single play, and who did the refs finally nab? Granted, the Canucks get their fair share of chintzy calls (because they’re whiners, snicker snort), but my father has a point about coincidental tripping/diving penalties. Either a guy is tripped or he’s not. If he is, call the trip. If he dives, call the dive. It should make no damned difference if he flails on his way down, if he’s tripped, he’s going down, ^&%$#*! But Mark Streit got nailed for being tripped simply because he’s a Flyer. &*^%$.

Whoops. Lost my cool there. I digress. Three minutes left and Schenn the Elder accidentally redirects one past Steve Mason – who was utterly faaaaaaaaaabulous, by the way; he kept the Flyers in it while Vancouver peppered him with 42 shots. I take back my comment about inconsistency.

MY BP is hovering near the blackout level as the clock winds down. The final minute is called. The Flyers pull their goalie. There’s an insane scramble in the Canucks’ zone, the puck squirts sideways and lands on the stick of Schenn the Younger – Luke’s little brother, Brayden – who promptly pops it past Eddie Lack. Philadelphia has tied the game! The orange-clad go wild, my peripheral vision dims, and the game goes to overtime.

No joy there, though it was a bit more exciting than the Saturday night OT. Vancouver wanted to finish before the shootout and Philly had to play along. To no avail, however. Neither team scored, so to the shootout we go.

Mike Santorini vs. Steve Mason. Mason makes the save. Yay!

Vincent Lecavalier vs. Eddie Lack. Vinnie scores. Yay!!

Ryan Kesler vs. Steve Mason. Mason doesn’t have to make the save; Kes fakes a shot then loses the puck before he can launch it. Phew.

Claude Giroux vs. Eddie Lack. Lack makes the save. *$&%^.

Daniel Sedin vs. Steve Mason. Yikes. But Mason stays with the play … and Philadelphia wins in the shootout!!!!!!

Celebration ensues, during which I collapse in my chair and realize that I haven’t taken a full breath (except to swear) since the puck dropped in OT. I’ve watched three Philadelphia games in a week. That’s more than I often see in a season. They won all three, by brute force and dumb luck, but they seem to have gained some momentum heading in the second half of the season. They’re in Calgary tonight then off to Colorado on the 2nd, so I likely won’t see them again for a while. It’s kind of a relief, actually. My heart can’t take much more live action.

Neither can my wallet. After last night, I’ll have to ask if Ter can break a twenty.

Auto Biography VIII

“The Bumblebee’s Camaro”

1990. Ter was starting her first fulltime government job and I was working graveyards at the radio station for $6.00 an hour. Blue Silver was our primary mode of transport, but with my odd hours and Ter now working 9 to 5, one vehicle was going to be challenged. We were living out of town and, as my younger older brother once described it, the bus service to and from consisted of “Three buses a week and all on Monday morning.”

It was time for Ter to buy herself a car.

She had admired the 1980s Chev Camaro for as long as I had known her. When she pictured herself owning a car, that was the one. She fancied the Berlinetta model, but has never been that stubborn about compromise. She came home one day all pumped about seeing a 1987 Camaro parked by the roadside with a “for sale” sign in its window and wanted me to go with her to see it.

You’re supposed to dream about the car of your dreams; that’s why it’s called the car of your dreams. You’re not supposed to own one from the get-go. That was my belief, anyway. Our family vehicles had always been previously-owned, functional for the purpose, and apparently expensive to maintain. We have no mechanics in the family, so whenever something went wrong with the car, it was a costly pain in the posterior for my parents. I grew up expecting the same fate to befall me, so despite my passion for the art of automotive design, Thunder had been chosen for practicality over aesthetics. Silver had been far less realistic given my financial situation, but she was a classic Mustang, end of argument.

Ter grew up in the big city. Neither parent drove, so there had been no family car. She learned to drive in 1985, taking her road test in my Dodge and sharing Silver until it became evident that a second vehicle might be in order. Her auto experience so differed from mine that it never occurred to her that she should start small with something practical, like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic. She had no idea that you work your way up to a sportscar. Naturally, I didn’t tell her any of this; I figured she would look at the car, decide it was too expensive, too big, too far beyond her reach, and let it go.

She didn’t. She bought it.

In her purest state, Ter is a bumblebee with absolutely no concept that her aerodynamics make flight impossible. If she wants something badly enough, she simply makes it happen. I have seen her will in action countless times over the years and, good or bad, it remains one of the world’s unsung wonders. One of my favourite stories is of her dad sitting out with one of his cronies when she drove her snappy new prize into the parking lot at their apartment building. Dad’s pal said to him, “Is that her boyfriend’s car?”

Dad proudly replied, “No, it’s my daughter’s.”

He knew.

Auto Biography V

“Blue Silver”

       “Only you would spend more money to buy a car that’s older than the one youʼre giving up.”

“But, Dad, it’s a ’66 Mustang!”

 

I mean, really. I was 26 years old, I was working fulltime. Thunder was packing it in ... and it was a ’66 Mustang!

My brother-in-law co-signed for me and the deed was done. I got behind the wheel to take her off the lot and the salesman said to me, “Don’t let your boyfriend drive.”

Who needs a boyfriend? I thought, gleefully. I have a ’66 Mustang! A creampuff V6 automatic with 66,000 miles on the odometer (this was in 1987), that came to me by way of a divorce where the wife tried to kill her ex-husband by selling his baby.

She was absolutely ripe for the name “Blue Silver”, taken from Duran Duran’s song The Chauffer, which features the phrase “sing blue silver”.

When I was laid off from my fulltime government job, Silver took me up and down Vancouver Island in search of radio work, then over the Malahat and back during the summer when I landed a weekend shift at the Duncan station. Finally, I nailed the graveyard shift at an AM station in Victoria. For a year, Blue Silver stood out all night on Douglas Street and was only towed once—I am convinced because she was a classic Mustang and the tow asshole couldn’t stand that she wasn’t his.

My wee sister cheekily called her a “character vehicle” – with good reason.

The carburetor iced up in winter. At 6:00 every morning after my on-air shift, I had to run the engine curbside until the temperature needle reached halfway up the dial or she would stall at a traffic light; if the traffic lights were with us, we could cruise 12 blocks without stopping and charge up Hwy 17 to home just as Ter was getting up to go to work.

The driver’s door clunked each time it was opened. I lubed the hinges with vegetable oil, to no avail.

Our happiest speed was 70 miles per hour, when I could lift my foot from the gas and the far rear wheel would squeal like a delirious hamster galloping for its life.

I got my first and only speeding ticket in that car, peeling off the highway and racing through a residential area on a mission to collect Duran Duran concert tickets from the mall outlet. The cop gave me points and I think there was a fine, but I was in a hurry to get where I was going so didn’t pay that much attention.

The AM radio was usually tuned to a classic rock station in Vancouver that featured “Beatle breaks” every weekday at 11:00 a.m. Classic tunes seemed more fitting with Silver’s style, but there were other, more current, musical moments to be had. Ter chauffeured me home from the dentist after I had survived some horrifying procedure and couldnʼt sit up let alone handle the wheel – Bruce Springsteenʼs new song was released on that day and I swear to this one that it’s called “Burger in the Skyˮ. I was on the road at Thanksgiving when DD’s new single, I Don’t Want Your Love, premiered and I damn near drove off the road at how good the song was. And once my Christmas present stereo was installed, I sang Make Love Like a Man with Def Leppard when their “Adrenalize” album was released in 1992.

Good times.

Alas, the car of my dreams fell into my lap at the wrong time in my life. A year after I got the graveyard gig, the station went automated from midnight to 6:00 a.m., so there went my radio career. I wound up on social assistance and Silver wound up on the street when Ter bought her first car in 1990. Newer and therefore more reliable, the Camaro got the driveway and Silver was housed elsewhere, changing locations whenever the vandals found her. A front tire was stabbed. A Halloween pumpkin pitched overnight struck and dented her rear quarter. Keys were dug along her near side. And one day, when the continually-clunking driver’s door opened, a god-awful POING! preceded the spring shooting skyward from between the hinges. That door swung free forever after, so turning your back on it guaranteed a shove in the butt.

And then the steering began to go.

I couldn’t afford to keep Silver safe from vandals or safe to drive. My dad – he who had advised me to “get off the moon” when I surprised him with my proud purchase – generously put up the cash to get the work done, but the end was nigh.

Ter and I moved to a costlier flat downtown. Keeping Silver was now completely impractical. I was only working half-time. I had nowhere to park her, no money to maintain her, and once in town, nowhere to drive her. Five years after I bought her, she was sold to a unit supervisor with the BC Ambulance Service for half of what I paid. I handed over the keys, got into Ter’s Camaro, and dared not look back.

In hindsight, I adored my Pony, but I didnʼt fully appreciate the jewel in my possession. If I had, I would have made one decision differently with an eye to keeping her … but even then, success was no given. Character vehicles are expensive when you have a full time paycheque to spend on them. It happened as it was meant to, but the single nameable regret in my life is letting Blue Silver go.

For my birthday that year, Ter gifted me with an 8X10 photo of my parents and me taken in happier times with the Mustang as a prop. I opened the package, burst into tears and cried, “I love this picture! Silver is in it!”

 

 

Mum, Dad, Ru and Blue Silver 1990

Unforgettable

I was listening to Nat “King” Cole the other night and had to stop what I was doing when Unforgettable started playing. That’s a sign. There are songs I stop to hear for one reason or another at any given time, and then there are songs that I stop to hear whenever, wherever, every time. Unforgettable is such a song.

It takes me back to dancing with my dad in my parents’ living room; swaying and stumbling, really, because I never learned to dance, but it felt so good to be in his arms while he crooned along with Nat and I tried not to cry. I dunno, maybe that’s when the song became so precious to me, but in truth, I loved it before then. I must have, because I was vexed when the Ford Motor Co. used it to sell Thunderbirds. That was when David Foster got the brilliant idea to have Natalie Cole sing along to her father’s recording and started the trend of duets with dead people, no disrespect intended to those who went before.

I don’t know if Unforgettable was Nat’s signature tune; he recorded so many beautiful pieces that it’s hard to name them all, so I’m lucky to have an actual favourite. I love Mona Lisa and Nature Boy and Autumn Leaves and Stardust, but Unforgettable trumps them all. I can sing most of it before I start to choke; the last two lines will always make me cry:

That’s why, darling, it’s incredible

That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable, too.

Mrs Bones

Another Hot Red Cantaloupe

No walk for me today – my right knee blew up like a red cantaloupe overnight (again), and while I’ve managed to get it to bear weight, it fights me on bending so better not to attempt the stairs without someone home to call 911 if it buckles. It’s not an excuse to avoid walking, either; I’m miffed about it because I really enjoy my solitary sojourns on my mornings off.

No matter. I have appeased my OCD regarding dust on the dark wood furniture and am ready to hit the writing computer when I’m done here. In fact, horror of horrors, I got an idea for untangling the knot I left in the novel at the same time I got a nibble for my next scene with Cristal. This means a little internal duelling to decide which thread gets my attention. It’ll be a good writing day.

I got my marathon Newsroom viewing done yesterday, when my right knee blew up the first time and kept me off work as well as off my feet. Two days running, it’s flared at 4:00 in the morning and I can’t figure out why. The usual suspects are notably absent from my diet, so it must be, er, um, hormones. These wonderful shifts in the female cycle can cause arthritic flares. I swear, whoever said it was great to be a girl had to be a guy.

Not only have I been dealing with hormones since I was thirteen, I’ve been dealing with arthritis since then as well. My younger older brother, The Handsome One, tagged me with the nickname “Mrs. Bones” when I was a teenager and still calls me by it thirty-some years later. It’s nice to be special that way. I have a few nicknames, but this one is my sentimental favourite.

I don’t know how my illness affected the rest of my family. I do know that I wasn’t the only one who had to cope with it. My focus was exclusively narrowed on getting through every day, sometimes moment by moment, so either I didn’t notice how everyone else reacted or they did such a good job of hiding it that I wouldn’t have seen it if I had been looking. We’re a pretty stoic bunch despite the powerful emotion roiling beneath our collective skin. I don’t remember talking about it with any of them. I tried not to talk about it at all. I just … got through it. My mother believed that she had done something to make God mad and He was taking it out on me; I hope she’s let that go because I never ever believed that. My bones were my challenge, but being aware of how much Mum suffered for my pain, I did all I could to be as normal as my healthier siblings – thrice-weekly physio and ongoing medical appointments notwithstanding. Mum was with me every step of the way, for which I am eternally grateful, but I also know the rest of the family, my wee sister especially, felt the loss of her attention.

Ironically, both my mother and my wee sister have been diagnosed with the same cursed thing during the last decade, and my father is starting to feel the effects of “everyone’s bones” – the arthritis we all get as wear and tear builds on ageing joints. Each of them has said to me at some point in the past few years, “I don’t know how you did it.”

You know what? Neither do I. I sat with a bag of ice on my knee this morning and stupidly said to Ter, “I think my walk is toast today.” She gave me the look that warned I’d be toast if I tried to push it – my parents once worried how I would manage when I left the nest. With Ter on board, they truly have no need to be concerned. I’m more afraid of her than I ever was of them!

Annoyingly painful as these incidents are, they serve as a good reminder of where I came from and what I was able to overcome with the support of my whole family. Even if all my brother could do to help me feel better was to give me a nickname, he did it. And it helped.

Hockey Woes of a Hockey Ho

#16, Captain Bobby Clarke
circa Ru's Hormonal Ignition

When I was growing up, Hockey Night in Canada was nothing more than the program that ran after The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. At that point, my parents were affluent enough to have acquired a second TV, a portable black and white, to solve the burgeoning viewing issues between the men and the women in the house. My father and two brothers would disappear upstairs at 8:00 on Saturday night. I’d stay in the living room with my mother, two sisters and the “big” TV. I don’t remember what we watched, but at infrequent intervals, the war cry of the male sports fan would shake the walls from upstairs: “He SCOOOORES!!”

Flash forward to February 1974. The family had relocated to BC, save the firstborn son who stayed in Ontario to pursue his own path. My second brother (“the Handsome One”) was about to be married and my father was about to lose his hockey-watching buddy. Mum took my sisters and me aside to suggest that Dad might appreciate it if his daughters developed some interest in the Great Canadian Game. It didn’t have to be an obsessive interest, but enough that one of us could sit with him for a while and know something of what was happening on screen.

In typical Ru fashion, I took it to heart.

One day I wandered into the living room where Dad was watching his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. I plunked myself onto the sofa and asked who they were playing. It turned out to be the Philadelphia Flyers.

Talk about a destiny point.

I decided—because I always enjoy contradicting my father—to stay the course and root for the opposition to his team. Harmless fun, right? Only I was almost 14 years old and got a glimpse of the Flyers’ captain. Whoa-ho-hoaaa, Nellie! Flowing blond curls and an angel face. He was missing his front teeth and had a potty mouth to boot, but apparently I’m good with that for I fell immediately in love.

From that moment, I was a blood-and-bone Flyer fan.

They won back-to-back Cups during my first two years and haven’t seen one since, though they got pretty darned close a few years ago. Captain Bobby Clarke has graduated from legendary warrior hero to management scum, but I still wear a jersey with his name and number on the back. For years, Dad and I spent every Saturday and Wednesday night in the den downstairs, watching hockey no matter who was playing. We saw the Edmonton Oilers in their gangly, coltish youth (Paul Coffey was a serious threat to Clarkie for a time) and I tried to change my allegiance to a Canadian team so full of energy and promise. I did well, thanks to #7, but when the Flyers came to town, I accidentally cheered when they scored on the Oilers. That was a sign.

I bleed black and orange.

I lost touch for a while. Young adulthood has different priorities, but I was always aware of the Flyers. Dad kept me apprised, with the regulation plethora of sarcastic sidebar comments attributed to embittered Leaf fans, but I didn’t watch a game for almost a decade. I missed the Oilers’ Stanley Cup dynasty and the retiring of Clarke’s number in Philadelphia.

Then one day while flipping channels in 1995, I landed on a TOR/PHI game and called my father to razz him. I don’t recall who won that game, but my passion for the sport was rekindled with a flamethrower, and since then, if there’s a game on, I’ll watch it.

Playoffs are the worst. I get so stressed out that I’m practically fetal by the end of a game, and the deeper my team gets is directly related to how shredded my nerves are. The Philly/Boston series three years ago nearly killed me. The Flyers were down 3-0 in the best of seven and had given up three goals in Game 4. By some miracle (due no doubt to my savaging of the Universe between periods), they clawed their way back to win the game, the series and the eastern conference final, but the effort drained them and they couldn’t beat Chicago for the Cup. &*^%$

Their series against Pittsburgh last year was a literal riot, rife with goals and penalty minutes. It was truly wild fun, and they won that round, but blew it to New Jersey in the conference semi-final. ^$#%*

They haven’t been the same since Mike Richards was traded to LA. And now that captain Chris Pronger looks like he’s done for good, there’s nothing holding them together. This half-baked season was a nightmare that couldn’t have been saved if they’d had another 34 games. They have some truly talented forwards—I consistently lose Claude Giroux to someone else in the office hockey pool, &^$%#—but there’s not much on the blue line and whatever the heck Bryzgalov thinks is in his job description, it isn’t stopping the puck. Sigh.

The regular season isn’t over until Tuesday, but the Flyers were officially finished last week. So were the Oilers, so the 2013/14 Stanley Cup playoffs will be easier on my nerves (sort of), and on Ter’s. She spends a lot of time talking me off the ledge at this time of year despite being a passionate fan herself. Edmonton born, she’s all about the Oilers and sick at their 7 year non-playoff drought, but no one beats me for drama. I’ve got a hate-on for most of the eastern conference teams and don’t care for many in the west, either; not the ones who got to the playoffs this year, anyway. National pride carries some weight: when my first choice goes out, I will cheer a Canadian team to the final … I sure wish Winnipeg had made it.

Sigh.

We’ll see what my heart does in the first round. I really hate to do this, but in the long run, I may have to become a temporary V-V-V … Nope, can’t do it. Can’t become enough of a Canuck fan to hope they win the Cup. I really like Ryan Kesler, though. I’d be okay if he won it – and the way the rest of the team has played, if they do repeat the final with a better outcome, it will be by riding on his back.

He was once owned by Philadelphia. What the heck were they thinking?

Sigh.