The greatest evidence of faith and hope is the ‘bump’ . Tanya’s showing and last night showed me the US picture of the new baby to come. But their new home is so organized. None of the clutter and waste that I seem plagued with. There’s no bodies in the corners of rooms. No skeleton. No carcasses. No carion smells. Vultures aren’t circling.
A couple of squirrels ran across the deck outside. Last night a rabbit visited. There’s a beautiful Christmas tree in the living room. It’s a smaller version of the one my sister in law Adell cut down in their yard and decorated with her cousin Melvine. I’m amazed at people whose lives are sufficiently together to be in the season. I’m still storing hunting gear in storage lockers, have to get the cammo gear back to storage.
Outside it’s snowing. Big fluffy flakes. The stuff of Its a wonderful life.
My nephew was making robots and talking with NASA. Now he’s working government computer programs. I discussed the merits of plasma, nuclear and chemical solutions with my other nephew driving here. His engineering degree was chemical engineering but he’s more interested in plasma and back at University of Toronto studying plasma application and doing research.
They’re really good bright people. Like Adell, Andrew and Tanya are cleaning up as they go.
My nephew Allan, with his fiancé Meagan, are heading back to England where they live. I wanted to visit them and go north to Aberdeen. I told Laura we needed to return to Ireland and explore the south coast. I want to sail there. Liked the harbours I saw when I was there. Imagined my sailboat in the harbour and me dingying ashore to an Irish coffee shop which served Irish stew. I’ve looking into jobs. There are so many jobs for psychiatrists around the world, hundred and our government hates psychiatrists. Since we’ve got the stoner PM it seems all the government has gone low brow. Maybe it’s just everyone in power smoking dope now. They used to drink. Now cocaine is coming in. The problem is the sprinkling of fentanyl that’s killing the innoscents. .
Gilbert has been well cared for by everyone without me ever asking. Tanya fed him and Graeme walked him and Andrew slipped him a bit of ham this morning under the table. He feels as welcome as I do. Everyone has been caring for me. I’m the white hair.
The two brothers are discussing light waves and audio systems. Earlier Tanya was commenting on the sun damage on the hard wood floor versus wear and tear. She’d mapped out the area of discolouration and was sure it was a chemical reaction with the wax. I was amused at how many people would simply not know or take wear and tear for granted. Really curious minds. Andrew is talking about the varnish on the floor and the dining room table. He’s been installing lights in the bathroom. Thanks to my father all the Hay boys are handy. The brothers are talking about building a deck together this summer. There’s all this incredibly advanced cooperative behaviour and sharing and discussing that others take for granted.
I work with drug addicts. Every one of these natural flowing human relationship transitions and communications happening around me here would have been ratcheted with attitude. Conversations would be derailed. Everyone would be on guard. There’d been that forever sense of walking on broken glass. People in glass houses would be throwing stones at everyone. The rageaholics and the always offended looking for a peg to hang their anger on would be preying on your every word. The bullies would be looking for respect. Did you respect me. All the inferiority complexes would be marching and demanding attention. I’m going back to the war this coming week. Being in this rest area back from the lines I’m relaxing. The men had walked in and shown me their knives and revolvers. The women have their complaints in quick draw holders on their chests. The blood levels of drugs fluctuated personalities week to week. The professional police are like the Mexican city police. If you report a theft they arrive to take what wasn’t taken by the perpetrator and blame you for working with the dangerously insane. They have locks on their doors and guards in their high rises. I’m on the street. I sometimes dream of the jar of bed bugs thrown at me by the person who couldn’t get the government to address his infestation problem. The government isn’t ever near. So they hit us. We’re near. The government blames us for riling up the natives. They don’t even know the language and are too afraid themselves to be of any help to anyone. That’s why they got their jobs. Bunker duty.
It’s not emotionally loud here though. I can shake off the work. I can forget for a while the bullies and the toxicity. I loved being with Adell and watching the family Christmas repeat like all those childhood Christmases with my father and mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts. I loved when my grandfather and uncle came down from up north and Dad visibly changed to more himself. When we rode horses together with his cowboy and cowgirl friends he was like he was with his rancher logger brothers. Then my mother’s sisters would come and she’d relax safe in the uptown Toronto feeling. I love still sharing on FB with the friends in Fort Garry. Recently we all reminisced about climbing out of windows to shovel the snow from the doors to get them open after the snowstorm. I loved the pictures shared. I remembered snowmobiling through the city streets to man the emergency. It wasn’t the only time I snow mobiles to work. I remember the 50 miles tundra ride and going throug the ice and walking frozen the last half hour to the nursing station where the aboriginal man had had a stroke and there was question of dates on the late stage pregnant lady. I like snowmobiles but have no real justification for one in Vancouver where the snow is at most a sprinkling. I just like vehicles. Have been missing my Mini Cooper here..
I’m relaxed. Family have certain traits. Here it’s assumed that you don’t hurt others. Here people don’t lie. It’s just a Hay thing. I never knew that telling the truth and not hurting others were ‘optional’ family traits many but they are. I’ve spent too much time on the edge. It’s comforting to be among this ‘normality’ despite the eccentric set of the lot.
Last night they all watched a cooking show , the worst chefs, where the people were given a recipe and judged on their product. It was a variation of the singing one but really much more earthy and bad. Graeme and Andrew laughed hysterically at the misshapen baked goods guys and girls made who’d never baked before. Just for the record, I’ve never watched such a show before. Peculiar people. Each with his or her own traits but all kind. All sensitive to each other. All thoughtful.
Tanya is like the elf princess in Lord of the Rings. Sensitive in a gentle way. Great sense of humor. Now pregnant, a part of her tuned inward. Preparing for the child.
Gilbert feels at home here. He’s sleeping now.
All week people have been doing their individual things, gathering to cook a meal together, making a puzzle together, then going off alone or in pairs to read or talk. I’ve watched tv and joined in or read.
I was reading about Ethiopia, planning a trip, and learning of all the bugs, malaria, rats, cobra, then dreaming of slow death by bugs eating one. It was a Stephen King things but lucid dreaming so I was trying to escape. I must be careful what I read before falling asleep. Most nights I’ve been dreaming of deceased family,visiting those who have passed, walking with my brother, talking with my aunt, eating a meal with my parents. I keep seeing my father’s face and my grandfather’s face. They’re happy and quizzical. They’ve all go so much wiser the older I’ve got.
A new year is dawning. I’m not sure what I’m going to do differently. This trip immediately and a medical conference late fall next year are the only destinations fixed in the journey of another year. I’ll motorcycle and drive and work and walk the dog. I’ll read and watch Netflix and enjoy my couch and swim and lie in the hot tub. I think that’s likely I’ve tickets to a Canucks game , the ballet, and a couple of concerts . I look forward to camping. I really want to unload the excess in the storage locker and reduce the files. Surely I can get rid of business files to begin and scan some clinical ones. I’ve boxes of books that can go and old furniture and clothing that really needs to move along. I’m heavy with stuff. I want so much to lighten up.
I’ve been in this place before. Never could sustain it. Relationships wrecked by my restlessness. I have to remember expectations are ‘preformed resentments’. Another person my age I knew in college years died.
It’s strange this dying bit. I remember when the divorces were infectious. I remember when the going to college was infectious. I remember when certain sports took hold in the yuppie world. I remember the standard travel plans and me being outside out of the norm and not fitting as my interests deviated so far from the safe and narrow of the politically correct, that place of utter mediocrity.
When I meet other solo sailors we’re in sync. When I meet other psychiatrists who have devoted their life to clinical practice we agree. I relate to people my age usually more than those of a different generation. I’m always feeling adolescent with respect to the ‘fit’. There’s a collection of traits which are supposed to go as a group, my dancing ballet and big game hunting are ‘abnormal’ . I can relate to my nephews interest in virtual reality and my other nephews interest in energy production. My sister in law loves education. She’s a gifted interior designer in retirement. She’s so appreciative of music that took centuries to develop.
I like to write. Steinbeck used to write letters to his editor before writing a passage in his books to come. I ‘blog’. It’s it’s own end. I like to write. My work is channeling the tales of people’s lives by the highlights of their successes and failures. I’m wearying of typing all day. I’m having memories of when I was an executive copy typist. Channeling. I like this nonsense better. The squeezing the puss out of my head journaling. Superficial thoughts. Now I’ll go back to reading Evelyn Waugh. Amazing writing. Truly gifted for the use of English. 1930’s writer. Conversation with the dog or with God. It doesn’t seem to matter much.
I’m flying west later today. I remember my father always starting an argument with me or my brother the last day of our visit. Ron and I discussed it. Only when we were older did we realize how sad he was to see us leave. It’s was nails on a chalk board to his heart. He was such a strong man that he couldn’t cry easily. Only my mother’s death brought torrential tears. It was easier for him to get angry. It took us years to understand. My brother and I in his last years talked a lot about our parents and our childhood.
Adell gave me pictures of the grandparents this visit. She’s been going through old boxes.
The Irish is turning up.
I remember my drunken Irish friend insisting only Catholics were Irish. We’re the protestants and Fay for sure.
Today the FB controversy was whether First generation Somalis should be Canadian Cabinet ministers. Meanwhile Trudeau has set out to destroy Canada and is allied to the communist globalist rule by beurocratic elite. Brussels a snake pit. Somali was communist. It attacked Ethiopia over Ogaden. Communist Canada is devolving. Death by tax.
It concerns me. Aetheist communists killed hundreds of millions in a matter of decades and most Canadians are ignorant of this history. I feel politically like an outsider. It’s been so often like I’m walking about on an Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake set.
Enough. I’m going to go back to reading Evelyn Waugh.
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