Noises in the night

As a young child I lived in a rural area of Nova Scotia. My bedroom window captured the sounds of a nearby brook and occasionally a roaring ocean depending on the direction of the wind and ferocity of the storm. This soundscape was rarely interrupted by manmade noises, the road in front of our house was not heavily used although trucks were fairly common; hauling supplies and goods to the next village down the road.

There were few noises in the night to keep me on edge and awake with the exception of a Mickey Mouse watch. I received it for Christmas when I was about six and that watch ticked so viciously that I had to smother Mickey in blankets and pillows to get any peace. Luckily, I’m one of those people who have an odd effect on watches; they tend to die within months of being strapped to my wrist. Mickey quickly went the way of most other watches I have owned and drowned silently in the toy box.

At the age of nine, I left my babbling brook and moved to a bigger community, and then a bigger community and finally I moved to Vancouver- one of the biggest cities in Canada. Those stages of moving to ever expanding noise environments was effective in helping me block out each addition to the nighttime soundscape.

While I found little difficulty in blocking out the sound of rushing traffic and sirens, there have always been sounds, far less intrusive, that jolt me out of sleep. The first sound I reacted to was the sound of my cat Toodie coughing up a furball. This sound was always disturbing, making me fear for Toodie’s life. I’d jump out of bed as soon as I heard him start to choke and pat his marmalade coat until he stopped.

My sister and I slept in the same room for a time, and for some reason, her sleep was never impacted by this terrifying sound. As it turned out, not much could wake her up, take fire alarms for example; no effect.

And that fact became a very tangible difficulty when my family moved to Vancouver. The first night in our new apartment building-with boxes piled half-opened all over the floor, and no beds yet to be sleeping in—the fire alarm went off. At first my mother and I tried to figure out if this was real, was there a fire the first night in our new home; a home that had taken us weeks to find, and while we were finding it, we had been living in a tent. Surely not. A dash out to the balcony proved beyond a doubt that the alarm was real—two balconies over from ours flames and sparks were shooting down the side of the building.

We got my sister up, found Toodie and headed outside. It was a long night, but we got to meet our new neighbours, the building was habitable except for two units and we got to go back to our new home and finish unpacking.

Mickey Mouse watch, cat choking and fire alarms—my list of inescapable sounds.

Then I became a parent and hardly ever slept. Every sound the baby made woke me up. Or no sound, that was worse. Sleep inhabited a separate dimension from the one I lived in for at least five years. And after that, a full night’s sleep, that didn’t happen for another five years. And my parental radar has never diminished, any unusual sound in the night, I wake up.

Then there is this house, it’s old and old houses have lots of character including their own chorus of creaks, bumps, and rattles. Because my house is like my baby, I can’t sleep through all its many nighttime songs. Every bump is a drainpipe falling off, every rattle a loose window about to succumb to gravity, creaks are unwanted animals in the attic. The cacophony of sound is terrifying. I can’t block it out through sheer force of will, so I listen to talk radio all night—it’s the only kind of background noise that keeps the disturbances at bay.

Sometimes this doesn’t work, if the program suddenly samples a clip of music, I am apt to wake up. If loud alarms are part of the show, I will definitely wake up; but usually this method of sleep therapy works well for me.

Four o’clock this morning I heard a small voice call out, ‘Mom, can you help me?’ Aroused from sleep I quickly answered, “I’ll be right there.” I got up and made my way to my younger daughter’s closed bedroom door, opened it and saw a sleeping child. There was no movement, not even the squeaking of her door made an impact. Puzzled I went back to bed and caught a few snippets of the conversation currently playing on the radio. It became clear that the call for help had been broadcast on the BBC, not from down the hall.

My kids are older now, in the teen and almost teen years, and nighttime crises are few and far between. But it seems I will forever be locked in that space where a nighttime call for mom, is always a wake-up call.

Mickey Mouse watch, cat choking, fire alarms, and cries for mom—inescapable sounds.

Time travelling through my Inbox

Time travel has never really appealed to me but gauging by its popularity as a theme in novelistic and cinematic endeavours, the possibility fuels the fevered hopes and dreams of many.

If it was possible and I had to choose between visiting the past or visiting the future, I would choose the past. I couldn’t bear a future that was worse than my today—it would crush one’s will to live which is why I think most rational people would choose to visit the past—fewer unknowns.  

There are a few moments or events I would like to witness in history; the Liberation of Paris, the coronation of Charlemagne, the carving of the Ram Khamhaeng inscription and the Rosetta stone. More important than events, it’s people I’d choose to visit. After years in her company, I’d make my first trip into the past to my grandmother’s flower garden on a sunny day. She’d be in a sun hat with gardening gloves on, swishing the cats away from the freshly dug earth.

I would think deeply about finding the precise moment in time when a cell failed to copy correctly or followed the wrong instructions while I was in utero resulting in the birth defect that has played such an important role in my day to day life. Would I change that moment if it were possible? Thinking hard on the situation—I don’t know if I would. Adversity has made me the person I am, and I think I am doing pretty good as a human. But the toll is sometimes a heavy one. Better to ask this question when I am writhing in pain waiting for the drugs to kick in —I think I’d give a different answer.

Time travel, it’s a tricky idea when you look at as H.G. Wells envisioned it in the novel The Time Machine, but we humans already have the means to travel through time, at least in one direction--the past.

Books, film, audio recordings and archaeology all afford us glimpses of the past. I love nothing more than to find documentary footage of events from before I was born. Last year I found original footage of building the Aswan Dam in Egypt from the 1960s and used it in a presentation. It was amazing to see the technology and manpower used to build that mega project more than 50 years ago.

This topic of time travel came to mind last week when my Hotmail threatened to freeze due to dwindling storage space. I rarely clean out my Inbox; it serves as an archive of my life. But the threat of losing access to any incoming mail made me come to the realization that I had to reduce some of my files.

Logic dictated that removing the oldest messages would be the best way to start my virtual housecleaning. My oldest messages were from 2006. There must have been a purge of email before this recent warning as I have been using this Hotmail account since 1998.

But 2006 is still a fair jaunt back in time. I was living in Bangkok, had one child and was working as a freelance journalist. I had mail from various clients: An online store I wrote copy for including elaborate stories about pearls, teak and candles to sell products. A magazine that hired me as copy editor for entire issues; name on the masthead and the whole shebang. The International School for which I wrote all the PR and the prospectus. Various other forms of piece work for magazines around the city—all reminding me of how busy I was and how successfully I was breaking into a career in writing on so many fronts.

Then there was an email from the woman with whom my ex was cheating on me, asking me where he was because she had not heard from him in a while and she was worried. Needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to hit delete on that one.

There were other emails I was more reluctant to delete from friends and former students who I am no longer in touch with, interview notes—I hate to purge those, and some back and forth from members of the writing group I was a member of for several years. Those were perhaps the hardest ones to think about deleting. The group, I am guessing, is done and dusted, our many members scattered to the four corners of the earth. Fortunately, I am still in touch with many of the members but there are others who have disappeared from my life like the artist who introduced me to Frida Kahlo, the lady who had some great memories to share about growing up in Thailand in the 1950s, and a budding American playwright who watched her property get swamped by Hurricane Katrina from half a world away. I miss them all.

In the end, I couldn’t let go – couldn’t cut the timeline and erase that part of my life. I emptied my work folder instead. There’s always more work, but those friends and those emails from my last year in Thailand are a snapshot of the life I left behind. Keeping them in my inbox means I can time travel back to those days—minus the cheating ex—anytime I want. I don’t need a time machine, just a computer- and those are pretty easy to come by these days.

Home Economics for reluctant students

Remember how much we, or maybe it was just me, hated Home Economics—especially in the days when the Home Ec. classes were a girls only affair. All the boys seemed much happier going to Shop and making bookshelves and lamps than I was going to Home Ec. making biscuits, aprons and pillows.

My mother, never one to be out of steps with the times, demanded that I be allowed to attend Shop class when I was in Grade 9.

At the time we were living in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. So not only was I the new kid, which I was almost every year of my life because we moved so much, but I also had to live up to my mother’s expectations and buck the trend, forcing my way into Shop.

The first day was grand. The boys cat called me as I walked in. The Shop teacher with the inevitably missing thumb looked at me like I was the dessert tray in a fancy restaurant, and I couldn’t even focus on the work I was supposed to do because I had never operated a table saw before. And I wanted to keep all my fingers; I was fond of them as I already was a writer and found them useful for typing.

I was, of course, the only girl who had ever taken the class.

I don’t remember staying in Shop for long. The constant harassment and the final realization on my mother’s part that I might not be safe in that den of lions, led me back to the more gentile life in Home Ec. I remember making a blue pillowcase with a ruffle and zipper that year as well as a few lessons on meal planning; something that never happened in my chaotic house.

And today I am brought back to those off-white walls, planning sheets and hypothetical grocery lists, because it is now that those Home Economics lessons have finally become useful.

As of yesterday, a State of Emergency was declared in the province where I live due to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. We are allowed to make trips to the grocery store, post office, and pharmacy; but are asked not to go outside of our homes more than absolutely necessary. And here is where Home Ec. and meal planning comes into this story.

For my entire life I have been a frequent grocery shopper. Deciding in the morning or maybe even 30 minutes before supper time, what I would put on the table. This often requires a quick trip to the grocery for one or two items.

I always liked this kind of dinner prep. I liked the obvious freshness of any produce required. It made me feel like those little old ladies I saw in Italy who travelled to the market at least once a day to get fresh cheese, meat and vegetables for their daily meals.

But now, as part of doing my COVID-19 self-isolation duty I have turned to the fine art of meal planning as taught to me by a no doubt, much maligned, Home Economics teacher more than 30 years ago.  

I plan to go to the grocery store once a week. A concept that made my children gasp. Surely the ice cream won’t hold; of that I am positive. But this is a time to make changes and adjustments for the greater good.

So, I’ll eat less ice cream, plan meals for the week, and stay the hell away from other people.