Heidi Greco's Blog, page 20

40 days (and 40 nights)

That's how long it's been since we've had rain. 

The rain barrels have both been empty for weeks. The lawns are parched, too many trees look droopy. Even the ever-fresh daisies are looking tired. 

Water restrictions are in place, though luckily still only at Phase One locally. 

Naturally, we're not supposed to waste water by washing cars (hardly an essential demand). Fortunately, we are still permitted to hand-water our vegie gardens.

Tomorrow will be Day 41, the day we'll tie the longest dry spell experienced here. As for the rest of the province, the forecast -- especially with raging wildfires -- is not looking good. 

Biblical? Nearly. 

Crossing fingers on behalf of the plants, especially the trees, that they'll soon be able to get un-parched. 

So much for social responsibility

This is the way a house in my neighbourhood came down -- all of a piece, in one gigantic mess. 

Even though some days back, when we realized the house would be a tear-down (in itself an irresponsible decision, as the home was likely built in the 1980s), neighbours asked to buy some of the doors and windows. Sadly, their requests were refused. 

So, a bunch of us happened along this morning and watched (some with masks, as the dust was hideous) while a machine methodically knocked it over and over and over. 

Rather than recycling those beautiful French doors and oversize windows, a mass of wood and glass and metal, along with heaps of pink insulation, made its way to the landfill. 

Only in Surrey? Could well be the case. So much for Surrey's slogan, The Future Lives Here. We can only hope not. 

Nostalgia on a summer breeze

At last, the season for reading outdoors has truly arrived. Oh sure, I used to read in the snow fort I’d built in the backyard, but that was a long time ago, a time I’m not all that nostalgic for. Still, such thoughts are somewhat apt, as the book I read yesterday afternoon, Diane Tucker’s Nostalgia for Moving Parts , opens with memories of childhood.

Whether she’s recalling the feel of bare feet on cool floors or sliding on them “in sock feet” or lying down, staring into the heat vents which she describes perfectly as looking like “little venetian blinds” she’s certainly succeeded in transporting me there. Even in her stories of being a very young girl, we see her developing what she understands being a woman to mean, whether that’s disliking a dress your mother wants you to wear, flirting with a cute boy in grade two, or coming to the realization that there’d come a day when “You threw the dice of yourself and hoped you’d win.”

Her poems and the experiences they recount—including the deaths of both of her parents—have taken me to some of the places I realize I still need to pay more attention to. Even my massage therapist tells me that my pains are from holding back grief. As the poet Edward Hirsch reminds us in 100 Poems to Break Your Heart, “The poet is one who…is determined to leave a trace in words, to transform oceanic depths of feeling into the faithful nuances of art.”

And that seems to be exactly what Tucker has done with her poems, which deal with everything from the joys of backyard games:

we smashed the badminton birdie

over the fading net arc after arc

until evening ate the small white thing

 

to observations about the qualities of evening wine: 

White wine is not white but golden,

bright lantern to light your aging limbs,

slow lover bathing your solitary throat.

 

And from those words I read on yesterday’s summery afternoon (“This afternoon could scour the cool / out of anything…”), I have to say that I am grateful that she has given me words I can use to write about her book, a book that helps me understand why she is nostalgic for certain lost things—and how it is that she has come to write about them. For lack of a better way to express this, I offer a stanza from her poem, ‘The woods are full of poets’: 

As cedar boughs grow down and then

grow up (a double wish, a desire for both

at once), blank paper does two things:

it blocks the light and it lets light through. 

It’s a stanza that in itself evokes a small reminder of (and nostalgia for) Leonard Cohen, and his lessons about light.

For the birds?

July is supposed to be the happiest of months. Or maybe somehow I just have that stuck in my mind. Maybe because it's the first month of no school. Or maybe because I often go to Kansas for the Amelia Earhart Festival (cancelled again this year) and its exciting display of fireworks. 

It's traditionally been the month when I get back down to plenty of leisure reading. Something about warm weather that makes me want to sit outside with a book -- a great excuse for not doing anything more energetic. 

When I used to work in schools, July felt like the time when I was finally free of responsibilities of classroom teaching (marking, ugh) or library work (inventory, double-ugh). So the idea of free reading is one I still associate with this month. 

Again going back to work days, my brain never seemed ready to tackle 'big' books. I'd start off by reading a few of Tintin's adventures, and then gradually go forward to books like David and the Phoenix or The Secret Garden. Before the month would be out, my brain would be back in gear and ready to tackle some grown-up books. 

Even though I no longer have those mega-duties anymore, I still find myself doing 'warm-up' reading with what might these days be called YA materials. This year, it was GG-winner, The King of Jam Sandwiches, followed by the old-fashioned pleasures of a Green Knowe book from Lucy M. Boston. 

Already I've managed to roar through Thomas King's latest, the very timely, Sufferance, much of it actually set on the site of a residential school. Among the residents of this very fine book is a passel of crows, one of whom stopped by on one of our skylights. Not sure if he thought he could get inside or what. Must have been a nice buffet of dead bugs up there. Or maybe he was just looking down onto my current stack of library books, hoping to find something good to read. 

O, Kanata

This year's July 1st has come to mean quite different thoughts than the proudly patriotic ones of the past. The reason, of course, is the sadness that descended on our country over the recent confirmation of the many deaths -- mostly of children -- that occurred at Canada's residential schools. 

For weeks now, nearly all flags have flying at half-mast in recognition of these lost souls. 

Many of us are wearing orange shirts today, a sign that we choose to remember the children who were taken from their homes and who had their culture, their families, and their language taken from them. 

The wearing of orange shirts has its origins in the story of Phyllis Jack, who had an orange shirt she loved when she was only six years old. Excited about her first day of school, she wore the bright orange shirt, a gift she'd received from her grandmother. But upon her arrival, the nuns took away her shirt and never gave it back. Recent years have seen the tradition of wearing orange shirts, many of which bear the reminder that Every Child Matters. 

As for the 'Kanata' reference at the top of this post, it's part of Canada's origin story. Sadly, it's yet another example of how colonizing settlers took from the people they met here. We took a word from a language that wasn't our own -- a word that meant 'village' -- and applied it to the whole country. Stolen words, stolen lands. 

Much to learn, and much to heal from. A time for listening. 

Dog days of June

In truth, it seems a bit unfair to dogs to designate some of the most miserable days of the year as 'dog' days. At least, looking into the history of the name, it turns out to relate to that time later in summer when Sirius, the dog star, passes overhead. And yes, this period of time generally comes must later, calendar-wise, toward the end of July and into August. (Oh, if you click on this last link, you may find yourself as enchanted as I was when you see the fanciful illustration.)

The temperatures we've been experiencing here in BC's Lower Mainland are unprecedented -- even for later in the season. Our little thermometer, which is never in direct sunlight, but on the inside of a post in our gazebo, has never before gone over 40 Celsius, and has certainly never before gone over 100 Fahrenheit. But that's exactly what it did, both yesterday and the day before. 

As might be expected, the news is full of items about climate change. The Vancouver Sun's front page headline story chronicled just that. But really, unless you've been living under some moss-covered rock, this is hardly surprising. 

I'm just hoping that the disquiet, discomfort -- and now, as we've learned, even deaths -- resulting from this latest distress call from the Earth, will help bring our politicians to action beyond their mumblings about reading reports and considering what to do. How convenient though for them (both provincial and federal) to have taken off for the summer recess and no doubt, to their lakeside cottages where soft breezes blow any such thoughts of responsibility and duty away to some other day. 

Anniversaries and fresh starts

Although I knew that today is National Indigenous People's Day, if I hadn't heard it on the news, I wouldn't have realized that this is the 25th anniversary of this observance. Time. Such a strange phenomenon. Sometimes it moves so slowly; other times it seems to be in the blink of an eye. 

One aspect of this year's observance that seems worth noting is the fact that our current Parliamentary Poet Laureate, Louise Bernice Halfe -- Sky Dancer is Indigenous and spent part of her early years attending Residential School. 

Her poem called "Angels" reminds of us of the children whose graves were discovered at the old school in Kamloops. It's posted on the Poet-Laureate website and you can read it here. 

The turning of the tide

Today is the last day of spring, officially, as tomorrow evening (8:32 pm PDT) will be solstice. Really, it's hardly felt like spring of late, more like a long, extended winter. Altogether too many bad things have been happening, including covid deaths. The latest, and we certainly hope the last of these, was the husband of my sister-in-law Sophie, who left us at the end of January. Soulmates perhaps with husband joining his wife. It was a bit as though one might have called the other. 

But yesterday, walking on the beach when the tide was almost exactly at its lowest, along with a glimpse later on of the waxing moon, gave me the feeling that the tide is turning. 

And maybe today, officially recognized as Juneteenth, will really be the start of shifted thinking. 

Statues of colonizing figures are coming down, an action that stirs mixed feelings in many. 

Indigenous people are finally being given the chance to take charge of the forests in B.C. Whether this action will take place in time to make a substantial difference, well, we'll have to see. 

Still, for a change, partly because I and most of my family have now received two doses of vaccine, I am finally starting to feel a bit more hopeful. 

Regrets

I never met her, but I felt I knew her. When news came this week that Shelley Fralic, writer and editor for the Vancouver Sun, had died, a physical sense of loss washed through me. 

Her longtime pal and fellow columnist Pete McMartin was the one who broke the news to me -- on the front page of Tuesday morning's paper. His tribute to her is worth reading to the end, as he uses her own words in summary, and wise words they are. 

She wrote about things that many would consider ordinary, but in such a fresh and honest way they rose above the plane of the mundane. A great example is a column from earlier this year, when she wondered why a worker at Canadian Tire didn't understand what she was looking for when she asked for a crescent wrench. In that same piece she muses further on encountering a worker at another store who didn't know what she meant when she asked about . Worst was probably the supermarket worker who had no idea about Brussels sprouts. 

Her point in that column was that it seemed to her that people are getting dumber. And maybe we are.

I sure feel that I am. In part because I never wrote to her (though thought of it a number of times). Why? To thank her. For what? Wasn't she just doing a job, one she was getting paid for?

The thanks would have been for writing in a way that always filled my head and made me want to read her column right down to the last word. 

It would have been for making me think, and for occasionally making me explore; I doubt I would have become as accustomed to visiting Point Roberts if it hadn't been for a nudge from her.

It would have been for occasionally pulling my heartstrings and making me nostalgic for some memory nearly lost in time. And it would have been for making me laugh.

In a recent piece she mentioned the small pleasure of eating cookies, but in such a way that I not only laughed out loud (alone, no less) but nearly choked. I was prompted to write to thank her for the laugh, and to say it seemed lucky I hadn't been eating cookies at the time. 

But I didn't. Too many other emails to write, or maybe just the distraction of the day's Sudoku. Whatever, I didn't thank her, and now I can only regret that I didn't. I can just hope that mistake will help me express thanks the next time I need to, especially when it's for something as life-affirming and important as a laugh. 

Glacial Melt

It's true. The glaciers are melting at what seems like ever-faster rates. The latest chunk to fall off of Antarctica is bigger than the state of Rhode Island, or 70 times the size of Manhattan (though without the skyscrapers).  

And yes, old-growth trees continue to fall -- or at least they will if protesters at Fairy Creek don't soon make a difference to our ever-distracted premier. It seems that really all the protesters are asking is that the government honour the standards they've already agreed to uphold. Only they aren't keeping their word. And they've used the power of the courts (an injunction) to hammer their fist down.  

But worst of all is the news that 215 children, some as young as three years old, are buried on the grounds of what once was one of our federal government's residential schools. 

So, with all such terrible news, I can only offer the photo above which gives you a glimpse of my own glacial project -- defrosting the pantry fridge, a luxury (despite its manual defrost needs) which I remain thrilled to own. 

Even though it's now starting to feel like summer outside, the chunks of ice I tossed out into the back yard hadn't all melted by morning -- shades of Newfoundland, but on the west coast!

Truly, things can only improve.