Erin's Journals

Nothing like thoughts of baseball to brighten a February day and Rob and I have been hoping to fit in a Jays game when we visit Ontario in April. We might just be able to sit in the friendly confines of the Rogers Centre and watch our favourite team in the early days of a (hopefully) promising new season. But one player we won’t be seeing this year in a Jays uniform is veteran infielder Darwin Barney, who has been signed to a minor league deal with the Texas Rangers. The news came down yesterday.
 
I was reminded of a close encounter with Darwin’s family last June when Rob, his sister and my aunt and uncle and I had the time of our lives on a road trip to see the Jays visit the Mariners. I thought I might relive a few moments of that brush with Barney here today.
 
We were seated in the back row of our field level section on the Sunday of the three-day stand, which was the best we could buy the day the tickets went on sale in March. Two ladies ahead of us were standing and chatting. One of them had a Jays t-shirt on and I was trying to figure out if we were surrounded by Toronto fans or if we’d have to pipe down a bit this game out of respect for Mariners’ fans. To the woman in the red shirt I said, “I hope you’re a Jays fan, too,” and she responded, “My son plays second base for the Blue Jays.”
 
I stammered, “Barney?” and she said yes. I don’t know what came over me, but I just reached into the row ahead of us and gave her a big hug. “That’s some good parenting, right there!” I laughed.
 
With a bit of Googling, I was able to determine that her name was Doreen Barney (or Mama Dee or DeeDee as she’s known). Darwin had been born in Portland, Oregon, a three-hour drive from Seattle, and soon Doreen was joined by Darwin’s beautiful wife and three sweet daughters who still live in Portland. Several other family members were seated with them, including the Barney children’s other grandparents and a lady we think may have been Darwin’s sister. (Sometimes a lull in the game lets you try to put two and two together; I think most of my math was correct.)
 
As the game went on, Doreen told me that she wasn’t wearing a Jays jersey, not because her son wouldn’t give her one – I’d jokingly asked if that was the case – but because it was bad luck! Here’s a shot of the stadium that I took that includes “Mama Dee”; she has the flower in her hair.
 

 
What a nice moment I had, getting to hug a Jay’s mom. I know it’s silly, but you just never know who’s nearby, do you?
 
We wish Darwin and his family well and hope that he manages to get a regular spot in the infield. If he does, he’ll face his old teammates April 6th when the Jays visit the Rangers. And on we go.
 

Another week, another earthquake out our way it seems – and it wasn’t caused by Don Cherry’s suit Saturday night (or his ridiculousness equating weather with climate on Coach’s Cuckaloo Corner). A 3.2 magnitude (intially reported to be 2.8, but later upgraded) quake hit a place called Friday Harbor, which is just as idyllic and sweet as its name implies (although it does sound a bit like a saloon) just before 11 on Saturday night.
 
We had turned off the TV, having watched the east coast feed of Saturday Night Live (which may never be better this season than last weekend’s Will Ferrell outing). After a fun night at my aunt and uncle’s enjoying some seafood chowder and a lot of laughter, we had come home to a happy pup, some comedy on the PVR and then…BOOM.
 
The TV was off and we were both standing, but we felt none of what others around our part of the island did. We simply heard the boom: something like a transformer blowing. (Rob thought he heard two thumps.) I looked towards Victoria International Airport, of which our house has a clear view from on high and saw, fortunately, no signs of problems there.
 
Then we went to bed, I went online and began reading accounts of people’s experiences: a rolling feeling, rattling windows, the sound and sense of a dump truck emptying its load on the front lawn. I know exactly what the latter sounds like, having lived on Bloor Street downtown where dump and other kinds of trucks would bang every time they hit a bump or metal plate on the road during construction (which seemed to be regularly and at all hours).
 
We’re about 20 kilometres from Friday Harbor as the crow flies (although it takes the ferry an hour-and-a-half to get there, as we found out en route to the Jays/Mariners weekend in Seattle last summer). Part of our house is on stilts and perhaps that’s some of the reason we felt so little of the quake: we’re up high enough that ours is the neighbourhood to which people fleeing in the event of a tsunami warning come and park. And we’ll put the coffee on if they’re near our place!
 
Once again, like the tsunami warning that hit the island after the big Alaska quake a few weeks back, the little shaker reminded Rob and me that we still haven’t put together a “go bag” to prepare us for the eventual Big One, for which we pay fully half of our homeowners’ insurance. It’s not like we’ll need to seek higher ground (there isn’t any) but we do need to have supplies to take, in the event we have to bug out. After all, there were three quakes in the 4+ range just north of Vancouver Island three weeks ago and another 1.9 last week in nearby Sooke. I guess this is a regular thing, is what they’re telling us? 
 
It’s a tough notion to get your head around – the idea of evacuating. I mean, we did look at properties right on the ocean shore and I’d be sleeping a lot more lightly if that was the address we’d chosen. But still, even if we made a list, is there time to gather the items on it? An urn? A ponytail? Some jewellery and our passports? My purse, laptop and Molly and her stuff? That’s a lot to think of in a few short seconds, especially when half of those seconds are spent wondering just who the heck is dumping stuff in your front yard right now!
 
Last word from vicnews.com: “Vicki Walker had a different reaction. ‘Thought it was my husband snoring so I elbowed him,’ she said. ‘Poor guy.'”
 
Have a great Monday and we’ll be back with you here tomorrow.
 

Welcome to Friday – and Groundhog Day at that. I’ll try not to repeat myself. And I’ll also try not to repeat myself. By the way, some cities have the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day in theatres this weekend. Check it out if you’re looking for anything to watch this Sunday besides football. Of course, there IS the Puppy Bowl, with half-time kittens (which is also a great band name). 
 
February 2nd. 02-02. Dates and numbers are funny things. For example, eights show up a lot in my life and so I tend to notice them. Or maybe that’s why they keep showing up? I also keep track of dates and those elevens that occur so often for us, having lost Lauren on the 11th of May, her son’s birthday falling also on an 11th, my parents and grandparents marrying on the 11th, Dad being born on the 11th – things like that. 
 
And so, a few months back and thanks to an online game called Draw Something, I was made aware that a significant date was coming: the number of days since we’d last played our game together on our iPhones, Lauren and I. Somehow, three years later our match has just been erased – as well as those with two other friends – so I have had to let it go. I don’t know if I ever would have, otherwise, but that decision wasn’t left to me.
 
But here’s what Draw Something helped me to figure out. With the help of a calendar and a little math, I came up with the fact that this Sunday, she will have been gone for 1,000 days.
 
One thousand days. Feels like a moment; feels like a lifetime.
 
1,000 days alone would be a marker worth noting in my heart as well as on the calendar, except that it’s also significant in that it would also have been my mother’s 85th birthday. This February 4th – 1000 days since Lauren’s death is the date of my own mother’s birth in 1933. Isn’t that…interesting?
 

 
Mom left us six years ago this week; on February 1st, she suffered a catastrophic brain aneurysm while sitting happily having dinner on a TV table watching M*A*S*H reruns with my dad after what can only be described as a great day of laughter, cocktails with my sister and warm California sunshine. February 2nd, I flew out to be at her side and on the 3rd, Dad, my sisters and I turned off her life support.
 
The next day, February 4th (also a Super Bowl Sunday that year), was Mom’s birthday. We would wait until the eve of Lauren’s wedding the next year, in June of 2013, to hold what we called our “Momorial” for family and friends at the same little church in Jackson’s Point where Lauren was to walk down the aisle the very next day.
 
I love to think that Lauren’s and Mom’s spirits are together making music and laughing and watching over us all as we continue on as best we can without them. Have a gentle weekend. I’ll be looking for dimes.
 

 
This is how many I’ve found since 2015, minus one I gave to a homeless man who saw me pick it up. I bought this little dish in Seattle.
   

Welcome to a brand new month. Tomorrow, I have a kind of spine-tingling story of a couple of dates that coincide this weekend that I think you’ll appreciate. I’m off to see another movie today, so next week we’ll talk I, Tonya and Lady Bird. Lots to share with you. My must-see recommendation for this weekend is still Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Powerful, filled with redemption and empathy. Surprises at every turn. Everything a Best Picture ought to be.
 
I wanted to take a moment to thank you once again for sharing a bit of your day here reading or listening to our adventures, thoughts, musings and just everyday things. Some days and weeks are harder when it comes to inspiration and often I’ll sit at my keyboard, letting the reflexology take over as my fingers (or more aptly, my fingernails) tap at the letters and send energy and ideas to this brain of mine.
 
Some days what comes out is whimsical, some days a little more pointed. I worry about offending (as I did yesterday with my thoughts on what “politically correct” really means) but this should be a place where I’m safe to speak my mind. 
 
And some days it’s just to vent. 
 
I tweeted after the State of the Union address on Tuesday (which I could not watch, but for which I scoured coverage on various channels afterwards) that if screaming at the TV was cardio, I’d be a size two.
 
When he’s not questioning if he heard what he thinks he heard, Rob sits and sighs; he’s long given up trying to persuade me to look away if I can’t stand the flat-out lying and deception that passes as leadership in the US these days. There are moments of hope, of course, as someone – however briefly – has the spine to call Trump out, but that never lasts. Every time the Mueller investigation seems to be gathering steam, someone gets fired or something leaks and things appear to fall a few squares back. Obstruction is everywhere, families are being destroyed and idiocy reigns. So why do I care so much?
 
There was a scene in This is Us last season that brought home why I’m so angry about Trump and every day that he is in charge. It’s because it’s simply not fair. He did not win the popular vote. He won based on an antiquated system that was meant to appease the southern states after the civil war handed them their backsides on a big ol’ plate. And as we’re seeing more and more clearly every day, Russia played a role in his victory and Hillary’s loss. It was not fair.
 
The This is Us scene I’m referring to saw Mandy Moore’s character having a meltdown in a grocery store when someone else got the last onion – the one she’d been about to choose before one of her babies fussed in the stroller. She lost her temper at the woman and the produce manager and ended up in tears about something that was seemingly trivial. But what it came down to was her anger and pain about losing her baby. It wasn’t fair. And that stupid onion (teary metaphor, anyone?) was just the straw the broke her spirit that day. 
 
For me, the unfairness of Lauren’s death, the rug being pulled out from under our lives in so very many ways, is something I can’t rage about every day. But what’s happening in the news every day? That’s something I can wrap my rage around. So pardon my rants – it’s just me getting through another day. 
 
And thank you again.
 

My friend Lisa posted a link to an amazing blog by John Pavlovitz last week. It was about the hypocrisy of white evangelicals who keep giving the serial liar and cheater in office a “mulligan” (golf term for a do-over) where they lambasted and targetted with hatred their previous Commander in Chief seemingly for simply existing. They called into question Barack Obama’s religious beliefs, his motives and even – and most loudly – his citizenship.
 
The vast contrast is visible between the highest-placed religious leaders (Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson, to name two) and the way they revere the man in office now as having been chosen and placed there by God, and the way they constantly kicked and accused the man who actually won his way into office in both popular votes and the Electoral College. It’s enough to make your blood run cold.
 
Captivated by the tone of this pastor’s column, I scrolled down and once again his words – this time on a different topic – resonated loudly and clearly.
 
You’ve by now heard that after 71 years, the Cleveland Indians baseball team is finally putting to rest the cartoonish caricature of a red-skinned, buck-toothed brave in a headdress as their mascot. They’re taking a year to do it (presumably so everyone who wants their Chief Wahoo garbage will get it) and then he’s put away wherever the Confederate Flag hangs pinned up in rec rooms and garages among those who rant and whine about how “politically correct” we’ve become and how those libs – or more commonly, “libtards” – are ruining everything!
 
“Politically Correct.” That’s a phrase I really have trouble with, because blaming it for a change in attitudes, and the way we see what may hurt some groups of people, misses the entire point of why those things were painful to begin with. Pavlovitz writes about people rejoicing that under Trump they no longer have to be PC! But what they’re actually claiming is that they’re tired of filtering the things they say in public that they know could offend others who hear it. They are, as Pavlovitz puts it, voicing their outrage at “being asked to participate more fully in civilized humanity.” 
 
Instead of wondering where the world’s gone wrong and blaming political correctness, perhaps the future is about evolving, so that one doesn’t have to be called out for the subtle or even overt racist comments that they used to get away with. The ones that make people look down awkwardly during a conversation or to which no one responds when something is blurted out at work in earshot of co-workers who don’t have a pay cheque big enough to call out its inappropriateness.
 
As Pavlovitz says, it’s not about not being able to “speak the truth” anymore; it’s about having to be accountable for the feelings that lie beneath that so-called truth. It’s about showing every human being the decency you expect, and that they deserve.
 
Good riddance, Chief Wahoo. It’s about time.