Weekend Update

I'm still hobbling about though I went for a very long walk this morning, partly as rehab, partly to alleviate my stiff, stiff joints and, mostly, to use my magic stick. Yeah, I have a magic stick. The weekend was full of surprises that way.

My father flew in from Calgary after visiting his brother in Windsor (yes, he had to fly to Calgary to get to Windsor even though we live on the prairies-see also Dan Bern "Lightning Jazz" "Every plane flies to Phoenix, even if you're trying to fly from New York to Boston you have to fly to Phoenix") so my parents arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

It was raining Saturday so my father and I accompanied my mother to a birthday party for my mother's friend's 90 year old father. It was here I confronted my future in the face of Violet. She was new to "the home for the Aged" (this is prominently set in stone above the building's double security doors and made my father and I laugh- is this a cheese factory?- though I soon forgave the fine institution for the label when I saw they had Happy Hour three days a week. I am now campaigning hard to convince Ma and her sister to get on the waiting list) and when I asked her if she liked it there she said, "It's different... it's very different."

She lived her whole life in this town, at home with her mother and twin sister Viola who died only recently in their 90th year. Childless, having never married and no contact with any of her 3 brother's children, she delcared herself the "lone survivor". Come for the cupcakes, stay for the heartbreak.

"So," she said lightly, changing the subject, "who's this party for anyway? I don't have a clue who this man is." We had that much in common. Still, if I can find a pensioners palace with Happy Hour on weeknights, I think I'll be okay. At least I'll have practice attending stranger's birthdays.

After that I went in search of information regarding the local cemetery walks. While perusing the tourist brochures I was pleased to discover I had already experienced one of their much lauded attractions: the ER. The blurb highlights the hospital's cutting edge medical equipment "including a CT scanner" and "dedicated medical evacuation helicopter on standby should an emergency occur in the area" which I have every intention of riding in to see that Scott fellow again. Why they didn't have his picture in the inset...

Speaking of modelling, on the way home I spent a good three minutes with this beauty on the side of the highway:

Big Brother made it in time for dinner and the rain let up long enough for all of us to spend the evening around the fire.

In the morning, after a brilliant hangover cure breakfast (not that I had one, but if I had, it would have set me right in no time) we all pitched in to get the last of the carpentry work done on the cabana so I could finish the painting yesterday. It was a really great moment for me, all four of us working together towards a common goal. I can't recall the last time we did that, if ever, but I wish we'd done more of it.

In the evening, after everyone left, the sky cleared and, after a three week separation I made a dash-okay, a gimpy dash- for my kayak before the heavens had a chance to change their fickle mind and send more rain. The water was like liquid glass, high, after five days of rain, and the lake offered no resistance; no waves, no wind, no current. I don't know that it's ever been so alive and I could empathize, listening to the excited chatter of birds and frogs as I chased a dragonfly - bobbing, weaving, hovering- across the bay and paddled into this flower:

After taking this picture I began laughing, great big, uncontrollable belly laughs, while giant tears streamed down my cheeks. I briefly entertained the notion I was suffering PTSD or some sort of cubicle survivor's syndrome but that wasn't it. I was feeling every emotion at once. I was angry for all of the oppressed people in the world, sad for all of the lonely, hurt for the rejected and so on while feeling equally overjoyed, relieved, delighted, even, inexplicably, in love. All these feelings, among a myriad others washing over me at once, without cause or context. So I just kept paddling like a weeping, laughing mad woman, unable to help myself or even to understand what was happening, though my mind floundered about for some explanation to cling to.

But, the more my mind tried to sort it out the harder I cried, and the harder I cried the harder I laughed, until I had to stop paddling and just float for a while or risk pitching overboard. I'd gone blind from the tears and the laughing was making my kayak toss about precariously which only made me laugh harder. When I thought I would pass out for want of an inhaled breath the thought struck me that I felt inadequate to cope, overwhelmed with this inexplicable emotional onslaught and it stopped as abruptly as it began.

Astonished, I paddled straight for the creek trying to make sense of it as I went but I began to giggle and tear up again just at the thought of it. By the time I reached the creek my mind, having already wandered down innumerable paths and back, settled on pondering how amazing it is that I should have been born a human being at all. Of all the bajillions of life forms on planet earth I was born with the ability to be amazed at how amazing my consciousness is and really, to not be utterly crazed at the beauty of that, and the beauty of everything, would be the true sign of insanity.

Of course that set me off again and this time there was no stopping. I was heavily burdened with an awe so spectacular it manifest as an outrageous laughing cry fit.

Which is exactly what I was doing when the beaver swam by with my magic walking stick. He let go of it just a few feet from me and within seconds it had floated right to me while he swam away. As astonished as I was, this entire incident only made me laugh and cry even harder though I tried, once I'd pulled the stick on board, to find my camera and take the beaver's picture:

Not great is it? But it's a very good rendition of what s/he looked like to me through my tears.

A cosmic hello from the Universe itself or a gauntlet thrown down to declare the beaver uprising begun? I can't be entirely certain, but I do know we went for a walk this morning and it fits me perfectly.