The sublime importance of being born

What with winter and Republicans, I’m overwhelmed and even depressed, which is not like me. This too shall pass. Watching Americans in town hall meetings shouting at Repug politicians helps a lot. The tide will turn, and perhaps all this will turn out okay in the end, if it forces people to realize how much true democracy matters, how vital it is to vote, how important to read real news and figure out what is actually happening. We’ll see.

There was a bright spot last week when Canada won the hockey game against the U.S. I wasn’t watching, can’t stand the tension, but I watched that final goal online over and over, rejoicing. God, we needed that, meaningless as it is. I also watched a bit of the English Liberal leaders’ debate last night, hoping Carney would hit it out of the park, and he did not, a bit solemn and wooden. But he’s solid and our best bet, though Karina Gould is a firecracker and deserves a big cabinet post. A bright future for an articulate, ambitious, idealistic woman.

My cat, after a $300 vet visit, has been declared officially diabetic. It means medication that will cost $150 a month, possibly in perpetuity, plus frequent expensive vet visits to monitor. In the meantime, she still often pees on the bathroom floor; I now have newspaper and plastic mats around her litter box, so I am frequently mopping up cat pee and my bathroom is not a pleasant place to be. I am feeling crabby about all this, a diabetic cat one more thing I simply do not want to cope with, as the snow melts and risks flooding the basement, and bills pile up. No choice, however.

Sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t write when I’m feeling like this. But perhaps it’s good to share the fact that I’m not always perky; sometimes I sink.

This is a position, with no extremities showing, my daughter calls “the perfect meatloaf.”

Off to the Y soon, that will help.

Yesterday I spoke about the life of a memoir writer to the lunchtime chat group organized by Doug Fisher, whom I call Captain Cabbagetown. Before going, I dug out diaries and letters to show them an entire lifetime as a writing person, and unearthed my mother’s diary from 1944. She was not a chronicler, kept this tiny book on and off through the year, writing sometimes in illegible pencil – I read and transcribed using a large magnifying glass – and never wrote a diary again. But it’s a treat to read my 20-year-old mother, working at Bletchley Park with a world war in the background, going to dances, meeting Yanks and airmen, having “wizard” and “scrummy” teas. She reports on the D day landings:

“Tuesday, Tuesday, June 6, oh boy, insides all shaky with apprehension – invasion. We invaded near Caen and Cherbourg Peninsula. Paratroops and dummies with explosives on and minesweeping.

June 7 hitch to town [London] on two lorries. Out with Peter Warren last night, super time, lunch in a dive off Oxford Street. Jean Gabin in Le jour se lève. More troops landed, more air resistance by Germans. Rodney and Nelson taking part in shelling.”

She meets, flirts with, and dates many men (“RONNIE. Oh gosh. Can’t eat – all het up inside. What a man. He’s grand.”) although she has a hapless fiancé training in the States; I think, any one of these guys could have swept her off her feet for good, and I’m toast. She drinks cider and lemon shandies and plays the piano in pubs, hitchhikes everywhere, is working 8 hours shifts, sometimes through the night. She stops writing.

And then, on November 29 1944, one word: Kap. She met my father at a Chopin concert in Oxford, and they went on a very successful date. To my immense relief, the life of Beth Kaplan will soon begin, and so, eventually, will the lives of Anna and Sam and Eli and Ben.

Now that’s something to be cheerful about.

 

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