Sunday, March 3, 2013
my parents
winter whites
Saturday, March 2, 2013
gone
It is 10 p.m. on Saturday night. I've just come from dinner with one of my oldest friends, Louise, from Grade 13 in 1966, and her new husband who was her childhood cello partner. And Auntie Do. We talked a lot about the past. But also about now - Louise had just come from the "Met Live" series at Cineplex, where she watched "Parsifal," a five hour Wagner opera. She was overwhelmed.
It was a lovely dinner with old and good friends. But now, here I am at Mum's. This is my last night, ever, in the home of my parents. From August 1950 till I left to go to university in 1967, I lived more or less at home. From then on, I visited when I could, sometimes quite often, sometimes only once a year, when I lived in B.C. But they were always there, my parents, as was their hearth, always there to welcome me. After Dad died in 1988, my mother was always there, more eager than ever for my visits. The bed was always made beautifully, there was a little vase of fresh flowers on the bedside table, she had bought some treat especially for me.
Now - boxes in the living room, piles of dust and garbage in the corners, empty cupboards, one coffee cup left, one cereal bowl, to be packed tomorrow. From now on, wherever in the world I go, it will be as a guest, even with my closest friends and my remaining family. Whereas here - even though I never lived here, even though my relations with Mum were often strained and she exhausted and infuriated me - here was home. Home - was it Phillip Larkin who said so? - is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Now, no one, anywhere, has to take me in.
This death is a liberation. I am untethered, and that is a good thing. My mother did not protect me from the elements; on the contrary, she hurt me more than anyone on earth. And yet, she was beautiful and open and very good company. She loved me, and she was my mother.
It was a lovely dinner with old and good friends. But now, here I am at Mum's. This is my last night, ever, in the home of my parents. From August 1950 till I left to go to university in 1967, I lived more or less at home. From then on, I visited when I could, sometimes quite often, sometimes only once a year, when I lived in B.C. But they were always there, my parents, as was their hearth, always there to welcome me. After Dad died in 1988, my mother was always there, more eager than ever for my visits. The bed was always made beautifully, there was a little vase of fresh flowers on the bedside table, she had bought some treat especially for me.
Now - boxes in the living room, piles of dust and garbage in the corners, empty cupboards, one coffee cup left, one cereal bowl, to be packed tomorrow. From now on, wherever in the world I go, it will be as a guest, even with my closest friends and my remaining family. Whereas here - even though I never lived here, even though my relations with Mum were often strained and she exhausted and infuriated me - here was home. Home - was it Phillip Larkin who said so? - is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Now, no one, anywhere, has to take me in.
This death is a liberation. I am untethered, and that is a good thing. My mother did not protect me from the elements; on the contrary, she hurt me more than anyone on earth. And yet, she was beautiful and open and very good company. She loved me, and she was my mother.
mucking out
The internet here is very slow so I can't Google this - but in my recollection, one of the labours of Hercules was to clean out the Stygian stables, a massive dump of @#$. Is that right? And right now, I feel a bit like Hercules.
We're nearly there. Dealing with the last chock a block boxes of photographs, including one where Mum had thoughtfully put lots of photos of other people's weddings and babies, and many more blurry travel shots, shots so bad you can barely make out what they're of, and yet she kept them all. All thrown out. Went through the photo albums with Auntie Do - she pointing out my British great-great grandparents and all the Brits - all the Nellies and Sams - and then the other album, the Kaplans, including a shot from the 1880s in Russia, Kaplan great-great grandparents. The diversity of my background on stark display. Wonderful, all of it - it's just a shame I've never seen many of these before, because Mum had them all stashed away. There are photos of my father as a baby with his grandmother, Jacob Gordin's wife Anna, that I might have put in my book about him - one of them, with my grandmother, at the beach. Must be Coney Island.
The heavy weight of heritage - and yet the joy of knowing one's roots. Right now I feel rooted as never before. And in another way, I'm doing my best to yank up those heavy bonds to the past and move some of this stuff to my house, so I can dump it on my kids.
Tonight, my musician friends are coming back to look at the records - so many great ones, Pablo Casals, string quartets. Mum's stamp collection - new stamps, hundreds of them, bought as an investment, I guess, both here and in the States. Sheets of Elvis stamps, anyone? Are we rich yet? Dealt with her Christmas card collection - two under the bed storage boxes plus a desk drawer, full. Mostly new, but also ones sent to her. There are still file cabinets full of papers. And my father's ashes, which have sat in her closet since 1988. My brother and I are making a deal - we're dividing and mixing Mum's and Dad's. I want to scatter my half in the Necropolis, with my kids. So I can go and visit my parents a few blocks from home.
Going out to dinner tonight - getting out of the dust. Getting out of the stables. And on Tuesday, it all arrives chez moi, where the unpacking begins. As Charlie Brown says, Good grief.
I ache, and not just physically.
PS Just went for a walk. It's minus 3 with a wind, the kind of cold where your hands hurt if your gloves are off for long. Stumbled through the snow down to Britannia Park and the Ottawa River, where the guys were out - what's it called, snowboard sailing? They have snowboards attached to giant colourful kites; they lie on the ground until the wind catches their sail, and then they're skimming over the frozen snowy river at great speed, one doing leaps and twirls. It was beautiful and even more importantly, silent, except for a few shouts and laughs. WINTER! White as far as the eye could see, white white. I'd forgotten how lovely real winter can be. It's just not a good time to live in a big city - makes you realize how filthy cars and human beings really are. Out here, there were snowshoe and ski tracks in the snow, dogs bounding, a park bench buried right to the very top - in white.
It looked so dead, the landscape, the trees grey and bare, Bob's community garden below the condos, where Mum had her own patch, completely covered. But soon it'll all spring to life again. How amazing is that? Hard to believe. Just as, though all those scores of relatives whose pictures I looked at today are dead, I go on, and when I'm dead, my children will go on, and Eli. Eli will go on. It's almost enough to make an agnostic half-Jew believe in God.
But not quite.
We're nearly there. Dealing with the last chock a block boxes of photographs, including one where Mum had thoughtfully put lots of photos of other people's weddings and babies, and many more blurry travel shots, shots so bad you can barely make out what they're of, and yet she kept them all. All thrown out. Went through the photo albums with Auntie Do - she pointing out my British great-great grandparents and all the Brits - all the Nellies and Sams - and then the other album, the Kaplans, including a shot from the 1880s in Russia, Kaplan great-great grandparents. The diversity of my background on stark display. Wonderful, all of it - it's just a shame I've never seen many of these before, because Mum had them all stashed away. There are photos of my father as a baby with his grandmother, Jacob Gordin's wife Anna, that I might have put in my book about him - one of them, with my grandmother, at the beach. Must be Coney Island.
The heavy weight of heritage - and yet the joy of knowing one's roots. Right now I feel rooted as never before. And in another way, I'm doing my best to yank up those heavy bonds to the past and move some of this stuff to my house, so I can dump it on my kids.
Tonight, my musician friends are coming back to look at the records - so many great ones, Pablo Casals, string quartets. Mum's stamp collection - new stamps, hundreds of them, bought as an investment, I guess, both here and in the States. Sheets of Elvis stamps, anyone? Are we rich yet? Dealt with her Christmas card collection - two under the bed storage boxes plus a desk drawer, full. Mostly new, but also ones sent to her. There are still file cabinets full of papers. And my father's ashes, which have sat in her closet since 1988. My brother and I are making a deal - we're dividing and mixing Mum's and Dad's. I want to scatter my half in the Necropolis, with my kids. So I can go and visit my parents a few blocks from home.
Going out to dinner tonight - getting out of the dust. Getting out of the stables. And on Tuesday, it all arrives chez moi, where the unpacking begins. As Charlie Brown says, Good grief.
I ache, and not just physically.
PS Just went for a walk. It's minus 3 with a wind, the kind of cold where your hands hurt if your gloves are off for long. Stumbled through the snow down to Britannia Park and the Ottawa River, where the guys were out - what's it called, snowboard sailing? They have snowboards attached to giant colourful kites; they lie on the ground until the wind catches their sail, and then they're skimming over the frozen snowy river at great speed, one doing leaps and twirls. It was beautiful and even more importantly, silent, except for a few shouts and laughs. WINTER! White as far as the eye could see, white white. I'd forgotten how lovely real winter can be. It's just not a good time to live in a big city - makes you realize how filthy cars and human beings really are. Out here, there were snowshoe and ski tracks in the snow, dogs bounding, a park bench buried right to the very top - in white.
It looked so dead, the landscape, the trees grey and bare, Bob's community garden below the condos, where Mum had her own patch, completely covered. But soon it'll all spring to life again. How amazing is that? Hard to believe. Just as, though all those scores of relatives whose pictures I looked at today are dead, I go on, and when I'm dead, my children will go on, and Eli. Eli will go on. It's almost enough to make an agnostic half-Jew believe in God.
But not quite.
Friday, March 1, 2013
moving out
Once more at the island airport, waiting to go to Ottawa, 10 a.m. on a cold, sunny Friday morning. This is my last trip to my mother's condo; I'll pack up my pile of stuff, do the last few divisions with my brother, and set things up for the movers who are coming on Tuesday. My brother has already moved his stuff out, so the place will be half empty. This will be my last farewell, not to her, but to her physical reality.
I helped her move in about 1994, from the five-bedroom house in Edmonton where she'd entertained for my father and where he died, to this three-bedroom condo on the western outskirts of Ottawa, in the building adjoining the one where her sister lived. She agonized for months about buying it, didn't want to live out there, wanted to live downtown - and for a long time after she moved in, she still complained about the mistake she'd made. Just like, during her marriage to my father in 1949, she wept throughout because she was so sure she was making a mistake.
It was a wonderful place for her, with its huge community garden below and its vista of the Ottawa River.
My God, they're calling my flight! So efficient. Okay, the end to this musing. I am coming, Mum, to say goodbye.
I helped her move in about 1994, from the five-bedroom house in Edmonton where she'd entertained for my father and where he died, to this three-bedroom condo on the western outskirts of Ottawa, in the building adjoining the one where her sister lived. She agonized for months about buying it, didn't want to live out there, wanted to live downtown - and for a long time after she moved in, she still complained about the mistake she'd made. Just like, during her marriage to my father in 1949, she wept throughout because she was so sure she was making a mistake.
It was a wonderful place for her, with its huge community garden below and its vista of the Ottawa River.
My God, they're calling my flight! So efficient. Okay, the end to this musing. I am coming, Mum, to say goodbye.
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