Erin's Journals

There are many things in this life – this rich, varied, glorious and painful life – that I am thankful for this weekend and always. But if you’re like me, chief among those things are people. Those who love us. Those who support us. Those who understand, tolerate, entertain and encourage us. Those who make our lives better simply by being there, either in person or in spirit.
 
Take this relationship we have, you and I. I would guess that I’ve met perhaps five percent of the people who come by to share this journal and to comment on Facebook or via email with your own perspectives on things I bring up. You share thoughts that make me see things from a different angle, that show to me that we’re so very much the same, many of us, and that serve to humble me with the honesty of your own experiences.
 
I’m grateful that you are there. And even though we haven’t really met, so many of us, there’s this attachment I feel. You’ve been there when I needed it most and even if you never wrote or reached out (and that’s okay, too!) I’ve always felt your quiet support. Maybe I’m delusional. But I choose to believe it’s there, even if I can’t always see it. I guess that’s what “faith” is all about, too, right?
 
This week in my journals I’ve been leaning on some experiences with family and it’s reminded me of the importance of being around the people who know you best. It can take decades to get past the bad feelings that can exist in family dynamics, but perspective and experience can show you that there are ways you could have handled yourself better, and that it’s never too late to make a fresh start. I think that’s happening among my siblings. Never too late.
 
Finally, I’m grateful in this new life of ours, where we’re just a video call away from the sweet boy who holds all of the strings of our hearts, that we are still able to hold and love two little children. Our second cousins, Regan who – like Colin – is about to turn four and her little brother Owen who just turned two, will be at a boisterous Thanksgiving table this weekend. Their mom is Lauren’s “big sister” (or so she wished) Karen; Karen and Joe live near Victoria and we’ll be at the home of Karen’s folks, my aunt and uncle, for what I’m sure will be a lovely dinner.
 
Last weekend here near Victoria, my dad was with Karen’s dad, who is 19 years his junior. We got a couple of generations in one shot here – Dad (left), Vern and little Owen. Those Davis jowls are right there in the DNA, you can see that. And what a lovely memory to behold!
 

 
I wish you time with family and, if that is not possible, a heart filled with memories that make you thankful, too. For many of us, a chair will sit empty and we’ll say a silent prayer of gratitude for the years of joy we shared. 
 
There’s always so much for which to be thankful, and we are. We truly are.
 
Have a lovely weekend and I’ll be back here with you on Tuesday. ‘Cause guess what? We’re “wheels up” again!
 

I thought I’d take a turn today with a bit of a laugh: something that happened that I was telling my sister about and she was doubled over in laughter. So I figured I should share it with you – and add that I’m glad I can laugh at it now, too!
 
A few weeks back, while Rob was busy with errands and getting set for a big Rotary weekend at the Saanich Fall Fair, I took advantage of a few solitary hours and went for a massage at a hotel in nearby Sidney By the Sea. I got on Sally’s table and she proceded to try to get into the tight, taut, tense muscles in my shoulders and back. (She should have brought a Dremel; for someone who’s stepped away from the daily stress of a highwire live radio act, I sure am tense a lot.)
 
As Sally worked and I grimaced, I started to feel this…pressure. And it wasn’t in my back, but more my, um, backside. Uh-oh. 
 
I thought back to what I’d had before I went in: black coffee, cereal with almond milk – no lactose – and wondered why the sudden urge to “sparkle” (as we used to call it when Lauren was a kid) had descended upon me.
 
As she urged me to “let her in” and tried hard to pry her fingertips under my shoulder blades (boy, that was fun), I just kept getting tenser and tenser. Surely, Sally thought I was a hopeless case, but nonetheless, she persisted.
 
Then it occurred to me: the cereal I occasional eat, Love Grown, is made of…wait for it…beans. Yes, it’s fruit- or chocolate-flavoured and I love it for its high fibre, but I’d completely forgotten its unusual main ingredient.
 

 
As what was supposed to be a therapeutic but also relaxing massage continued, I just grew more and more tense. Yes, it’s as natural as almost anything we do and Sally being a yoga teacher, she – more than almost anyone – would understand. But still…I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not if I could help it!
 
Mercifully, the story has something of a happy ending. The breaking point came when Sally just happened to be juggling river rocks to get the hot and cold ones just where they’d do the most good on my body. And sure enough, a little “pup-pup” sound escaped from me. But thankfully, it was identical to the noise the stones made. My toot was moot and she was none the wiser!
 
The moral: don’t eat beans – even in a cereal – before a massage. (That goes for yoga, too.) Yeesh.
 
Enjoy your Thursday and I’ll be back with a thankfulness journal tomorrow. I hope you’ll join me and that you had a laugh today. We have to, right?
 

Last week when my dad and sister made the nearly one-hour flight from the interior of BC (Kelowna) to visit Rob, Molly and me here near Victoria, we had another constant visitor in our house. Or, more aptly visitors: Jake Tapper. Anderson Cooper. Don Lemon. Chris Cuomo. The anchors and interviewers on CNN.
 
Despite being a news junkie myself since my teen years when I had a serious crush on CTV weekend anchor (and now Dateline host) Keith Morrison, I was taken aback by how glued we all were to the Kavanaugh hearings. It’s not that the real-life drama surprised me, but that we were all so interested.
 
I had a great 2017 documentary from Carl Reiner (If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast, about 90+ year-olds who are thriving) but Dad watched a bit of it and wanted to go back to CNN. Even though we’d watched the hearings all day, listened to CNN on XM in the car during our drive home from Malahat, and heard about all there was to hear! Nope – Dad felt we needed to explore what other panels had to say about the day’s jaw-dropping testimonies.
 
At an age when many of his peers are more interested in weather coverage or (heaven help us) Fox “News” my dad has broken free of his Alberta-born right wing leanings to a small but still surprising extent. Not enough that he has anything positive to say about our prime minister, mind you, but sufficiently that he is a feminist in a great many ways who also sees Donald Trump for who and what he is – a lying, philandering, manipulative, loose-screwed con man. (In fact, that would be a rare area where he and his lady friend seem to have a difference in opinions.)
 
As I muted the overly loud TV several times (Dad gave up wearing hearing aids when Mom died six years ago), my father, sister, husband and I would have what verged on deep conversations about the #MeToo movement, the allegations facing Brett Kavanaugh and the testimony given by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during those moving hours in DC last week.
 
But it was the quieter times when Leslie and I were alone that Leslie’s own experience with sexual assault came up. It happened before she was even in her teen years and she has had difficulty speaking about it for the 40-plus years that have followed. It has affected her deeply as she moved through her life and prompted the realization that as her own teenaged daughter begins involvement in clubs with boys her own age and older, she has to be reminded that it’s good to speak up when something happens. To know that she didn’t bring it on herself. Not to be afraid that she’ll be blamed in any way. That no does in fact mean NO.
 
Time and again, as we watched CNN and followed social media feeds, we heard (or heard of) women our own age discussing the Kavanaugh situation brushing it off because it may have happened when he was a teenager. We’ve read about people who blamed a young girl for getting herself into that vulnerable a position. We witnessed the same tropes that have been trotted out for generations. Have we learned nothing? Has nothing changed? 
 
When a close male relative, who was the same tender age as I was, offered to show me his if I’d show him mine, I declined and told an older relative. I don’t know what she did with that information, but I’m assuming it was discussed with his mother. Leslie’s situation was different: our mom learned about it when she happened upon (or more likely sought and found) a diary. There was doubt cast on her claim (much more serious than mine, I might add) and to this day, the boy’s side of the family believes Leslie made the story up.
 
I have no idea – not a clue – why someone would make up a claim of sexual assault or harrassment. The 19 women who were humiliated for their charges against Donald Trump certainly didn’t do so for the publicity. Nor did the dozens who came forward to talk about their experiences with the now-incarcerated Bill Cosby. Christine Blasey Ford didn’t step forward so that her life and that of her family could be endangered and so that she could be called every name in the book.
 
My own experiences, ones that I can back up with a handwritten daily diary that I kept from age 12 to about 42, don’t compare with those of Ford or even my own sister. But you don’t forget the details. You never forget the details. All we can do is hope that last week’s news events prompted a great many more intergenerational conversations on topics that were long ago shoved deeply into a drawer. It’s time to bring them into the sunlight – what they call the best disinfectant, yes?
 
Back tomorrow on a lighter note. I think we all need it these days.
 

Sometimes the weather gods decide to give you a big, fat break and that’s exactly what happened to us last week in our tiny corner of the world.
 
Here on the Saanich Peninsula (north of Victoria) we enjoy about 30% less rain than Vancouver. So let me dispense with the “wet coast” stereotype just a little bit. Okay, with autumn’s arrival, the rainy season starts to move in: yesterday it rained. Sunday it poured. But last week from Wednesday through to Saturday, when my dad and younger sister were visiting from Kelowna in the BC interior, the sun shone brightly and we got up to 25 degrees, if the car’s temperature reading was to be believed.
 
It was the best convertible weather we could have asked for – if only all four of us had fit into the MINI! But even though having them with us made the convertible impossibly impractical, we were happy to suck it up and take the “grown up” car for some wonderful outings.
 
One of them was up island about 45 minutes to a place called the Villa Eyrie in Malahat. In case it sounds familiar, the Malahat is also the name for the one-way-up and one-way-down highway that is often closed due to vehicle rollovers, bringing island traffic to a standstill for hours on end. It seems to happen at least twice a month. On this glorious early fall day, though, we stopped off in a provincial park for a short walk and then made our way to the villa, a resort that features a beautiful restaurant called – appropriately – the Summit.
 
A weekday afforded us the luxury of having an outdoor deck all to ourselves and, under the shade of two umbrellas, we enjoyed a spectacular, slow-paced lunch as we all took in the view of the south end of the Saanich Inlet (listed in some places as a fjord) from 1880 feet above sea level.
 

 
A stroll around the grounds later afforded us a chance to get a few pictures together. 
 

 
And, of course, Dad was clowning around for the camera….
 

 
But he finally behaved himself! The weather, as I say, couldn’t have been better for their visit. And nowhere was that more clearly illustrated than on Wednesday, when we were out to dinner for my birthday at a place called The Chalet at Deep Cove. As wonderful as our meal and server were, little could compare with the picture that was developing right outside our window.
 

 
I swear to you, there are no filters or photo tricks at play here. I only wish that later, as we sat at home watching an orange harvest moon rise behind majestic Mount Baker, I could have captured the magic. You’ll just have to take my word for it – it was, just as the ads say, Super Natural British Columbia at its very best.
 
Tomorrow, a darker side to our visit as #metoo came home.
 

Welcome to a brand new month. Thanksgiving, colourful leaves, Halloween decorations and pumpkin everything! That’s what October means to me.
 
It was a terrific visit with my dad and sister and I’ll share a few stories with you here tomorrow. But today I just had to tell you the funniest thing that happened to us on Friday.
 
We were on our way back from downtown Victoria, having picked up my sister Leslie after her visit with an Ontario friend who has also relocated to BC. As we made our way up a six-lane street, I looked over and noticed a pick-up truck to our left.
 

 
I know it’s a small world, but it’s an even smaller island. In Victoria, with its greater area population of over 300,000, we pulled up next to the truck owned by the guy about whom I wrote here on Friday. The clever guy with the stove ad – remember him? (Just follow the Friday link if you want to read what I’m talking about – a hilarious buy-and-sell site post that I just had to share with you here.)
 
Yes, that same stove was still on his truck. I was hoping it was being delivered, but I saw on the ad site just yesterday that it was still for sale. 
 
Like some teen at a K-Pop show, I shrieked when I saw the truck (my sister, who thought I’d lost my mind, will attest to this) and said, “Rob – it’s the stove guy! It’s him!” He was pretty incredulous, too, and then I had to explain to Dad and Les why we were all excited about a pickup truck with a stove in it.
 
It’s weird, I know, but I couldn’t help it when the very guy whose writing I’d admired was right there next to me on the road. Clearly, I either need to get out more or stay home where I can’t harm anybody!
 
Have a gentle day and here’s to the little things. Sometimes they’re all it takes.