moving home

To the uninitiated it might seem I am always on the move. In fact, to me it seems that I am always on the move. This month I am again moving home. It sometimes seems like we just got here, yet it will have been just shy of 4 years in this house when I leave (including the 6 months I wasn't here but my stuff was). I'm leaving under much different circumstances than I moved in with - a dream lived and died in this house. But other dreams have taken its place, and this move will facilitate them. 

In fact, 3 years and 11 months makes this one of the longer stays in one residence for me, certainly as an adult. In 48 years I've now moved 24 times* (including 2 moves in Kingston, which felt like homes; but not including two years in university dorms, which never were home for me). You'd think I'd be good at moving, and with my spreadsheets and sticky notes and 'moving tool kit' and penchant for organization maybe I am, but I still hate it. I have friends who have moved even more frequently and think nothing of it, but for me, having created a real home, there's always some sadness in the leaving. 

And this has been a home. It's the first home I've created with a partner since leaving my marriage, and we moved in calling it our love nest never thinking the honeymoon would end. It's been a safe space for my sons to come and go from. It's hosted parties and Christmases and Easters. We jumped feet first into the gardening, and soon discovered it to be a mud bog of effort though it still creates beauty and joy. I doubt I will ever again have a kitchen I love as much as this one - it's sunny, and spacious and warm and there's room in it to share work and laughter. I don't love cooking, but I love cooking in this kitchen. 

The condo I'm moving too will also be a home. My sons will again come and go. The 'stuff' that makes a place mine will surround me. It will, in time, host its own parties and Christmases and memories. I relish the bigger bathtub and the in-suite laundry and no longer having the least-attractive commute in Victoria. I can't wait to be walking distance to stores and restaurants, and to be more convenient for friends to come by or meet for coffee and walks. It will be a good space - one I hope to stay in longer than I've been here. 

It's time to go. It's time to close this chapter. But if there are tear stains on some of the tissue-wrapped photo frames, I'm sure you'll understand why. 

* The rundown, for those keeping track: 

• Quesnel - 1
• Kamloops - 1
• Prince George A - 3 (?)
• Chetwynd - 3
• Prince George B - 1
• Aldergrove - 1
• Port McNeill - 2
• Fort Saint James - 2
• Castlegar - 1
• Prince George C - 2
• Victoria - 5
• Kingston - 2

Me Before You: a book club review

There was more to Jojo Moyes' novel Me Before You than I anticipated, but not quite as much to it as their could have been. I know that in general we are discouraged from judging a book by its cover, but that's like saying not to judge people for how they present themselves - a nice idea, but a little naive. When a book looks like the prototypical 'chick lit,' I don't have high expectations. 

The characters in Me Before You, particularly the lead character Louisa, are complex and sympathetic, except when they're not meant to be. Louisa's parents are well drawn, perfectly flawed, struggling, inadvertently cruel and loving, unfair without malice, and limited by their own concerns. Her sister - the favoured daughter despite being completely self-absorbed and having quit college due to an unplanned pregnancy - is quintessentially sisterly. Loving when she's not being a bitch, and there when the chips are down. 

Though the plot of Me Before You sometimes verges on the maudlin and overwrought, it kept my attention and moved at a compelling pace. It didn't rush the reader or the characters, but their development over time was believable and rewarding. I sometimes thought the author was being manipulative, but that's because my reading was flawed by a misleading spoiler. I wish I could read it again for the first time and see if I still felt that way. 

Me Before You is set in a small English town, and as our book club hostess said "is Pride and Prejudice with a gang rape." In fact, though, the gang rape is one of the most poorly managed aspects of the plot. The main story is between charming, lackluster 26-year old Louisa who is perfectly happy with her job at a diner and living with her parents until the diner closes and she take a position as a 'carer.' Her client, Will, is the epitome of the entitled, public school attending, man of action, upper middle class Englishman. He's also bitter and suicidal since being hit by a car left him a quadriplegic. 

Despite all it has going for it, Me Before You fails to deliver. It broaches gang rape, teen pregnancy, the rights of the disabled and assisted suicide, and yet my over-all impression was of whip cream: it looks great and tastes good, but really doesn't satisfy. The fault lies mainly in the low reading level - it's a rare writer who can address complex issues with simple language; Moyes is not one of those writers. I do recommend the book; it was thought-provoking in a 'table topics' kind of way - it raised the point, but did little to really inform. 

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What a brilliant woman our Teacher Lady is - her family was in the middle of moving this month but she didn't want to miss her turn hosting, so she booked a suite in a lovely downtown hotel and hosted us there. 

Downtown drinks after were an option. A dip in the pool could have been an option (if it hadn't been closed for maintenance). More ladies showed up than have attended in a year (in fact, everyone except Little E was there, her excuse being 39 weeks pregnant), and the food was outstanding.  It was, in fact, the perfect book club night. 

I wish I could have stayed over with Teacher Lady. It was a great reminder that we live in a beautiful city that people visit from all over the world. 

life in the time of hyperbole

I am sometimes accused of being a drama queen, of playing things up, or (at best) of "having a way with words." Part of that comes from being writerly, some from a vivid imagination, and some from my ongoing mental health battles. But it occurs to me that in this present culture, hyperbole is the norm - a cacophonous crescendo as too many voices work to be heard.

Dramatic tension is the life-blood of all fiction and most non-fiction writing - whether that's for TV, short stories, 'creative non-fiction', or, increasingly and perhaps problematically, journalism. If the story doesn't capture the reader's imagination, some other flashing headline will. I have taken a small and meaningless stand against the mental spam, click-bait, formulaic video and article headlines that are the standard pap of Facebook these days. No matter how compelling the story might otherwise be, if you use one of these ridiculous overstatements, I will not reward you with a click:

Ugh. My head. 

No video has yet changed my life. 

No laughing baby has made me re-assess my philosophy.

No rendition of "Let it Go" has driven me to rhapsodies of spirit and soul.

And yet, I am pulled to play that game. When the whole of society has turned the volume up to 11 and crying wolf is the most common form of communication, how do you make yourself heard, and how do you find the room to think?

That's the task before me for the next 17 days - to create quiet and find a way through the yowling morass to a high place where I can see clearly.

i believe...

I believe. 

I believe in the magic of a new year;

in the possibility of a clean page. 

I believe in fresh starts and umpteenth chances. 

I believe in taking a moment to catch your breath, dust off your scraped soul, and rise again. 

I believe that even though our numbering of hours, days, months and years is a social construct, they are imbued with the power we assign them.

And I assign these days of transition the power of completion and resurrection. 

I believe in the year before me. 

I believe in me. 

God rest ye, merry, gentle man.

The phone call came in the middle of Christmas evening, freeing us from a hilarious/painful card game, and bringing life and family into clear focus. My Uncle Stan had waited for two of his three sons to arrive and wish him Merry Christmas before escaping the cancer he's been fighting for two years. As with any cancer death, there is relief in the sorrow. Uncle Stan was clear-minded, appreciative of a life well-lived and grateful for the love that surrounded him. He had relatively little pain, and his wife and other care-givers were spared many of the ongoing indignities and cruelties of cancer  - the pain, the loss of bodily control, the dwindling self. 

And still, he is gone. My cousins will again bury a parent taken by cancer. My mom and her surviving brother have lost the big brother who looked out for them all their lives. Last evening when my mom returned to the table after the phone call from my cousin, she said to her surviving brother, "it's just the two of us now." And my sister quickly pointed out that it's the two of them, and their spouses; their children and grandchildren; their nephews and nieces and friends old and new, some of whom grew up with my parents and uncles in the kind of small town that creates friends-who-are-family. They have lost their brother, and they are not alone. 

We will all mourn Uncle Stan in our way. I am reminded again of the circles of grief - to offer support to the inner circles and accept support from circles further out. For me, I have lost one of the several men in my family who are both traditionally masculine - provider, fixer, doer - and gentle souls - a humourist, a musician, a man who felt and loved and displayed his love. When Uncle Stan said "hi sweetheart, how's it going; how are your boys" they were never idle questions. He was the father of sons, the grandfather of grandsons, and knew what it means to raise men. He also never failed to ask, with genuine hope and interest, if I had written anything new. I thought he asked me because he was loving, but then my mom said he asked her often about my writing as well, and ... maybe it makes no difference to anyone else anywhere, but it mattered to me that he was out there waiting to read what I wrote. 

Yesterday was Christmas, and I was reminded, once again, that the best part of Christmas is still my family. An easy, laughter and gift-filled morning with my youngest son, one sister & her partner, and my parents. A small quiet interlude, then dinner at which we were joined by an aunt, uncle and cousin. Much food, slightly less wine, and even more laughter filled my parents' home.

And then the phone call we all expected and did know whether to dread or hope for came, and the voices that had rung with laughter became our comfort. Family. It is our beginning, and if we are truly blessed it is there at the end. 

And so, to my sweet loving Uncle Stan I say, God rest ye, merry, gentle man.  

Just a little video from 2014 of my mom singing with her brother - sorry my voice is louder than theirs.