Tuesday July 29
Coming in from Pearson airport – endless towering high-rises, a million cars, people living under the Gardiner Expressway, a vulnerable woman tottering home in what looked like her underwear. The city felt brutal, relentless. And very very hot. The plane back was freezing; I put on all my layers, and then peeled them off immediately leaving the terminal.
It’s 10 p.m. and I’m home. Alanna did a great job; the cat is alive. I’ll see the garden tomorrow. My ears are still plugged, crackling and painful.
On Sunday, Kath and I did a great hike, a trail set up on crown land by a local man called Willy, who took it upon himself to carve out a long path along the cliffs and maintain it. Vistas for days. I took it easy as was still not feeling well. Kathy is a nurse, scrupulous about me touching nothing, washing my hands, wearing a mask, keeping far away from everyone.
Sunday night, she asked Alexa, her constant companion and servant, to put on folk music from the seventies and sixties; we sang along, eventually moved on to Motown, and danced on the deck as the sun set. Wonderful.
Today after putting everything I might conceivably have breathed on or touched into the washing machine, with my sheets already hanging on the line, she drove us to St. John’s. We went up Signal Hill, a military lookout overlooking the city and the harbour where Marconi received the first transatlantic telegraph signal. The wind up there was so violent, it almost knocked us down, I had to grab a handrail not to be pushed over. Then to Quidi Vidi, a pretty fishing village close to town that’s overrun with tourists, where we had lunch – fish and chips for her, delicious lobster roll for me, with, of course, beer. She had two pieces of fish and could only eat one, so I wrapped the other and took it with me. It’ll be lunch today.
And that was my last treat in Newfoundland. Off to the airport, and home. Very grateful to my generous hostess, who knows the province so well and has created a beautiful home there.
There’s an authentic humour that’s delightful, the give and take, openness and honesty. At the same time, as Kathy told me, there’s the highest level of alcoholism and unemployment, surely related conditions, in the country. Nfld is vast, trillions of trees, thousands of coves; most everyone has a deep connection with fishing and the ocean. Kathy taught me an expression: “Good day on clothes,” to which the response is, “Yes, b’ye.” It’s a good day to hang laundry on the line. Many such vivid expressions. I love the accent. But there’s no doubt I’m a city girl. Unapologetically.
Below: so many beautiful old churches and graveyards. Dusk on Kath’s deck. Quidi Vidi. Kath and Finn in the wind on Signal Hill.
Back to lists – a ton to do in the garden, three editing clients, family, my own big birthday coming up. I’ve already had one of my presents – the trip. The next is in November – the Macca concert in Montreal. I am a lucky woman.
Wednesday July 30
Two more treats in the mail: a card from my new family, fourth cousin Lesley and her husband Duncan in France, and my birthday poem from Nick Rice. He writes and sends me a new one every year. You should all have such a friend. It ends “Now as I write/this letter/once again/I hope I see you/more than/ now and then.” Those in the know will twig that’s a reference to the very last Beatle song, Now and Then. Nick knows me well. Since 1975.
Olivia came over yesterday and we spent hours trying to fix my email; one of my addresses no longer receives mail, no idea why. We finally phoned Patrick who’s in Winnipeg and partially solved the problem; Olivia is coming back today to see if we can finish the job. Tech! My cold is fading. So much easier to be sick at home.
A lot of work in the garden, just scratching the surface of what needs to be done – I’m thinking I should not go away in July, when everything is bursting open. I picked two huge cucumbers and many cherry tomatoes, cleaned up the rose of Sharon, staked, raked. Kath thinks I should sell this house and rent, and sometimes I think so too.
Book report: Two books I’d put on hold from the library came in just before I left. I brought with me All Fours, by Miranda July, a bestseller. I’m glad I read it as a zeitgeist book, and was glad when I finished. Yes, it’s brave, excoriatingly honest, with humour and very good writing. It’s also weird and graphic and even, to me anyway, though I will be accused of prudery, disgusting. I do not want to know the minute details of her sex life, incessant masturbation, and frenzied fantasies. There’s such absurd craziness – instead of driving across the country as planned, she stops not far from home and spends $20,000 to completely redesign and equip a shabby motel room. There are two beyond obsessive affairs, and in the background, a very nice husband attempting to cope with an off-the-wall wife. I’m glad she’s devoted to their child, who already, at the age of six, has been declared nonbinary — like many children in California, I’m sure.
What to make of it? She’s delving into the obligatory drudgery and boredom of marriage and motherhood, how to free herself from it, and into menopause, women’s fear of losing sexual allure and desire. All that feels so far away from me now that I feel I’m too old, the wrong demographic for this book. All the frantic obsessing about sex and love – was I like that once? Yes, I guess so, though I’d prefer to believe not.
“I only need my lesbianism held and kept, like a person who buries little bits of money all over the world – it’s never on me, but it’s never far,” she writes, although by the end, she’s a lesbian whose husband, with whom she continues to co-parent, also has a girlfriend.
A favourite passage: “Exercise-wise I’d never done more than buy ten yoga classes and take two of them. I was so weak that sometimes my arms got tired brushing my teeth. I nodded instead of waving – hands are heavy! No one wants to admit it! And heads. Just keeping the whole contraption upright was a lot. I was almost always leaning on something, sharing with burden with a counter or a doorway. There was nothing really wrong with me, exercise just seemed like a lot of investment in a temporary body. Wasn’t it smarter to spend your time making things that could live on after that body died?”
So funny, sharp, and clever. But the book can also be gross and offputtingly quirky. Have you seen Miranda July on the internet, wrapped in a plastic bag and doing strange dances? I celebrate quirk, am glad there are quirky people on the planet. I’m just too placid. It’s not my thing.
FYI, this placid writer is doing a free Zoom workshop about memoir for Word on the Street soon – Tuesday August 12. Good to keep my brain, if not my libido, in gear.
