Canada

Independence


Independence is not only overrated, it isn’t really possible. Think about it. What can you exactly do or achieve without any help or input of any kind from anyone. Whom among us is really an island? Self-sufficient in the Jeremiah Johnson tradition? 

As a newly widowed woman I was constantly being harangued by other widowed people to “learn to be alone”. No one really understood that I started there. Alone. I was the one who made all the decisions, did all the work, and did it with no input from my late husband throughout his entire illness. He would have supported me if he could, but his dementia made that impossible. I was already alone when I became a widow. And though I have offended people with my views on being alone, single and “independent” before……it’s not quantum physics. 

Many people don’t do alone very well. Not because it is difficult but because it is lonely, and that is the problem. People confuse their innate dislike of enforced loneliness with an inability to be alone. Being alone is easy for anyone if it is for a finite period but alone without seeming end is another matter. Widows who have been married for long periods of time, especially if they married young, seem to have the most difficult time adjusting to a singular existence. Female widows in particular will take up a pseudo-feminist stance which, I think, stops somewhat short of bra burning and going commando, and proclaim loudly and often of the joys of making decisions without consult and having a closet all to themselves. While I don’t disagree about the closet (and even though I love Rob and my daughter I wouldn’t mind a bathroom all to myself either), having no one who you care enough about to bounce ideas off of or who to point out the holes in your logic or beam at you in wonder when you are particularly brilliant isn’t worth the joy of walking through the house naked while you are getting ready for the day or eating whenever/whatever you want for dinner. Truthfully, I can walk around naked now (as long as the kids aren’t home or are in bed for the night) and even a planned dinner menu is worth it when there is someone to talk to while you eat.

Independence is knowing your own mind and not being afraid to verbalize it. It is not knowing what you want and being supported while you look for it. Some people have never had this and I understand that, but it is a fallacy to believe that being alone and independence are the same thing because independence isn’t about being on your own. It’s about having the security to be yourself.

From Miles Off


I find myself watching the sky all the time anymore. It’s ridiculous because the sky is the sky. It’s no different here in Alberta than it was in Iowa, but it seems so different. For one thing, I have the feeling that earth’s roof is closer now, that clouds are touchable, and that I can actually see the horizon curve and bend around the planet it blankets. And you can see the rain coming from miles away. Watch it fall in sheets and streaks. Gray and wispy.

I stood in the parking lot of the Safeway last night and just watched the storm clouds in the distance making their way ever so determinedly from Edmonton to the Fort. Rob, who watches me, came and stood by me to snap a picture with his phone. He watches me like I watch the sky……and everything else. I wonder if it would be as fascinating to watch all things advancing from the distance. Would it be as awesome? 

Tim Horton’s


Canada is not just a whiter version of the United States, and I know that is how many of my fellow Americans view the Great White North. After all, we share semi-similar pioneer roots and a British birth as well. But, even the little bit of time I have spent here has firmly re-enforced what I already knew. Canada is not a suburb of the United states; it is a foreign country.

Rob laughs at me when I describe him as exotic and point to the fact that he and his country are foreign to me as proof, but even he agrees that Canada and its people are not what Americans think they are.

We went grocery shopping last evening at the Safeway. It’s just a grocery like any other. The aisles are set up to lure you into overspending and there is even a Starbucks at the entrance and it doesn’t get any more status-based consumption oriented than that. But, as I wandered after Rob pushing the cart with Katy in it and plucking items with the kind of assurance that is born out of familiarity, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater. The one where the guy comes back from a hunting trip via time machine in the past to discover that death of the prehistoric butterfly he accidently crushed beneath his boot has somehow resulted in a Nazi victory over the Allies (a favorite scenario of sci-fi writers it seems). 

Everything was different but in a surreal way. New York artist and illustrator, Brad Holland, defines the surreal this way “Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life.”  And that is how it felt. Everyday ordinary. And yet, it wasn’t ordinary at all. The products I recognized, and there were many, were packaged differently – bigger letters on the labeling and unrecognizable color schemes. French leaps off the labels at you. People cock their heads a bit in a puzzled manner when you speak. 

And it’s not just stores. There was the restaurant where the server wanted to know if I wanted my toast made with white or brown bread. There are washrooms, not restrooms. One has to take care to watch for moose as well as deer when driving the rural roads and at night you can hear the occasional coyote yowling in the not all that distance.

I am learning to disregard the tendency to ask “what degree is that in fahrenheit. 22c is a nice day. 30 is god awful hot…..if you weren’t born and raised below the 49th, and anything below 17 is long pants and sleeves weather. When gas is 99.9 it is still more expensive than it is in Iowa and Canadian paper money only looks like you should be using it in Monopoly. It still buys things.

Starbucks and McDonalds may be ubiquitous, but Tim Hortons has more outlets, donuts and pastry in addition to artery-hardening  fast food, and it has better frozen lattes too. 

On the way home from the strip mall (which are remarkably like “home”), I was scanning the countryside, as I am wont to do these days, and Rob asked me what I see when I do that. I told him I see “not home” in the sense that I feel as though I haven’t got a bearing yet. I don’t recognize landmarks or streets to the point that I can “sleep-drive” the way I could back in Iowa. I am not sure that this is a bad thing really. I have been set on auto-pilot for too long and I am pretty sure that isn’t a widow thing either.

Tim Horton was a hockey player by the way. He played for one of the original six, The Maple Leafs. He died in 1974 and his partner cheated his widow out of her share of the chain that bears his name. Can’t escape that widow connection even when you are just looking for a box of Timbits to fill a four year old tummy. Small world. Just live in a different section of it now.