Life is a bit surreal these days — it’s a beautiful late spring day of 2026, the garden is glorious, and I am buried in 1947 and 1948, the epistolary exchanges between my parents, trying to sort letters by the references in them when the dates are vague, as they often are. And even sometimes wrong — my mother dated a letter 1947 when it is OBVIOUSLY 1948. That doesn’t help, Mum! I’ve also been transcribing my mother’s minuscule diary from 1944, much in faded scribbled pencil, barely legible.
It’s really something to have this trove of material; they were both such vivid writers. My parents are exchanging honest opinions about each other, their future together, their sex life, and of course the world’s post-war politics. Riveting.
I heard of an app called Transkribus that trancribes from printed page to computer, so I tried photographing one of Mum’s handwritten letters to Dad and uploading it. Here is how it translated: “on leave an lade and i glorions sumpe of boating, bat lging in the sun and sands on the batticcoast, walkeng dowig for intes Danay to gaid gath unfortunately perhaps, always pleaty to dinleh ray I was in a bad car accipent & was the by one whoelmerged more or lefs denberst was eventually flown home for a month leave in Augiest. October saw some porting foundmyself up pooted and dumped but il. A good proust”
Hmm. A good proust indeed. Maybe it thinks it’s ancient English? Or Welsh? Then I tried a typed letter to Mum, Sylvia, from one of her beaux.
Dear Sylvis, Although, I premicet net to cem micate farther tillmy return from festen, the desire to say halls again preves a bit tee strend to be pestpened for even a weok-end. the trip hene last night mas slightly on the lenely side.
Etc.
So, back to the drawing board. Or, more accurately, Otter.ai.
Several wonderful artistic events this week. Saw a beautiful prize-winning play, Primary Trust, at Crow’s Theatre, about a lonely autistic man’s struggles to cope with life. Tender and very moving, and unusually, although I was waiting for disaster, a happy ending. Even better, however, Friday night, Suzette sent me a ticket she couldn’t use to Katma, a Luminato event at nearby Daniel’s Spectrum. Had no idea what it was except something to do with dance, so I was game. And what a joyful explosion it was, a glorious experience, loved it, wept at the end. I’m grateful to have been there.
It was an international troupe from Australia — incredible dancers of all sizes, shapes, and colours (except mine), and the show was a kind of rave, not that I’ve ever been to a rave. There were no chairs in the big room, just beams of light from the ceiling delineating various spaces. The soundtrack was mostly drumming with a ferocious beat, rather than music. We stood around moving to the beat and gradually the dancers appeared and began to dance — I asked one of them afterwards, and he said the show was about 30% choreographed and 70% “freestyle.” Mad wild dancing, all while we gathered and moved with them and clapped in time. At the end, they gathered us into two huge groups and led us in dancing. It was sheer joy. Thanks to Luminato for bringing them here, to remind us that we have bodies. And souls.
Encountered two inspiring women this week, one in person and one on PBS. First, a terrific documentary about Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post during Watergate and for a long time after — a mild-mannered wife learned to stand up, not just for herself as the only woman, and the boss, in a roomful of scornful male journists, but for her country and for the truth that brought down a president. What she faced from the misogyny of Nixon and his gang was terrifying, but she did not flinch. Good journalism is vital to democracy!
And at the Toronto Public Library’s fabulous and free speaker series, Terry Tempest Williams, superb nonfiction writer and environmentalist. She spoke about spending half an hour watching an ant, helped by other ants, carry a flower to the nest, and paraphrased Simone Weil: Attention is a form of prayer. “Nature is my god,” she said. “My language.” She said of the U.S. that currently “we are losing everything we hold dear.” But “There is something deeper than hope — engagement. Action!”
Thank you to the women fighting against the forces of darkness, to move us forward.
And one more joy, literally — another Luminato event, massed amateur choirs singing the “Ode to Joy” at Yonge-Dundas Square, accompanying the Toronto Symphony and the Mendelssohn Choir projected onto video screens. Heaven.
But mostly, it’s garden and letters, letters and garden. Here’s a tiny taste, something Gordin wrote to Sylvia at the end of August 1947, after they’d spent four days together in Paris:
Do I love you? I’m damned if I know what love is; even if I were convinced that I loved you I think I might be kidding myself, because as close as we were, after four days what the hell do we know of each other? In any case, for the first time, I thought of marriage and realized that it might be very agreeable.
God only knows I’m aware of some of your faults, as you must be of mine, but never have I found in a woman such lack of hypocrisy, such simplicity and straightforwardness. Christ, I feel like I’m writing this letter with my blood. I hate writing these letters as I may once have mentioned.
Patience, kiddo. We’ll know either one way or another by next summer.
Kap
PS I probably do love you at that.
Back and forth they go. I wrote a Substack about this process, that I realize as I read how close I came, over and over, to not being born, as they flirted with other people and challenged each other. But she sailed to NYC in December, they married the following August, and I was born the August after that. I made it. Thanks to the gods.
https://touchpointsawriterstruth.substack.com/p/researching-and-confronting-the-past
Sylvia and Gordin, both aged 26, on their wedding night at the registry office in Chicago; they’re staying with friends. Mum is wearing a shiny mauve dress she sewed herself. It’s in a cupboard downstairs. She threw nothing away. A mixed blessing.
There is trouble in the Garden of Eden. My roses have been attacked by bugs called thrips, which bore into the buds and devour them from within. Horrifying; I’ve had to cut off at least 20 damaged buds. My poor William Morris rose. But there are still some healthy blooms, and I’ve bought a serious thrip killer called Doktor Doom. One does what one must. My chard and spinach were devoured by leaf miners. The world is full of danger and destruction, the garden a microcosm.
And yet the scent that is wafting in right now — roses, jasmine, mint, oregano, rosemary, basil. The phlox, not yet in bloom, has spread wildly, even as the golden glow, usually a forest, has nearly died off. The mysteries of the garden. Or, as Lorna Crozier’s book says, The Garden Going On Without Us.
Next week very busy – to Eli’s Grade 8 grad on Wednesday, to Paul Simon with Sam on Thursday, and then Anna, the boys, and I leave at dawn Saturday for three days in Montreal, after which they drive off to Nova Scotia and I take the train home, only to leave the next morning for three days at Ruth’s cottage. Too much summer excitement. Carol is back from Ecuador in her suite upstairs to keep this place, and the ridiculous cat, running.
I feel immensely privileged and incredibly lucky to be where I am, to be nearly 76 and so far healthy, to have an enjoyment of life and music and nature, so much good inherited from the two people whose letters I am boring into, like a thrip. They gave me great gifts. They hurt me, too, both of them. Life, eh? Thank heavens for family trouble; there’d be no writing without it, and I wouldn’t have a job.
The moon through the second floor skylight last night. Shine on, friends.
