Shauna and
I drove down to Toronto last Wednesday for a concert at Massey Hall, and also to
look in on her mom. As much as her mom was probably relieved to see us leave
her house after we’d been there for two and one half months, I imagine it was
also difficult for her to be there, absent the man with whom she had spent the
past 68 years. With some protest, she accepted our strong advice that she should
retain the 24-7 caregivers we had hired for Syd. Clearly she should not be
alone, and we convinced her, at least for the time being, that even if she did
not need them right away, she might need them soon. They have been trusted and
loyal employees, and those are not so easy to find these days. As I have
learned from experience, it is better to be proactive about such things.
Whether or not Mom Taylor decides to stay in that house will of course be her
decision. By my logic, everything has been repaired or replaced in the past ten
years, including the electrical, the major appliances, the plumbing, and the
roof. The basement is again dry, which took some doing. Why not remain in the familiar surroundings of
one’s own home? That was what my
parents wanted, and what I think I will want as well, but perhaps the memories
will be overwhelming for her.
As Shauna
and I drove back up north after the concert, we stopped for gas somewhere
around Orillia, and Shauna pointed out an unusual vending machine at the gas
station. There right outside the door to the convenience store was a live bait
vending machine. While I see live bait advertised all over the Great White
North, I was not aware that one can buy it 24-7 from a vending machine. I was
so amused I took a picture of it.
Tomorrow,
with any luck, I will turn 58, and as the Grateful Dead put it so eloquently,
what a long, strange trip it’s been (so far). I remember at the time thinking
to myself that 40 was not such a traumatic event, though everyone told me it would
be. I saw a photo recently taken of me on my 40th birthday. In it I
was grinning like a fool and making a 4-0 gesture with my hands as Shauna and I
cruised down the Magnetawan River in her father’s boat. I remember the chocolate
birthday cake Shauna presented to me that night, with a colorful racing motorboat
design on top. Then Poof! The candles go out, eighteen years blow by, and I
find myself wondering in clichés … where did the time go, it seems like only
yesterday; how did I get this old? A little creakier, perhaps a bit wiser (but
probably not), I have in the past few years become a little more conscious of
my mortality. When I get on a tall ladder to wash the windows, or I carry a
heavy load of wood from the woodpile, or I pull up the dock for the winter, I
wonder to myself, how much longer will I be able to do these things without
help? If the codgers up here are any indication, I’ve got another eighteen
years at least. Harvey, the guy who plows our driveway in the winter, and whose
grandson now works for us, is still going strong, and he’s almost 80. Every
winter, in the worst kind of weather, we count on Harvey to come rumbling down
our driveway, usually at night, with his big plow rig, accompanied in his
heated cab by his hound. Guys like Harvey put “cidiots” like me to shame. I
love that derogatory expression, used by the locals to describe a particularly
onerous breed of big city jerks who come up on to cottage country on the
weekends and spread their unique brand of anxiety and stress.
Final notes. A substantial
amount of snow fell on South Dakota last weekend (really, already?), a big
typhoon is pummeling southeast China, and it rains cats and dogs up here in the
Great White North. Video of the week award goes to the footage of that Indy
crash in Houston yesterday which sent racer Dario Franchitti to the hospital. I
can’t believe Franchitti survived relatively unscathed. I’d like to see that
new movie Rush about Formula 1 racer Niki
Lauda. I count myself among the posers who have at one point in their lives been
intoxicated by the thrill of speed, but these days, maybe because I am now so
freakin’ old, I don’t go quite as fast as I once did. I watched a motorcycle
race the other day, and for me that is one crazy sport. UN weapons inspectors
have begun to destroy Syria’s cache of chemical weapons. Violence has once
again erupted in Cairo, just as two Canadians, detained without charge, were
about to be released.
For my
birthday this year I think I’d like some Ibuprofin and perhaps a case of Pepto
Bismol.
“Lately I’ve been thinking that my time’s
passing faster, and I feel some sense of dire urgency/ In a month or so I’ll
usher in my fifty-first year and I’m nowhere near where I thought I should be/
Over halfway through my life with nothing much to show, and outside, the wind
begins to blow …”
Written by
Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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