People Are Strange
(Densmore, J/ Morrison, J/ Krieger, R/ Manzarek, R) Performed by The Doors
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange faces come out of the rain
When you're strange no one remembers your name
When you're strange, when you're strange
When you're strange
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange faces come out of the rain
When you're strange no one remembers your name
When you're strange, when you're strange
When you're strange, alright, yeah
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange faces come out of the rain
When you're strange no one remembers your name
When you're strange, when you're strange
When you're strange
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange faces come out of the rain
When you're strange no one remembers your name
When you're strange, when you're strange
When you're strange, alright, yeah
I'm going to step away from the usual format this week to talk about the weekend I just had: several months ago, my friend's daughter, Cara, started to plan a surprise 50th birthday party for her Mom. As soon as I told Dave that there was going to be a party for Delight out in Edmonton, he was excited to go, but immediately, he realised that it was planned for the same weekend that he left for Japan on another business trip. He said I should take the girls, and while Kennedy was ecstatic about the opportunity to see the city where she was born (for the first time since leaving as an infant), Mallory correctly guessed that the party would be at a bar, and as she is less than a month shy of the drinking age out there, it wouldn't be much fun for her to wait in the hotel room during the actual party no matter what other fun things we might do. Fair enough; just me and Kennedy then.
We flew out on an early morning flight on Friday, picked up our rental car, and headed for West Edmonton Mall. We went to the underground aquarium and sea lion show, bought an all day pass for the amusement park (and, in my case, suffered whiplash from a few of the rides; youch), walked for hours to see all the same stores that you see in any mall (but also the attractions like the indoor water park and ice rink), and when my legs screamed to be done, we went to the restaurant area and ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory; the restaurant (though not this same location) where Dave, my Mum and I ate the night before Kennedy was born.
When we were finished eating, we drove around the city: I showed Kennedy the Legislature grounds (and since you can't park on the actual grounds at night anymore, we had to use a public lot and climb up an insanely long and steep set of stairs that many people were jogging up and down; we were lucky to walk it), then to some places where I used to work, the hospital she was born in, and the house Dave and I owned when she was born; it was hard to convince Kennedy that that was a cute house as it is now literally falling apart. I was exhausted, so we went to the hotel.
We wanted to do more touristing the next morning since the party wasn't until 2:30, so after messaging Cara to make sure that we couldn't possibly run into Delight anywhere (Cara assured me that the plan was for her Mom to be at home until her friend picked her up at 2), Kennedy and I went to the Muttart Conservatory, checked out the HUB and the theatres at the University of Alberta where her Dad used to perform, parked back at the hotel (easy walking distance to the party's location) and then walked along Whyte Ave; checking out all the funky shops and having lunch at Chiantis, the restaurant where Dave and I had our first date. It was then time to go wait at Blues on Whyte for Delight to be brought along, but when we got there, only Delight's younger daughter Hayley and her step-sister Mallory were there: we quickly saw that nothing had been set up for us and I was stunned to learn that Delight and her friend had been shopping along Whyte Ave at the same time that Kennedy and I had been. We moved tables together, more people started showing up, and Delight's former mother-in-law (Hayley's grandmother Jeanette) brought a bunch of food platters and it started looking more festive.
Here's the thing about me and Delight: even though we worked full-time alongside each other and saw each other outside of work often (25 years ago), I knew I was never her best friend and she always had crazy stories about all the crazy goings-on that her other friends got up to. As people started showing up and introducing themselves, it was usually the first time that I was able to put a face to the names that I had heard about all those years ago. Every time someone would say, "Oh you're Krista, I'm sure we met back in the day", I would be thinking: I don't think we ever actually did; Delight did a good job of keeping her worlds separated. I was glad to see that her brother Dean recognised me when he came in with his new girlfriend, and Delight's mother made a point of coming over and sitting beside me for a while to reminisce about the time she had to babysit the newborn Hayley while Delight and Cara came out to be in my wedding party. Hayley's grandmother and aunts talked pleasantly to me, like they knew me, but I had never spent any time with them; they were probably just looking for allies amongst the rough looking characters from Delight's teenaged years. Because there were some rough looking characters at this party.
Eventually, Cara showed up -- her excuse to leave the house had been that she was going to get her hair done, so her Mom insisted on driving Cara out to the west end where her mother-in-law's salon is, and as soon as Delight drove away, Cara had to run to a bus stop and get back to Whyte Ave, lol -- and she walked straight to me and hugged me and started crying and thanking me for coming so far. Throughout the evening, Cara had many stories about how important Dave and I had been to her life (she certainly remembered Dave's Planet of the Apes toys) and I eventually began to wonder if she was inflating and romanticising those years in her memory: as she was the only little kid that we knew, Cara was indeed treated like a pet whenever we saw her, but we really didn't see her that much (yet, when I said this to Dave, he remembers reading her bedtime stories and taking her for ice cream, so I may be simply deflating her presence in my memory).
And then Delight came in and was certainly surprised, and she also made a beeline towards me and Kennedy, and while I understood that she needed to make the rounds and see everyone who came out, Delight always came back near me eventually. At one point a woman named Patti came over and sat beside me (and I figured that was to be sitting where Delight would eventually return to) and asked where I knew Delight from. I explained that we worked together a long time ago, and when she found out that we flew in from Ontario just for the birthday, she made a point of yelling that fact around the table. I asked where she knew Delight from, and Patti said that they met when she was 15 and Delight was 18 and that they had been close friends forever. In the closeness competition, Patti had me beat. She eventually got very day drunk, but she kept saying, "Yeah, I'm drunk, but I'm taking a cab after this next one, so who cares?" And yet, she never did leave.
When the party was winding down, Cara said she wanted to walk down the avenue to check out a free punk show for a short bit, and she took Kennedy and Hayley with her. I'm pretty sure Kennedy had never seen anything like that before, and while I know she's been to plenty of parties at university where people have been smoking pot, she was surprised that the other girls were passing a joint between them openly as they walked along the alley (Cara had made a point of telling me that Kennedy had said no thanks when she offered her a smoke, and then Hayley shot a nervous look at me as though I might get mad that someone had tried to corrupt my innocent daughter; I just smiled and shrugged). When the girls got back, Cara asked Delight if we should go to karaoke and Delight was...delighted; smiling and nodding eagerly. The eco-friendly group decided we would take the bus over (Patti declared that she would take a cab instead, but ended up stumbling towards the bus stop with us), and although two of Delight's oldest friends -- Tessa and her sister Lisa -- did travel on the bus with us, they decided to get off at Lisa's apartment to get properly stoned before the bar, and seemed really put out that Delight didn't want to go with them.
We got to the second bar, had a crappy dinner, and waited for the karaoke to begin. Patti continued to get soused, Tessa and Lisa walked in totally baked, and the rest of the group was me, Delight, and our girls. Cara started with a Tracy Chapman song, and as Delight had always told me, that girl can sing; can cause goosebumps when you hear her live. As soon as she was done, the DJ started telling Cara about an upcoming karaoke contest. That good. Kennedy was up next and she did Love Shack (her usual party trick) and the girls laughed and clapped through the whole thing: Kennedy might not be the better singer, but she is the better performer. We had to sit through other singers -- good, great, and terrible -- and then Cara did an Adele song (fantastic) and waited for Kennedy's turn again. Unfortunately, everyone was outside smoking dope (and someone went out to smoke dope every time you turned around) when Kennedy started her Tina Turner version of Proud Mary (so they all the missed the slow opening), but Delight was back by the time Kennedy was belting out the second half and doing the famous Tina Turner dance moves: this was a hilarious performance, but Kennedy totally nailed the vocals, too. Everyone in the bar was hooting and clapping when Kennedy was done and Cara said she was sad to have missed it. Cara finished with a Janice Joplin (Piece of My Heart, her showstopper) and she brought the house down; the DJ now begging Cara to join the upcoming contest. Kennedy's last song was Bust a Move, and her rapping and dance moves were so hilarious that Cara had tears in her eyes from laughing, declaring that she wished she could adopt Kennedy.
Meanwhile, Patti had stumbled off for her cab before the night was quite finished, Tessa was the most obnoxiously loud person I had ever met -- yelling and cussing even while people were singing -- and her sister Lisa sat stock still and stupefyingly stoned. We pretty much shut down the place and had a goodbye on the sidewalk, making plans to see Delight again the next day. We called cabs (so much for my smart planning of staying at a hotel walking distance from the original party location), and we had a crazy ride, with the cab driver stopping suddenly in the middle of a block, and as we looked out the window to figure out why, we could see that we were facing the wrong way on a one way street. Gulp. Then when we were close to our hotel, the cabbie turned one block too early, and as we ended at a one way street, he said, "Is it left or right from here?" We both said "Right" and hurriedly blurted, "But that's a one way going the wrong direction". He sighed and turned left and left and left again, adding much time and distance to our fare, and while at first I was annoyed that he expected us to pay for his mistakes, his age and accent and general air of hesitancy forced me to pay and tip (for which he seemed pretty surprised).
The next day had always been a dicey part of our plans: I knew that Delight would have to visit with people who had come from out of town to be at her party (especially her mother and Hayley), but with our rental car and a full day ahead of us, I had planned to take Kennedy to see the mountains: it's hard to balance "I came just to see you" with "I want Kennedy to see this other stuff". Delight understood and said to come see them whenever we got back to town; they'd be keeping Cara's 3-year-old son Cole up to meet us as late as needs be. So, leaving before 7am, after a late night of partying (Kennedy and I really hadn't had that much to drink, but we were still tired), we headed for Banff, a 3 1/2 hour drive. Kennedy was gobsmacked by the Rockies -- you really can't appreciate how majestic they are until you see them up close -- and we walked around Banff, drove out to Lake Louise (I wanted Kennedy to see that unique colour of blue of the lake; never imagining that it would be frozen enough in April for people to be out walking on it; which was dumb of me but dumber of the people out there as the lake was open water at the shoreline). I asked Kennedy if we should drive the extra distance to make it into British Columbia so she could say she had technically been there, and that sounded good to her, so we drove until we passed the Welcome to BC sign, stopped at a gas station to buy a postcard, and turned around and headed back to Banff. As we had been driving around, Kennedy had been in contact with a friend of hers who had dropped out of the U of G and moved back home to Canmore, and he said we needed to see the Bow Falls, and so we did (kind of underwhelming, really, but he's the local with the insider knowledge). I was starting to worry about getting back to Edmonton at a decent time, but when Kennedy asked if we could stop in Canmore so she could have a five minute visit with her friend, I figured it would have been mean of me to say no to that. I dropped her at the tourist info centre that Ben works at for a selfie that immediately made all their mutual friends back at the university jealous (so, worth the stop) while I got gas, picked Kennedy back up, and headed for the highway. As per some subset of Murphy's Law -- the more of a hurry you're in, the worse the traffic will be -- the cars were bumper-to-bumper, speeding up a bit and coming to a sudden stop, until we passed Calgary and were heading north again; dinner was drive-thru A&W so we could eat on the fly.
It was nearly 8:30 when we got to Delight's house, and by then, little Cole was tired and a bit fussy, but still a very sweet, very cute kid. Kennedy and I sat and talked with Delight until 1 am, and most of what she had to say was a surprise to me. She said that she had known Patti for about three months, thirty years ago, and Delight hadn't even told her that she had moved back to Edmonton because seeing her was just not a priority. She said that she was tired of Tessa's meanness and was thinking about cutting her out of her life. Now that really was a shock because I knew that Delight and Tessa had been through everything together -- lived together as teenaged runaways; were pregnant at the same time and raised their kids as friends; when we lived in Edmonton at the same time, it seemed that Delight was always just coming from or going to Tessa's house -- but having been put off by Tessa's loudness and coarseness the night before, I could totally see how someone who was hilariously subversive as a teenager would be wearying to know at 50 if she hasn't changed in all that time. The final straw, apparently, was Tessa hurting Cara's feelings at karaoke: in the middle of some conversation about how amazing Adele is, Tessa turned to Cara and said, "Honey, you don't have what it takes to bring tears to my eyes". When being a "bar star" is all Cara aspires to, that is a crap thing to say. Delight says that just like she was my naughty friend -- the one who, by comparison, made me look like Mary Poppins -- Tessa had always been her "good by comparison" friend and it just doesn't work anymore. This week's song choice is for Delight's old friends (Tessa and Lisa and Patti and the rest of those rough looking characters): not only were they all massive fans of The Doors back in the day, but they're as strange to me as I'm sure I am to them; and I'm okay with that meaning that I'm hopelessly square. When we realised it was 1 and Delight had to work at 8 in the morning, we had to say goodbye, promising to get together one more time the next day if time allowed.
We got up painfully early again so as not to waste too much touristing time, and Kennedy and I drove to where Theatre Network used to be at the Roxy (the theatre Dave used to manage which is now, literally, a hole in the ground), drove past Kennedy's birth hospital again, bought coffees and drank them at Hawreluk Park, went back to the university to buy Dave a souvenir T-shirt from his alma mater, and were checking out an antique mall (Western Canada's largest!) when Delight called and asked if we wanted to meet for lunch. Yes please. I didn't realise she meant that we were meeting at a sandwich shop where Cara works, so we were pleased to be able to say another goodbye to her, and the lunch was a fitting farewell to Delight. Kennedy and I went back to walk along Whyte Ave one last time, I picked something up for Mallory, and then it was time to head for the airport and home again.
I have loved Delight since the first time I met her: despite having some really subversive behaviours and an acid tongue, Delight has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known. She is bright, hard working, loyal, and unapologetic; she deserves all the happiness that life can throw at her. It was impressive looking around at the people at her party; plenty of people who made a big effort to come to Delight's special day; certainly more people and more love than I could attract in a room. I know that as "the only normal person Delight knows" (her words), I was probably the freak in the room, and I hope that I didn't look as pathetic as Patti; overestimating how close I am to Delight based on our relationship from half a lifetime back; flying across the country, and dragging my kid along too, to drop at Delight's feet. But that's just the effect she has on people: even my own mother couldn't stop herself from reposting pictures from Delight's birthday party on facebook as though she had been there herself; and she didn't even know Delight until a couple of years ago (and as I pointed out to Kennedy, after this weekend, she totally knows Delight better than my mother does; Mum would probably have been scandalised if she had been at the party and the karaoke after, yet she believes that Delight is her own good friend. It was not by accident that I never mentioned to Mum that Kennedy and I were going out to Edmonton: she can't keep a secret and I would have been horrified if she decided to join us.)
We flew out on an early morning flight on Friday, picked up our rental car, and headed for West Edmonton Mall. We went to the underground aquarium and sea lion show, bought an all day pass for the amusement park (and, in my case, suffered whiplash from a few of the rides; youch), walked for hours to see all the same stores that you see in any mall (but also the attractions like the indoor water park and ice rink), and when my legs screamed to be done, we went to the restaurant area and ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory; the restaurant (though not this same location) where Dave, my Mum and I ate the night before Kennedy was born.
When we were finished eating, we drove around the city: I showed Kennedy the Legislature grounds (and since you can't park on the actual grounds at night anymore, we had to use a public lot and climb up an insanely long and steep set of stairs that many people were jogging up and down; we were lucky to walk it), then to some places where I used to work, the hospital she was born in, and the house Dave and I owned when she was born; it was hard to convince Kennedy that that was a cute house as it is now literally falling apart. I was exhausted, so we went to the hotel.
We wanted to do more touristing the next morning since the party wasn't until 2:30, so after messaging Cara to make sure that we couldn't possibly run into Delight anywhere (Cara assured me that the plan was for her Mom to be at home until her friend picked her up at 2), Kennedy and I went to the Muttart Conservatory, checked out the HUB and the theatres at the University of Alberta where her Dad used to perform, parked back at the hotel (easy walking distance to the party's location) and then walked along Whyte Ave; checking out all the funky shops and having lunch at Chiantis, the restaurant where Dave and I had our first date. It was then time to go wait at Blues on Whyte for Delight to be brought along, but when we got there, only Delight's younger daughter Hayley and her step-sister Mallory were there: we quickly saw that nothing had been set up for us and I was stunned to learn that Delight and her friend had been shopping along Whyte Ave at the same time that Kennedy and I had been. We moved tables together, more people started showing up, and Delight's former mother-in-law (Hayley's grandmother Jeanette) brought a bunch of food platters and it started looking more festive.
Here's the thing about me and Delight: even though we worked full-time alongside each other and saw each other outside of work often (25 years ago), I knew I was never her best friend and she always had crazy stories about all the crazy goings-on that her other friends got up to. As people started showing up and introducing themselves, it was usually the first time that I was able to put a face to the names that I had heard about all those years ago. Every time someone would say, "Oh you're Krista, I'm sure we met back in the day", I would be thinking: I don't think we ever actually did; Delight did a good job of keeping her worlds separated. I was glad to see that her brother Dean recognised me when he came in with his new girlfriend, and Delight's mother made a point of coming over and sitting beside me for a while to reminisce about the time she had to babysit the newborn Hayley while Delight and Cara came out to be in my wedding party. Hayley's grandmother and aunts talked pleasantly to me, like they knew me, but I had never spent any time with them; they were probably just looking for allies amongst the rough looking characters from Delight's teenaged years. Because there were some rough looking characters at this party.
Eventually, Cara showed up -- her excuse to leave the house had been that she was going to get her hair done, so her Mom insisted on driving Cara out to the west end where her mother-in-law's salon is, and as soon as Delight drove away, Cara had to run to a bus stop and get back to Whyte Ave, lol -- and she walked straight to me and hugged me and started crying and thanking me for coming so far. Throughout the evening, Cara had many stories about how important Dave and I had been to her life (she certainly remembered Dave's Planet of the Apes toys) and I eventually began to wonder if she was inflating and romanticising those years in her memory: as she was the only little kid that we knew, Cara was indeed treated like a pet whenever we saw her, but we really didn't see her that much (yet, when I said this to Dave, he remembers reading her bedtime stories and taking her for ice cream, so I may be simply deflating her presence in my memory).
And then Delight came in and was certainly surprised, and she also made a beeline towards me and Kennedy, and while I understood that she needed to make the rounds and see everyone who came out, Delight always came back near me eventually. At one point a woman named Patti came over and sat beside me (and I figured that was to be sitting where Delight would eventually return to) and asked where I knew Delight from. I explained that we worked together a long time ago, and when she found out that we flew in from Ontario just for the birthday, she made a point of yelling that fact around the table. I asked where she knew Delight from, and Patti said that they met when she was 15 and Delight was 18 and that they had been close friends forever. In the closeness competition, Patti had me beat. She eventually got very day drunk, but she kept saying, "Yeah, I'm drunk, but I'm taking a cab after this next one, so who cares?" And yet, she never did leave.
When the party was winding down, Cara said she wanted to walk down the avenue to check out a free punk show for a short bit, and she took Kennedy and Hayley with her. I'm pretty sure Kennedy had never seen anything like that before, and while I know she's been to plenty of parties at university where people have been smoking pot, she was surprised that the other girls were passing a joint between them openly as they walked along the alley (Cara had made a point of telling me that Kennedy had said no thanks when she offered her a smoke, and then Hayley shot a nervous look at me as though I might get mad that someone had tried to corrupt my innocent daughter; I just smiled and shrugged). When the girls got back, Cara asked Delight if we should go to karaoke and Delight was...delighted; smiling and nodding eagerly. The eco-friendly group decided we would take the bus over (Patti declared that she would take a cab instead, but ended up stumbling towards the bus stop with us), and although two of Delight's oldest friends -- Tessa and her sister Lisa -- did travel on the bus with us, they decided to get off at Lisa's apartment to get properly stoned before the bar, and seemed really put out that Delight didn't want to go with them.
We got to the second bar, had a crappy dinner, and waited for the karaoke to begin. Patti continued to get soused, Tessa and Lisa walked in totally baked, and the rest of the group was me, Delight, and our girls. Cara started with a Tracy Chapman song, and as Delight had always told me, that girl can sing; can cause goosebumps when you hear her live. As soon as she was done, the DJ started telling Cara about an upcoming karaoke contest. That good. Kennedy was up next and she did Love Shack (her usual party trick) and the girls laughed and clapped through the whole thing: Kennedy might not be the better singer, but she is the better performer. We had to sit through other singers -- good, great, and terrible -- and then Cara did an Adele song (fantastic) and waited for Kennedy's turn again. Unfortunately, everyone was outside smoking dope (and someone went out to smoke dope every time you turned around) when Kennedy started her Tina Turner version of Proud Mary (so they all the missed the slow opening), but Delight was back by the time Kennedy was belting out the second half and doing the famous Tina Turner dance moves: this was a hilarious performance, but Kennedy totally nailed the vocals, too. Everyone in the bar was hooting and clapping when Kennedy was done and Cara said she was sad to have missed it. Cara finished with a Janice Joplin (Piece of My Heart, her showstopper) and she brought the house down; the DJ now begging Cara to join the upcoming contest. Kennedy's last song was Bust a Move, and her rapping and dance moves were so hilarious that Cara had tears in her eyes from laughing, declaring that she wished she could adopt Kennedy.
Meanwhile, Patti had stumbled off for her cab before the night was quite finished, Tessa was the most obnoxiously loud person I had ever met -- yelling and cussing even while people were singing -- and her sister Lisa sat stock still and stupefyingly stoned. We pretty much shut down the place and had a goodbye on the sidewalk, making plans to see Delight again the next day. We called cabs (so much for my smart planning of staying at a hotel walking distance from the original party location), and we had a crazy ride, with the cab driver stopping suddenly in the middle of a block, and as we looked out the window to figure out why, we could see that we were facing the wrong way on a one way street. Gulp. Then when we were close to our hotel, the cabbie turned one block too early, and as we ended at a one way street, he said, "Is it left or right from here?" We both said "Right" and hurriedly blurted, "But that's a one way going the wrong direction". He sighed and turned left and left and left again, adding much time and distance to our fare, and while at first I was annoyed that he expected us to pay for his mistakes, his age and accent and general air of hesitancy forced me to pay and tip (for which he seemed pretty surprised).
The next day had always been a dicey part of our plans: I knew that Delight would have to visit with people who had come from out of town to be at her party (especially her mother and Hayley), but with our rental car and a full day ahead of us, I had planned to take Kennedy to see the mountains: it's hard to balance "I came just to see you" with "I want Kennedy to see this other stuff". Delight understood and said to come see them whenever we got back to town; they'd be keeping Cara's 3-year-old son Cole up to meet us as late as needs be. So, leaving before 7am, after a late night of partying (Kennedy and I really hadn't had that much to drink, but we were still tired), we headed for Banff, a 3 1/2 hour drive. Kennedy was gobsmacked by the Rockies -- you really can't appreciate how majestic they are until you see them up close -- and we walked around Banff, drove out to Lake Louise (I wanted Kennedy to see that unique colour of blue of the lake; never imagining that it would be frozen enough in April for people to be out walking on it; which was dumb of me but dumber of the people out there as the lake was open water at the shoreline). I asked Kennedy if we should drive the extra distance to make it into British Columbia so she could say she had technically been there, and that sounded good to her, so we drove until we passed the Welcome to BC sign, stopped at a gas station to buy a postcard, and turned around and headed back to Banff. As we had been driving around, Kennedy had been in contact with a friend of hers who had dropped out of the U of G and moved back home to Canmore, and he said we needed to see the Bow Falls, and so we did (kind of underwhelming, really, but he's the local with the insider knowledge). I was starting to worry about getting back to Edmonton at a decent time, but when Kennedy asked if we could stop in Canmore so she could have a five minute visit with her friend, I figured it would have been mean of me to say no to that. I dropped her at the tourist info centre that Ben works at for a selfie that immediately made all their mutual friends back at the university jealous (so, worth the stop) while I got gas, picked Kennedy back up, and headed for the highway. As per some subset of Murphy's Law -- the more of a hurry you're in, the worse the traffic will be -- the cars were bumper-to-bumper, speeding up a bit and coming to a sudden stop, until we passed Calgary and were heading north again; dinner was drive-thru A&W so we could eat on the fly.
It was nearly 8:30 when we got to Delight's house, and by then, little Cole was tired and a bit fussy, but still a very sweet, very cute kid. Kennedy and I sat and talked with Delight until 1 am, and most of what she had to say was a surprise to me. She said that she had known Patti for about three months, thirty years ago, and Delight hadn't even told her that she had moved back to Edmonton because seeing her was just not a priority. She said that she was tired of Tessa's meanness and was thinking about cutting her out of her life. Now that really was a shock because I knew that Delight and Tessa had been through everything together -- lived together as teenaged runaways; were pregnant at the same time and raised their kids as friends; when we lived in Edmonton at the same time, it seemed that Delight was always just coming from or going to Tessa's house -- but having been put off by Tessa's loudness and coarseness the night before, I could totally see how someone who was hilariously subversive as a teenager would be wearying to know at 50 if she hasn't changed in all that time. The final straw, apparently, was Tessa hurting Cara's feelings at karaoke: in the middle of some conversation about how amazing Adele is, Tessa turned to Cara and said, "Honey, you don't have what it takes to bring tears to my eyes". When being a "bar star" is all Cara aspires to, that is a crap thing to say. Delight says that just like she was my naughty friend -- the one who, by comparison, made me look like Mary Poppins -- Tessa had always been her "good by comparison" friend and it just doesn't work anymore. This week's song choice is for Delight's old friends (Tessa and Lisa and Patti and the rest of those rough looking characters): not only were they all massive fans of The Doors back in the day, but they're as strange to me as I'm sure I am to them; and I'm okay with that meaning that I'm hopelessly square. When we realised it was 1 and Delight had to work at 8 in the morning, we had to say goodbye, promising to get together one more time the next day if time allowed.
We got up painfully early again so as not to waste too much touristing time, and Kennedy and I drove to where Theatre Network used to be at the Roxy (the theatre Dave used to manage which is now, literally, a hole in the ground), drove past Kennedy's birth hospital again, bought coffees and drank them at Hawreluk Park, went back to the university to buy Dave a souvenir T-shirt from his alma mater, and were checking out an antique mall (Western Canada's largest!) when Delight called and asked if we wanted to meet for lunch. Yes please. I didn't realise she meant that we were meeting at a sandwich shop where Cara works, so we were pleased to be able to say another goodbye to her, and the lunch was a fitting farewell to Delight. Kennedy and I went back to walk along Whyte Ave one last time, I picked something up for Mallory, and then it was time to head for the airport and home again.
I have loved Delight since the first time I met her: despite having some really subversive behaviours and an acid tongue, Delight has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known. She is bright, hard working, loyal, and unapologetic; she deserves all the happiness that life can throw at her. It was impressive looking around at the people at her party; plenty of people who made a big effort to come to Delight's special day; certainly more people and more love than I could attract in a room. I know that as "the only normal person Delight knows" (her words), I was probably the freak in the room, and I hope that I didn't look as pathetic as Patti; overestimating how close I am to Delight based on our relationship from half a lifetime back; flying across the country, and dragging my kid along too, to drop at Delight's feet. But that's just the effect she has on people: even my own mother couldn't stop herself from reposting pictures from Delight's birthday party on facebook as though she had been there herself; and she didn't even know Delight until a couple of years ago (and as I pointed out to Kennedy, after this weekend, she totally knows Delight better than my mother does; Mum would probably have been scandalised if she had been at the party and the karaoke after, yet she believes that Delight is her own good friend. It was not by accident that I never mentioned to Mum that Kennedy and I were going out to Edmonton: she can't keep a secret and I would have been horrified if she decided to join us.)
People are strange when you're a stranger
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| The Legislature |
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| One of three sets of stairs to get up the hill. Gasp. |
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| Hockey. Because Edmonton. |
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| Chianti's! |
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| Is that Delight wiping tears? I do believe tis true. |
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| As my mother posted, "Can you believe this girl is 50?" |
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| Downtown Banff |
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| Lake Louise |
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| Lake Louise |
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| Bow Falls |
