Mind Picking : Happy Halloween V

Hard to believe that this will be my fifth Halloween post: every year I think that I can't possibly have a new strange story to share, and every year, something drops into my lap. And then every year, I remember that I have other, related, stories to share; nearly too many to put into one post. I'll begin with the incident that led to this year's theme being "Messages from the Other Side":

We had our usual party on Christmas Eve of last year, and as usual, my brother Kyler and his family came along. Knowing that I'm open-minded to stories of the strange, my sister-in-law, Christine, said she had a good one for me. Apparently, one of her clients had given her a gift certificate for an "Aura Reading", and with a shrug, Christine decided to put it to use. She made an appointment with a woman in Hamilton, and at the arranged hour, rang the bell of the woman's midcentury brick rowhouse.

Christine had no idea what to expect, but assuming that the woman would attempt to use the tricks of sham mediums – making broad guesses and then following her target's body language – Christine decided to remain impassive; give away nothing if she could help it. As soon as she entered the foyer, the youngish woman (obviously a mother from the kids' things about the house) said, "I can see by your aura that you're closing yourself off. You're highly intelligent, and that makes you skeptical – which I totally understand – but if you want to get anything out of this experience, you may want to open yourself up to it." Christine smiled and nodded noncommittally; isn't that exactly what a sham would say? Attempt to flatter her mark into susceptibility?

The woman led Christine into her dining room, where she had a pot of tea steeping, and invited Christine to sit. As she poured out the homebrew – some mix of familiar-sounding herbs that she listed as she served – the woman explained her process: not only could she see and interpret Christine's own aura (providing a system check for Christine herself), but this process allowed her to communicate with people "on the other side". As a matter of fact, she said, there was an older gentleman sitting right behind Christine, waiting to make contact. Christine remained cool, nodding noncommittally.

Although Christine had been devastated to lose her Grandpa Sully a couple of years earlier, when the woman suggested that this man might be a relative who had recently passed, Christine shrugged and said, "Could be." The woman described a trailer in the woods that the man was showing her, saying that he thought it was a place Christine enjoyed visiting. She again shrugged and said, "Could be", but as she said to me later: just because her grandparents had a trailer in the woods that she enjoyed visiting her entire life, that wasn't proof to her, "So many retired people have holiday trailers that that could just be a good guess". My grandparents didn't have trailers; I don't know anyone with a trailer in the woods; yet, if this didn't feel like "proof" of anything to Christine, it wasn't proof of anything.

The woman then asked if they had enjoyed campfires at the trailer and Christine was emphatic with her, "No." The woman explained that the man was showing her wood, insisting it was important, and Christine countered that campfires were just not a significant part of her experience at the trailer. The woman seemed confused, but let that idea go. She then said that the man recognised the necklace Christine was wearing, but although it had indeed been recently passed down to her from her grandmother, Christine assumed that could be another lucky guess; she nodded blankly.

The woman then began to pass on everything this man was telling her: that he knows he was difficult to deal with in the end; that he had been hard on Christine's grandmother – snapping at all of her final efforts to make him comfortable; he had specific messages for his daughters; wanted everyone to know that he was proud of them and grateful for the love they had shown him. The hour was up before long, and although Christine was touched by the content of all of these messages, she didn't really think that anything that was said proved contact with her dead grandfather: isn't dying always hard? Wouldn't anyone send messages of love from the other side? But as she drove home, going over everything in her memory, a bolt of recognition jolted through her: when she was growing up, Christine and her grandfather were always building things together; they were always cutting wood and gluing and nailing it together, with Christine decorating the end products with folk painting (I have several of their projects around here that they made for me and my girls over the years): no other image could have been more meaningful to her as a message from the other side than that of her Grandpa with wood, and the Aura Reader may have simply misinterpreted what he was showing her. Up to that point, Christine wasn't even sure that she was going to tell her mother about the experience – why cheapen grief with tawdry flim-flammery? – but she suddenly began to wonder, "What if that was my Grandpa and he asked me to pass on those messages? Wouldn't I have a duty to follow through?"

When she got home, Christine did call her mother, and as she laid out the whole story, her Mum experienced her own personalised jolts of recognition, and by the end, they were both in tears. Christine's mother asked if she could relay the story to her own mother – the snapped at, still grieving widow – and that was apparently another meaningful, tear-filled experience. Christine told me that for Christmas, she had decided to get her Mum a gift certificate for her own Aura Reading with the woman in Hamilton. I kind of wish she had gotten me one, too.

This seems to be the spot to share two slightly related stories: Another sister-in-law, Laura, lost her Dad to cancer far too early; when Laura was in her thirties and her children were still preschoolers. Whenever his condition would take scary dips, Laura would drive the six hours from here to his hospital bedside in Ottawa, and because of this vigilance, she was present when her Dad suddenly passed. This occurred on a snowy winter's night, and as she drove with her devastated family through the countryside afterwards toward their rural childhood home, Laura looked out into a large field, and illuminated by a suddenly spotlight-bright moon, the entire family saw a magnificent stag standing regal and stock-still, and each of them knew that this was a message from their Dad: He was fine and at rest and they were suddenly all at peace in their grief as well.

And sometimes these messages are more urgent: My friend Delight told me that once when she was driving, she was stopped in the left lane of a busy four lane street, waiting to turn left. She had her toddler, Haley, strapped into the rear right seat and was impatiently waiting for traffic to ease up, and as she crept forward, turning her wheels left in anticipation of making the turn, she heard the voice of a dead friend inside her head – someone who had died in a car accident himself – insisting, "You know you should leave your wheels straight when waiting to make a left turn so that if you get rear-ended, you won't be pushed into oncoming traffic." No sooner did Delight straighten out her wheels than she was rear-ended, and more-or-less just safely knocked forward. Delight 100% believes that her dead friend communicated with her just in time from the other side; that he probably saved Haley's life if not also her own.

I haven't personally made many attempts to communicate with "the other side", but as I have written about before, when I was quite young, I had a friend who had a Ouija Board. This was in the Seventies, and Becky's parents were definitely hippies – her Mom was a big, gregarious lady who wore flowy gypsy dresses; her Dad was skinny with a fringed leather vest, Lennon-glasses, and a horseshoe moustache. They lived outside our small town, in an even smaller lakeside community, and their house was essentially a winterised cottage; a cosy cabin right out of a fairy tale. Becky's Mom would playfully read tarot cards, which I found interesting (if not very mystical), and Becky and her sister kept the Ouija Board in their shared bedroom. They said that they used it all the time – that they were in frequent contact with a spirit named Joe – and although I tried it with them, I don't remember Joe saying anything interesting to us. And besides: I couldn't be sure that it wasn't just Becky and her sister moving the planchette on purpose; interesting, if not very mystical; probably flim-flammery.

Coincidentally, it was just this summer that Dave told a story I hadn't heard before: When he was in high school, he and his friend Anna once tried using a Ouija Board. Dave has always been a spoilsport skeptic, and when they "apparently made contact" with a recently deceased relative of Anna's, Dave played along for the fun of it; knew that Anna was moving the planchette, and he let her; let her spell out stories from this relative's life; played along as Anna pretended to be freaked out by the experience. Some time later, Dave was with Anna as she told her mother about the experience, and the mother confirmed all the meat of the stories (including the details of the relative's hard death that she had tried to keep from Anna). Dave said that Anna was so visibly shaken by her mother's confirmations that he was never sure afterwards if it had been a prank or a real contact experience all along.

Now, to circle back, while Christine was telling me her story, my brother Kyler was sighing and rolling his eyes; he petulantly turned up the volume on the TV he was watching to show his displeasure with Christine having been moved by, and now sharing, her Aura Reading story. Which is weird, because this is the brother of mine who lived in what my family believes to have been a haunted house after I moved out. Kyler himself was singled out for particular abuse from the other side, and now he didn't believe in it? Once when we were young and our parents were out, Kyler and I  watched The Exorcist together; and we got very, very frightened by it; Kyler slept on the floor of my room for a few nights after – and while I may have pretended I was doing him some kindness, I was happy he was there; we were both terrified of being possessed by a pea soup-spewing demon. Some time after that, and probably after my experience with Becky's Ouija Board, our parents were out and I asked Kyler if he wanted to make a homemade Ouija Board with me. I have no idea where I heard these instructions, but we drew all the letters of the alphabet on squares of paper, wrote out "yes" and "no" as well, and laid them out in a big circle on the kitchen table. We then took a glass of water, and after the two of us took turns drinking it dry, we flipped the glass over into the middle of the letters and began. I don't remember our first question (probably something like, "Is anyone there?"), but I precisely remember the glass moving smoothly on its skim of residual water beneath our light touch – first looking like it was going to go one way, and then another, and as I stood above the display, holding my breath and hoping/dreading an actual response, the glass suddenly flew out from under my fingertips and went shooting across the room and shattered against the sink. Kyler and I both accused each other of trying to scare the other and throwing that glass on purpose. As Kyler stomped off indignantly, I remember cleaning up the evidence by myself; discarding the glass shards, tearing the letters up into teeny tiny unrecognisable pieces. 

Years later I reminded Kyler of this incident, and while I told him that I've always known he was moving that glass around, that he threw it across the room on purpose to freak me out, he not only didn't admit to it, Kyler swore that he had no memory of the event at all. I'll never forget it, and he has this amazing memory, so that is weird to me.

And to tie it all together: After watching movies like The Exorcist and Poltergeist or reading books like Carrie, I learned that (in fiction anyway) pubescent youths (and especially young girls) can act as conduits for negative energies. I've always been the kind of person who can simultaneously hold two contrary thoughts in my mind – I know this isn't real, but what if just being aware of it makes it happen to me? – and I scared myself often as I was growing up, wondering if it was possible to become possessed by forces I didn't even believe in. When people started whispering about what was supposed to happen if you chanted "Bloody Mary" into a mirror, I despaired that I now had this knowledge; never willingly tested what I knew couldn't possibly be true; would lay in bed with my eyes squeezed shut, hoping that no gruesome apparition would be summoned by the refrain (Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary) looping silently in my brain against my desperate will. I eventually learned (from "true" accounts on shows like Celebrity Ghost Stories) that Ouija Boards are said to be used by malevolent spirits to cross over from the other side; that this combination of pubescent youth and untrained portal-opening can unleash monsters. And it's sold in toy stores. I won't have one in my house. Bizarrely, Kennedy found a Ouija Board squirrelled away in one of her grandparents' closets while decluttering their house for sale this summer – Granny tried to insist that Kennedy bring it home with her "to play with", but she nervously threw it in the Dumpster instead. Kennedy has watched enough Celebrity Ghost Stories to know better, too; you just don't play with portals, even if you don't believe in them. (I asked Mallory the other day if she has ever used a Ouija Board and she said, "No. Why would I? There is zero upside." That's my girl.)

And yet...is there really anything sinister about going for tea at a young mother's home and having her tell you that your grandfather loved you and is proud of you? I am still the kind of person who can simultaneously hold two contrary thoughts in my mind – I don't really believe that mediums relay messages from the other side, but it's pretty cool that Christine received such messages – and I wouldn't be opposed to having a chat with an Aura Reader myself. 

Happy Halloween!


Strange stories from previous years:

Halloween I
Halloween II
Halloween III
Halloween IV

The Bone Mother

This was many years ago, back in the first land, when my grandmother was still alive and I was a small child. I would be sent to visit her in the woods, and while she was cooking she would tell me stories of the Bone Mother. The little girl came up to the Bone Mother's house and knocked on the heavy wooden door. It opened all by itself and the little girl, who was very much like you, saw the Bone Mother at her giant wood stove. There she stood, throwing handfuls of vegetables in a big black pot made of iron, just like her teeth. And then my grandmother would smile with her teeth made of iron, and I would giggle and shiver.

According to the “About the Author” blurb, David Demchuk “has been writing for theatre, film, television, radio, print and other media for more than thirty years. The Bone Mother is his first novel.” As a collection of twenty-five short stories (some as short as a couple of pages and all broadly considered “horror” stories), I don't know if I'd really label this a novel. I also find it an odd selection to discover on this year's Giller Prize longlist – but because I can glean a spark of deeper meaning, and because I happened to have read it in the days leading up to Halloween, I'm happy to have picked this book up; yet, wouldn't necessarily recommend it beyond to other Giller completionists.

Most of these stories take place somewhere in the Ukraine and primarily center on the three villages that neighbour “The Thimble Factory”. We learn that they who inhabit these villages must serve a mandatory five year stint working at the factory, and if they survive, they will have earned a pension that can support themselves and their families for life. If they don't survive, well, the factory has its own graveyard and funerary services. Whatever the work that really happens here, it's so important that we learn in a late story that during the great famine, or Holodomor, these villages are singled out for food relief shipments (guarded by starving soldiers who might risk their lives for a stolen apple). Interspersed with these more “realistic” tales about the Thimble Factory are fables and ghost stories, horrifyingly populated by the strigoi (undead), rusalkas(knife-toothed water nymphs), nyavkas (forest witches), but most perilously, by the Nichni Politsiyi: the Night Police who come knocking on doors in the dead of night, disappearing people without warrant or protest.

I now know that no matter how far or how fast we run, our ghosts and demons run with us, and are always close at hand.

And this is what I eventually determined to be the deeper meaning: With a long history of war and famine and iron-fisted government control based far away, the people of the Ukraine have suffered more than their share of actual physical horrors – no wonder they have such a rich lore of spooks and monsters. Even when characters have been forced to move away from their villages – to larger cities or even different countries – their ghosts and demons follow; a remote farm in Manitoba isn't beyond the reach of the Nichni Politsiyi. 

I liked that most stories started with an old photograph – attributed to Romanian photographer Costică Acsinte and taken between 1935-45 – there's not much more spooky than an old black-and-white photo of a stern-faced Slav as it decomposes around the edges (think Miss Peregrine without the costumes). And the stories themselves could be chilling, with horrifying creatures unfamiliar to me. (Also chilling when it's implied that the plummeting birthrate during the Holodomor might not have been a natural process.) I might have enjoyed this reading experience more if I had dipped into these tales one or two at a time, but the bang-bang-bang of short, short story after short, short story became a bit monotonous – and if this is to be considered a “novel”, then I guess that's the way it's meant to be read.

The 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist: 

David Chariandy: Brother
Rachel Cusk: Transit
David Demchuk: The Bone Mother
Joel Thomas Hynes: We'll All Be Burned in Our Beds Some Night
Andrée A. Michaud: Boundary
Josip Novakovich: Tumbleweed
Ed O'Loughlin: Minds of Winter
Zoey Leigh Peterson: Next Year, for Sure
Michael Redhill: Bellevue Square
Eden Robinson: Son of a Trickster
Deborah Willis: The Dark and other Love Stories
Michelle Winters: I Am a Truck


After finishing reading the longlist, I'll rank the shortlist (according to my own enjoyment only):

I Am a Truck

Minds of Winter

Son of a Trickster

Bellevue Square

Transit

*Won by Bellevue Square - a surprise, to me, but not an unwelcome one. Congrats to Michael Redhill!

Boundary: The Last Summer

Bondrée is a place where shadows defeat the harshest light, an enclave whose lush vegetation recalls the virgin forests that covered the North American continent three or four centuries ago. Its name derives from the deformation of the word “boundary”, or frontier. No borderline, however, is there to suggest that this place belongs to any country other than the temperate forests stretching from Maine, in the United States, to the southwest of the Beauce, in Quebec. Boundary is a stateless domain, a no-man's land harbouring a lake, Boundary Pond, and a mountain that hunters came to call Moose Trap, after observing that the moose venturing onto the lake's western shore were swiftly tripped up on the steep slope of this rocky mass that with the same dispassion engulfs the setting suns.

Boundary is about several different hazy borderlands: Not just this forested setting that spans the Maine-Quebec border, but also the unseen limits that separate people by class and custom and gender, the numinous realm of ghosts and legend, and especially, the boundaries that mark a girl's passage into womanhood. On the surface, this book reads like a murder mystery, but it's much deeper than that. I'm unsurprised that it won the Governor General's Literary Award when it was first released in French, and am happy that its appearance on this year's Giller Prize longlist led me to pick it up. I'll give no more spoilers than what's on the book's cover, but it is a murder mystery, so reader beware from here.

Everyone knows that death stains, that it leaves marks everywhere it goes, big dirty tracks that make us lurch backwards when we're about to step right into them.

The year is 1967 and the summer cottagers – an assortment of rich Americans and modest Quebeckers who don't intermingle – return to Boundary Lake. Two of the teenaged girls, Zaza and Sissy, have come into their own this summer, and as they strut along in their short shorts and tank tops, brazenly smoking stolen cigarettes and singing A Whiter Shade of Pale and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the women cluck their tongues and the men disavow their thoughts at the sight of their long, flowing hair and long, tanned legs. When Zaza goes missing one night when her family is away, Sissy has trouble raising the alarm among the other cottagers: Just what do you expect from that type of girl? But when Zaza is found dead – having apparently stumbled into an old bear trap and bled out in the forest – it's considered a horrible accident; maybe even the revenge of the ghost of the legendary Pete Landry who once trapped in these woods. Yet, when danger visits upon Zaza's friends, it becomes clear that there's nothing more vulnerable than a girl blooming into womanhood.

The narrative switches between several points-of-view, but feels primarily from that of Andrée – a twelve-year-old Québécoise tomboy who would rather catch frogs than paint her nails. Andrée likes the attention that Zaza and Sissy sometimes pay her (giving her sticks of “baby yum” and calling her “littoldolle”), but Andrée feels that there is more than just language acting as a barrier between them: these barely older girls feel like they're from a different world. As the summer progresses and Andrée spies on the adults around her and the ongoing police investigation, the evil that she witnesses takes away her childish innocence and pushes her over the boundary into that adult world. As the book progresses, Andrée goes from fighting growing up:

I didn't want a bra or nylon stockings or nail polish or blood between my legs. I wanted trees to climb, I wanted dirty running shoes that go a hundred times faster than new running shoes and girls' sandals, and I especially didn't want to feel that what up to then had got me out of bed every morning was going to leave me cold, while life went on without me. It hurt too much to think that old age planed down the mornings, and left slivers of new wood at your bedroom door.

To acknowledging its inevitability:

Still lost in thought, mite, my father said, gently ruffling my hair, and that gesture made me want to cry, because soon my father wouldn’t dare pass his hand through my hair that way, for the simple reason that I was less and less of a mite, that I was unbugging at the speed of light, like all those girls who from one day to the next start saying no to their parents’ goodnight kisses.

In the Acknowledgments at the end of the book, author Andrée A. Michaud notes that her family had a cottage in Bondrée for three years, and that made sense to me: this felt like a very personal narrative; made knock-over-the-head obvious by the main characters being a young girl named “Andrée” and a police detective named “Michaud”. Tying together the dichotomies represented (that of English/French and adult/child) is the character of Larue – a book-loving recluse whom Michaud engages as an interpreter for his investigation – and he would seem to be another aspect of the author herself:

Larue came from another world, that of books, which reflect reality with a different sort of acuity, taking a small sample of the real and weighing it against a whole that existed only in the sum of its parts.

Even on the surface, this is a satisfying read: the nature writing is engaging, the characters are recognisable, the mystery is intriguing. But what I really liked was Andrée path into adulthood – would she become one of those frightening beauties who call danger down upon themselves; or one of the mothers who “forget themselves” once they have children; or one of the cops' wives who must take second place to the dead girls who haunt their husbands' dreams – and while Andrée tries to cling to her childish ways, her body outgrows her hiding places and events push her over that final boundary. Truly an enjoyable read on every level.

The 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist: 

David Chariandy: Brother
Rachel Cusk: Transit
David Demchuk: The Bone Mother
Joel Thomas Hynes: We'll All Be Burned in Our Beds Some Night
Andrée A. Michaud: Boundary
Josip Novakovich: Tumbleweed
Ed O'Loughlin: Minds of Winter
Zoey Leigh Peterson: Next Year, for Sure
Michael Redhill: Bellevue Square
Eden Robinson: Son of a Trickster
Deborah Willis: The Dark and other Love Stories
Michelle Winters: I Am a Truck


After finishing reading the longlist, I'll rank the shortlist (according to my own enjoyment only):

I Am a Truck

Minds of Winter

Son of a Trickster

Bellevue Square

Transit

*Won by Bellevue Square - a surprise, to me, but not an unwelcome one. Congrats to Michael Redhill!

Next Year, for Sure

I think I have a crush on Emily, he tells Kathryn in the shower. This is where they confide crushes.

A heart crush or a boner crush? Kathryn says.

He doesn’t know how to choose. It’s not particularly sexual, his crush. He hasn’t thought about Emily that way. And Chris would never say boner. But it’s not just his heart, either. It’s his molecules.

On the surface, Next Year, for Sure is a breezy, quirky read – when Kathryn's boyfriend of nine years tells her that he can't stop thinking about an acquaintance from the Laundromat, she encourages him to ask the woman out, beginning an exploration of polyamory which looks like a “Whatever happens between consenting adults is their business”-type story – but this is actually quite a sad and introspective book. By making the main characters so hip and unconventional, author Zoey Leigh Peterson pulls off the literary bait-and-switch of making the reader believe what they are telling the world: We're fine with this and don't care what you think. Meanwhile, by slowly doling out information from Kathryn and Chris' childhoods, we are quietly led to realise that they may be a bit broken, acting on motivations that even they are not aware of. On the surface, this might look like a strange novel to have been longlisted for the Giller Prize, but there is something special happening here; I'm pleased to have been led to read it.

Next Year for Sure is separated into chapters that follow twelve months, from September to September, and switches back and forth between Kathryn's and Chris' perspectives, using some offbeat literary devices along the way: there's nothing straightforward about the storytelling. After that opening conversation in the shower, the pair goes on their annual camping trip, and this is where the title comes from: Their best friend couple, Kyle and Sharon – who usually accompany them on this trip – find themselves too busy this year, but “next year, for sure”. And this is really significant: The two couples used to live across the alley from each other, did everything together, were as close as any foursome could be. But then Kyle and Sharon moved away, bought a condo, decided to get married – all that adult stuff – while Chris and Kathryn still rent a one bedroom, have an old futon in the living room, work at jobs instead of careers. When Sharon recoils at the idea of Kathryn encouraging Chris in his relationship with Emily, Kathryn has a mental rebuttal:

She and Chris are smart, caring people who love each other. They can try things out, and if those things don't work, they can try something else, or go back to how they were before. Kathryn could call Chris right now and tell him to come home, and he would, if he had a cell phone. Kathryn could say, I need you not to see Emily ever again, and Chris would do it. He would erase Emily from his very thoughts. But Kathryn's not going to ask that, because that's not what love is, Sharon. Love isn’t I love you so much that I need to possess you and control you and be the source of all your happiness. Love is I love you so much that I want you to have everything you need, even when it’s hard for me.

There are enough of these justifications that the reader could easily be led to believe that that's how Kathryn actually feels. But when you learn about her weird childhood and the abusive relationship that Chris had rescued her from, you might conclude differently. And when you learn about Chris' childhood and the string of romances he drifted in and out of before he met Kathryn, you might understand why even his mother doesn't approve of this new arrangement:

Emily is part of my life, he says on the way to the airport. His mother acts confused, as if she doesn't know who he's talking about, but Chris presses on. If you want to miss an important part of my life, he says, that's your choice, but.

His sentence simply runs out. He thought he had a but.

His mother studies her lap. She picks a fibre off her dress and lets it drop to the floor of the cab. Then you should break up with Kathryn, she says.

I told you, Kathryn is fine.

That's baloney, Chris. Can't you see how sad she is?

She's always sad, Mom. We're both always sad.

Chris wonders how long this has been true. How long they've been trapped in this sadness together.

You're not sad, his mother says. It's called being an adult.

The writing in this book feels light and breezy and conversational, and it kind of looks like it's saying that monogamy is so old fashioned, but at its heart, Next Year for Sure is actually a tragedy about two broken people who can't grow up. An easy but surprisingly deep read.

The 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist: 

David Chariandy: Brother
Rachel Cusk: Transit
David Demchuk: The Bone Mother
Joel Thomas Hynes: We'll All Be Burned in Our Beds Some Night
Andrée A. Michaud: Boundary
Josip Novakovich: Tumbleweed
Ed O'Loughlin: Minds of Winter
Zoey Leigh Peterson: Next Year, for Sure
Michael Redhill: Bellevue Square
Eden Robinson: Son of a Trickster
Deborah Willis: The Dark and other Love Stories
Michelle Winters: I Am a Truck


After finishing reading the longlist, I'll rank the shortlist (according to my own enjoyment only):

I Am a Truck

Minds of Winter

Son of a Trickster

Bellevue Square

Transit

*Won by Bellevue Square - a surprise, to me, but not an unwelcome one. Congrats to Michael Redhill!

Tunesday : Father and Daughter

Father and Daughter

Written and Performed by Paul Simon

If you leap awake in the mirror of a bad dream
And for a fraction of a second you can't remember where you are
Just open your window and follow your memory upstream
To the meadow in the mountain where we counted every falling star

I believe a light that shines on you will shine on you forever
And though I can't guarantee there's nothing scary hiding under your bed
I'm gonna stand guard like a postcard of a Golden Retriever
And never leave 'til I leave you with a sweet dream in your head

[Chorus:]
I'm gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you'll always know
As long as one and one is two
There could never be a father
Who loved his daughter more than I love you

Trust your intuition
It's just like goin' fishin'
You cast your line and hope you get a bite
But you don't need to waste your time
Worryin' about the market place
Try to help the human race
Struggling to survive its harshest night

[Chorus 2x]

I remember hearing this song for the first time when Dave and I took the girls to see The Wild Thornberries - and in addition to it bringing tears to my eyes, I thought to myself, "This is the perfect song to play for a Father of the Bride Dance at a wedding; at one of these girls' weddings"; because while it might sound like it's aiming to choose a favourite between them, it's nevertheless true that no father ever loved a daughter as much as Dave loves both of his girls. This week, I finally get to the event that made us a real family: Kennedy's birth.

As I've said before, we planned to start our family as soon as I was graduated from college, so I spent my last semester of school pregnant (and didn't mind all the extra attention that got me). Delight was the first person I told - as we were getting ready to go out for New Year's Eve - and I mainly told her first because I was frustrated that Dave wasn't constantly monitoring my status: are we or aren't we? With my very light drinking that night - which I told myself was fine because my baby was still only a handful of cells at the time; one can convince oneself of whatever one wants to believe - the cat was soon out of the bag and we had plenty to celebrate that night. I convinced Dave to go buy a pregnancy test the next day, all was confirmed, and despite being only a few weeks pregnant, we made the phone calls that made all the family happy: this was to be the first grandchild on either side and plans were quickly in motion for people to come out and visit this most wanted of children. I soon called an OB-GYN at random in the phone book, was checked out, and was given a due date of the 8th of August. Perfect.

Meanwhile, as I've written before, Dave was laid off from his job as a property manager, but soon got a job with my Uncle Mike's friend Mike as a carpet cleaner (with a plan to eventually bring Dave into a partnership with this Mike). It was incredible how much it rained in Edmonton that summer, and with basements flooding and sewers backing up, Dave was rarely home (which I was actually kind of pissy about: of course his instinct was to work as much and as hard as possible with a baby on the way, but I was wanting attention, too.) Mike's company also did janitorial work, and in order to spend some time together, Dave thought it would be appropriate to ask me - after I had already received my diploma with Kennedy charmingly ballooning out the front of my graduation gown - to come along as he cleaned office buildings (with me vacuuming, begrudgingly lugging the heavy machine up stairs and through hallways) as he emptied bathroom garbages with his bare hands (to save Mike the expense of new garbage bags every week?). Dave also got side work pulling out old carpets in apartment buildings that Mike's company was renovating, and Dave thought it was natural to expect me to haul disgustingly filthy rolls of carpet out to the Dumpster. As I wasn't working, and as this really was the only time we spent together that summer, I understood why Dave would ask me to help him get these jobs done - but they were hard and gross and I didn't like it; especially the bigger I got. The upside: We often stopped for Subway sandwiches at some point, and veggie subs - every vegetable with cheese and no sauces - would be incredibly satisfying: if I had anything like a pregnancy craving, this was it.

My mother came out at the beginning of August - in case Kennedy came early - and she bought us a few things, but we were pretty much prepared; I remember she insisted on getting a juicer that Dave used more than I did. My due date came and went, and with a plan to induce a week later if there was no movement naturally, all we could do was walk around the mall, go to the movies and out for dinner; wait for Dave to come home. The night before the scheduled inducement, we saw the movie Babe (which we all found totally charming) and had dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory (when I took Kennedy back to Edmonton for Delight's birthday last year, we had a dinner at a different Spaghetti Factory to honour that history). Despite some weak contractions that evening, we arrived at the Royal Alexandra Hospital the next morning for a pitocin drip. We joked at the time, but it was nonetheless true, that after forty days and forty nights of Biblical-level city-crippling rains, August the 15th dawned clear and bright; Kennedy's arrival would bring back the sun.

I felt bad that Ma got to Edmonton so early - she had wanted to guarantee she spent as much time with the baby as possible - but she was the only one who got to wait outside the delivery room door. She said good luck and gave me a thumbs up as they brought me in, and I teased her later that the last thing I heard her say was, "See you, I wouldn't want to be you."

It is a blessing that the pains of labour don't really linger in the memory, but I do remember some things that annoyed me. Dave had made a mixed tape of songs for the delivery, and I gritted my teeth that I wasn't given any input - I know these were supposed to be "our favourite songs" and that the intention was sweet, by why couldn't I have chosen my favourite songs to soothe me during my efforts? - and I was irked as every new song began (also every time he played that tape in the car ever afterwards). Also, we had bought a massaging thingy on the advice of the prenatal class instructor, but when Dave tried to use it on my aching lower back, I really didn't want to be touched at all (poor Dave). And, I had chosen my OB-GYN because she was a woman (Dr. Gail Black), but she had another patient go into labour earlier that morning, so her husband (Dr. Robert Black) had to step in with me - there was nothing unusual about my situation that required the specialty of one doctor over another, but I had been happy to have a woman doctor. Minor annoyances.

If I remember right, the pit drip started around eight in the morning, but real labour didn't begin until after noon; I think it lasted a couple of hours. I'm sure the contractions were strong, but I wasn't forced to scream; more like helpless whimpering. I know they explained to me early on that if I was considering an epidural, it would have to be right away, but I waved that off; I can't really explain why. I know that my mother told me before that she had been gassed to unconsciousness - more or less against her will - when she was giving birth; that she had been desperate to feel the pangs of childbirth but that was denied her by the medical establishment of her day. Was I trying to feel the true pain that my mother had sought? I honestly don't know - and if one of my daughters was to have a baby, I'd tell her there's no reason to embrace the pain; that's what medicine is for.

Like I said, I really don't remember the pain of contractions leading up to the birth, but once Kennedy began to come out, I felt like a bursting dam; like there was a build up of pressure that was threatening to cleave me in half; to wash me away. When Kennedy's head was clear and the doctor told me to stop pushing as he positioned her shoulder (or whatever was happening in that paused moment) I felt like time was stopped; that I was a being of pure pain and the wild-eyed anticipation of much worse caused me to whimper and pant like an animal. When he said to push again, I shuddered from head to foot - felt like I had been torn in half - but Kennedy came out fast. Nine pounds, thirteen ounces; a heavyweight bruiser of pure joy.

The doctor handed Dave the scissors to cut the umbilical cord as the nurse wrapped Kennedy in a blanket. Dave was handed the baby first, and then she was given to me, and then when the nurse took her again to clean her up, Dave ran to the door to get my mother, shouting happily, "It's a girl! It's a girl!" Ma burst in saying, "I know! I heard!" and when the nurse then handed Kennedy to my mother, a misbegotten family legend began: My mother has ever after said that she got to hold Kennedy before either me or Dave did. Uh uh. And that hurts Dave's feelings a lot: he held her first; I know, I was there, and I've told Kennedy the way it really went down (but I don't really mind the old lady having her fantasy).

Soon, Ma and Dave were shooed out as the doctor stitched me up. It was then that Kennedy was first put to my breast, and as she latched, I felt sorry for anyone who wasn't me in that moment: Being able to provide the stuff of life for this baby - a human I had grown and supported within my own body for (over) nine months - being able to feed this wondrous new and helpless infant from my own body made me feel powerful and at one with the creative energies of the universe - I can not overstate this: I was woman and I roared. Poor Dave, poor men everywhere: they who provide a single cell to the process are bit players in the miraculous circle of life, and I was all power.

Meanwhile, my mother had called Dad back in Ontario with the news - he was in a meeting but asked for her call to be put through on speakerphone. "It's a girl!" Ma said. "I knew it would be," replied Dad. "Tell Krista 'good work'."

Dave called my brothers, and when Ken heard that the baby's name was going to be "Kennedy Ruthann", he banged on the bathroom door where his soon-to-be wife was showering and said, "They named her after me!"

Dave called his sister Ruthann, and when she heard the name, she yelled, "You named her after me?!"

Dave called his parents and they said, "We'll be there next week!"

As I was being put into the shower to get cleaned up, Ma and Dave went home to get some treats for a little Maternity Ward party they were planning, and after I was comfy in my bed (I couldn't believe how nice and cosy and homey my room was), a nonstop parade of well-wishers began to show up. Delight came by, and Marg and Mike - Marg taking Kennedy out of her little bassinet and holding her to the consternation of others who came by and might have liked a cuddle. Ma and Dave came back with asparagus rolls, oysters and cream cheese, and Diet Coke - I had stopped drinking my favourite pop while pregnant and Ma figured I'd be wanting some now; she wasn't wrong - with champagne for themselves and others.

Essentially, a whole whack of people came by the hospital and congratulated me on my sweet little girl; an exhausted baby who slept through the evening and didn't wake up until the last person left and her exhausted Mama thought she could finally close her own eyes. And then Kennedy started to wail and motherhood really began.

I reckon that's enough for this week.

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition

No chain of islands on Earth is more vicious than the Arctic Archipelago. Like teeth lining colossal jaws, some ninety-four large islands, and 36, 469 smaller ones, stretch across a territory about half the size of the contiguous United States. They can bite down and swallow ships whole. Even the earliest, most hopeful, searchers, who mapped large parts of the archipelago as they looked for Erebus and Terror and their crews, knew it would take a miracle to find anyone in that gigantic maw.

In his introduction to Ice Ghosts, author Paul Watson explains that the search for the doomed Franklin Expedition of 1845 – which was itself an abandoned quest to find the Northwest Passage and which saw the loss of two British ships and 129 men – has been the most “extensive, expensive” and “abundantly written-about manhunt in history”. He writes:

At the heart of the Franklin mystery is why people would spend so much time, money, and effort, for so many generations, searching one of the most unforgiving places on Earth to discover what seems obvious: Franklin and his men challenged the Arctic, and the Arctic won.

If this “why” was indeed the mystery that Watson intended to explore, he didn't quite hit the mark: Ice Ghosts is a dull and plodding recitation of historical events; one more volume on the pile of an “abundantly written-about” topic that adds little more than the author's own experience in the modern day – Watson was on the search vessel that found the Terror in 2016, and one can, therefore, understand why he would have rushed to print a book that affixes the Franklin mystique to his own name – but one wished he might have gone a little slower; attempted to answer that “why”. For a history lesson that catches the Franklin story up to modern times, this is a fine effort; for a “fast-paced historical adventure story”, look elsewhere.

I picked up Ice Ghosts as a companion read to Ed O'Loughlin's Minds of Winter; a novel which does attempt to explore the “why”; its form allowed O'Loughlin to explore the humanity behind the draw of the High Arctic and the search for Franklin's trail. The novel opens with a beautiful chapter about a ball that was held aboard the Terror and Erebus, tethered together off Van Diemen's land during Sir John Franklin's tenure as its Lieutenant-Governor, and it was an engaging introduction to the main players and their motivations. By contrast, Watson summarises these events this way:

If Francis Crozier, Franklin's second-in-command, had had the strength to turn and watch the well-wishers recede from Terror, it would have been with a broken heart and a sense of foreboding. Crozier had fallen madly in love with (Franklin's niece) Sophy when Erebus and Terror stopped at Hobart Town, the once-swampy capital of Van Dieman's Land, while serving with James Ross' Antarctic expeditions. But Sophy seemed infatuated with Ross, who was already betrothed to another woman. Crozier did not depart in an optimistic mood.

Because I read these two books back-to-back, this paragraph came off as a tuneless clunker. But on the other hand, O'Loughlin didn't explain that soon after that ball, Franklin was recalled to Britain in disgrace and that he fought a hard campaign to be allowed to lead another expedition in search of the Northwest Passage in order to redeem his reputation; that his wife, Lady Jane, would push the aging Franklin hard in his campaign and that this might explain her own extraordinary efforts to mount search and rescue missions for many years after her husband's presumed death. So, there's a “why” for the Lady Jane funded/arranged expeditions, and near the end Watson descends to name calling to ascribe malevolent motives for a certain Conservative Canadian PM's relaunch of efforts to find Franklin's lost ships in 2008, but in between, Ghost Ships is overstuffed with dull research. The following is an example of an author eager to use everything he comes across:

Paranormal sources were literally all over the map with their search tips. Useful leads were as rare as the South African quagga caged up at the London Zoo.

And the following is an example of an author who could have used a more ruthless editor to cut out the banal:

Ice is an obstacle few outsiders even try to understand in its confounding, immaculate complexity. Knowing that it's cold, hard, and slippery, and chills food and drinks nicely, is good enough for most of us.

And yet, I did like some of the quirky historical bits: that the Terror was an active warship in the War of 1812 and its mortars firing on Fort Henry were the “bombs bursting in air” that inspired Francis Scott Key; that a tattered prayerbook recovered from a Franklin search effort was (maybe?) interred with President Lincoln. And so, to return to the ascribing of malevolent motives, cue the horns and let enter the Darth Sweatervest of Canadian politics:

A new leader had just taken power in Canada, and he had his own designs on the Arctic, including a strategy to market his broader conservative agenda through heroic tales of the North. Prime Minister Stephen Harper immediately began to ratchet the bolts on what quickly became an excruciatingly tight information-management machine. He set it to work gagging federal scientists, especially experts warning of human-driven climate change, and anyone else who might think of challenging his plans. Harper wanted the Arctic to be the shiny white wrapping around his government's darker policies.

So, that might be off-putting to some. I appreciate that Watson put the Inuit and their knowledge in places of importance throughout this book – one can't help but conclude that the shipwrecks could have been found generations ago if their information had been gathered and treated as the expertise it obviously was (the place where the Terror was eventually discovered was one named by the Inuit, decades ago, a name that can be translated as “where it sank”; you could almost laugh). On the other hand, there's a difference between honouring a people's knowledge and promoting their superstitions: I got the sense, repeatedly, that Watson was making a case that it wasn't so much that Franklin had the misfortune to have travelled during a cycle of extraordinary ice, but that, as the Inuit believe, these qalunaaq (white men) brought a curse upon themselves and the land by their intrusion.

Again, Ice Ghosts feels like it was rushed to publication after the author happened to be present for the discovery of Franklin's second lost ship: The history is a long, mostly dull infodump of names and dates, and essentially, Paul Watson's is just one more in the list. As a final note and interesting coincidence, just yesterday, Britain officially gave the wrecks of the Terror and Erebus to Canada; one more factoid on the history pile. Three stars is a rounding up.