Finding Warren

I could swear that the memory I have of being only a year old, sitting on Mom and Dad’s dining room table picking frosting of my first birthday cake is real.  I have insisted over the years that I remember it as though it were a snapshot in my mind.  Well, as it turns out, it is an actual snapshot, because there is a photo of me, with a bulky cloth diaper bunching up my cute little jumper picking blue and white frosting off what looks like a teddy bear-shaped cake. 

And right there beside me is my grandfather, which was completely normal, as he and my grandmother lived next door to us throughout my childhood.  Before my sisters were born, there was Mom, Dad, and me, a couple pets here and there, and my maternal grandparents.  I always called them Nannie and Grampie.  I never met my paternal grandfather, as he had passed away almost two years before I was born.  Nana has lived alone since then.  She is still alive, and living at the Westford Nursing Home at the time of this writing.  She’s never alone for long these days, and happier than I’ve ever know her to be.

Grampie was a fixture in our lives while I was growing up.  He was a lineman for NB Power.  Although he officially retired in the mid-80s, I never knew him as a working man.  He drew long-term disability due to a number of medical conditions.  One of those conditions would eventually cause him a massive heart attack, resulting in quadruple by-pass surgery.  It was sometime around 1986, I think.  I would have been eleven.  I remember my mother curled up on the carpeted hallway, sobbing, despondent with worry, and me not knowing what to do or say.  I still don’t. 

He survived, and lived for another twelve years, if my memory and math are correct.  I have found that for the most part, people of his generation tend to handle surgeries like that really well.  Maybe it’s because technology and science have made it safer, and the surgeons more skilled.  I like to think that it is because that generation worked really hard, and their bodies were all the more resilient for it.  I fear that when (not if) my time comes to go under the knife, I’ll be relying heavily on science, because my body has never known the fitness nor the fortitude of someone who grew up in the hungry 30’s.

His strength of character was remarkable given the hardships of his youth.  His father was abusive, and left his mother with three young children to feed and nurture.  Being the eldest, Grampie only made it to Grade 5 before inevitably quitting.  It was common for kids to drop out of school to find work to support the family.  Ever the skeptic and joker that he was, I imagine a few one-room-schoolhouse battle axes were more than happy to see him go.  He nevertheless learned how to read, and was an avid reader to the end.  He enjoyed reading the Bible, if only to interpret it as he saw fit.  Ezekiel was his favourite book; I figured it was because of the ‘wheel in the sky’ imagery, being mechanically inclined as he was.  He once told me that he never needed to go to church.  Only at this point in my life do I really understand what he meant.

His health hindered him even from his late teens.  While his friends were enlisting for the war, he was unable to go as a result of his heart.  He served in the armed forces at home, traveling across Canada, but rarely talking about those years.  He believed in his country, and wanted desperately to serve.  Knowing him like I did, it must have been torture to not be able to go.  Had he gone, perhaps I would never have arrived.  You might be reading a blog about Miley Cyrus instead of this one right now.

He once said he met Nannie in a potato field in Havelock, or something silly like that.  In actual fact, he ended up walking her home one day by chance, and they hit it off right away.  She was many years younger than him, which was also the norm back in those days.  While they bickered like any couple who had a long marriage, I will never forget how affectionate they were to each other. 

Nannie was indeed a special lady; not just anyone could, or would have put up with his eccentricity.  Grampie was fond of Playboy’s centerfolds, and had more than a few pin-ups around his garage.  He was a notorious hoarder—not like the people you see on those reality shows, but, like many from his generation, he saw value in keeping things that might still have a use.  He would even bring his trailer to the dump and come back with the most ridiculous treasures you could imagine.  I remember one time there was a big car accident near his driveway.  One of the cars was towing a camper, and it suffered severe damage when it jackknifed into the ditch.  The owner left the camper behind, figuring it for a total loss.  Grampie ‘rescued’ it, repaired it, and then mounted it on the back of a truck he happened to just have parked in the yard.  You’d be surprised how many vehicles he had just laying around.  Equal parts ingenious and hideous, they actually drove that monstrosity to campgrounds a few times.  While I wouldn’t be caught dead actually sleeping in it, I was always proud of his ability to use what others wrote off as trash for something practical.

I could spend all night telling stories about him.  Maybe one day I will.  He was a home-body, never excited to travel for long, or very far.  In the years after he passed away, Nannie was able to travel, no longer held back by his desire to stay close to home.  Home was his playground, though.  He often pulled a comfy chair out in front of the garage, doors wide open to display the assorted clutter, tools, equipment, and other treasures the Canadian Pickers could have spent hours perusing.  He had at least two refrigerators in there specifically to keep motor oil and other such containers.  He famously converted an old fridge into a smoke house for smoking mackerel.  Not just anyone could claim to have a burning fridge in the field behind their house to be completely normal.  He also converted a club house my cousin and I had spent hours repairing into a smoke shed.  Evidently, he ate a lot of smoked fish.  I was furious with him.  He laughed.

He spent a lot of his later years napping back at the old camp.  I have written about the camp before.  He had an old radio back there, and he would just sleep away the afternoon, alone with his thoughts, surrounded by nature.  In those later years, he was the only one really keeping the camp functioning.  There was no running water or electricity, and mice were a constant chore to deal with, but while he was living, the camp was always a fun place to visit and spend time.  The camp died along with him.  The last time I visited it, it felt like his ghost was starting to flicker and fade once and for all. 

The last time I was home, about a month or so ago, I decided that it was high time I visit his grave marker.  He passed away in 1998, just a few months before my wife and I left to live in Louisiana.  I visited him briefly while he was in the hospital that last time.  He couldn’t talk, because he was hooked up to a ventilator.  I did all the talking, but I’ll be darned if I can remember what I said.  I will never forget how his eyes shined that day.  He was saying goodbye, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time.  It was the last time I saw him. 

He had asked to be cremated, and so he was.  I didn’t cry at his funeral.  Truthfully, I wasn’t sure how to feel.  I knew I would miss him dearly, but never understood how much.  His urn was buried in the United Church cemetery in Port Elgin.  I drove up the Burnside Road to the cemetery, after driving past countless times the last fifteen years.  I’ll stop in next time, when I have a bit more time, I usually said to myself.  I parked my van, and wandered about the markers, some really fancy, some really old and weather-worn, all sacred to someone, somewhere.  I found a few markers with the name ‘Murray’ inscribed, but try as I might, I couldn’t find his marker anywhere.  Frustration set in, and as the local caretaker had just arrived to mow the grass, I hurriedly returned to my vehicle and pulled out the front gate.  I couldn’t look back.

Nannie has suffered a steady decline in her own health the past few years.  She is currently trying to adjust to living in her new accommodations, where there are other folks like her, living in that purgatory between feeling able to live alone, but truly aren’t.  The house Nannie and Grampie lived in for so many years is now vacant.  The process of sorting out what to do with what remains will unfold as it does for everyone, eventually.  I suppose I’m coming to terms with the inevitability of change, that change when whole generations seem to pass on all at once.  Grampie has been gone for fifteen years.  What I have come to accept is that I have been searching for him long before I pulled into the cemetery.  With his house now empty, I have one less place I can look.

*

September 24 was my grandfather’s birthday.  It is one day before my youngest sister’s, and eight days before my own.  While most of this entry was completed on the 24^th, I just wasn’t ready to post it until now.  I’m not sure what I wanted to accomplish, other than to describe how much of an impact he had on my young life.  Maybe that’s enough.  Warren Everett Murray; born 24 September, 1920; died 2 June, 1998; alive in spirit, and dearly missed.

Through My Window, I Spied Her

I have a confession to make.  I can’t contain it any further, else I will burst at the seams, teeming I am with such emotion.  I have been harbouring a secret crush, and I just have to tell the world, so how better to reveal my psychological transgressions than to write it out on such a platform for all the world to see?

One morning, a few years ago, I drew myself a hot bath, found a good book, and lit some candles so I might relax on an overcast Saturday morning, after a long week’s work.  Feeling the steam mist reaching the deepest recesses of my lungs, immediately loosening my muscles as I stretched out, lowering myself beneath the soapy foam bubble bath, and hearing the faint crickle-crackling of the candle wick as the gentle flame tittered about, I reached for my novel, and as I was about to open to my awaiting chapter--I saw her.

Gazing up through the windows, I saw her briefly glide into view.  It is so early to be out and about, I mused to myself, yet there she was.  Alert, alive, and unabashedly settling into her first task of the day,  or so I believed.  I would find out later that she was always busy, night or day.  What a remarkable specimen, to look so good and to be constantly motivated!  I was immediately intrigued, so I calmly set my book aside, sat up carefully so as not to spook her, and began to observe.

Full-figured, my subject was majestic in appearance.  For someone so curvacious, her legs were slender and sleek.  When she walked it was like she was walking on air.  She went about her morning repairing and tidying her home, effortlessly, tirelessly.  She tolerated no refuse to be strewn about her property.  When even the tiniest of debris found its way onto her stoop, she would meticulously slide over, retrieve, and discard it without a single thought.  I would watch her for months at a time, and she would always maintain the kind of proprietary care a master of their trade would envy.  If she ever needed home repairs--and in our neighbourhood, it was often--she simply did them herself.  She would spend hours, surgically repairing her home for both the aesthetics and the functionality.  Some days, she simply stayed inside.  Perhaps she traveled, but I doubted that was the case.  When someone works as tirelessly she did, they are most certainly entitled to rest.  Perhaps she enjoyed a lesiurely break such as mine, in which she was spying back at me.  The thought made my heart flutter.

One day, she was gone.  All evidence that she was ever there simply ceased to exist.  I couldn’t anything except for a few tattered remnants of her handiwork, as she was no longer there to repair it.  A small part of me went cold.  Had she gone for the winter?  Was she ill?  Had she found somewhere else to live?  Was it I who had driven her away?

Several months later, I would be reassured that she was fine.  At first, I had not noticed the slow reconstruction of her new tennement.  I thought that perhaps a new occupant had moved into her spot, and was clearing the cobwebs of years past to build something anew.  I waited patiently yet excitedly for the moment to arrive, and sure enough, there she was.  Drifting into view, my distant love had returned to me.  My heart soared as she took to her stage, doing her dance, carefully choreographed to captivate me as I watched, for at this point I acknowledged that she was aware of my presence all along.  Mine, and everyone else’s.  In fact, she was counting on it.  It meant nothing to her that I was there, watching her every move, but all this work was never intended for my audience in the first place.  She had bigger fish to fry.  And they frequented her often.

What was debris that so often lay scattered across her yard was nothing less than the remnants of her clientelle.  I always new the nature of her business, of course, but only rarely did I see the crime as it happened.  One time, a large gentleman came flitting by, poking about the premises, no doubt attracted much like I was.  Suddenly, he found himself tangled in her web.  Initially, he wasn’t alarmed, and set about freeing himself from the trap so elaborately sprung.  Perhaps before he saw her emerge from her shelter, lithely approaching with the stealth of an assassin, or maybe only upon sight of this formidable creature did he then begin to panic.  He twisted, jerking this way and that, but the more he fought, the more he seemed subdued.  Never giving in, he flapped and waved, but no one came to his aid.  The hunter had her quarry exactly where she wanted him.  Escape was futile.

It happened very quickly.  She pounced, quicker than the eye could capture, paralyzing her prey in an instant.  With no qualm for any inquisiting passers-by, she began to tidy up the mess.  Her victim tied tightly from head to toe, she casually lugged his unconscious body out of my view.  After an indeterminate amount of time, she made her way back outside, setting immediately to work repairing the damage his incursion and subsequent capture had caused.  Before long, life was back to normal.  Passersby were oblivious to the horrific scene which had taken place just moments before.  My beloved settled back into her hideaway, occupying herself with whatever it was she did out of my sight through the window.  Perhaps she was entertaining her new guest, who I figure was never going home again.  Would anyone come to look for him?  Surely they would meet the same fate.

Alas, I can only dream about her ruthless efficiency.  She will never reciprocate my admiration.  She lives her life doing what she does, which is building and repairing her home, baiting her small but strategic piece of real estate for would-be victims, and seizing them when they inevitably stumble upon her lethal, invisible snare.  She is for all I know, happy with the way she lives her life.  Indeed, she could know no other.

You might think that I am hopelessly in love with her, but in fact, I am in love with all of her kind.  As a matter of fact, when I walk outside, I admire a whole host of creatures like her, all established in their own environs doing the exact same thing, neighbours and peers of the killing lane I now refer to as ‘Death Alley’.  The odds of anyone casually passing through this region and making it out alive are slim to none.  I’ve seen the bravest of the brave, the moist boisterous and fearless of souls tempt fate by trespassing into the killing ground, only to see them all meet their fate in a most excruciating way.  And it matters not their shape or size; even the tiniest of the hunters has seen success, taking out quarry many times their size.  All of them are immaculate housekeepers.  All have established themselves without any quarrel with their neighbours.  Some have even collaborated, building what appear to be duplexes, sharing the precious little space at their disposal, only to reap double the reward.  Perhaps they are collaborating behind the scenes.  But I will never know.

I will never know because there is a line finer than those gossamer strands that  comprise their killing machines.  I can rationalize that they will not hurt me.  I have physically acted upon my desire, and taken her into my hand, and she has yet to turn on me.  I know, however, that she is best left to her world, and I to mine.  She is best admired and adored as she is, through my steamy window while I sip my coffee and enjoy my novel.  It is a good relationship, when you think about it.  She gets to live the life she knows best, without the stress of being constrained to my rules or expectations.  I don’t have to look after her, feed her, let her in or let or out.  She will live and die exactly the way she was meant to.  And if for some reason she were to rear at me, and gnash at me in either anger, fear, or even instinct, she could very well inflict pain on me, and wouldn’t that alter our entire relationship for the worse?  

I have determined that we all have our own nature, and we would do best to respect the nature of others.  Sometimes nature is cold.  In some ways, it is the coldness that defines her appeal.  By that token, a liaison between us will never be anything but dangerous.  Thankfully, she isn’t that interested in me. There are definitely others in this world that would not hesitate to prey upon me or my loved ones. Why court such disaster for the sake of an exotic fantasy?

The water now grown cold, and the wick drowning the flame in the melted wax coagulated around the base of my contorted candle, I wrap myself in a warm towel before dressing, and take a moment to peer in on my two sleeping children.  It’s the weekend, and they’re having a sleep-over in the spare room.  Outside, in Death Alley, its business as usual.  

They Will Call Him George...

One thing I have tried really hard to do this summer, especially the last few weeks during the warm, sunny weather, is to avoid watching television.  This hasn’t been terribly difficult for me.  I’m not much of a TV watcher, except for sports I follow and the evening news.  Even in a world where news can be reached instantly on your computer, I still prefer to either watch it on TV or read it in a newspaper.  The impetus for this is to jump-start my motivation to do things that I either never get time to do during the school year, or to get odd jobs done that I deliberately put off.  So far this summer, I’ve been pretty successful.  I built the bunk beds for the kids’ playhouse.  I hung the new mirror we got at Christmas up on the wall--only six months later.  I got the garden tilled and planted, and even have it weeded, although I need to credit the boys for that last bit.  I even got my man-cave tidied up, relatively speaking.  By my standards, it’s a lot tidier, but I’d wager that if you didn’t know better, you’d still think it’s messy.

The bonus of keeping the TV off is that I haven’t had to follow the constant gaggle surrounding the birth of William and Kate’s baby.  Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge don’t need last names; everyone on the planet knows who they are.  I can’t immediately think of any couple that radiates that much star power.  You wouldn’t necessarily need to live in a Commonwealth country to know them.  Heck, the Americans fought the Revolutionary War to be free of the Royals, and their media is as smitten with them as anyone.

The concept of the monarchy as the Canadian head of state is a contentious one.  If you’re a Canadian, you know the history, or at least you should.  Canada was a colony of the United Kingdom, until in 1867, four provinces hashed out a deal to form their own nationhood from the ashes of colonial Britain.  The relationship has been a dicey one over the years; after Canada grew from the founding four players to the ten provinces and three territories, there are moments when a Maritimer feels he has nothing in common with a Westerner, let alone other Maritimers.  Still, our fledgling democracy took root, but not without one dangling strand of nostalgia keeping us firmly attached to the old empire’s underbelly.  The Monarchy.

Canada is a lot like hockey, the great game we cling to with such national pride.  We like our product, but for the life of us can;t help but with feel there is always something wrong.  So we tinker with it, twist it in half a million distorted ideas and concepts until one day it looks nothing like we imagined it in the first place.  And we still admire it, to the point that it is infallible.  Of course, both sports and countries change over time.  That’s natural.  But only in Canada do we beat ourselves up so fervently about the chronic state of affairs we find ourselves in.  I’m sure every national feels that way about their own country.  But here, feeling the need to change everything we do is as much a part of our identity as poutine and beaver tails.

Still, the vestiges of the past are still a rich part of our national fabric, or tartan if you like.  Canada, despite the recent Conservative Party’s efforts, is a progressively liberal society.  We are known for this world-wide.  Maybe not Netherlands liberal, but you get the point.  We seem decades ahead (or away depending on your political taste) of our blustery, blowhard distant cousins to the south, the ones who decided to rile up the masses, polish up their guns and take their damned independence by force rather than settle into lengthy committee debate over tea and crumpets like we did.  Canadian history is often cited as being rather boring, but only if you’ve studied American history first.

Like our US friends, we are firmly committed to our roots.  The Americans have their sacred documents, rules, and codes for all citizens to embrace and obey in perpetuity.  We’re not quite as rigid, but part of that lies in the fact that we never did fully gain independence.  If the US and Canada are two children, the former would be the brash, eager young cadet who couldn;t wait to move as far away from home as possible, while the latter is the sentimental fool who bought the house next door and comes over for bridge every Friday night.  And we aren’t the only sniveling child.  Australia and New Zealand come to mind as other adolescents who never quite made their own way in the world, erstwhile they maintain a constitutional monarchy just like we do in Canada.  

And just like an immature adolescent, Australia even held referenda to decide whether or not they would move further away from home.  In their most recent vote, the citizens down under opted to listen to the little winged angel on the right shoulder rather than the spikey-tailed devil on the left.  So Queen Elizabeth II remains the head of state there, as she does in Canada.  Admire the Royals as they might, you’d be hard pressed to locate an American willing to call anyone other than the President their leader.  If anything, the USA is decisive.  No lingering around the corner to see if anyone changed their mind after the big blow-up argument.  Nope, they made a choice and stuck to it.  If the whole thing comes crumbling down for them, just like that stubborn intrepid child who moved far away, they’d rather starve than pick up the phone and call mom and dad for cash.

If I was really that upset about the whole ‘should we or shouldn’t we’ question concerning the role of the British Monarchy in Canada’s governance, I would have done my research and pulled up numbers to back my claim.  I don’t see how the Monarchy has any relevance to how we conduct our business, prepare and enforce our laws, and make our decisions.  That’s not to say I think we should abolish our ties.  I’m only suggesting, as millions of Canadians do, that the role the Crown plays is murky at best, and illogical at worst.

So we all turn our focus to the next generation of the stewards of our imperial historical connection.  Will and Kate introduced a healthy baby boy, after what seemed like forever to those who sat fixed to their screens (television, smart phone, or anything in between), waiting for his first exposure to both the rays of the sun and the flash of the papparazzi cameras.  

The only part of this whole process that even remotely interested me was what they had chosen for a name.  Because if you are a British royal, your name carries an almost mythical stigma, which could elevate you to the highest of highest, or relegate you into the case-files of historical royal villains.  Prince Charles has suggested that he may choose a regnal name, possibly George, which would make him George VII for those keeping count.  That means that if he holds to that idea, his grandson--who wouldn’t have to go the regnal-name-route, since they called him George--would be the eighth to carry that name historically.  I’m hoping that when George’s time comes, and it’s unlikely I’ll be alive to see it, he throws everyone a curveball and takes the regnal name Charles.  Wouldn’t that be screwy!

I was a little disappointed in William and Kate choosing to name their son with such a boring, overused name.  When the new Pope arrived, there was speculation that he was more liberal-minded than his predecessors, and that he would shake up the Vatican.  He chose an original regnal name, opting for Francis, a tribute to St. Francis of Assissi, who I’m told did great things many years ago.  Just by choosing a non-traditional title, he made a significant move towards determining how he will proceed with his term at the head of the Church.  Now, I understand little George the (possibly) Eighth had no say in the choosing of his name, but it seems like this was an opportunity lost.  Prince William, who has been seen largely as a ‘people’s king’ in waiting, and embraced by the hip young generation who probably follow him on Twitter, had a chance to make a big move towards changing the image of the monarchy, and I would say for the better.  Why not call him something different, like Brady or Caden?  Or even an older name that hasn’t got stale, royal attachment issues, such as Jason or Michael?

I really don’t care that much about the goings-on of the royal family.  I will admit that their history is entertaining; they have made excellent heroes and villains in stories and movies.  I admired Cate Blanchett’s performance in Elizabeth, and cheered as William Wallace fought for Scottish freedom against “Longshanks” Edward I in Braveheart.  Henry VIII proved to be quite the character in the popular television series The Tutors.  Of course, if you were one of the beheaded wives, you might think otherwise.  Fast forward to modern times.  Queen Victoria oversaw Canada’s confederation.  Edward VIII’s abdication in favour of his divorcee fiancee was maybe the greatest triumph of romance of the twentieth century.  Mix in alleged sympathies to the Nazis, the king who stuttered, and young Elizabeth II establishing herself as one of the longest-serving royals of any house ever, and you have a fantastic legacy of fairy tales.  And we haven’t even got to Diana yet.

Lady Spencer never quite realized what she was up against.  By the time she was batting her lashes alongside resident royal stiff Charles, she was already the real star of the family.  Why settle for Anne when Lady Di was there?  And as spunky as she was, Sarah Ferguson couldn’t hold a candle to her.  Too bad really.  I once got to see Fergie up close.  It was at a Scout Jamboree on PEI, in 1989.  Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York were paying a royal visit to the camp, and a friend called out to her to smile.  She immediately spun around and flashed our troop a wicked grin.  You could tell that she wanted to be there.  We weren’t concerned about Andrew; besides, he was on the other side of the concourse signing autographs.

The drama of the royal family mid- and post-Diana is well documented, and absolutely tragic.  What people loved about her was that she was just ‘one of us’.  She loved rock ’n roll music, and was famously friends with Bryan Adams and Elton John.  Does anyone remember Bryan Adams’ song ‘Diana’, a somewhat embarrassing fan-boy ode to the true queen of our hearts?  You most certainly remember Elton’s moving reworking of ‘Candle In The Wind’, performed only once, at her funeral in 1997.  Do you remember where you were, or what you were doing when you heard that she had died?  I do.  It was one of those kind of events.

With Diana’s backstory now fabled in the lore of not just a country, but in pop culture the world over, William and his wife, the young, attractive and seemingly down to earth Duchess of Cambridge are basically deities to their future subjects.  As a Canadian, I felt no overwhelming sense of fealty to the arrival of young Prince George the -yet-to-be-numbered.  As a human being, I was happy to see him arrive in the hands of two apparently good and humble people who never chose to be who they are.  William was introduced to the world in the same way, as was his father, and his mother, and so forth for centuries.  What troubles me most about the royal family is not so much the personalities, but the concept of a caste of blue-bloods in the twenty-first century.  The royals have never really had any sort of impact on Canadian affairs, save for the odd photo op, constitutional signature here and there, and such.  They are filthy rich, not unlike Hollywood stars and rich CEOs of banks.  They have otherwise no power over anything.  We are over eight hundred years removed from the Magna Carta.  That was the document that handed absolute rule from the monarch to Parliament.  They have clearly had remarkable staying power, and while the prospect of a new heir--yet third in line to the throne--has melted our apathetic hearts for just a little while, their future has never been more uncertain.  

I find myself wondering why we worship celebrities so blindly, particularly the reluctant ones who are otherwise people like you and me, but have yet to really do anything.  Then again, raising a child in these circumstances to be modest, humble, and sincere in an age of incomparable surveillance, omniscence, and celebrity is no small feat.

In the meantime, we can marvel about all the frivolities, like how Kate managed to lose her baby bump so quickly.  And why the hell they had to announce the birth on a royal easel.