Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week. [Maggie Kuhn]

It’s 7-7 – Ringo Starr’s 85^th birthday. Now that is old age – not you or I, my friend! In honour of one of the last two remaining Beatles, Ringo is asking that at noon today – wherever you are – you just raise your fingers in the peace sign, and say, “Peace and Love.” Why not, right? I mean, these days, can it hurt?

I don’t know how much help I’ve been in making our world a little better – at least here on Vancouver Island – but I’ve had my fighting pants on during the past week. Okay, maybe not pants as such, more like shorts. It’s nice and comfortable here with 20C days (sorry if you’re sweltering as you read this) and my rants aren’t long. So shorts seem appropriate.

I first pulled them on when we got an email with the local grocery chain’s specials for the week starting July 2. Fresh off a spectacular red, white and maple syrup-flavoured celebration of this wonderful country of ours, it felt like a slap in the face to see this:

Peaches or nectarines, product of California. I wrote to their website through their “contact us” link and expressed my disdain to see fruit from the country that is threatening to erase our sovereignty promoted in their flyer. Calling themselves “Proudly Canadian,” Thrifty’s is a chain exclusive to Vancouver Island (which most decidedly does not live up to its money-saving moniker) but they’re ours. And this is what they’re putting on sale!

I’m not naïve and realize that as shoppers we have the choice of not buying their US produce, regardless of whether the sneaky little signs say “US or Mexico.” Because, yeah, it’s usually US. I also know that people on a tight budget will buy what they can afford to feed their family well, and I won’t look in someone’s cart and judge them. I DO, however, judge Thrifty Foods for choosing to highlight products from the USA in their sale flyer.

Their response? A cut-and-paste email that said they offer all produce, blah blah blah. I’m doubtful any human eyes even saw my note. But if their produce is as soft and rotten as their morals, I’ll pass, thanks. Keep your stupid peaches. We have the Okanagan.

Then there’s the flag flap in our bucolic little tourist town of Sidney, BC. Since the summer season began, there have been stars and stripes flying aside the flags of Canada and BC along our pristine and perfect waterfront, and at certain hotels. It was a decision taken after a 4-3 vote at town council, which was influenced by the number of Americans who own businesses here. Gotta keep them happy, right? They also say it’s in the interests of tourism. Well, having been fortunate to travel many countries of the world, I never once checked to see if our maple leaf was flying there before I felt welcome. It’s just a flag – until it’s someone else’s. Can’t imagine the Russian flag flies in many places in Ukraine, can you?

It’s infuriating to see that flag anywhere near our own. It does not belong here. Being literal minutes from the US border, we welcome our share of American tourists here. Yesterday I saw a woman wearing a Memphis t-shirt; a man in an Ohio State pullover was at a table adjacent to us on Saturday evening. On Canada Day I saw tone-deaf Brooklyn, NY and Palm Springs Ts being worn. Wear what you want (except for that red hat, an anagram of “hatred” that might as well be a swastika at this point). But the American flag should not be flying over our town.

I wrote to town council Friday and am awaiting a response. I told them that it’s only the first week of July and it’s not too late to replace that symbol of greed, injustice and anything but freedom with a Pride flag or an Indigenous Canadian flag (which is what we’ve hung from our balcony this month). If I get anything but a namby pamby “there there” from our mayor and his council, I’ll share it with you next week.

Maybe our Queenager years are when we step into our loud voices; when we are the change we want to see in the world. When muttering under our breath or tapping angrily online becomes writing, and even attending marches and protests. Logistical difficulties prevented Rob and me from marching in Victoria’s Pride parade yesterday under the Liberal party banner, but I had already tried to figure out how to combine red with rainbows. Next year!

Call me woke if you want – I wear that badge proudly. Just don’t ask me to approve of the flag of a country that is still lying about us (claiming yesterday that we steal their fish?????? WHAT?????) and stirring up ill feelings about a land so many of their people never even paid attention to unless it was to add an unhumorous “eh?” to their posts about hockey, baseball or whatever.

I’m done sitting quietly. Raging Grannies, Unite! And bring your guys with you. Somebody has to speak up and I’m fed up with “Boomer” being used online in an attempt to insult us. We put up with a lot of misogynistic BS and inequity in our careers and lives and fought quietly for rights (“not too loud, now, or you’ll upset the apple cart!”).

Well that cart – that ship – has sailed. We’re going to continue to fight.

You know, maybe if we stop throwing names and start calling out, we’ll get farther – together. Who’s with me?

Just a thought… When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane. [Hermann Hesse]

In one week I’ll mark six years of sobriety. We call it a “birthday” and it means that I’m past the halfway point of the longest period of not drinking that I accomplished (10 years) before I dove right back in upon retirement. Thankfully in 2019 I found my way into the arms of supportive and loving people who’ve been at this far longer than I. So it’s with that in mind that I wrote to my sister Leslie yesterday: “When do we know if this really is WWIII? Because I’d like to start chilling the gin.”

It was a joke. And we all have our crutches to help us get through the most anxious of times. Another, of course, is falling back on belief systems that have carried us in the past. Most of us haven’t been through periods like these; few remember the “duck and cover” exercises that we’ve seen in grainy reels from the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the existential threats of nuclear war that existed even then. We’ve lived blessedly peaceful lives, most of us; others escaped from war-torn countries to find this cushion of tranquility inside our borders and were welcomed here.

Now we look within, and it’s from that place of gentle wisdom accrued over millennia that I share a little today.

Thank you to my podcast partner and longtime friend Lisa Brandt for introducing me to stoicism, as she’s talked me off a ledge more than once when I was anxious about issues over which I had no control (and only thought I did). It’s also one of the best things I learned in rehab six years ago: you were CEO of your life and you effed that up, so it’s time to hand it over to a higher power.

I’m not going into the whole HP thing here; you do whatever gets you through the night.

So I’m sharing with you a good post gleaned from the stoics – a group of men whose names you’ve probably heard who lived many centuries ago, some of whom were rich leaders, others who were enslaved – from @dailystoic Ryan Holiday who is an excellent follow on social media.

Many of these also bring me to Mel Robbins’ massively popular bestseller The Let Them Theory. I read and listened to it over the winter and it fundamentally shifted the way I was looking at my life: it lessened my suffering over circumstances that had not turned out the way I’d hoped. And not just the BIG things like death, but the little things, too.

Now some have called out Mel’s writing, asking if it came from someone else’s work. I have considered that dilemma greatly over the past few months and my response to my own question of whether I can trust her writing and my instincts is that most of these ideas came from stoicism, Buddhism, Biblical scholars, etc.. The fact that she was able to compile these messages, this wisdom, into something easily accessible and digestible for our turbulent times still makes it well worthwhile.

Do what you need to to get through what’s happening and what’s ahead. Take gratitude in knowing that our country is helmed by a calm, intelligent and worldly individual who has our best interests at heart. Know that being Canadian is an enviable position for many in this world today. And please, take it easy on yourself.

Don’t argue online when you don’t know who’s on the other end; you can’t change minds, especially when they’re just bots with zero followers. Shut off the news when you need to. Quiet the discourse. Don’t self-medicate. Go inside (literally and figuratively) when you can. Find a good meditation app and listen to it. It can be for five minutes a day and you don’t have to hang upside down in the dark. Just do what’s best to keep your sanity, helping those around you with theirs.

Control what you can and let go of the rest…or at least try, my friend.

Just a thought… …all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. [John Steinbeck]

Boy, it can be hard to leave Vancouver Island. But not for the reasons you think!

Last Wednesday, for the second time in a month, I said good-bye to a sister who visited us here on Vancouver Island. And also for the second time, the travel gods conspired to make it as challenging as possible for her to leave. And it wasn’t even the same airline! So settle in, grab a cup of something, and I’ll tell you our stories, grateful that both ended well, especially in light of last week’s Air India tragedy. These tales are trivial in comparison, I know. But they’re the light adventures I’m here to tell you about today.

I’ll start three weeks ago when my sister Les and her husband came to Victoria for a brief visit. We had a super time until the night they were to leave: Leslie’s phone dinged and we assumed it was a reminder that their flight was due to leave in a few hours. As Rob and I prepared to chauffeur them to the airport, only a 15-minute drive away, Leslie read aloud from her phone: their WestJet flight to Kelowna had changed. Instead of going to Vancouver with a brief stop and then on to Kelowna that evening, the airline was sending them much later to Calgary, where they would spend six hours overnight in the airport and fly out the next morning to Kelowna.

After a lot of panic, we decided to take a long shot: call the airline and hope to speak to a person. Miracle of miracles, Les got through to a helpful agent who agreed when she said that we’d found a different, later flight to Vancouver that would eventually get them home the same night. After numerous checks and double-checks, we were able to ensure our guests were on a flight and headed back to mainland BC instead of spending a night lying in the Calgary airport.

So that’s the first story. But there’s an earlier part I’ve skipped over: on the way here their flight to Vancouver was scrapped (Leslie told them it was because the plane wasn’t full so they would have to take one four hours later, and it wasn’t denied.) That erased an entire day’s plans in Victoria, including a special reservation to celebrate Leslie’s 60^th with High Tea at the Fairmont. A whole day blown, they finally arrived in the evening for a three-day stay. Thankfully, Leslie has recently discovered and taken to heart the “Serenity Prayer” and the dogs didn’t learn any words they hadn’t already heard!

Then we come to last week’s second (or is that third?) travel debacle.

After flying home to the island, accompanied by my sister Cindy who lives in Mexico, we spent five days together.

On Wednesday she had packed and repacked her bag to fit in her shopping finds, and was ready to go. Then it happened again: the dreaded ‘ding.’ The message said that her Air Canada flight to Vancouver was delayed due to air traffic control problems at YVR. Okay, we thought, you’ll make your 11 pm Aero Mexico flight home. About half an hour passed and there’s another ding. It’s delayed another hour. That’s when Rob said, “Your flight is going to be cancelled – you watch.”

Cindy didn’t think that was likely, but Rob went online and checked the FERRY schedule. To make a long story shorter, Cindy finally relented and we ended up getting her, not on her planned 7 pm flight, but to the nearby ferry terminal to catch the sailing to south Vancouver. She took an Uber to the airport, got through security and was seated in the lounge by about 9:45 pm. She made her Aero Mexico flight to Mexico City, spent six hours there overnight, and flew on to Guadalajara, then took an hour-long car service home. Mio Dios!

Oh, and that Air Canada flight to Vancouver? Rob was right. It was cancelled.

Victoria’s a glorious place to visit, but beware: if you’re taking a short flight to or from Vancouver, you might want to plan on being a walk-on passenger on the ferry. Never mind Planes, Trains and Automobiles – our family story seems to be Planes, Boats and Automobiles. Once again we’re counting our lucky stars that Porter Airlines is providing direct flights out of here to Toronto and (at least for now) to Ottawa. There are a lot of things we lucky Canadians take for granted, but flights that go when they’re supposed to, and land on time? Not anymore. Flyer beware.

Just a thought… If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. [From the film The Crow]

First off, welcome in – and I hope you had a great weekend. Here on lower Vancouver Island (not to be confused with the great big city of Vancouver on the mainland, a ferry ride away) the weather has been sunny and perfect, unseasonably warm. And what a way to show off Sidney to Cindy, my older sister, who is here for a few days (all the while, lamenting the hardships of Canadians in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, Northern BC and Ontario right now).

She’s actually one of my two older sisters, but all four of us (I’m third in pecking order) gathered last week for the first time in three years, a one-hour flight away in Kelowna, BC. The occasion was to get together, yes, but also for celebrations: on Wednesday of this week, my father turns 92, while last Friday the eldest of us, Heather, marked 68 years and is going strong. Cindy, Leslie and I were along for the cake!

The visit with Dad was bittersweet. While he could name one of his four daughters who wasn’t present the first drop-in, sister Cindy, who lives in Ajijic near Guadalajara in Mexico, is convinced he didn’t recognize her. To be fair, it has been three years since they’ve been together, and in that time Dad’s memory has only faded further.

He doesn’t have many words to say, but when we were singing along with entertainment in the group lounge at his care home, he certainly knew all of the lyrics to “You Are My Sunshine.“

We know he’s still in there, and we all shared love and laughs while Dad smiled his partly-toothless smile. (He doesn’t bother wearing the replacements, and as teeth break, as long as he’s not in pain, he seems not to mind that they aren’t there. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if Mom was still around, she’d be saying, “Donald! Put in your teeth!”) Oh, and his hearing aids are but a memory. His electric shaver needed replacing after it went “walking” (which happens a lot in memory care) but we got on that right away. For all we knew he tossed it himself!

No more nagging about teeth, hearing, or even a three- or four-day beard. We let him be, wherever he is in his world now. When Mom came up in conversation, he didn’t ask about her this time, another change. It’s somewhat of a relief not to say she’s away visiting; that lie has been retired. There are no more truths to break his heart.

As for ours? Well, we said “Poor Daddy” plenty as we talked before and after our visits with him. We made clear to each other that there is no way we’ll be sticking around if or when we are no longer “here.” Just how that comes to pass, we don’t know; at the lawyer’s last week to sign our wills, that very topic came up and, no, there’s no booking MAiD in advance, or having a list of criteria that our caregivers can check off to know that we’d want to go. My sister Cindy talks of a pill in Mexico that people can avail themselves of to choose when to say “adios.” As far as I know it’s just talk…but I like the idea.

I didn’t feel the pain I thought I would, watching Dad slip away as he has. We all have the “it is what it is” stoicism surrounding the demise of our father’s brilliant mind, and no amount of tears or wishing can change what’s happening. We choose instead to be grateful to be able to stroke his hand, to sing with him, to help him eat a gorgeous cake on a sunny day and to take pictures that will let us remember him: cheerful and smiling widely even now, in no pain, and without a care in the world except wondering when he might get to bed for a nap.

Come to think of it – right down to the naps – that’s who he has always been. Aren’t we lucky?

Just a thought… In the middle of difficulty comes opportunity. [John Archibald Wheeler (often misattributed to know-it-all Albert Einstein)]

I’m constantly surprised and delighted by how helpful people are. Today’s one example; the other came on Friday thanks to social media.

Rob and I volunteer at a local seniors’ centre, having signed up during the worst of Covid. People couldn’t or didn’t want to leave their homes for groceries, so the centre made delicious and nutritious meals and once a week we’d drop them off. Meals were priced according to income and ability to pay; the best part was that we met our beloved friend Mira, who despite passing last fall, still has a firm grasp on our hearts. We continue to deliver now, but to far fewer clients, as demand has slowed.

When we found ourselves with dilation eye appointments today as we both look into vision improvement surgery, we were in a pickle: no driving home from Victoria, about a 40 minute trip from our town of Sidney. So we called the Shoal Centre and asked if, by any chance, someone was going into the city today . Long story short, the answer was “yes” and we have a ride! We’ll tuck a Tim’s gift card into our thank you note, and then take a couple of buses home.

The second instance came thanks to dozens upon dozens of comments from people when I attached this cartoon to a post on Facebook and other social media Friday.

I said that we are indeed at the end of our ropes, having had our BC dream house on the market for a year now with no offers. There were some common themes in the responses.

1. Lower the Price Done, done, done and done. With our agent, we’ve searched the comparables. A lot. We’re well below the assessed value (which we ended up successfully appealing) and absolutely in the right price range. Any of the 90(!) or so parties who’ve been through have not mentioned that it’s too high. So there’s that.

2. Change Agents We really don’t want to do that, as we feel the man handling our listing has held many open houses, marketed the place throughout Canada and the US, and done just about everything we thought possible to try to sell this recently-renovated home. We didn’t search for an agent when we went to sell; it was he through whom we bought the condo we’re now in and he had helped sell our kids-in-law’s house in a day. We thought we were in good hands.

3. Get the Right Saint! I said initially that we had St. Anthony planted (upside down as instructed) in the front yard. Well, of course, it’s St. Joseph (bad Catholic, Erin!) but honestly these days, the patron saint of hopeless causes might be of more use. Hey St. Jude: take a sad house and make it better!

Many people suggested I attach the listing on Facebook and other socials to get more eyes on it. See, here’s where the personal and the private get murky. We’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to afford a house in this price range and I am reluctant to share what that price is. Now if you were to search realtor.ca and look up a home on Park Pacific Terrace in North Saanich, well I couldn’t stop you. But the last thing I need is some Bitter Betty coming after me for something. I have enough of that taste in my mouth right now already.

So, what to do? I realize these are what they used to call “first world problems” and I’m not moaning. Bridge financing is expensive and hard; we didn’t have to buy the condo when we saw it (it’s a rarity in the building that we liked) but we did have to get out of a house that now brought nothing but sadness after so much joy. (There’s the personal. But it’s no secret.) What we’re having so much trouble with – besides eating the monthly interest on that loan – is that the house we walked into and said, “THIS IS IT!” doesn’t seem to have grabbed anyone else the same way.

The 150 degree views of trees, ocean and mountains. The eagles and deer and rabbits (and occasionally, as you see here, Snowbirds) and the quiet. Maybe it’s the blessed isolation of the neighbourhood on what’s called a mountain (but with paved roads and mail delivery LOL). We’re out of ideas as to what it is. The market? A looming recession? Three pertinent elections? Who knows?

Would we move back? Not now that we’ve embraced walking across the street for groceries or almost anything else we need (except cataract surgery with the doctor our optometrist recommended). It’s finding the right people to start their own dreams – maybe immigrants to the States moving again, but to our beautiful country to practise medicine (as so many will be after their US visas expire July 1). Maybe another couple from Ontario who need to start their new next chapter.

A friend whose house just sold after listing at the same time as ours says, “There’s a bum for every seat.” I’m just hoping someone’s bum gets in gear and they find ours. The chairs are pointed at the ocean.

Have a great week and I’ll write to you next Monday after a long overdue visit to see my dad, and be reunited with my three sisters. The Coven collects – watch for strange cloud formations!