DINNER AT THE CARE HOME It’s a grey Monday afternoon. On the far side of the terminal window, crews are spraying the aircraft wings with anti-freeze. The temperature is deep into minus territory. (My brother) Kevin has dropped me off. My flight is still a couple of hours away. I’m carrying a box full of muffins, as requested by Jones. (She says she asked only for one.) Calgary security confirmed that I can take them through. I’ve said my goodbyes: to Cathy and her girls, to Kevin and Ann, to Penny and Mark and Alan and their families, and to Mum. All week Mum has been slipping gently away from us. Her time left on earth is very short.
I arrived in Calgary on Thursday the 15th to find Mum poorly but still able, during her brief waking periods, to respond lucidly to staff and family.
KEVIN & ANN
Kevin and Ann had flown in from the US a day or two before. Glad as Mum was to see us, it was the arrival of Cathy (and her daughters) that brought her especial joy. We took it in turns to be at her bedside, exchanging a few whispered words when she surfaced and ensuring that she had whatever she wanted to drink. She had stopped taking any solid food.
The nursing staff would come in regularly to check her and turn her. Several told us how they admired her. Their job is not an easy one. Many of the residents of the care home are infirm and others are foggy headed; dealing with them demands a lot of patience. It’s quite common to bump into old folk making their way down the corridor on their “walkers”, who ask earnestly: “Where am I going?” or “What am I doing”. We learned to steer them gently back towards the east wing, from which they emerge. Mum, I should add, is in the west wing.
As during our previous visits, (my niece)
PENNY (right) AT THE RINK, WITH COUSINS & HER MOTHER
Penny and Mike ran an open house. Their home is within easy reach of the rest of the family. Their hospitality was warm and untiring – and I thank them. We often gathered there of an evening for a pasta meal, games with the kids and an hour of conversation. Their elder son, Jackson, celebrated his fifth birthday during my stay with a party at a bowling alley. It was a hoot, with some of the little tots barely able to carry the bowls. That didn’t stop them from having oodles of fun.
Another day I went along to watch Jackson taking skating lessons. Canadian kids take to the ice almost as soon as they can walk. Jackson is already confident on his skates and will soon be quite at home on them.His younger brother, Wyatt, is something else. If Jackson promises to be sensitive and artistic, Wyatt looks likely to be the family hockey or football player. Their dad is 6’7” and his children seem to be following in his footsteps. (These opinions are mine alone, I should emphasise, and probably fallible.)
I joined Kevin and Ann one evening for dinner at (my nephew) Mark and Mindy’s home.
KEVIN WITH RACHEL & ETHAN
Their young son, Ethan, is a honey although Mindy confesses that there are days when she is relieved to thrust him into his returning dad’s arms. Well, that’s fair enough. Mark teaches aviation at a college in Calgary. He shares custody of his older son, Connor, with his first wife.
ALAN & ANITA(My younger nephew)Alan (who has resumed his studies with his eye on a medical degree) and Sarah have produced two daughters to bring a little gender balance into the family. Young Esther is bright-eyed and bonny. Her older sister, Rachel, is a real character. She led the boys in great games during a family gathering that Kevin and Ann arranged one evening. The young cousins are clearly going to have fun growing up together. We missed only the Witbank side of the family, Brendan, Conal and Micaela.
CATHY & ERICACathy’s daughters, Erica and Anita, were delighted to renew the acquaintance of their Canadian cousins. It was their first trip to Canada since Penny’s wedding 10 years ago. Erica and Anita are both at university; Erica is doing a Masters in Design at Goldsmiths in London and Anita is completing a Bachelor in Political Science at Constance on the Swiss-German border.
Like me, Erica and Anita were keen to exploit Canada’s relatively lower prices. (Apart from anything else, Alberta imposes a 6% sales tax on goods and services, compared to around 20% in much of the EU.) Alan, who knows everything that’s worth knowing about desirable technology and where to get it, took a morning off to lead us to a specialist mobile phone importer. There I acquired a Nokia N95 cellphone (cum camera, video camera, GPS, web browser, MP3 player, radio and much else). The device, Nokia’s attempt to compete with the “iPhone” is not yet widely on sale in Canada.
I took numerous pictures of our get-togethers, along with a few videos. Under the guidance of their Canadian relatives,
KEVIN & NIECES
my German nieces also made some very satisfactory high-tech purchases. Let me add that Alan managed to acquire and unlock an iPhone that he demonstrated to us. It was the first I’d actually seen in action. What a stunning bit of technology it is.
Let me move from high-tech to motor cars because my Canadian family is nothing if not keen on cars and enjoys little more than trading used ones in for new ones. (I tell Jones that the new ones are more environment-friendly but she's not persuaded.) As it happened, my visit coincided with vehicle purchases by both Alan and Mark, although it is their wives who will benefit most. With young families and the need for child seats, both nephews opted for mini-vans. I was wowed by their sheer space and practicality, to say nothing of the fold-down televisions, self-opening and closing doors, rear-view camera and you name it.
KEVIN Kevin too confessed to having acquired a new vehicle, a Jeep suitable for towing. I didn’t get to see that as it’s in Chicago, parked beside his beloved Audi (RS4). The towing will be done by the mobile home that’s due to be delivered in the spring. He and Ann are both keen (mobile home) travellers in spite of a few small setbacks with their first two, and hope to spend some time touring North America. As you may be aware, the firm Kevin was heading has been bought out by a competitor and he is contentedly out of a job right now. I have urged Kevin, now that he has a little free time, to spend some of it writing to the rest of us – so that the news comes from the horse’s mouth rather than its stable mate's.
CATHY & SARAHEspargal: I’m home, 24 hours home in fact. It’s a chilly evening after a warm, sunny day – some 30 degrees centigrade warmer than Calgary the day I left. The first fire of the season is burning in the stove. The dogs have snuggled down in their baskets beside it, just the happiest little guys. I went walking with Jones and the dogs while Natasha cleaned the house. The hills are green and damp after last week’s rains. Jones showed me the spot where she went off-route while leading our neighbours around a steep, bushy hill. The party floundered around in the dusk until Jones released Ono, who promptly led them a few metres back to the path, where they found Stoopy already waiting. Silly humans.
MARK & ERICA
In my English lesson today, we discussed the plight of the unfortunate British woman teacher who has been arrested in Sudan for accepting the vote by her young class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. She is accused of insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs. This strengthens my suspicion that God has disowned humans as a disappointing experiment. Certainly, if I were God, I’d raise heaven’s drawbridge.
On Natasha’s behalf I tried to fill in an online application form for the Portuguese Frontier Service but each attempt we made to submit it was rejected with an error message and an apology. Natasha is anxious to legalise her residence in Portugal. She’s not finding it easy. Ironically, she’s visited the Frontier office in Faro several times to establish exactly where she stands in the light of constantly changing regulations. The officials guide her as best they can despite knowing that she’s in Portugal illegally. It’s only if foreigners are caught working without a permit (or committing crimes) that the authorities actually expel them.
Jones is ironing. In spite of the warmth generated by the fire, she’s wearing a light jersey over her gown. She doesn't warm easily. I brought her back a few “love you” gifts from Canada. For fear that the customs authorities might challenge me over these (and other) purchases, I thought it prudent to discard the smart containers before travelling. Of course, customs showed no interest in me whatever. Security at Frankfurt airport did, checking that the mass of wiring inside my satchel belonged to the ipod, the radio, the 2 cellphones, the headphones and the notebook computer that I was carrying.
CATH (& ESTHER), SARAH & MINDY
I have always found security at Frankfurt to be exceedingly thorough. It’s the only place that my bags have several times been subject to random searches and where I’ve been asked to boot up my computer. On this occasion, the female security guard examining my belongings finally approved everything except a 200 ml container of fresh orange juice (off the Air Canada flight), even though it fitted into the small plastic bag permitted. The maximum permitted size was 100 ml. She said that she could confiscate it or I could drink it and leave the container with her. I thanked her and drank it. Thorough as they are, Frankfurt’s security officials, like Calgary’s, are also quite pleasant – not a compliment that one can pay to the leaders of the free world.
Jones has subbed my letter. She's not impressed: too much domestic detail! I tell her that nobody has to read it. The pictures may be of interest.
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