Travel Clinic - Vancouver Coastal Health

What a great experience at the Travel Clinic Vancouver Coastal Health. The staff were positively delightful. Everything was really easy.  Lovely offices at 601 Broadway.  It’s on the ground floor at the back so a tad tricky to find.  

The receptionist was welcoming.  The intake form easy to understand.  Dr. Angela Ernst was truly praiseworthy.  As a clinician myself whose done a bit of travelling I had some significant concerns about travelling to Ethiopia. Mostly mosquitoes and falciparum malaria.  Black water Fever.

It’s interesting that in my residency in community medicine and public health I’d learned about Falciparum Malaria and Sickle Cell Anemia. The British medical doctor, Dr. Burkett of Burkett Lymphoma fame  had noted a correlation between the two areas of distribution of these disease.  Dr, Burkett hypothesized the overlapping distribution of the two diseases was more than just coincidence. It was postulated that the carrier state of Sickle Cell anemia was selected for in the overlapping regions. 

Now here I am decades later heading out to where these textbook mosquitoes breed. I’ve already bought Ben’s 20% Deet. 

Dr. Angela Ernst was on top of everything.  All the latest vaccines. I’m not a Luddite anti vaxxers. Thanks to Dr. Ernst I’ve got my Hep B and A vaccine, my tetanus renewed, meningitis vaccine. I even had my yellow fever certificate renewed.  I had the shingles vaccines a couple of years back so that was good. I had TB treatment in the US after acquiring the infection as a flyin doctor in Northern Canada. Dr. Angela even offered me the flu vaccine which I was glad to have now that I’m aged enough to be in a population which warrants it.

The staff actually poked me with no loss of limb. They were so competent and caring that the vaccines were less painful than a mosquito bite.

What Dr. Angela Ernst gave me was a ‘holy’ prescription for MALARONE ,the malaria prophylaxis. This is why one needs a travel specialist.  There are a dozen anti malarials and malarial prophylaxis. Historic quinine was in the tonic water mixed with gin to protect the colonia era British travellers.  Different malaria’s require different anti malarials today.  Thank God Dr Ernst conscientiously keeps abreast of the advances and changes in international infectious diseases.

She also gave me Zithromax  for traveller’s diarrhea. I told her I’d written a paper comparing Septra and Doxycycline for traveller’s diarrhea some 30 years ago to. Today the recommendation was this newer medicine I only ever recommended for STD’s and URI’s.  

It felt so safe here.  How can one ever travel without visiting a travel clinic?  I came here when I took off to study medical Spanish in Costa Rica and again before sailing solo across the Pacific en route to the Mariana Islands.  My friend Laura told me she’d been to this clinic and loved it before she flew out to th Marianas. My friend Mary Lou is heading out to the Phillipines for vacation. She came to this clinic too and loved it,

I confess I was exuberant. The prospect of being a ‘free man in Paris’ again after a few years is intoxicating. I last felt this way about adventure and exploration going to Cappadoecia.  The Christians built under ground churches there to survive the invasions and persecution. Now I’m so looking forward to seeing the rock churches of Lallibela.

The cost was minuscule too, cheap for private medicine, the cost of a room for a night.  The benefits the same as insurance.  I loved Dr. Ernst’s comments on footwear and clothing, ways to protect myself to maximize the benefits of travel while minimizing the risks. 

 

Out of Control

“She is out of control. She’s been going down town and picking up men randomly for sex,” he said, quite hysterical

“Is she using a condom?” Raven replied

“How can you ask that. She’s married to one of the most important men of our time. This could be a public relations nightmare.”

“It could be a whole lot worse if he and she both die of Aids. Or word gets out she has syphillis They don’t call it the English Disease or the French disease any more. People know how STD’s spreads.” Raven answered, looking at her long painted nails. She’d chosen red polish with tiny black roses.

“Do you think she’s infected now? Do we have to get her tested.? Will she listen to reason.’ He was shuffling papers feigning to look for something. It’s what he did when he was anxious. He was very anxious now.  His job depended on the present regimen. There was never any security but he’d just invested in some offshore property. He had commitments. He didn’t need her acting like some teen age girl who’d had her first orgasm.

She was very beautiful. Exotic in the manner of tall willowy black haired women.  She knew men desired her. She had known since her father climbed into bed with her and she felt that pain and his covering her mouth as she tried to scream. Her mother was angry at her in the morning. But her father had told her after that she was his number one. Her mother made her clean her own laundry. But she stared down at her mother after that. Shameless. She knew.

Her father then came into her room night after night. There was only a little more pain. She began enjoying the attention anticipating his coming.  Learning from him what he liked.  She moved her hips and her tongue danced.  “You’re so much better than your mother, ‘ he told her.  She liked that until she saw her mother crying in the morning.

She would cry scant years later when her younger sister became her age. Her father never came to her bad after that.

She’d learned her power. She watched other women, how they walked, how they held themselves. She practiced on the boys at school but they were children.  Her teachers were a bit more interesting.  Her mother had taken her to her own doctor. She’d begun the birth control pill. Every culture knows about in breeding. Until the Pill and IUD all cultures had were taboos. 

 Her mother become more her friend and sister . She stopped being mean to her.  She was still a little girl. Her sister now was old before her time.

At college she was in control. She rode her policy professor like a little donkey. 

“Men are so easily pleased’, she thought, smiling to hersel. They’re useful too.

She wanted so much now. She had fine clothing and a fancy car. Her own car. A little Fiat.  Her father had bought it for her.  She’d used it to fuck the professor in the back seat, not caring he found it cramped, having to open the door, risking being caught,  that first night , in the park.  

She liked the feel of men between her thighs.  She didn’t always orgasm.  She liked them serving her..She really wanted  servants. 

“I’d prefer slaves,” she’d laugh to herself. A master of pc, she to keep that thought to herself. 

When she had her degrees she got a job that came with her own staff.  She was quite the bitch.  Behind her back they called her names. What did she care. She was smart and elegant. Men wanted her. Women too. Her boss was a woman who introduced her to a whole different world, More rough in some ways, more tender in others.

It was after that she got into politics.  She liked to dress up and talk with powerful men and women.  Raised in the family she was ,with the associations of her father and the relatives of her mother, she’d a certain ease of relationship with people of what was once referred to as “class.”  Her group was a classless society now.  It would be a terrible faux pas if she were to let that word slip at some party.  Class was one of the many new “banned” words. They all knew  there were things that they didn’t say. 

Whwn one of the others was among them they made it seem as if he or she was like them. Outsiders didn’t know.  The atmosphere just changed when they were gone. She and her former boss would love to laugh  and gossip. They didn’t share a bed so much anymore but when they touched there still electricity. The bedroom door wasn’t closed. They had both just expanded their range..  At the spa naked together in the steam room just a towel between them they’d talk of lust and lovers.  When they having they would talk of politics without names. They had demeaning nicknames for all the players.. They were very careful not to let anything slip from their adventures in the board room. But beneath the sheets, that was different.  It was also knowledge.  Knowing a person’s particular whims in private gave one a certain power.  Only the inner circle shared this knowledge.  Knowledge was power.

She saw him first.  He was acting silly with his mates. She’d not have paid him any attention except for his name.  He was cute too in a girlish sort of way.  Not strong like her father.  Boyish and sweet when she got to know him.  So insecure.  Right from the start he let her use him.  Their engagement followed not long after.  She was getting too old to be single. Twenty six.The married men were beginning to consider as mistress material.  She needed her own fiefdom. 

She wasnted to compete in these domains.  She’d thought of being a concubine but she saw early the power of religion especially to the other women. She didn’t believe in any of the nonsense but the forms were pretty. She liked the rituals. She felt something when she practiced especially with the women, some of whom she’d known outside the place of worship.

Now married it followed she would have children. She stopped the pill. Her mother and sisters were close to her. Together they shared everything.  Her mother was even friends with her former lover now. She was even a bit jealous. They talked of shoes though. There was no doubt  they each coveted what the other had.

She remembered her first 4 inch heels, how she’d had such difficulty walking in them. The sales girl said, “Honey they’re not for walking. If you’re walking in those beauties you’re definitely doing something wrong.”

When they came, she liked her children.A girl and a boy.   She didn’t know if she would have, were it not for her nannies. She enjoyed best when her sisters came over. They had children of their own.  She, her mother and they would drink  wine and some  smoked hashish. Her mother preferred opium. The nannies prepared the little ones for naps and fed them.  She began drinking a bit more.  Shiraz was her favourite.

Those days her husband was sleeping with his secretary . A little blond who was too coarse to keep him interested too long. She was everything she wasn’t.  Her mother had been the first to notice the  change in him. She tried to warn her.  No one would say they  plotted but the women  did discuss it at length. In their circle it wasn’t approved of but men were pigs. It was only considered acceptable if he was discrete.  It was obvious that’s what he wanted. They were not sure about her.  

A friend of her sisters took the time to talk to her about discretion. The girl was quite shocked to be confronted by this powerful woman . The woman explained to her the rules as if she was a school girl.  It really was all about class but no one would call it that. After that the affair didn’t last much longer. All the sauciness had gone out of the girl when she understood the  larger picture.

This wasn’t about individuals. In her mind she’d been competing with the wife. The  wife was alone in her mind. That just wasn’t alone. The wife was part of a coven. A nest.   A crèche situations.  Even the man didn’t know how many were involved in the fabric of this thing.  

“You’ve had  a bit much, don’t you think dear,” he said to her that first night after the secretary quit. He’d used her for his pleasure, the first time in months,  a moment of desperate manliness. He’d not even bothered to wait for the bed. In the garage he’d pinned her to the wall,  pulled down her black lace panties, staying behind her,  pinning her with one arm against something metal.  She’d felt dirty. She even worried a bit about her crimson gown getting soiled. There was no pleasure for her. She was just a convenient receptacle. He didn’t take long.  She brushed her skirt down, picked up the panties from the cement floor and followed him into the house. She went straight for the wine cabinet.

She was on her second glass of Shiraz when he made the comment. She was wet with him and sore.

——————-

“I don’t know how we can keep this out of the news if someone sees her.” He carried on. Raven was listening. 

“She’s not taken the Mercedes down there. She leaves it by the train and uses that to get to the city.”

“Did you have her followed.”, “There’s always been some surveillance for the family. His father insisted . But I stepped it up myself after she hit the parked car on the street and we had to have our lawyer friend brought in to avoid the police her.”

“Has there been more.” Raven asked. 

“More? I’d think the pictures of her naked in that back alley down town with a homeless man would be enough.”

“Of course it’s enough but how much more is there?

“Well we have her in the western bar.  There’s  a gang of black men in the porn club. She’s been to the park as well.

“God, how long has it been going on.” Raven sighned. She was staring at one nail with the black rose. 

“I told you, it’s only been a couple of weeks.’

“A couple of weeks.’

“Yes.  

“And she’s the same in every other way.”

“Yes. With the kids and in her own work. It’s just she seems tireless.  All that fucking. All those nights out. Whenever he’s on trips away , she’s up half the night drinking and going  with different men. There must be 30 or more already.”

‘We have to stop this.’ Raven said, adamant, no longer studying her nail, looking straight at him. 

“What do you think I’ve been saying?” He asked, his tone hurt

.”while what do you suggest. You must have some suggestion. You’ve been building up to this’

“I think we have to Talk to his mother.”

“Really. “ she said, looking back at her nails

 “Yes. Not just because she has her own problems. She’s got the most to lose.  I’ll talk to her mother too.  Lets the ladies handle it. I expect they’re concerned but they don’t know all of it. I was hoping it would stop without them but it hasn’t. I need you to arrange it.”

Raven understood. It just wasn’t in her job description as a bodyguard. She didn’t like things to get messy and this really had the potential to get messy real fast. Besides she liked her job.

——-++

The mothers talked to her shortly after, in the morning, over coffee.

“We’ve decided it would be best if you took a vacation dear.” 

She’d looked from one to the other.

“We know’ her mother said.

She looked around the carefully decorated sitting room, bay windows ,brocaded couch. Her eyes settled on the French Provincial Furniture legs.

“What if I don’t want to take go ?” She asked. after taking a sip of tea from her cup peering over the rim  at the two women, calculating.

“It’s best for the children.” Her mother said.

“ We’re only thinking about the children, Dear.” His mother said. 

She wondered how much they knew. They’d never say but it wasn’t about details now, was it. Not to these women.  She’d not seen them look so strong in so many years. She didn’t like them looking at her this way.  She felt sick and she didn’t think it was just her hangover. She tried to think of her options.  She was wearing a linen pant suit and found herself staring now at the fabric, admiring it as she did the incredibly expensive Persian silk and wool carpet 

“Where would I go, “ she asked, after a while

“We’ve made all the arrangements with friends back home.” 

“I dont want to go there.”  She abhorred that place.  So strict. So secretive. So controlling. She thought she’d run away if they insisted. She was studying the bone china cup.

“You’ve given us no choice dear.”  First one mother spoke then the next.  They were sitting side by side.  Matriarchs  

It was only days later she was on the plane.

———

Raven  had flown out with her. Neither spoke. 

Her husband met the waitress after her shift was finished. He took her to the suite at the Beach Hotel  he’d rented for the occasion.  She really was a young thing. So energetic. She’d insisted on being on top and he liked that.  He couldn’t remember how good strange felt. Looking up at her pert breasts and pretty face as she ground her hips and moaned in ecstasy her head flung back her long neck stretched back, he felt young and powerful. After they’d done it once she’d wanted  him to take her from behind. He’d liked that. He’d even been a little rough. Slapped her ass a few times. Like a porn star.  After they’d showered together.  He’d watched her dress.  He’d thought of offering her money but when she didn’t ask he’d thought nothing of it.  He just figured she’d liked it as much as he did.  He was planning on seeing her but she was a little coarse. A bit cheap for his taste now he was dated. Lacking class, he though He didn’t know what he thought of the ‘Fuck You’ tattoo she had cursively written across the small of her back either. 

——-+—

“What were you thinking?” His father asked him two days later.  The family lawyer was present.  “Forget that question. It was stupid of me. You weren’t thinking.  Now tell Mark here exactly what happened and perhaps he can make it right. You can can’t you, Mark.”

“I think so. It would have been worse if she’d gone to the police. The fact that she called you is a pretty good indication it’s just a straight forward shake down. I don’t like the bruises.  You didn’t do any of this, I presume.” He showed the picture of the girl with a bruised and swollen eyes and split lip.

“Of course not.  That’s ridiculous.  I never hit her face. I slapped her butt maybe but I didn’t do that. I’d never hit a woman in the face.” The son was furious. Bantu cock furious. 

“I didn’t think so, so this could mean either she’s done it herself or she’s got an accomplice.’

What’s she asking?” The father asked. 

“Well she’s not asking anything yet. She’s just saying she doesn’t want any other woman to go through what she’s gone through. She says she feared for her life and wanted you to know that she isn;’t after money or anything but that she’s concerned. She thinks your son needs help.”

‘God, that means she wants a lot. What do you guess. 5 figures, 6 figures.” The father looked at Mark. 

“I’ve asked Lou to find out if there’s a boyfriend. I think she wants 6 figures but we can get it down to 5. It’s not like she’s anyone.  What we can tell from her  family is that they’re into drugs.” Mark said. 

——$$

She was admitted to a private hospital overseas in a country where oversight wasn’t an issue and privacy was respected more than anything. The country existed solely to serve the wealthy and powerful. It had been that way for hundreds of years. Most times  such hospitals didn’t  even records. The staff kept what they needed to protect themselves if anything  unravelled. 

Her case was fairly straight forward. There were twenty other women all about the same age, young to middle age mothers, all supposedly depressed.   They had all been fairly  shaky the first days after their arrival.  There was no talking therapy.  Good food, rest and clonepin. There was no liquor in the facility.It wasn’t easy to come by in the country. Not  that that had stopped the local women of class. What they hadn’t been able to buy on the black market their young bodies and obvious intelligence had been able to procure. 

It was different for her.  She’d always had it.  No restrictions. Wine racks always stocked. Until now.  She didn’t like feelings she had now.  She’d been in a foul mood when she spoke to the doctor, called him all manner of names but he’d just put her in a room by herself. The women in the white uniforms, were all butch. Big girls.  Russian by the accent. She’d tried to seduce one but she’d only laughed at her.  

——+—+-

He sat watching his father and the lawyer. It was the second discussion. 

“There’s a biker boyfriend. He’s behind the extortion. He’s not affiliated though. Just a druggy. Even sold his Harley last month for some more crack. Its desperation. The two of them.  Drug addicts who thought they’d lucked out. Wanting the big score. Feeling entitled to it.”

“What can we do.” The father 

“They only want $10,000 . They’d started at $100,000 , just as I said. They settled for $10,000. I have the pictures of her and don’t think there are any more. They’re not smart enough to have kept copies. I scared them a bit too”

“But what happens when they use up the money you’ve given them and they need more drugs. Won’t they keep coming back.’ He asked, even though he’d felt relief at what he’d heard. 

“I don’t think so.  I talked to a friend about that and they said they’d look into it.” The lawyer answered, sharing an imperceptible nod with the father.

———-#

A couple of months later there were two more fentanyl deaths in the city.  The man wasn’t known by any one locally. The girl had a mother who identified her body for the police. The father’s whereabouts were not known.

——-+—

The young woman came home a couple of months later.  She was older now. She wanted to be angry with her mother but she couldn’t be. She was just so glad to be home . To see her children.. To be in her own house. She talked half the night with her sister who caught her up on what was going on.

“Serves him right,” she said when she heard.

That was it.

————$

Life went on.  She talked with the psychiatrist like a good girl. He never asked her anything about herself just wanted to know about the medication. It was what they’d given her in the hospital.  An antidepressant and something  that curbed her desire to drink as well.  

She saw the psychiatrist every month for fifteen minutes. When she’d tried to talk to him about her past or anything but the medication, he cut her off. “I’m sorry our time is up. We can discuss that next session.”  But nothing was discussed.  He was a private psychiatrist and the husband’s family paid him $500 each month.. She learned to take the medication and dutifully comment on her sleep and bowell movements.

Everyone was happy.

She was the wife of a very powerful man today.  The man’s lawyer took him on vacation to some island a couple of times a year.  There was all sorts of scandal in the news feeds but nothing stuck to her or her family.  When her father died her mother told her how much money they had overseas. She hadn’t thought she could be surprised but she was. 

That night she slept with her old boss and told her. “I knew all along girl. It never mattered to me.  Never let the kids know or it will go to their heads.  You don’t want children to lose control now , do you.”

“I guess not, ‘ she said.  She remembered the men in the back alley and the park. She could use a drink. She took an extra pill that night. Her son would be  graduating college soon. She didn’t want to think of her past.

  

  

90 minutes in Heaven

I just watched this movie 90 minute in heaven. I don’t know why I did. I normally prefer gun fighting, car chases, and easy women. This wasn’t any of that. It s the true story of a young Pastor, Don Piper and his wife Eva, their family, friends and congregation, Don died in a car accident and came back to life. Multiple operations and months in hospital, a year unable to walk, excruciating pain and all the trials and tribulations of sickness.

Hayden Christensen and Kate Boswoth are amazing. Dwight Yoakim, Michael Smith and Fred Thompson were great too. The acting and writing were superb. It could so easily have been maudlin or slow but no, it wasn’t. It was an amazing choreographed. Michael Polish was the director. As sensitive and thoughtful as a director could be.

No alien invasions, hero’s charging forward on elephants or lamborghinis and pole  dancers. I loved it nonetheless. Truly brilliant moving and captivating.

Thank you

2 years old : Love and Shit

I don’t remember being two. It’s surprising when one considers all that happens in that year.  My earliest memory is of my Mother, my aunt and my Grandma in my Grandmother’s kitchen in Toronto.  She was smiling big time and laughing as were my mom and her sister. My father was holding me. My brother was standing on the big black and white tile floor.  There’d be later memories of dinner at the long dining room table with my grandfather. . Friends of my grandfather’s would be there and friends from the Baptist Church. The family from the United States came up one year. They were ‘well to do’ as my mother said.

My aunt had been the executive assistant to the Canadian ambassador  in Washington during WWII. She’d become close to the American’s in the family as a result.  She once told me of her years in Washington, wanting me to know about war. ‘It was a big party, Billy, the grandest party you could ever imagine.  Important meetings all day and dinner and dancing all night. We’d feel sorry for the men who came back from the war. We could tell they had a difficult time but in Washington it was just a series of parties and a whole lot of money.  I had a grand red coat and noticed that when I cam back to Toronto. I was standing on Youge looking up and down the street. As far as the eye could see I was the only bit of colour. Everywhere there was austerity. But not in Washington.  I just thought you should know.  When you talk of war and peace. I thought you should know about the parties. ‘. .  

 I think I was  2 when I remember being held by my father as we’d be coming and going through Grandma’s kitchen.  We always had dinner as a family back in those early years in Toronto.  The three years old and after memories begin to gel fairly solid ,but that time before two I’m not so sure. 

I knew a man who remembered being in the womb, blue light and steady beat of a drum. I used to do past life regressions with hypnosis with people I was working with in hypnosis but this time I’d just asked the fellow to go back to when he remembered being happy. He was sitting there in my office with a little smile mouthing a bit like a fish, so I told him, ‘You can still speak and answer my questions whatever age you are.’  He didn’t know where he was but he was happy and he’d not been able to recall ever being happy in his life. But here he was happy. He described floating in dark blue surroundings and what was the comforting sound of his mothers’ heart. He was one of the saddest most depressed patients I’d ever treated despite his having gone on to achieve success at university and later in work in finance. He’d never married and never had children and lived pretty much alone following a rather onerous routine with no cheer.  We’d build on his womb experience in the months that followed awakening his positive feelings. I don’t know if he ever achieved joy but he did find a modicum of happiness.

 Most people’s memory kicks in around 3 though a lot with trauma in the early years blot out their whole life of the time.  Walling off the good and bad.  Mentally doing what the body does faced with tuberculosis, walling off both healthy and sick parts of the lung to stop the spread of disease.   Walling off that trauma and past at what cost?The best of therapy is regaining the positive that was lost, exploring the good tissue, once the disease is identified.  It was easy for me to do therapy having begun in surgery. So much is similar. But I didn’t like that counselors with too little training focused in some kind of vicarious delight on the sick and dirty parts rather than moving beyond these to celebrate the healing, the scarring and the life that no longer needs to be forgotten but can be reclaimed.  

My own first trauma was the stray dog that bit me under the street lamp in front of our house. . I was drawn to the little grey terrier because he was shaking and cold.  Being a kid I didn’t realize it was summer and hot out and the dog shouldn’t have been sweating and shaking.   I always loved animals especially dogs. But this one was too afraid even for a little boy of three to approach him. He bit me and ran away. To this day I figure he was telling me to stay away because he couldn’t control himself like a were wolf going into a change or a human losing the last vestige of humanity as the zombie takes over in the horror movie. My parents were really scared. I was crying and bleeding but it wasn’t that bad a bite.  Punctures.  They were scared though and I remember Dad speeding on the way  to the hospital, every one serious.  I didn’t know about rabies.  I was treated for that all summer.  Because I’d told them about  animal being cold and sick and hot  and shaking, a stray that no one could find, I had to be treated.  Who knows if I did get rabies. It might explain things.  Especially to the later ex wives.   It was summer then and the moonlight and scent of flowers was something I remember. Also the hospital smells and the nurses and doctors in white.  My parents anxious that summer.  Everyone told me to never approach strays again. Not only would I approach them I’d make a career out of helping them. Not dogs but humans. Though I treated my share of animals when I was a fly in doctor in Northern Canada, the bush planes and helicopters the taxi service that took me in and out of remote reserves.

Two is an incredible time of walking and exploring and talking and opposition.  They used to think that kids who didn’t toilet train according to the clock were obstinate. They’d punish them. There was discipline and regimen in those days.  The military had won the war so all things military were admired. I don’t even remember diapers.  I don’t think I missed the magic time a kid  should stop shitting where I shouldn’t. Years later I’d piss in potted plants.  That’s what happens when you drink too much and there’s a line up at the washrooms in the parties of fancy millionaires and such. Now I’m worried about descending to Depends stage.  Sometimes I dream I’ve shit myself or pissed myself but it’s just a message to get out of the bed and use the toilet.  It’s still a harbinger of times to come.  As a kid though  I was probably okay. It no doubt contributed to my confidence . I was said  by all accounts to be a protege or sorts.  So I can only extrapolate and guess I did well on the big shitting and pissing test that back then no doubt separated the winners and the losers.  . Maybe I was out of diapers early.  I simply don’t know. I don’t remember and everyone I could ask about this is dead. Worse I doubt they considered it important even at the time. I know parents fuss about it but later it’s not all that memorable.  Like trauma that whole stinky diaper period is walled off. Not surprisingly kangaroos and other marsupials, are thought by some, especially males, to be an advanced species.

I carried the oppositional streak throughout my life.  I said no to all manner of things others just kowtowed too.  I wondered if they were beaten into submission as children. Maybe failed the shit piss stage so gave up on rebellion early.  I wasn’t anything but loved and cared for as a kid.. My mother was an incredibly happy red haired Irish beauty whose children, family and husband were the centre of her life.  My father’s father was a rancher and dad loved animals.  To him I was a special hairless kinds that tugged at his heart strings and caused him no end of concern.

My aunt always said I was such a lovely baby and little boy.. This was in contrast to what I’d later become.  My brother was always there. Four years older he was my hero. He did the most unusual things which to him were no big deal but to me were quite genius. Like doing up the buttons on my shirt for me or tying my shoe laces. He cared for me when I was small. There are pictures that tell this truth of the family love but I remember the warm feeling of family then. I remember loving hanging out with him, hugging my dad’s leg and curling up against my mother’s bozom holding her with arms hat didn’t even reach around to the back. I love the scent of my mother.  Lilac and lavender.

I just don’t remember much about two..  MCMLIII was a non descript year for me probably because I was caught up in really important matters like speech and locomotion and shitting on a toilet.  

It’s important now for me that Samual Beckett’s play, ‘Waiting for Godot’ premiered in Paris that year.

I’d had a recurrent dream that I was a bit of light in a translucent bright bubbles flying through the galaxy , stars all around me, with other light filled bright bubbles accompanying me, when all of a sudden, a cataclysmic event of some kind, knocked me off this happy exciting tranjectory and took me down through earth’s atmosphere to earth.   All my own kind, carried on,  on to a further destination, another planet perhaps,  where I was supposed to go with them but I ended up alone on this earth.   I didn’t feel I’d landed on the right planet at the right time. The people here were nice and loving but they were not my kind and my being here was a product of a huge mistake. I wondered when or if I’d ever be re united with my own kind.

A theologian came to teach at Regent College UBC. He was giving a free lecture at the ‘Under the Green Room’ series. He told a story about his second child being born when his first was only two.  The two year old asked if he could be alone with the baby. He was insisting he needed to be alone with the baby without anyone else being there. Having had their share of psychology and sibling rivalry tales  and never seeing the two year old so agitated. they decided to allow this to happen only while they stayed right outside the door having put a camera in the crib.

The two year old then walked unsteadily up the his brother and said quietly, ‘Do you remember Him?  I’m forgetting what He was like. »

The baby burbled some while the 2 year old went on,, ‘I used to see his face and hear his voice but it’s going.  Please tell me what’s He’s like again. I’m afraid I’m going  to forget Him.’ 

There was no more except the parents had this tape and the profound sense the child was speaking about God.

It’s would be a few years later I’d dreame of  a shining mother and father god comforting me in my bed, their faces hovering over my bed and speaking softly to me about my being on earth. It was a place to be and a time to spend but it was clear from what they were saying this was just a temporary place. Like the child’s place before and the world we were going to. Here we were just passing through.

Waiting for Godot really.  When I studied that play at University of Winnipeg in my first year of English studies I was immensely moved by it. We acted a bit of it and later I’d be blessed to see a live performance in England.  The existentialism of the war years.  Long before my birth. I was a post war baby.  My father had been in the Air Force.  He married my mother wearing his blue RCAF uniform.  My mother kept the jacket folded in the bureau.He wore it on very special occasions like Remembrance Day.  He never gained weight like I did. He was as slim and fit in his 90’s as he’d been when he first wore that blue RCAF jacket and went to war.

1953 was also the year that the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel first met to discuss the UFO phenomena.  Naturally that seems significant to me knowing what I know. James Watson and Francis Crick announced their discovery of the structure of the DNA. Something I’d study some 20 years later in depth. I’d love the movie Gattaca.  I ‘d study the history of Canadian women doctors research in eugenics later taken forward by the Nazis’s for their Final Solution. At the age of 2 knew no more of the double helix than I did of Stalin who had a stroke that year.  Without his doing so we’d never have had the great 2017 movie comedy, Death of Stalin.   

Dag Hammasrskjold and Nikita Khrushchev would come into prominence that year and both of them would be significant to me in later years. I’d hear of the Mau Mau in later years  but not really know they were a genocidal tribe in Kenya.  I’d mix them up with a wrap around skirt from somewhere else in the world.  

 More important to me personally was Ian Fleming publishing Casino Royale,  the first 007 James Bond book.  I read all his books and saw all the movies several times over, starting in my teen years after the Hardy Boy years. I still love Bond. My friend and I look back on our lives and wonder if we haven’t simply tried to emulate this fictional character.  The drinking, the fast sexy women, the PPK, guns, fast cars, fast boats, scuba diving, skiing.  The movies were an advertisement  for a kind of sophisticated masculinity that we fell hook line and sinker for. We’d read the books as they came out and watched all the movies over and over again, bemoaning only that we didn’t have a’ license to kill’. Thanks to Ian Fleming I learned at an early age the difference between freedom and license.  I’ve always had the freedom to kill. All I lacked was the license.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norqay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. If I’d been more than two at the time this would have impressed me. At two I was scaling my own Everests climbing up anything and everything that took my fancy.  Mount Everest now is  regular freeway to the top with tourists companies vying for the business. That didn’t matter. When I met a doctor at a wilderness medicine conference I was attending I was thoroughly impressed that he’d climbed Mount Everest. I learned a lot from our casual conversations and have quoted him for years. A gorgeous girlfriend of mine had been the doctor to the base camp of Mount Everest. I loved that my doctor friends from Winnipeg liked to hike in Nepal and Tibet taking their little children hiking at the base of these peaks. It didn’t surprise  to learn later of the the daughters  outstanding athletic and academic achievements. 

At two, I simply wouldn’t have known that Queen Elizabeth II had her coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1953.  I’m sure my mother’s would have mentioned it because in Canada’s the Royals , as they were called, were given a lot of attention. The Beatles themselves would even write a short song in Queen Elizabeth’s honor, ‘Our Queen is a very nice queen, though she hasn’t got a lot to say’ Coronation news is  not something that comes up when one is focused on toilet training and climbing out of cribs. Apparently I was a daring escape artist at that age. There was considerable doubt that I would survive those years as I was forever climbing and falling down and climbing back up again.  Definitely I was focussed on intensive training for later life.

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russel starred  in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes that year.  The Korean War ended. The Rosenburgs were executed at Sing Sing and USSR got its first Hydrogen Bomb. The Korean War ended.  Kinsey published the second of the Kinsey Reports, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female.  This continues to disturb men especially in Africa and the Middle East till today.  

John F. Kennedy married Jacki O. in Newport. REM and RAM were in the news. MACH II was reached by a manned aircraft.  The name MACH II, is used  today for a penile balloon type prosthesis implant, presumably for marketting reasons. Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy with Marilyn Monroe as the centrefold nude. Hank Williams dies.

The trouble is I don’t remember any of this. . A whole lot was going on but I was not atypically satisfied to play in the bathroom, walk, run and fall, climb things and learn to speak so I could swear, something it was noted and brought to my attention I did at a very young age.   My fondest memory still remains my family in my Grandmother’s kitchen with the black and white tiled floors.  

  .    

1968: winter, her basement, the school playground

The Vietnam war was raging on.  I was coming of age. We thought the world was going to end in our time.  I don’t remember the death of Kennedy but I sure do remember the Kennedy Missile Crisis. That was in 1962.  We were just glad to be alive. Living fast on the edge.  In 1968 there were riots. Martin Luther King was killed.  Bobby Kennedy was killed.  We were just in high school at the time.

‘I don’t want to go to war, ‘ I told my friend. 

‘Me neither,’ he said.  

I was afraid of being maimed and mutilated. I was still a virgin too.

We sat in her basement talking late into the night.  Our group.  Friends. Artists. Actors and actresses.  Painters.  We burned incense because no one had access to bash or marijuana back then.  The drinking age was 21. We drank tea instead. Exotic eastern tea. Burning sandalwood incense. Heady stuff. Listening to Cream on the portable turntable.  Some of the guys had tried smoking banana leaves but didn’t get high.

‘What do you want to be,’ she said.  

‘A writer,’ I said. ‘I want to be a playwright and write plays.’

‘I’m going to be a designer,’ she said.  She had the most incredible long brown hair that nearly  hung down to the floor. She wore clothes that no one in Canada had seen. Long gowns in velvet with sleeves that were fluted like medieval dresses and African bead necklaces.

I’d give a life time to be back with those guys talking shit.  It was so long ago but we were so close.  So many changes were there.  Our blond bombshell friend lost her virginity first.  On a gym mattress in the school.  

‘I didn’t want to be a virgin when I married, ‘ she said. It seemed like a satisfactory reason.  I was the intellectual and assumed it was something well thought out.

The incense was sandalwood.  There were only candles lighting the room.  Psychedelic posters adorned the walls along with peacock feathers and posters of Don Quixote and Desiderata.  I understood Sear’s catalogue underwear sections but these real live girls, our friends were something, too unbelievable.  Exotic butterflies. They flitted all over the place, laughing like elves.  Fairies giggling.  Giving spice to life.

Outside the heavy falling snow was piling on the sidewalk and in the streets. I’d hitchhike home past midnight. The buses having stopped at 11.  I was madly in love but it wasn’t with just her, more with love itself. Madly in love with love. And lust and all the angst wrapped up in her little smiles and the depth of her deep blue eyes as she looked at me.  Mesmerizing. I was a doe caught in the headlights of a semi truck trailer.  She killed me every time she looked at me.  Star struck.

‘I don’t think I could kill another human being’ I said.  

‘I don’t want to be in a wheel chair the rest of my life,’ he replied

‘I don’t want to be a coward though. I’m afraid I’d be a coward.’

‘You’re not a coward,’ he said.

We were walking in our parkas, just walking down the road.  We could see our breath. We crossed the main street to walk around the back of the elementary school we’d attended short years before. We were friends since we were young.

‘Remembre the Cuban missile crisis.’ I said as we swung on swings for little kids.  Teenagers playing on swings, in our parkas, wearing mittens, snow boots on our feet.

‘Yea. That was worse.’  He said.

‘But this could become a nuclear war. ‘ We were silent for a long while.

Everyday the radio reported the dead from Vietnam. The Têt Offensive.  Draft dodgers were coming through the town. I’d talked to some. They were cool with their long hair and girls who liked them. But I thought they were cowards. I worried I might be s a coward.

‘I’m afraid if I killed someone I’d like it and maybe not be able to stop. ‘. I said.  We’d left the swings and were walking across the field lumpy with snow drifts. The cold wind was blowing 30 below.  

‘I don’t want to kill people. ‘ he said.  ‘If they were going to harm my mom, maybe but,not because someone told me to. I don’t think I could do it.’

I liked most kissing girls.  We played spin the bottle in that basement . We also read each other what we were reading. We all read books. I loved poetry and read Souster and Cohen.  She liked Emily Dickinson.  I don’t remember who liked E.E. Cummings but I remember someone read his poetry. We talked of ghosts and supernatural.  The basement, snowdrifts against the basement windows, wind howling outside,candles flickering, corners of the large room black and mysterious.  Drinking oolong tea.  

I loved the the laughter of the girls. Giggling high pitched. Easily elicited,  One or two would stand and dance to the music. Swaying to Joni Mitchell Both Sides Now.  Some nights the music was hardly more than a whisper because her parents were asleep upstairs.  Other nights they were out and we could talk louder.  The laughter was richer then.  I remember best the group of us close together in a circle old hassocks and couch pulled close so we could talk together leaning in, staring at lips and teeth.  Talking low , afraid to wake the grown ups. 

  

Gratitude 2019

Thank you for this new year, Lord

Thank you for bringing me safely through 2018.

Despite all my fears and worries and loss of faith, you carried me through

I love the foot prints poem.  

You are so much like my parents when I was a child

You pick me up when I’m so tired

You put me in bed when I can hardly stay awake

You end the pain with sleep

You guide me at times when I am lost.

There’s those little indications of synchronicity

The words of a friend or family member

The special message that is embedded in a phrase 

That helps me through a day.

I’ve so thankfuf for all of these reminders

That I’m not alone

I am so thankful for that sense of your being here

Watching me, caring, loving.

I’m so thankful for the health I have.

Let me never take for granted all the wonders of this body

Though my sight and hearing are failing I’ve so much more than so many.

Help me to see what I have and not focus so much on what I have not

Help me to embrace my aging and the joys of wisdom

Help me to understand my journey.

Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the Holy Spirit

Thank you for saints of all religions.

Thank you for the church.

Thank you for the wisdom teachings.

Thank you for peace within.

Protect me and guide me and show me how I can know you more.

Thank you for joy and love and kindness

Thank you for family, friends, work, rest, food, shelter, transportation.

Thank you for my pets, those special roommates who make life so much better.

Thank you for this day, this new year, this canvass to paint on,

Remind me of priorities. Help me to focus always on you Lord

Help me live my life to the best of my ability

Help me to dream the impossible dream

Help me to be with you and walk by your side

Help me in the great game of hide and seek

Help me to know that you are always reaching out for me
Help me to let the Hound of Heaven catch me.

Help me to slow down and know you are with me

Help me to turn the handle in the right direction.

Thank you lord for all that has come before 

Thank you for all that you have prepared for me

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

God before me, god above me, god below me, god beside me, god inside me

Let me know you better

Still my fear Lord

Remind me ever that you are with me.

Thank you Lord, this day, this life.

New Year’s Day, 2019

Happy New Year! Happy. New Year! Happy New Year! I woke up to the normal aches and pains.  They remind me of past fun.   Laura was lying in bed beside me. Gilbert the dog and George the Cat were on her side. They all had their backs to me.  I had immediate gratitude for the toilet.  God bless Crete.  They had indoor plumbing for the King and Queen at Knossos some 3000 years ago.  Trickle down is working for this peasant, albeit slowly.  

I sat on my camel and wool hair carpet from Instanbul, thankful that George hadn’t puked on my spot in the night. I meditated.  Crossing my legs stretches my knee which I injured bicycling. Note to self, I wasn’t running from cops, hurling terrorists grenades, doing acrobatic sex with hookers but simply bicycling to work to stay in shape. Then the knee popped. Whenever people encourage good living and exercise I think of that knee. 

Now meditating I’m thinking positive thoughts with the knee and back hurting. The back I hurt flipping various vehicles and being in plane crashes. The first time I was hit by an idiot on black ice while I was trying to get to work to deliver a baby. Driving at speed limit while the offending driver was racing past me when he lost control of his car on black ice . Another reason not to be good. No alcohol or drugs involved.

I’m supposed to be meditating on God and good and love and life and instead I’m cataloguing the injuries I got, all sober doing good things for the world, while forgetting the near loss of a finger motorcycling back roads under the influence ,unable to remember where the brake was before the crash I’ve forgotten many a new year’s eves so am thankful for another night and year of sobriety.  

Last night Laura and I kept waking the dog and cat to keep them up till midnight. I’d lost satellite reception for the tv only to fiddle with the switch at the synchronistic moment before the image came on and we could watch  the New York ball come down. Laura and I had been in New York for New Years’ 2 years back.  I ‘d decided I couldn’t stand in the cold for hours and hold my bladder that long.  Aging and sobriety.  I never thought twice about pissing in potted plants or on street corners while drinking beer. But now I’m very fastidious already fearing a karmic future with butch nurses chasing me with Depends.

We enjoyed the Canadian cross country show of New Year’s Eve celebration. I loved seeing Burton Cummings and recalling how we hired the Guess Who for the Vincent Massey High School dance for $500.  The Sheep dogs were terrific.  Delhi2Dublin on Grouse were a lot of fun for young people.  I was delighted to have the tv and feel connected with the grid.  

Laura opened the trailer door at midnight as fireworks went off.  Gilbert barked.  The cat cringed .I remember as a kid year after year Mom encouraging me to bang pots at the door on the strike of 12.  No one was outside in Fort Garry in the bitter winter. So no one heard me banging pots and screaming Happy New Year. It was the Hay family fun.  I was 10 or so when I remember that.  As teens we stopped doing anything that wasn’t decidedly ‘cool’.

After meditating I made coffee and used the canned milk this morning.   The milk was going off.  “I don’t like canned milk,” Laura said. “It reminds me of breast milk”.  I imagine women get to taste breast milk a lot later than us guys. She’s had 3 children and is a grand mother. But how do they know these comparisons. I expect I like canned milk because it does taste like breast milk, Now it’s decidedly off. But I suffer through the uncertainty until my stomach feels sort of off.

I make more coffee.

My impossibly elegant and sophisticated friend Julie in New York, who still  ballet dances, is asking for recipies for Hoppin’ John, a complicated southern bacon dish . Laura is still in bed.  I’d thought of Quaker instant oat meal or an energy bar for NY day breakfast but Julie definitely raised the bar. I’ll have to make bacon from the yesterday’s Costco’s haul.  I normally take the motorcycle to Costco to limit my load but had the car and got most of the goodies in the store. I don’t need to go out shopping for weeks if not months.  

Then I get a “Lang may your Lum Reek” from a Facebook friend   I’m all happy with the Scottish phrase. My heritage kicks in and I begin humming Auld Lang Syne. I’m  Jonesing for bag pipe music while my stomach still feels like I’ve been to early into the haggis.

I send the greetings about to dozens of friends in a fit of good will only to realize the picture is of a champagne bottle. I’ve been so long from the stuff I think of Perrier. Laura when I tell her says the glass beside is a blue martini. She has a friend who works in Las Vegas and sends her pictues of martini’s. I never drank martini.  I was a wine connossiur by comparison.  I did have a wee dram of Scots on occasion before the swat teams surrounded me.  But there I am only hours into the New Year having drunk breast milk that was off and taunting all my sober friends with pictures of booze.  Meanwhile we’ve laughed about our elderly (at our age this is a mute point) friend staying up late eating brownies.  I”m like the newcomer at his first meeting wearing a Budweiser t shirt. .  

Laura loved the eggs and back bacon, toast and ginger marmalade and the fresh coffee with fresh Costco cream.  

The sunshine is special. I’m filled with gratitude for family and friends and pets.  It seems likely that the 2019 journey will be a gentle uphill climb. I wish Fair Winds and Following Seas to all my family and friends.

God bless. Hallelujah.  Thank you and Lang may your Lum Reek (translated my your chimney smoke).