On the Overpass at the Highway of Heroes

"Before setting off on an early-morning patrol on Wednesday through some of the most dangerous territory in Kandahar province, Lt. Justin Boyes phoned his 3-year-old son and wished him good night several time zones away. Boyes, 26, was killed by a roadside bomb just hours later." - The Toronto Star, October 20, 2009

I started my Halloween morning like most other Saturdays with a big cup of coffee and the puzzles in the Saturday morning paper. It was a wet morning though the weather man promised a dry, temperate night for the trick-or-treaters. I didn't quite get around to doing all my Halloween chores yesterday so I still needed to carve the pumpkin and put out a few more decorations. My visit to the dollar store yesterday was fruitless. They were completely out of webs and pumpkin stencils so I decided a trip to Bayview Village was in order. First though, I needed to stop by our neighbours place to drop off the balance of the Halloween costume I bought for their dog Dora. I dropped off the spiderweb coat on Thursday but had misplaced the matching boots. I decided to jump right into the spirit of the day so I dressed in black from head to toe, applied white makeup to my face, neck and chest and smudged a little black and green around my eyes and a few places other places to create a truly ghoulish effect all the while reminding myself that ghouls just want to have fun.

I managed to do my shopping, carve the pumpkin and spread out the spiderwebs across all the bushes by about 2:30. The scariest thing was that no one in the grocery or drug store seemed to register that I looked any stranger than usual. Around 2:30, my friend and neighbour, Brian called to tell me he and his wife Geraldine (Dora's parents) were planning to go to the overpass on the 401 to stand on the stretch which has been designated as the Highway of Heroes. The body of Canada's 132nd soldier killed in Afghanistan was on its way home. Brian invited me to join them.

I washed the ghoulish makeup off my face and changed into a Canada shirt. When we first arrived, there were about fifteen people there. One man had already hung several large Canadian flags and all the provincial flags along the overpass. By the time the convoy of cars carrying the body of Lt. Boyes, his military escort, police escort and family members passed below us, there were about 60 people gathered at the overpass. Most had been there too many times before. They are the families of fallen soldiers or of soldiers who are serving in Afghanistan. Some were soldiers themselves. There were paramedics and police and firemen. There were ordinary people, like me, who want to do something, no matter how small, to honour the sacrifice of these young men and women. The wind was blowing at a fast clip and ominous, dark clouds were gathering in the sky. We waited about forty minutes. Cars and trucks traveling along the highway, honked and waved as we waited. The 401 was, as always, traffic laden in both directions. And then, it stopped. Silence. No cars on the highway coming toward us. All cars stopped in the lanes heading away from us. The police escorts came first - about six motorcycles and ten police cars followed by the hearse and the cars of the family. The windows were down in the family cars and in each car, hands were extended from the windows, waving at us, acknowledging us in silence. In a matter of moments, the motorcade had passed. We said goodbye to one another. Most people muttering, "See you Monday" which is when the body of the 133rd soldier killed in Afghanistan will make its way home along the same Highway of Heroes.

Trick or Treat

When witches go riding,
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
‘tis near Halloween.
~Author Unknown

Tomorrow is Halloween and I'm going to make a concerted effort today to get in the spirit of the holiday. I usually buy at least three pumpkins, wrap spider webs around the bushes, put the tombstone out and generally creep the house up. My efforts have been more modest this year so I will try to crank it up a notch. I filled sixty treat bags for the first of the kids who come by tomorrow. I have a big bowl of candy to distribute once those bags are gone. Yesterday I bought a big pumpkin which I will try and find a creative way to carve today. I haven't bought any webs or ghosts to hang in the tree but I will dig the tombstone out of the basement and replace the battery in it so that it speaks to the kids when they cross its path. I haven't even figured out what I'm going to be tomorrow so the likely scenario is that I'll end up a ghoul - white faced with a tinge of green and black decay.

As a rule, I love Halloween. I seem to be struggling a bit with jet lag this week which has thrown a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm. I've also been worried about Jacob who is (thank God)finally on the recovery end of a bad bout of flu which developed when Merv and I were in Rome. He developed a secondary infection which the on-campus doctor treated with penicillin and he is over the worst. He's hoping to be well enough to join in with the other students in his residence tomorrow night to participate in an annual south residence program called "Trick or Eat". Apparently, the students dress up in costume and go from house to house around Guelph collecting canned goods for a local food bank. Residents are ready every year to donate to the students as this tradition is apparently long-standing.

On Sunday, Merv and I are driving to Guelph to take Jacob out for lunch. We will bring the cold weather jackets he left at home as the weather has now turned. I bought a big box of Halloween treats and a new set of towels to take as well as the small gifts we brought for him from Rome. I can hardly wait to see him. Jacob and I texted several times each day when we were away. I got a whole new sense of feeling helpless being thousands of miles away from my child when he was so sick.

Happy Halloween to one and all. Hope your holiday is all treats and no tricks.

Lo Amo Roma

"Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city." - Anatole Broyard

We are back from our adventure in Rome - nine days of pizza, pasta, gelato, wine, espresso, walking, climbing, exploring, praying, crying, laughing and living in wonder. Of all the places I've been in the world, Rome is clearly my favourite. The beauty of the city took my breath away. The big attractions did not disappoint. The Vatican Museums, The Sistine Chapel, The Colosseum, St. Peter's Basilica, The Spanish Steps and all the expected tourist attractions were spectacular and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. But the greatest joys came in unexpected places.

Sunday morning found us standing in St. Peter's Square after we heard the Pope would be speaking from his balcony. We went with low expectations but thought we should probably catch a chance to see the Pope - not something we may ever do again. So the rush of emotion I experienced as Benedetto (as the Italians call him) blessed us in several languages, caught me a bit off guard. He spoke and prayed in a half dozen languages - his words in English being the briefest. His message was about the humanity of Jesus. It was a lovely message. He said a number of "Hail Mary" prayers in Italian and lifted his hand in blessing. I cried. A lot.

The following day we did a Vatican tour. The Vatican Museum is spectacular - the art of Raphael, Michelangelo and so many others is beautiful beyond description. St. Peter's Basilica is so large that it was hard to take it all in. I loved it all but it was so overwhelming that I didn't feel a spiritual pull to any of it - that is until I saw Michelangelo's Pieta. I looked at the statue of Mary cradling the body of her grown son in her arms as she would have when he was a baby. I cried. A lot.

The best parts of Rome were in encountering beautiful frescoes on the walls of apartment buildings and walking into neighbourhood churches that didn't look like much from the outside but were spectacular on the inside. I lit candles and prayed. I cried. A lot.

Sitting outside the home of Caesar Augustus and having the tour guide invite me to take a load off my feet by sitting on the ruins of a two-thousand year old pillar gave me a sense of connection to another time that I've never experienced before.

Drinking cafe latte and espresso in the mornings, wonderful Tuscan wines in the evenings and cold beers in the thirsty afternoons, added to the magic of the city.

I love Rome. I can hardly wait to return.

Hello, Goodbye

Goodbyes are not forever.
Goodbyes are not the end.
They simply mean I'll miss you
Until we meet again!
~Author Unknown

Thanksgiving weekend went by in a flash. The boys were all home for the holiday. It was wonderful to see them and to wake up in the morning knowing Jacob was sleeping in his room across the hall. It did however, go by far too fast.

We had the pleasure of two Thanksgiving dinners this year. The first with Jonathan's family, was a lovely meal with a large gathering of his family's friends. The food was excellent, the conversation lively and we felt lucky to have made some new friends.

Yesterday we had our family dinner at Cath and Stan's. It was a small family gathering enhanced with the presence of Rick, Marg and Bob. No one makes a better turkey dinner than Cath. I'll be stopping over for leftovers later in the day. We had an early dinner so Merv and I could drive Jacob back to school and still give him some time to do some work before his heavy Tuesday schedule. I noticed a lot of families doing the drop off at school yesterday, like us they had their cars packed with things the kids have decided they need to make dorm life a little more comfortable. Our load included four cases of pop, two cases of beer, a rolling chest of drawers, a small vacuum, wall art, a dart board and groceries for the mini-fridge. Add to that, Jacob's clean laundry and it took two trips from the car to unload everything in his room. While I was waiting for Merv and Jacob to bring in the second load, one of Jacob's new friends dropped in to see him. When we left, the boys were about to settle in to an evening of figuring out an engineering assignment.

Today I'm going to start preparing for our trip to Rome on Friday. This will be the first real vacation (not attached to business for either of us) Merv and I have had without Jacob in eighteen years. It feels a little strange. I take some comfort though in knowing I can text and e-mail Jacob from Rome as easily as I can do it from Toronto and he'll probably respond to me(or not)just the same as he does when I'm at home.

The Boys in the Photograph

"I remember who I am." - John Kelly in The Boys in the Photograph

It is Thanksgiving weekend and Jacob and his friends are all home from school for the weekend. Last night they attended a homecoming reception at their high school where Jacob's closely cropped hair garnered a lot of attention. While Jacob spent the evening getting caught up with his friends, Merv and I went to the Royal Alex to see The Boys in the Photograph.

The "Boys" is a musical production set in Belfast beginning in 1969. It is the story of a Catholic boys' football team and their coming of age during a period of high unrest. It closely follows the maturing of five of the boys and the young women in their lives. Merv and I both enjoyed it.

Tonight the seven boys who make up Jacob's core of friends will be coming to our house for dinner, video games and hang-out time. I've made a big pot of chili and stocked up on snacks and soft drinks. I've missed my boys a lot and they're going to have to get braced for lots of hugs tonight. They will, no doubt, make a lot of noise and leave a huge mess. I couldn't be happier.

Eat to the Beat of the Emergency Room

“Each year, millions of skiers come to Colorado to experience its superb emergency medical facilities.” - Dave Barry

Last night's Eat to the Beat event in support of Willow Breast Cancer Support Canada was a resounding success. Merv, my sisters and I joined 850 other people as we sampled the wares of sixty female chefs and a host of brewers and vintners at Roy Thompson Hall. The mood was upbeat, the music wonderful and the food was extraordinary. The four pieces of jewelry I made for sale at the silent auction brought in a price far beyond my expectations. After three hours of socializing, eating and walking around Roy Thompson Hall in my four inch heels, I was ready to call an end to the evening so I could slip off my shoes. Cathy ran out of steam a few minutes before Nan and I did so she left about fifteen minutes before we tried to make our exit. After a round of goodbyes to friends and fellow board members, we headed toward the parking garage. Nancy somehow lost her footing on the five carpeted stairs at the exit from the hall and started to tumble down the stairs. She did successfully grab my hand, crushing my fingers and yanking my wrist in the process, but giving me a chance to secure her enough to prevent her from hitting the ground. A Roy Thompson Hall staffer appeared with an emergency kit and iced Nan's aching ankle. About forty minutes later he took her to her car in a wheelchair. Despite Merv's entreaties to let us drive her home, she insisted she was alright and would drive herself.

Thankfully, Nan made it home safely. When I called her this morning to check on her again, she raised little opposition to my suggestion that I pick her up and take her to the hospital to have the ankle checked. That was a good clue that she was feeling pretty bad. She comforted herself that things were probably not that serious - perhaps just a minor sprain because there was little swelling. I saw the opposite. I felt reasonably sure she wasn't dealing with a sprain at all because there was so much pain and so little swelling. To me, that spelled a break. A few hours in the Emergency Room at Sunnybrook confirmed my diagnosis. She broke the ankle. The good news is that there will be no cast and no surgery. A pull of her ligament forced a fracture of the ankle causing a piece of the bone to flake off. There is no treatment other than time and the prognosis is for a fairly speedy recovery.

As I sat in the waiting room at Sunnybrook, I watched lots of people come into the room - many of them clearly ill and struggling. There was much moaning, and some vomiting. One man was masked (which I appreciated). One woman declared in a voice loud enough for us all to hear that she needed to be admitted for psychiatric care after a suicide attempt last night. I was impressed with the volunteers who walked around the room offering warm blankets and soothing words to patients and visitors alike. The news was playing on one of the TVs in the waiting room. Prominent on the news report was a plea for donations to the Daily Bread Food Bank from a collection site just a block away from the hospital. After a couple of hours, a nice young doctor emerged from the back and called my name. He told me Nan was ready to go home and asked that I take good care of her. After a trip to the drug store to pick up a cane and a stop at the Daily Bread collection site to drop off a cheque, Nancy was safely home, sore but with the assurance she will be okay. And for that, I am very grateful.

My Mommy, My Baby

"We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves."
- Henry Ward Beecher

Jacob declined my offer to pick him up from school and bring him home where I can nurse him through the nasty head cold that has knocked him off his feet. I was relieved it turned out to be a head cold, showing none of the hallmarks of H1N1 or any other strain of flu. Though I know he'd really like to be home where I can take care of him, he plans to lay low today and try to recover enough to hit class tomorrow. Every mother knows how hard it is when her child is sick. It seems it still applies even when that child is eighteen. I hate it when Jacob is sick. If I could take it away from him by suffering it myself, I would do it gladly.

My Sunday afternoon found me at my Mom's today. I knew she came down with a cold yesterday and had been placed in isolation so today's visit required us to be masked and gloved. I thought it would be confusing for her but it actually didn't matter. She didn't open her eyes at any point during the hour-and-a-half I was there. The nurse struggled to give her the medication which had been prescribed though it was mashed and hiding in a spoon of applesauce. She refused to open her mouth and then to swallow once the medication got spooned in. She hasn't had anything to eat or drink since Friday. Dehydration is becoming a serious concern. As I sat in my Mom's room, I thought about the similarities between Jacob being sick and my Mom being sick. Mom is displaying the same behaviors that Jacob did when he was three or four-years-old. And I'm feeling just about the same way about her illness as I do about Jacob's. If I could take it away from her by suffering it myself, I would do it gladly.

The difference between Jacob and Mom is that as Jacob gets older, he is better able to cope. It's easier to take care of him than it was when he was small. I don't have to mash his pills and hide them in applesauce anymore. I don't have to coax every drop of fluid into his mouth. I know my Mom did those same things with me and Nan and Cath when we were small and wished she could take our illness from us even if the way to do that was to bear it herself. And now it comes full circle. Nan is at Mom's bedside, coaxing and soothing, mothering my mother. And everything that goes around, comes around.

Homesick

"You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right." ~Maya Angelou

Jacob is homesick. For the very first time since he left for university, he called and admitted to being homesick. He has a head cold. He misses his friends. He misses my cooking. He's a bit lonely. It took everything I have not to get in my car, drive to Guelph and bring him home for the weekend. The truth is, I'm homesick too and I'm at home. I'm homesick for how much fuller the house is when Jacob is here. I miss him so much. I miss his friends. I miss cooking for an army of kids. I miss staying up late with Jacob to watch reruns of House. I miss kissing him good night and good morning.

It's Saturday night. Merv is away for the weekend. I am alone. I've ordered pizza and opened a split of champagne. I plan to tackle my bedroom closet. The house feels so big. In six days Jacob will be home for the long weekend. In two weeks we'll be in Rome. I shouldn't be blue. There is so much to look forward to. But today, my baby is homesick and so am I.

Perfect Prey

"Can you hear me screaming? Can you see me crying? Do you taste the bile in my throat as I swallow the pain of being at the end of my own rope? Of course you can't. I wouldn't let you, until now." - Liz Cole

So begins Perfect Prey: Surviving a Cyber Shark's Romantic Fraud written and just released by Liz Cole. I've known Liz for quite a long time. Our children were in daycare together at the home of Janice and David. Janice looked after Jacob before and after school for six years. Liz and her husband Dan, Janice and David, another couple, Liz and Ian and Merv and I became friends over those years. We sometimes got together for dinner, and once spent a weekend at Janice and David's cottage in Sundridge, minus Liz's husband who was apparently busy with business.

In those days, I looked at Liz with a measure of envy. She is tall and attractive, smart and very witty and she always seemed incredibly self assured. One night she invited us all for dinner at the Hoggs Hollow home she shared with her husband and two beautiful daughters. The house was beautifully decorated and spotlessly clean. The meal was a feast. Liz ran her own wellness business. She was accomplished and I believed happy. She had it all.

We moved out of our Hoggs Hollow neighbourhood and Jacob went to a different school. We lost regular contact but I still kept in touch through Janice. I was surprised to learn that Liz and Dan had separated in 2005. Janice didn't really know what had happened and we fretted a bit about how Liz was doing but we didn't have any contact. I wanted to invite Liz to my 50th birthday party but didn't know how to get in touch with her. I thought of her often but our paths did not cross again until June 2007 when we found ourselves sharing the grief of Janice's unexpected death.

The day of Janice's memorial service, I learned from Liz that her life had been in shambles for two years. Her husband left her and the girls, without support, and had moved to California. She had been taken in by a con man who she met through an on-line dating service. She was living with her girls in her mother's Leaside home. And she was reeling. We met for dinner a couple of weeks later and I heard more of her story - a difficult marriage, issues with self-esteem, the shock of being deserted and the embarrassment of being conned. She was working hard to reclaim her power. She hunted down the con man and exposed him on national television. She was looking for an apartment to rent for her and the girls. She was trying to heal. She was writing a book.

Today I got the book. I was engrossed from the opening paragraph. How could I have been so blind?

"It started out small, only one square foot. But as time marched on, the doormat I wove for the men in my life to walk on grew, slowly at first until finally I became wall-to-wall carpet. I don't even remember the runner or area rug phase. I just remember being on my hands and knees spot-cleaning the facts to protect my state of remaining unaware. Women know this lie. It is at the root of so many of our tragedies. It is the product of fear combined with ego to hold on to the status quo. But that's not all. The lie is large and is concealed by talking instead of listening. The lie keeps us in our comfort zone rather than being willing to risk. The lie helps us to pretend and prevents us from asking questions."

I wish now that I had summoned the courage to ask the questions. At some level I was aware that all the bluster and wit was camouflage for the pain Liz was feeling. I'm sorry Liz. I should have been a better friend.

In case you are wondering, Liz got her happy ending. Sixteen months after Janice died, Liz married David. They've each been the healing balm, the other so desperately needed. Perfect Prey is available at Chapters, Indigo and Coles' stores.