Canada

In Country


Of all the things I don’t especially care for when we venture Stateside, one of the top five is cemeteries.

We haven’t been to Will’s grave since July of ’08. It wasn’t the highlight of that depressingly horrendous trip, but it will do as a touchstone.

Dad, from where I was standing, was clearly dying that summer. Death hangs about people, telegraphs its intentions and smothers soul and reason. The air was so thick with it that I should have known better, watched my words and actions with more care. Hindsight must be an invention of the Catholic church because it’s such an effective guilt inducing tool.

Burying Will is a regret. I knew that I wasn’t staying in Des Moines. Knew it from the moment I was told he was dying that the reason that brought me to Central Iowa in the first place would soon be gone.

There have been many moments in my life where something outside me has guided me on my path. In the spring of 1987, Jerry Wadden, the English Supervisor for the Des Moines Public Schools, interviewed me for a job that he knew didn’t exist – yet. He told me plainly that he had no job for me, but he thought he would by August. Could I wait that long? Not commit to another district before I talked with him again?

’87 was an abysmal year for new teachers. The only jobs were down south and only for those who were graduating in the upper reaches of their class. I turned down two offers waiting on Des Moines. Houston, where I most certainly would have met people my age and probably have been far less lonely than I was during the first ten years I was in Des Moines, and a border straddling town in Arizona.

I waited, not because Jerry was so persuasive or that I was moved by his conviction that I was the teacher he wanted to hire that summer – he actually ended up forcing the district to hire me without having a job for me. I waited because something was telling me I needed to be in Des Moines. There were tasks awaiting me. And this impulse? would not leave me alone.

I don’t pretend to be spiritual. I am uncertain anymore about what directs the universe, but I do know enough to listen – mostly. So I waited and ended up staying in Des Moines – teaching, marrying eventually, having a child, burying a husband – before unseen forces guided me to where I am now.

Burying Will was something I did because he wanted me to do it. There was so little I could do for him, I felt guilty not giving him this one final thing. Even though it cost money I barely had established an anchor to a place I felt in the deepest part of my gut I wasn’t meant to be much longer.

On our last trip down, there wasn’t time enough to make the trek to the little country cemetery where his urn rests. Do urns rest? Really?

This time, Dee needs to be made aware that we will be coming within about 45 minutes of it and given the option to visit. I really want to break her of the notion that Will’s grave is a symbol of him. It’s a big rock in front of a shallow hole that contains a metal box with ash and bone in it. He, according to her, is the guardian angel of a baby born last summer. Before that, again according to her, he dropped in on us often. Now he can only come in when he has time off. It’s an interesting concept for a seven-year old to have come up with on her own, but since we haven’t schooled her much in the afterlife, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, she thinks everyone goes to heaven.

She and I watched a movie called Oliver and Company. Cheesy bad animations from forever ago that twists the Dickens tale into a bizarre cautionary quasi-friendship themed fare for wee ones. The bad guys die.

“That was a good movie,” she told Rob. “And the bad guys died and went to heaven.”

Of course they died. We haven’t mentioned hell to her. She has no idea it “exists” in the whole death mythology. Everyone goes to heaven. Punishment is death itself and then there is heaven.

I dread the cemetery. My earliest memories of cemeteries are pleasant. Strolling with Dad’s mother as she introduced me to relatives and told wonderful tales that I was too young to know I should have been memorizing.

When cemeteries became somber, I had forty years of wonderful memories to overcome and have found that difficult. Hence the other part of my conflict. I want Dee to think of cemeteries as place where history and family are and not as sad obligations.

I have already told her that she doesn’t have to visit her grandfather’s grave. She knew him so much better than she did Will that her sadness is often more profound over Dad’s death than it is for Will.

It’s not helping me gear up for the journey knowing that life is in flux in the States right now either. No one seems quite as grounded or sane as I remember. Crossing the border, never pleasant, menaces. I fear something awful is about to happen and I would rather be here, in Canada, when it does.

And I am allergic. Oh, I am always allergic, but this week has seen a resurgence of vicious, sudden attacks. Eyes swelling to almost shut. Sinuses burn as if I have inhaled acid. It’s something in industrial strength cleaning solvents that causes it. That’s what happened to me when we took our trip to Victoria last fall and I encountered something at Dee’s dance school the other night which has set me off for most of this week. It tires me and is a little bit scary.

My kindly old Chinese doctor didn’t help when I saw him either. I needed refills on allergy meds, and he cheerfully recounted how two of his patients died trying to inject themselves with their epi pens. Sigh. Socialized medicine does not improve bedside manner.

Must pack and begin girding my loins.

Bacon or Sex?


Apparently for some Canadians it’s a tough call. Crispy thin slices of pig or orgasms.

43% of Canadians choose bacon over sex according to a survey conducted by Maple Leaf Foods (not exactly an impartial pollster).

How does something like this happen?

Developing a preference for pig meat over naked entanglement? I am nearly at a loss for words.

The survey also discovered the following:

  • When exposed to different fragrances, 23 percent of men preferred the smell of bacon.
  • 82 percent of male respondents who said they loved bacon also claimed they were good lovers.
  • Western Canadians boasted a deeper love of bacon than those in the east with 50 percent of British Columbia participants saying they’d give up sex before bacon, versus just 37 percent of respondents from Quebec.

That men would find the aroma of meat more appealing than Chanel No.5 is shocking. There’s a reason for the saying “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”, but that men who prefer bacon to sex would rate themselves high on the love-making scale just tells me that no one bothered to poll their significant others at all.

That British Columbians love their pork products might seem at odds with their laid-back tree-hugging Lululemon wearing image, but during our stay in Victoria last November, I saw so many smokers and an abundance of blue-tooth douchebags, the fact that they dig pig doesn’t surprise me a bit.

In our home, it’s turkey bacon though both Dee and Rob will make the huge sacrifice of eating the pig variety when we are traveling.

I don’t do meat. Not even fish much. My body has made it quite clear that it will get even with me if I try to force it to digest flesh of any kind.

Seriously, meat – regardless of how clean and tasty it looks in the grocery – is just a culturally blessed version of road kill.

But I am curious, bacon or sex?

Staying Put in Canada


I’ve mentioned before that there was a possibility we’d be heading overseas to live for a while. Rob was pursuing a position on a project that would have taken us to the UK and then Saudi Arabia. It would have been a 4 or 5 year gig that would have allowed us to move on to the retirement/second career thing in the mountains a bit sooner than later.

But the job is off. I am not at liberty to go into details, but it had nothing to do with Rob’s suitability. He is, despite his ambivalence, a sought after commodity in his line of work. This was an employment case of “it’s not you, it’s us”. Literally.

So now that we know for sure we are staying put, things that have been on hold or plans that we discussed in only the vaguest of terms are suddenly wide open dreamscapes.

One of the most pressing issues is our home. Rob has been steadily renovating the house we live in for … ever. Or least as long as he’s lived here and that’s a decade plus of years.

And the house is not done. Not even close.

One might wonder that this has been a non-issue for me since moving here going on three years ago now. And it’s not that I am oblivious to my surroundings, though I come quite close to that sort of space blindness, it’s just that I am not a Better Homes and Gardens type. I have a serviceable kitchen, a comfy bed and a place to write. What else does a person need?

Rob thinks we need an addition. One that will attach a garage to the house, add a new master bedroom with en suite and provide us with a large kitchen area. This is not a small project that upends the house a room or so at a time. This is gutting the back yard, tearing out half of the back-end of the house and ripping up a deck that consumed the summer of 2008 and the cement sidewalks that consumed last summer.

On the plus side, an attached garage. I never had one until the last house I bought with Will. I’d lived in Des Moines for 15 years, parking vehicles on the street or driveway and dealing with the weather. The whole first year of Dee’s life was coping with baby carriers and rain or snow or bitter cold or blistering heat or whatever other plagues of Egypt came our way in terms of weather. I loved the attached garage. Somedays, especially after Will was nearly blind and precariously balanced, not having to load the two of them up after somehow getting them outside was the only thing I had to be thankful for all day.

A new master bedroom would give us three bedrooms upstairs and mean that Dee could have our old room, which is twice the size of her current room. We could ditch the playroom downstairs and contain all things child in her larger bedroom space. And she would have a walk-in closet. She would be in heaven although she would have serious en suite envy. She totally believes that she should have a bathroom of her own – attached to her room. Where does she get such ideas?

Aside from hearth and home, there is also employment to consider. Staying means looking for part-time work. I put working on hold for a variety of reasons, but one of them was not being sure we’d be around long enough for me to find and settle into a place before we’d pack up and be gone. Since I didn’t need a paycheck for our survival, it seemed unfair for me to take a job knowing I wasn’t going to be in it long.

My mother’s first words upon hearing we were staying was “Well, now you’ll be able to get a job.”

I start my yoga teacher training this weekend. My current instructor indicated that she would be agreeable to my teaching at her studio, once I am trained and that would be this summer, so yoga is a real possibility as part-time work. It is not a living by any means, but it’s somewhere to start. I want to someday have a studio, somewhere. Be a business owner. I think that is my upbringing. I love to write and blog, but they don’t feed my need for tangible employment. Probably seems silly to some, but I like the idea of going into work. Actually leaving the house kind of work.

We’ve talked about trading in the tent trailer for a holiday trailer, and using it for vacations. Rob wanted to travel the SouthWest U.S., but with the border as it is, I am less keen. And though Americans don’t seem to have any sense of impending doom, the news we get looks more and more dicey. In fact, this coming summer it seems it has never been a better time to stay out of the States.

I am only a tiny bit disappointed about not moving overseas. It could have been fun and interesting in a way that most people’s lives never get to be. But it would have been work and Dee would not have been as happy about it as we would have been. Our mothers were distraught, and the older girls, though they’ve put on brave faces, would have felt abandoned to varying degrees. It is not great for Rob. He gets to continue on as a workhorse and he deserves more. Everyone takes for granted that he will be there to fix things, give advice, loan money and generally make sure the trains run. I doubt that anyone but me really worries about his needs, or wants for him, when it comes to that. Having been in that thankless position, I know how long it can make a day seem.

Although Rob doesn’t think much of the place, there are far worse little towns than The Fort to call home. It will not be home forever, I don’t think, but it is good enough for now.

Funny, I just read a blog piece about “good enough” and how that kind of settling is a bad thing. I didn’t really agree.