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Monday, July 29, 2013

Da

The kids were at Day Camp and I had a free afternoon ahead of me with no pressing work or house related jobs crowding my head space. I started down the familiar road to Dorts Cove anticipating a visit at my father's house or the beach; perhaps both.

I pulled into the driveway at my father's house and drove up behind the hill where the vehicles often hide when rain has not saturated the grass. No car, no truck, no people in sight.

I turned the car around on the hill and set off for the beach, just several 100 meters away.

As I drove in the beach road a familiar truck was perched on the edge of the bank looking out to sea, seaming to pull at an invisible leash that kept it tied to the shore. The truck was similar to almost every other truck in the community but the opened tailgate revealed a pair of rank black sneakers that I knew my father wore around the yard.

I parked the car and headed out across the rocks towards the mouth of the Salmon River where I could just vaguely spot a human figure.

The wind on the beach was brisk disguising the power of the sun as it poured buckets of radiation on me. The tide was high and what little sand peeked out between the rocks sparkled.

I walked up to the lone fisherman on the point who was standing in hip-waders in the river two or three feet deep. At first I wasn't sure if it was him; something didn't seem exactly right and I wasn't positive about the truck although I was pretty sure about the sneakers.

Normally I would have no doubt that it would be my father on the beach; the beach where he grew up, where his father and grandfather had grown up, where I had grown up and where now, my children were growing up. This beach is part of the family DNA. But my father's trips out to the beach were less frequent these days; his knees gave him a lot of trouble and the long walk over rough terrain was difficult if not sometimes impossible for him.

The fisherman looked up and sure enough it was my Da but with so much sunblock on his face that I barely recognized him under the white-wash. I didn't want to disturb my father, I guessed he had gone out to the beach, despite the trouble it may cause him, to be alone. I guessed that the beach acted as a sort of church for him as it did for me-- to either contemplate or forget the worries of the day.

I had come to see him on this day in the hopes of talking to him about his sister who had recently died. I had been away, attending to my grandmother's death and funeral in Massachusetts, when my aunt had died. I had returned on the day after my aunts' funeral.

Since I had been home my dad made some mention about the funeral but not much—I wondered if there was anything more he wanted to say. So here I was waiting to hear whatever might need to be said.

The death of my aunt surely struck my father hard. They were, as the saying goes, Irish twins, less than 12 months apart in age. She had been his playmate for his entire life. When I thought about her death I kept returning to a photograph I had once seen of them playing hide and seek around an apple tree when they were toddlers.

My aunt had been sick with cancer for several years but the end came quickly and unexpectedly. It was just four years ago that my grandmother died. None of us, at that time, would have believed it if we had been told that my aunt would die four years and one month later.

Now there is just my father and his youngest brother. Luckily they are friends, comrades, fishermen-in-arms. You can often find them casting out their lines at the Salmon River bridge located on the road between their two houses which are less than a mile apart.

So I waited for the conversation to start. But it didn't; at least not that one.

Da was fly fishing; hoping for a big trout. There was one already on the beach when I got there—past the point of playing the line, gills no longer trying to breathe in the unfamiliar atmosphere.

After a while a new fly needed to be tied and Da waded ashore. We talked about flys; none of them looked like anything we had ever seen in nature yet the fish went for them greedily. We sat, he tied the fly and the fish started to jump in the river diverting his attention from his knots. The more the fish jumped the harder it was to tie the fly. Finally he got back into the water and we kept an eye out for the fish who now seemed to jumping on the other side of the river.

The closest we got to talking about my aunt was when my father got up from the shoreline in an uncertain fashion—a little wonky in his waders. He said that was how it went when you were getting old then corrected himself and said, “when you are old.” He went on to tell me that his grandson Sam had recently told my father that he, Sam, could never think of Da as old. He was never an old man to Sam and that is a sentiment with which, most people that know my father, would agree.

My father has always been a woodsman, a fisherman, a man who always could and would do hard work. It's been very odd to think of him not being able to do things—for him and for me. The idea that my father is getting old is one I really can not square in my mind with the person that I know him to be and I think he has the same problem. Who is he if he is old? The death of his sister brought this question into sharper relief. A day on the river quietly thinking or not thinking about it; that's how we work these things out.

I stayed on the beach watching fish, birds and my father for several hours. The one thing in life I always want more of is time with my Da.

I started for home with a fish and fresh memories; a perfect afternoon.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Top five list

So I got this idea from a fellow blogger—top five list. However, I did not read all the directions properly before I started thinking about my top five list. Only after I had put together this solid top five during my morning run did I log in and check the link she provided and found that I was supposed to do specific top five lists like places I want to visit, books I have recently read, etc.

Well in keeping with my usual personality trait of just doing things my own way here is my top five list.

Top five things I don't regret that other people think I should

1 Being a single mother

2 Going to university to study the things I love rather than studying things that would make money

3Any and all love affairs

4 Moving back to my home town

5 Having no regrets

ONE

I can't say that I set out to be a single mother but I was not surprised when I became one. Somewhere in my head I never thought I could tolerate, compromise, or agree with another person long enough to raise children together.

When my second child was a few months old and my little family of three moved back to my home town, my grandmother, who I loved dearly, lamented the fact that I had this second child. Everything would have been easier if I was single with only one child she thought.

Gram might have been right in the short term; it was harder to work and make a living with two small children but in the long term she was very wrong. I can't imagine my child(ren) not having a sibling. To limit their life experience by making them a singleton would not have been beneficial. A sibling teaches you so much about relationships and how to live with others. I truly can't imagine how dull life would be without both of my children and I am thankful every time I can say, “Ask sissy to help you.”

TWO

From the time I was very young I loved anthropology. I made list from encyclopedias of cultural groups I should study and spent some time taking notes from encyclopedias and keeping them in a little scribbler. The different ways people do things fascinated me and still does.

In my first year of university I told myself that whichever class I got the higher grade, History or Anthropology, I would declare my major. Unfortunately, I got an A in History and a B+ in Anthropology. I decided rules were meant to be broken and majored in Anthropology.

After my first degree, I entered into the Kinesiology program at Dalhousie University. This was the “Be sensible, study something that will make money” educational opportunity. My first year was good; straight As and on the Deans List. But in my second year my personal life became messy and at the end of the second semester I flew off to Thailand and left all sensible options behind.

Several years later I started university again and entered a MA in Thai Studies. As I always say, a most practical subject.

So although there are no listings for anthropologists or experts on Thai culture in the Job Bank, my experience has led to employment and I am glad I made the choice to study what I loved not what was practical.

THREE

Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. That is a worn-out saying that I can get behind. Of all the men I have been involved with throughout my life, remembering the relationships we shared is usually a laughing matter; even if it takes several years to get to the laughing part after all the crying.

I am friends with most of my exes. I have chats with them on facebook and even sometimes visit them in other cities. It is my philosophy that if you can't say anything good about your ex, that really is saying something about you. So although not all my exs are great guys, most of them have a few redeeming qualities. Some of them are great and it really was just me and not you that messed things up.

FOUR

I moved back to my home town just over five years ago now. It was a big move. Most people didn't think I could handle it. My home town is a very small place-- maybe 400 people. Before returning here I had lived in some of the most densely populated places in Asia; Bangkok, Thailand and the north western tip of Taiwan in a few cities that felt like suburbs of Taipei.

More to the point, I was seen by many of my friends as a person in perpetual motion. According to their view of me, I would be unable to settle down and stay in one place. In the past, it is true enough to say that I lived short stints in different places but this was not a life plan I had devised for myself. My life was highly nomadic in my teen years due to my mother's inability to mentally adjust to stillness. On my own, in early adulthood, I lived in Halifax for seven years, then in Bangkok for almost eight years; Guysborough is small but I had lived in small places and I knew I could hack it. I didn't know I would like it as much as I do. That has been a great bonus.

I still want to travel and hope to venture further afield as the kids get older. As it is now I have my own house, have a job I like, have friends I can rely on and my kids live close to their grandparents. Everything has worked out better than I could have ever hoped or dreamed.

FIVE

No regrets. None. Nada. Nein. Nyet. Ok, truthfully, sometimes I regret eating too much ice cream.

So thank you Katie for getting me out of my post-less summer. Hope yours is truly magnificent.