Brains Leaking

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GoldfishThe doctor’s office is a sardine can of suffering humanity stacked side-by-side in pinched discomfort.  I am waiting for the receptionist. Her head is an auburn porcupine slung with a device that curls along her cheek and stops suddenly at her mouth.  With practiced courtesy she spills instructions to the soul on the other side of the wire, concludes her conversation and hands me a clipboard, without the welcome of her eyes.  There is nowhere to sit so I stand aside, complete the form and wait for a seat.

We who wait here do not talk with one another; we recede into private worlds.  We numb ourselves with the analgesic of glossy magazines, and await our turn like automobiles halted by highway construction.  The eldest among us twitches when his name is called and rises with help from his white-haired mate.  He shuffles down the L-shaped corridor and disappears at the bend. I take his seat, and wait for the mention of my name.

A big-boned nurse emerges from an inner office with a file which she deposits in a black tray.  In my imagination I see an earth-woman, milk-filled, spilling over with hugsn’kisses for her children.  She commiserates with a lady tucked in a coat of cobalt blue, buttoned to the throat as if protecting from a wind that only she can feel.  Like I, she is one among the multitudes who have gathered here to beat back the hound of encroaching mortality.

The screen above her releases bursts of high-definition intensity: black vehicles cruise past the Paris Opera; vibrant women, coiffed and painted to perfection, fill the evening with cascading laughter; sleek, sun-bathed bodies, flaunt displays of health and vigour.  Above the splash of cobalt, photonic images swim about in a rectangle of electrons. They are goldfish in a bowl, insouciant denizens of a world where youth, power and pleasure are worshipped; a world where disease and old age are obscenities.

An assistant recalls me from my daydream; she is amiable, she screens me and the doctor declares: take-this-do-that, avoid the obvious and all will be well.  The clinic recedes in my rear-view mirror, and at home the evening is soured by the hypnotic violence of television news.  Glutted, I turn off this herald of a nervous world and walk upstairs.

I check my e-mail, and review photos made a few days past: a lovely woman in red lipstick looks directly at me from a placard; it is inscribed with a brief conversation between passersby.  One stranger says, “Are you really alive?”  Scrawled in red reply, the second says, “Yes, but it’s painful.  A Facebook bloop announces another post.  One, recalling a conversation overheard at a restaurant, catches me like a fish: “brains…” it says, “leaking…out…of…ears.”  It is another dialogue in the litany of daily misery.  I turn off the computer and go to bed.

In the Age of Oakley

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Dr.-WelbyDr. Oakley’s baggy eyes looked directly at me as he searched my chest with the cold, round instrument. Rubber hoses flowed from each end into his hairy ears. And I looked back in fear; wondering if he was going to give me an injection. At seven years of age I was terrified of needles, and when my father escorted him to my bedroom the surrounding comfort of comic books, electric train and other toys could not ease the anxiety neatly hidden within me.

The ritual was always the same: If he dropped the cold thing into his black leather bag, I would not be pierced; but if he placed it on my bed, then…oh then. I watched him withdraw the probe from my ribbed cage and saw the jowls above sharing his assessment with my fretful mother: the pneumonia had receded.

As was their habit, my mother and father invited him to stay a moment to share a glass of home-made wine. I could hear them from the bedroom, expressing in broken English their appreciation for his efforts. And before he left for his next home visit my parents would insist, despite his best to decline, that he receive a gallon of ruby appreciation.

He was not a stranger to our kitchen-parties where immigrants in faded suits – card-playing, wine-drinking, hearty eaters – burst into songs from the old country; where strong working-men cried at Christmas, so far from home; and where smotherly hens clucked at children raised on home-made bread and generous kisses. In those days, everyone was equal in their poverty and Dr. Oakley’s presence affirmed us.

But some time in my teens we moved to a larger city, and when my father called our new physician, a young fellow from the South, he refused to come, saying he did not make home visits. This unfamiliar, cooler way of healing ran alongside the changes of a world in convulsion, where transformations would insinuate themselves into the fabric of our lives and change us forever.

In high-school I learned that Dr. Oakley had died of a heart attack. Despite my memories of his black bag and needles, I missed him and the laughter he shared with my parents. The age of Oakley is ended. And I wonder whether we have lost more than we have gained in our trade of soul for the cold reassurance of science and technology. The age of kitchen-parties, as I knew them, are ended too; discarded like faded suits, for Armani and stainless steel appliances.

Kissed by Spiders

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nun_p1650441Sister Mary Albert was a tall black bird with a white throat.  Her habit floated behind her gaunt exterior like a little black tail as she clicked down the school corridor on bird-feet.  Children were afraid of this nun and whenever I saw her approaching I held my breath.

When she spied a troublemaker – someone running in the hall or wearing shoes instead of slippers – her scowl would tower over him while she fingered the dark brown rosary beads that hung from her narrow waist.  It is her mottled, stiletto fingers which I most remember from the fifth grade.  While scolding me, her thumb and forefinger would pinch my scrawny arm like a spider’s kiss.

She wasn’t always severe, this bride of Christ; sometimes she would smile and for a moment I could almost trust her.  The menacing clouds would retreat, the sun would shine and I would be tempted to remove my storm gear.  On one occasion she beamed when I spontaneously donated ten cents to the mission for poor children.  But in those days the little professor within me could not trust the interplay of cloud and sun in this love-starved woman.

She was the Sister Superior, the principal, a martinet who let nothing slide by her, and in the sixth grade fate scheduled me into her classroom.  When her glowering form entered the room all were expected to rise as one and proclaim, “Good morning, Sister Mary Albert!”  No one sat down until she did.  Everyone was expected to have his dictionary lying on the left hand side of his desk – not the right side.  When you were spoken to you rose, then sat when she nodded.  And when she exited, all stood whether it was the end of class or not.

There was a host of rules to be followed, like the red ink decree.  It was simple: you could not write in red ink; only she could because it was the colour of correction; blue was mandatory for everything but math, for which only pencil was to be used.  One day, when she surprised us with a quiz my pen was out of ink.  Fearing a zero, I risked using a red ball-point.

My felony was quickly discovered.  She confronted me before the class and had me follow her to a back room where my hands shared ten swats with the grey belt we called the Beaver Tail.  And when I began to cry she offered a hug which I righteously pushed away.  I was later mollified by the knowledge that my classmates had been plotting to leave the room in protest.

That summer our family moved to another city.  The years passed, I graduated, and one day as a junior in university, I saw her standing alone at the entrance to a mall: still a bird whose hollow bones were vacuum packed in skin.  Old and compressed, she no longer seemed to be the great heron with the bladed beak…more a vigilant sparrow with little eyes surveying the terrain around her.  She recognized me, we shared pleasantries, but there wasn’t much to say; so I parted and let her slide back into the humus of memory.

Forty-four years have elapsed since that mall encounter.  And as I write, I feel a surprising tenderness for her, kindled by the memory of sunny moments that occasionally darted from behind her storm.  Who was Sister Mary Albert?  Was she born with the black’n’white pinions of the sisterhood?  Or had she once been a giggly young sixth-grader with a honey-blonde ponytail?  As a young woman had she ever fallen in love?  Or was it love betrayed that made her so bitter?  Perhaps she was reflexively passing something on when her spider’s lips kissed my skinny arms.  Perhaps she too had been kissed, by spiders much greater than she.

Like A Serpent in the Belly

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Roman NoseMemory…

Angelo’s Roman nose is a monument on an otherwise slim, narrow face.  In the third grade he defends it against the taunts I hurl by pushing me and running away.  Reflexively I throw a rock, but am alarmed when it strikes the back of his head.  Concerned and repentant, I follow his tears home where I subject myself to his parents’ reproach, and to their threat to tell my mom and dad.  Soon after, he and I – impelled by the mysterious logic of childhood – become friends and together navigate the shoals and reefs of Catholic school.

Angelino is his baptismal name but the neighbourhood just calls him Ange.  We are skinny Italian kids, whom no amount of pasta or homemade bread can fatten.  With calories burned in the forests of our adopted country, we are always dirty, curious and gloriously alive.

Ange comes to all of my birthday parties where he plays his accordion while the rest of us goof around like puppies.  We are innocents who have not yet awakened to the snake in the garden – and in the third grade it bites Ange hard.  We cringe in Miss Night’s class where we learn to write cursive letters from the MacLean Method of Handwriting.  She prowls the aisles between the wooden desks, identifies a malefactor and holds up his sheet of foolscap, publicly mocking his attempt at writing.

She then walks directly to Ange, takes him sternly by the arm and makes him sit on a high-stool, facing a corner.  She pins his offence to the back of his grey knit shirt and invites everyone to look at his transgression.  When I think it is safe I park behind Ange but cannot identify the source of Miss Night’s mean spirit.  I hear him crying silently. His thin suspenders trace the stoop of his shoulders, and his fingers try to staunch the drip from his noble nose.

When I see him the next day we do not talk about what happened because we are not mature enough to understand the necessity of grieving.  We just carry on – even when Miss Night, in the fourth grade, commands a troublemaker to her desk and slaps his face fiercely with the belting that was supposed to be used only for hands and buttocks.  We just carried on – trading comics, building forts and playing Cops and Robbers – our fear growing, like a serpent in the belly.

When my parents move to another city, Ange and I lose track of one another.  But years later a chance meeting with a boyhood friend informs me that Ange still lives in our hometown, and that his great mark of distinction has become a vacuum for cocaine.  He has lost his business, has undergone therapy and has been struggling.  When a family vacation brings me back, Ange is out of town so I visit his parents.  And in their kitchen it all comes back: the rock blindly thrown, Ange in the corner, his accordion, our romps in the wilderness – and Miss Night.

On my return trip, my young son plays in the back seat while images of straps, belts, pointers and chalk missiles parade themselves in memory.  I feel a stirring in my belly and wonder if Ange has calmed his with coke.  In the rear view mirror my eight year old quietly reads comics, and I ask myself, “What in God’s name did Miss Night, and the others like her, think they were doing!”

A Pettiness to Expiate

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africanspiritMemory…

In profile she is an African fertility goddess: belly and behind protruding in opposite directions.  She is presenting a workshop to which I’ve come feeling groggy and cranky from a cold.  And I want to be back in bed with earplugs and sleeping mask firmly in place.

Throughout the session, her wry comments about men leave me irritated and cool.  I count them – five times she cracks jokes that make an audience dominated by women, titter and laugh.  But I am not amused.  Fatigue combined with a bad mood causes me to drift in and out of a droning delivery.  I find myself having thoughts about this presenter that are not complimentary.  And wonder why she occasionally makes eye-contact with me.

During the break I pass by her as she waits by an elevator.  Looking directly at me, this stranger brightens and says, “Hi, how’re you doing?”

I feel startled and assess whether her voice carries the inflection of someone who has intuited my attitude – if not my very thoughts – and wonder if this is her subtle way of rebuking me.  So I reply with the reflex of those who guard their true sentiments: “I’m fine.  How’re you?”

She replies, “You have such a calm looking face.  When I’m talking I focus on you, because you have a relaxing effect on me.”  She explains that she searches for faces like mine at workshops because they center her, and today she has selected mine.

Surprised by her warm sincerity, I muster a smile and say ‘thank you’.  But behind my appreciation I feel chastened by the ironic justice and grace that this appointment has given.  I return to the conference, humbled but uplifted.

Her comment has burned away the chaff of my fatigue and ill humour. And when she shares an anecdote which pokes at her husband I now hear it like a humorous intimacy.  By the time the workshop closes, my disparaging pettiness has been transformed.  She is a goddess, indeed: one who heals.

In Praise of Older Women

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Memory…

Carmen Dell'OreficeThe powder of snow around Brandt’s Creek path has melted.  And leafy remains, black and pressed into the soggy lane, prepare for next year’s compost.  I emerge alongside the little bridge spanning the duck pond where orange-billed inhabitants mill about in widening circles like high society out for a turn on the green.

I press on to Yates, ever prepared with camera in hand, for a person, place or thing of interest.  And as I make my way, my path intersects that of an elderly woman exiting a parking lot.  A neighbourly ‘hello’ is exchanged.  And her calf-length coat – green and variable as summer grass – compels me to comment:  “I love the colour of your coat!”  I exclaim.

Her face brightens, and momentarily the lines around her lips dissolve behind a smile.  “I made it myself!”  She says.  “My friend weaves the cloth, and I make things.”

“Wow, you sure are a talented woman,” I reply.

“…and I’m 90-and-a-half,” she adds proudly like a young girl adding fractions to her age.

“Remarkable,” I say beneath the trees of autumn.  “You don’t look a day over 73.”  And indeed she did not: elegant, fresh, assured; her voice resonant with the lingering flavour of youth.  She blooms with appreciation, and surprises me with a little hug.

Up the gentle incline to her destination we walk, while conversation spills from her mouth like summer flowers.  She tells me of her adventures in the neighbourhood; meeting the orchardists on the hill; discovering, to her delight, that they speak French like she, and how they have become friends.  I am intrigued: This is no ordinary nonagenarian.

She speaks of her days at McGill in the ‘30s; of how, at the end of her first year, her father said: Well, you’ve now met as many men as you’re going to meet, so it’s time to stay home; and of how she responded: No way!  I’m going back!  She looks at me and victoriously says:  “So I became a model for the Eaton’s catalogue.  I earned $10 per sitting.  And it was enough for an entire year ($300).”

We arrive at the entrance to a mall.  And before we part, this model allows me to snap a photo.  I give her my card and ask if she would at some time be willing to sit for a portrait.  She looks away, fingers bending and flicking the edges of my proposal, and diplomatically says, “Oh…I’ll think about it.”

My many walks along the lane leading to Brandt’s Creek have treaded the autumn leaves to pulp.  And when I see the paddling ducks, green and black on the still pond, I sometimes think of my elderly acquaintance: a fleeting serendipity in ever widening circles of time and space.   What will I be like when I am ninety-and-a-half?  Will I have a coat of green that will catch the eye and inspire?

Fonzie

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TonyCurtisDucktailHairstyleBecause of his ‘50s rock-star haircut, I like to think of him as Fonzie.  He is tall, slightly stooped, head inclined to the pavement as if searching for nickels and dimes.  I see him shuffling St. Paul Street, perhaps on his way to a hit of comfort, or a bottle of something.  He seems thinner today, more soiled – like a discarded cigarette.

His passage triggers my memory:  I am visiting my parents, and my father returns home saddened by his attempt to collect rent from tenants who have not paid for two months.  Weeks later he tells me that on his last visit he discovers that they have fled.  There is a large hole in the ceiling, mold has colonized the walls, and water pipes are broken.  The police have explained that the residents have been using the house as a grow-op.

I intersect Fonzie’s path, and cannot see the heels of his shoes.  They are covered by cuffs, dirty and frayed with the search for oblivion.  At home I open the Capital News and read headlines about busted drug factories, and about the weapons, the money and the insouciant gang members who will avoid prison.  In time, the news reports the death of a teenager, stabbed in the neck by another – drunk at a party on the West Side (I remind myself that alcohol too is a drug.).

Days after I last see Fonzie, I hear from one of the members of my strata that the house across from mine has been seized by the bank.  It is an upper-scale residence whose occupants in the last year have been a young couple whom I welcomed to the community.  It seems they have been nurturing marijuana crops in the basement, and have quietly absconded with the profits.  I remember our warm introductions on the strata roadway: a fresh twosome, neatly dressed and coiffed, charming and friendly: wolverines among the deer.

On a return from shopping I enter my strata and see a van parked in front of the abandoned house.  A cleaner has come to service what I imagine is destruction of the kind in my father’s rental.  But when I ask, the workman says that they have caught the damage just in time.  I am surprised by the way cleaning a grow-up triggers him to share the misfortune of his son: addicted to cocaine and now in fragile recovery.

Kelowna is awash in a sea of substances which laps at the door of every household.  And when I consider that abusing a drug is our way of dealing with pain of some kind, I wonder where all the sorrow is coming from.  I have not seen Fonzie for a long time.  Perhaps he works the public garbage cans for cast-offs.  Perhaps he has found a place in line at the Gospel Mission.  Or perhaps the ship he has used to sail his private sea of grief has sunk.