I’ve just come in from an evening walk along the waterfront. One of the resident great blue herons sat on a concrete embankment, contemplating his dinner prospects in the water below.

Along the bridge I stopped to see if the red-winged blackbirds were scouting a nesting spot among the reeds. Last year the male regularly swooped down on walkers, trying to shoo them away from his young. The male who flew down tonight was so intent on a few crumbs on the railing that he walked to within a few feet of me and paid me no notice.

Further on, two turtles swam languidly, sometimes right down along the muddy bottom of the marsh, sometimes with their heads above the surface. All around them mallards and coots swam by in pairs and singles.

Piles of sand dotted the beach, ready for the parks department to spread them out in anticipation of visitors. The board walk around Waterfront Park had been repaired while I was in Australia. Fresh boards stood out among the weathered ones.

I crossed the lock and circled back around. Wind moved the spring-green leaves sprouting along the willows.

With each step I felt more fully at home. I recognized the different aromas of spring. Even the spots where the air was cooler or warmer were familiar, known. If smiles are a measure, others were feeling that same sense of belonging as they followed the pathways that wander through the marsh and along the waterfront.

Yesterday I read about a study that found that lakes and sea and forests were far more healing to our spirits than our city parks, no matter how lovely they may be. We need a touch of wildness. The lake at my doorstep offers that. So do the marsh and the nearby slopes of Knox Mountain.

I’ve lived many places but none more beautiful than this. I know I could live someplace else and, in time, would find those spots where my heart lifts, as it does here.

Though loved ones far away have carved places in my heart only they can fill, I am here now, and I am home.

Robin and David in Port Elliot's Horseshoe Bay

The Jarmaniac twins turned 70 on March 27th. For their 50th birthday they wrenched their backs trying to duplicate the act that made them a popular duo on the performance circuit. The musical brothers would play the piano upside down, backwards, with their feet, and whatever pretzel approach gave them a chance to make the audience laugh.

At 70 they contented themselves with huge smiles, their usual friendliness, and appreciation for the love friends and family showered on them. The setting for the party was the seaside bowling club (lawn bowls, that is) in beautiful Port Elliot, South Australia.

Rocky edges of Port Elliot's Horseshoe Bay

Many of the friends gathered there had known the twins since they were young men, starting out on different paths. Robin’s would take him to Canada in 1968, an adventure he expected to last a year or two but is now in its 43rd year. David stayed in Adelaide, his roots growing ever deeper in the soil of a community where he is inextricably entwined.

Though their reunions were years apart, they followed similar paths. Teachers until they retired, both became tour directors and are still in their element sharing their wealth of knowledge with visitors.

When they are together, years fall away. One begins a thought, the other finishes it. Their gestures, speech mannerisms and eccentricities are so alike Jeannette and I roll our eyes and laugh.

The four Jarman siblings - Tony (youngest), David and Robin, Jenny (middle child)

Happy 70th, David and Robin. You spread joy wherever you walk. The world is a better place because you are in it.

The Fishbowl Boys

[One of the birthday surprises was the arrival of The Fishbowl Boys, talented young singers from Adelaide. Robin and David used to sing barbershop so were thrilled by this quartet. They joined them for the last song. Notice how similar the twins’ gestures are. Thanks, Don and Jill, for a gift the twins will never forget.)

We stopped last night to say farewell to a couple who are high on our list of favourite people. When we said our goodbyes, Jill spoke the six words that struck me like an arrow. I can’t get that simple phrase out of my mind.

Farewells are different when age is added to distance. Last time we were in Australia, in 2008-2009, we felt confident everyone would still be there when we returned. Now Robin and his twin brother, David, have celebrated their 70th birthday. I’m 65. The next years are our last chapter. No one knows when the book will close.

In Adelaide we basked in the friendly circle of David’s and Jeannette’s long-time friends. The circle is gradually shrinking. We learned of the deaths of spouses, of hospitalizations and injuries as everyone enters the stage David calls, “ills, spills and pills”.

This visit to Australia, with me now officially a “senior” and Robin entering his eighth decade, is affecting us differently from our last stay. Three grandchildren are growing so quickly they will be at very different stages when we are with them again. The oldest is four so we don’t know how many of their milestones we will witness.

Robin and David have inherited the family’s predisposition for deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Since neither can fly long distances, the twins have no safe, quick way to reach each other should something happen. We are already making plans for the next family reunion, but this farewell feels especially poignant.

Robin has an Australian soul. Much as he loves Canada, he lives with a split heart. So the return to Kelowna will be both joyous and sad.

We know we are fortunate to feel happy and connected in both countries, but we can’t easily navigate the distance because of Robin’s DVT. That makes the goodbyes harder. That and the reality that we are closer to the end of our lives than the beginning.

Death is everyone’s travel companion from the moment of conception. As long as we are young and healthy, we pretty much ignore it. These days, when I’m still healthy but no longer young, I think of death as a quiet, friendly bureaucrat, walking beside each of us, ticking our names off the list when our time has come.

It doesn’t hasten death to be on friendly terms with it. But it does add a poignant note to farewells.

Robin walks the beach at Port Elliot - how many more of these walks will we have?

I’m grateful to the author, who prefers to remain anonymous, for allowing me to post this poem on Catching Courage.

Love is a gamble, photo by Javier Delgado

My father is a drama teacher
My mother an activist lesbian
Tell me,
What hope had I
To fall for prince charming?

A girl pulled me out of my book
One day in junior high
To apologise for calling something gay

She hadn’t known, you see
That our science teacher was my stepmother
My mother’s lover
The woman who revealed the problem
Of our tidy little nuclear family
There was no want of love
No fights, no cheating
Just a mismatched pair
Who made two kids before they moved on to new love

And those two kids
Grew up knowing not to talk about their mothers
Not to invite friends over
Because who knew how they might react
My friend said “ew”
When I asked her what she thought of two women loving each other
We weren’t even old enough to understand love, much less sex
But so began ten years of silence

Years that exploded into pain
When they finally passed that bill
Making my family legal
And I realized it made no difference
Because they were still going to say “ew”

So yes, I do discriminate
I shy away from men who play sports and drive trucks
Women who wear makeup, short skirts, high heels
I find it hard to give them the benefit of the doubt
When I know what I risk

I will never fall for prince charming
I do not see his white horse
His shining armour
Instead, I see him bearing down upon me
With his sword of society

Sharpened with conformity
Asking me to be what I am not
And that is,

And that is what?
What am I not, that I do not understand
How to respond when a man looks at me?
What am I not, that I cannot be content
With the simple answer
With white pickets, golden retrievers, station wagons?

God and Goddess know I want it
I want to come home from work
To my two-point-four children
make dinner with my partner
Read aloud as night draws in
And curl up in bed with the man I love

but what man shall I love?
Every song book movie tv show person I meet
Tells me love is everything, overcomes everything
I should do anything for love
Let nothing stop me
That I should sacrifice my life for love
That is to say, have no life beyond it

But that doesn’t work so well when he’s gay
I can sacrifice sheep to the pagan gods
But he will never love me
We may sleep like lovers in one bed
Wrestle like brothers
Talk like sisters
Walk like husband and wife
But at the end of the night
He is going home with someone else
and at the end of the day
not only am I alone
I carry the shame of loving the wrong man

Fag hag is an ugly term
It means woman who is too afraid to love a man
Who might actually love her back
Woman who is so pathetic, she cannot let go of the safety
Of a gay man, to have a real life

There is no such word

To describe a straight man who falls in love with a lesbian
Nor any such word for gay men or lesbians
Who fall in love with straight men and women
It is only the poor, pathetic straight women
Who are so named

Why?

Why should I be ashamed
To admit even to myself that I love someone?
Why is it worse to love a gay man,
Than to love a married man?
A cruel man?
A man who simply doesn’t love you back?

Why should I feel guilty
For recognizing general compatibility
Even if one of the specifics is not quite right?
My father did
He had a happy marriage,
Two kids he loves
And yes, it ended
But it was never his fault
And he got over it and married another woman
Kind and beautiful and loving

And so will i
Get over gay men
Over and over reject their friendships
Because I am expected to only love straight men
And I will love a straight man
Or perhaps a bi man, a pan man, a transman
But he will not be gay
And we will be happy

But in the meantime
I refuse to feel shame and guilt
For love
I should not have to answer
For the leanings of my heart
If they do no more harm than the average
Unfulfilled crush
I renounce the names you give me
And say I may love whom I love
And suffer the consequences
But never ask forgiveness

~ M.

Readers - they're everywhere; photo by moriza via Flickr Creative Commons

I’m nursing a case of acute tendonitis. It’s a first for me but not the first injury I’ve had that’s reading related. Three of them stand out, but not one of them has persuaded me to change my ways.

The first was the third assault on my poor tailbone. I was engrossed in a book and couldn’t put it down long enough to walk downstairs. Several steps from the bottom, I misjudged distance and took the remaining steps in a tailbone-jarring slide.

Having broken my tailbone twice previously (ice falls unrelated to reading), I knew the drill. The young doctor didn’t. He appeared mortified when I told him he’d need to stick his finger where the sun don’t shine and check to see if it was a break that needed medical attention. Without a word, he exited. When he returned, after consulting a colleague or a medical tome, he blushed and did exactly as I’d suggested.

As usual, the break had not penetrated skin, which meant six weeks of agony but no treatment. At least broken arms are visible. Friends don’t take seriously a break with no visible signs, but I’ll put a broken tailbone against any other bone break for points on the pain scale.

The second reading-related accident occurred on the same set of stairs. This time it resulted in an ankle so sprained it could have competed for both purple and pain points.

Farm chores don’t stop for accidents so it was a week later when I sent up the white flag and had it checked out. The young Irish doctor doing a locum in the emergency room gave me the sweet relief of a pain killer and said, “Didn’t it occur to you to stay off your ankle?”

I mumbled something about chores, to which he replied I could agree to walk on crutches while it healed or be consigned to hospital. A week on crutches wasn’t long enough to improve my graceless clumping about, nor to heal the blisters that formed under my arms, but I did at least become more careful about reading while descending stairs.

The latest reading-related injury is due to a combination of wanting to avoid disturbing my sleeping partner and a stupid determination to finish a book before drifting off. For a good three hours I lay on my right shoulder, uncomfortable the whole time but not wanting to awaken Robin. I always read on my right side, and the iPad isn’t heavy, so I figured there’d be no problem.

I was wrong. Dr. Chang at the Brighton Medical Centre in Adelaide assessed the damage as “acute tendonitis” and prescribed an anti-inflammatory and rest. I’m being good on both counts, thanks to indulgent family members who are keeping watch when I’m tempted to do more than I should.

I wish I could say that at 65 I’ve finally learned my lesson(s). But I’m still inclined to read a new library book while I’m walking back to our condo so there are few signs of growing wisdom.

Maybe when I’m 85…?

The Overland train is swaying along the tracks that lead away from Melbourne. This morning we said our last, reluctant goodbyes and hopped the train at the Southern Cross Station. Around 4 p.m., we’ll pull into Murray Bridge, where David and Jeannette, Robin’s twin and his wife, will meet us and drive us to their beach-side unit in Port Elliot.

Lily and Oscar sitting on the stools Robin (aka Popsy) painted for them

We travel with a mix of anticipation and sadness. That funny tingling that precedes tears is making my sight a bit fuzzy at the moment. I opened the photo app on my iPad and couldn’t resist watching a short video of 4-year-old Lily singing the ABC song and another of 8-month-old Sunday happily kicking balloons. Seeing those beautiful little faces smacked me with the reality I’d been trying to avoid: The next time we’ll be with these munchkins they’ll be several years older than they are now.

We’ll see them via Internet, of course, but no amount of Skype or Facetime can compete with the pleasure of sitting with Lily on one side, Oscar on the other, while they take turns playing some of the children’s apps I downloaded to share with them. It can’t compare with Robin’s pleasure in watching them change over the four months of his stay. The distance between Australia and Canada makes the video jumpy when we connect via Internet so telling them a story won’t work the way it does when Lily and Oscar are tucked into their beds, bodies relaxing, the story playing out in their eyes.

Sunday enjoying her yogurt

We won’t be able to walk into a room and see 8-month-old Sunday’s beaming face. She won’t be sucking on the glasses that hang on a string around my neck while I hold her soft little body in my arms. We won’t be around to watch the next stages as she learns to crawl, take her first steps, and try out new words.

I’ve learned a lot in these weeks of living with small children. I already knew they don’t arrive in the world with owner’s manuals. And, of course, no one really owns them anyway since the personalities they are born with affect how they are parented. But in the weeks of watching four young adults interact with their offspring, I have been impressed by how beautifully they are guiding the children and how skillfully they are navigating around any bumps. Their love gives the three children the safe cocoons from which they will unfold like butterflies.

It speaks well of Robin that after living with his son’s family since late November, they’re all still on loving terms. And it speaks well of his children and their partners that I feel like part of the family. Robin’s son and daughter and their partners are generous souls. They opened their homes and hearts to us in a way that made the farewells hard.

So today, much as we’re looking forward to the adventures ahead, we have sore spots on our spirits, empty places only these two special families will ever fill.

Baby Sunday

You can see the delight on Sunday’s face. Her mother, Michelle, is leaning over the iPad. Sunday is beaming because she is looking at another beloved face. Her mother, Miriam, is talking with her via Facetime. Miriam is in Melbourne, putting in a day’s work, while Michelle and Sunday enjoy their beach house in Anglesea. Facetime (the Mac equivalent of Skype) connects them.

Robin and I are here enjoying their company in the short time that remains for us to be with the grandchildren. Being with them makes us feel incredibly blessed.

Melbourne to Anglesea is a shorter distance than Kelowna, British Columbia, to Melbourne. The extra miles make a difference because signals drop when they have to bounce so many miles. Sometimes there are so many users online we have to turn off the video and content ourselves with voice. Timing the calls is awkward because of the huge time difference. Still, watching Sunday interact with her mother via iPad reminds us how lucky we are to live in a computer era.

When Robin’s father left England to emigrate to Australia and then, years later, Robin left Australia to emigrate to Canada, the threads of family connection were stretched thin. No matter how many loving thoughts they sent across the miles, no matter how many letters they exchanged, emigrés missed watching the grandchildren’s first steps, their excitement on birthdays, their hockey games and concerts.

Skype, Facetime, and whatever other options people use now or in future will never substitute for a cuddle and will always give only a partial glimpse into the lives of those far away. Still, I’m happy to be living at a time when such connections are possible. They make the world feel smaller and friendlier.

Grandchildren and Popsy holding hands and jumping the waves at Anglesea

One night in Melbourne I told Oscar (2 1/2) and Lily (4) the story of the pater familias who complained of the noise in his house. There are many versions of the folktale so I felt free to adapt it. To the passel of children, I added a brother and his wife and all their children, plus grandparents. All were crowded into a small house. The constant noise drove the main character crazy.

He went to see the wise woman, who asked if he had chickens. “Bring them inside the house,” she advised. And so it went, day after day. Each day she suggested he deal with the noise by bringing more of it inside. Finally, there were chickens, geese, a cow, goats, and a donkey crammed into the house.

Her final piece of advice was to send the animals back into the barnyard. Without the clucking, honking, mooing, bleating, and braying, a house full of people seemed suddenly quiet.

The story comes to me now, only in reverse. We’re in Anglesea, in the beach house Robin’s son and daughter-in-law bought as investment property. Since the Great Ocean Road is in the southern hemisphere, February is still peak rental season. So we feel incredibly lucky the kids brought us here for the weekend.

We’re staying through the next weekend, at a different beach house, this one owned by his daughter and her partner. We’ll enjoy a week with them and with the youngest of the cousins, little Sunday. But tonight we’re on our own. We’ll enjoy this time to ourselves, but the sudden quiet will also be a sobering reminder that our time with Robin’s grandchildren is flying by. In the blink of an eye, we will be back in Canada, half a world away.

We’ll connect via Skype, but we won’t be able to sit on the verandah and watch a storm roll in or “play fishes” together on the iPad or bear witness to how splendidly both of Robin’s children and their partners are parenting their little ones.

They have made us feel welcome. Still, they have sacrificed a lot of privacy to include us in their lives for this extended visit. (Robin arrived in Melbourne in November. I joined him the second week of February.)

The children in the two families are four, two and a half, and seven months. They are growing quickly, and we will witness the changes only in snippets during our rare visits.

So as I sit here on the verandah, watching another storm roll in over the sea, enjoying the luxury of uninterrupted writing time, I’m thinking about the father in the crowded house who complained of too much noise. I’m experiencing the opposite. Tonight we’re getting a taste of what’s to come when we leave Melbourne in just over two weeks. The next time we see the children, they will have passed through many more developmental stages.

We’ll be in Australia until Easter, but after March 12th we won’t see them again for at least two years.

And that will be too much quiet.

It’s an old saw, “If I’d known how much fun grandchildren would be, I’d have had them first.” In my case, things worked out that way.

I’ve never had children. That’s a long story with some sad chapters, but what it means for me now is that I’ve skipped the hard part and gone straight to the fun. And tonight, my heart is a puddle.

My late-life romantic partner is the reason for this largesse. Robin brought me to Australia for a long stay in 2008-2009. I fell in love with his family and year-old Lily, his son’s first child. Her brother Oscar was born shortly after we returned to Canada. Then last summer Robin’s daughter gave birth to Sunday, a baby we all consider a miracle.

So here it is February 2012. Sunday and one of her mums (Robin’s daughter) met me at the Melbourne airport. I was immediately besotted with a pair of inquisitive blue eyes and a bright smile. Later, we watched Michelle and Miriam, her two mothers, give her the kind of attention and nurturing every child should have. I saw how fortunate she was to have parents who will give her room to develop her unique personality but will also hold her in their sheltering arms through the inevitable rough patches.

We left Melbourne the next day for the Grampians Jazz Festival so it was nearly a week later when we arrived at Robin’s son’s house. Robin has been staying with Darren and Nat since last November. It takes pretty special people to not only encourage him to stay on but welcome his partner as well.

We’re grateful for Skype and for parents willing to find time to help us at least be virtual grandparents, but nothing comes close to the pleasure of being here. Having no experience with small children, I’m learning as I go, and I couldn’t have better teachers than Oscar and Lily. I’d loaded my iPad with some child-friendly apps, hoping if I had enough of them at least one or two would help us move beyond the initial uncertainty we would all be feeling.

The good news is that some of them are hits with the littles. Better news is that these munchkins have hearts big enough to take me in without a tech intervention.

Our weeks in Melbourne will fly by all too quickly, but I plan to store up every morsel of love Lily, Oscar, and Sunday are willing to share. And that’s why my heart is a puddle tonight.

Lily and Oscar making papadams with their dad

Find us on uencounter.me

Women thrilled with the hair they were granted at birth are lucky. Most of us look in the mirror and see hair that is too something – too curly, straight, thin, thick. Curly hair is my lot in life.

The young hairdresser took a look at my curly grey mop and set to work. We had a thoroughly enjoyable conversation until I started getting nervous. “Leave some,” I pleaded.

Wondering if I should laugh or cry, deciding on the former

“Just a little more here,” he replied, as he whacked at the tufts of hair that refused to obey whatever vision he had for them. Every cowlick half hidden by slightly longer locks leaped into view. No matter how short he cut the hair around them, they would not stop opening into distinct gaps.

I was sure his last act, once I finally conveyed sufficient alarm for him to stop, would be to brush the remaining hairs into some semblance of order.

I was wrong. He squeezed gel onto his fingers, rubbed them through what was left of my hair, and admired the results.  “Now it looks kind of butch,” he said, “much more modern.”

All the way home I alternated between laughing out loud and wishing I’d brought a paper bag to pull over my head. Last time I had such a short haircut was when a friend in Oakland sent me to her hairdresser. The guy was actually a barber, and he knew how to handle the locks of my African American friend. All he could figure out to do with mine was to shave them down to an only slightly feminine version of a crew cut.

Just as short, but I can live with this

When I got home and looked in the mirror, I laughed so hard tears ran down my cheeks. I snapped a couple shots for comic relief on the next bad day. Then I washed out the gel and combed what little hair I had into something I could live with.

Young hairdressers, trying to update us oldies. Gotta love ‘em.

And the good news is? Hair grows.