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.

Our dear rabbit

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There is an absence in our house this morning. A small rustling that isn’t heard. A cute face not peeking out from a bed of hay.

Our little rabbit died yesterday, and it was with great solemnity that I headed out to dig a grave in the backyard.

Rabbi, as he was best known, was my younger daughter’s pet. She had been asking for a pet- pig, horse- for years and when the opportunity came up to get a rabbit, I thought it would be a perfect starter pet for competent tweenager.  

The rabbit was a constant source of concern; requiring new cages, new foods, and new cleaning protocols. I watched over the little creature but failed in the end, with much regret.

Two weeks ago, my daughter noticed the rabbit was losing fur on his feet. I went to google and found the condition was likely urine scald; bunny getting his feet wet with pee causing skin irritation. I googled some more and got advice from a hobby farm Facebook group I joined.

We washed his feet regularly with saline water, kept the cage cleaned and full of hay, giving him several hours a day out of his hutch; he seemed to be getting better. But yesterday when we went to give him carrot scraps from supper, he was gone.

As parents we allow our children to have pets for several reasons; to learn responsibility, for companionship, and eventually, to learn lessons about death and loss before they start to lose important people in their lives.

This is not our first pet loss, and we have gone through the loss of some important humans too. It’s all part of life, losing the people and pets we care about. And it isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be. But you get better at dealing with loss, learn to live with the absences.

My daughter and I both feel sadness about the death of our little rabbit. It was difficult not seeing and hearing him this morning.

In our book of thankfuls yesterday, the only thing I could think to write was that I was thankful the ground had warmed up enough that I could dig a little grave.