Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Right now it feels as though we have no present…. We have a past and we have a future and right now we’re in some sort of transit lounge and there isn’t any connection between the past and the future. [Arundhati Roy]

Welcome in.

On 60 Minutes Sunday, we watched an interview with a writer from Delhi, India. Her name is Arundhati Roy and she has written about COVID-19 for the Financial Times.

What she said resonated with me so clearly that I stopped writing my journal about Jenn Casey, and asked Rob to pause the PVR so that we could take it in. She compared where we all are now in this COVID-19 limbo to being in a transit lounge. And I thought how perfect that was.

Here’s how I construed her remarks: our flight has arrived and we’re in a hub – say, Calgary or Frankfurt. We’ve landed and we’re waiting, but the departure board is flickering; we don’t know when or where the next flight is leaving. And so we find a nice corner, plug in our devices and get a coffee to wait this out.

At first, the experience of being in a strange place with just our few fellow travellers is a little exciting. It’s novel to have access to all of the snacks, the WiFi, the magazines and the freedom to do nothing at all while we wait. How often do we get an opportunity such as this?

One hour turns to another. The chairs that were once comfortable, we start to notice, have tears and crumbs in them and don’t feel as welcoming as they once were. Our travel mates are starting to wear on us a little and could use a change of wardrobe. (I’ve no doubt they’re thinking the same of me.)

We start to fantasize about where the next plane is going to take us. At first, we imagine faraway attractions: the gleaming Taj Mahal perhaps, or the winding well-trodden streets of glorious Venice. Reaching into a pocket, we reassuringly pat our passports. Soon, my friend, soon, we think.

Then, as one day blends into another, you realize your sleep was restless and your waking hours are spent pacing the lounge. Has the carpet always been this worn? As we grasp at hopes that are starting to fade, our thoughts turn, not to exotic destinations, but to more familiar ones: perhaps the comfort of the world that we called our lives. The routines and the things we took for granted and yearned to escape as we anticipated adventures worth writing about and experiences that were new. Our existence as it once was is beginning to become a little hazy and we question why we ever took it for granted.

Finally, as we realize the Departures board was unplugged long ago, the days turn into weeks, then months. Will we ever get out of here? We’ve run out of questions to ask and know we would be told “we’ll make an announcement if there are any new developments.”

We’re surrounded in this desolate travel lounge by the same familiar faces day after day after day and, although they belong to people dear to us, our thoughts turn to other people whose hands we want to hold, with whom we long to share a meal. The friends and family whose arms around us make us feel at home because they hold a piece of our hearts – that part of the beating jigsaw puzzle that makes our hearts whole again.

Enough! Some travelers are pounding at the doors, demanding that anyone pull up a plane to take them away, so they can have the vacations they paid for. Get to the adventures they crave. Return to the jobs that are feeding their families.

Outside the lounge, a few shuttles are pulling up, their doors open, but the impatient drivers won’t tell anyone where they’re going and what price we must pay. “Come with us!” they shout. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. There are no roads, but we know the way. And it’s your right to be where you want and live how you want!”

A murmur arises among those of us who have tried to be patient. Do we go with them and take our chances, believing that this was all for nothing, or do we wait in these uncomfortable chairs for word that we’ll be traveling safely together some time in the future? What if the people in charge are wrong and the rogue drivers, ready to take the angriest and most anxious of our fellow passengers away, are right?

We back away from the mob fighting to get through the doors marked EXIT and return to our seats in the transit lounge.

We will wait because that’s what we’re being told to do and we’re trusting those who care for our well-being to send us to the right departure gate when it’s safe for us to go. Does that make us less courageous or perhaps wiser than those who are jamming the exits?

Time will tell. And it seems that’s all we have now – time.

I’ll be back with you here tomorrow. And in the meantime, as I wrote this today (and thanks for sharing this standstill journey with me) I was distracted by this sight outside, above our deck, so I shot a short video. Enjoy. Take a little of his spirit with you today.

Just a thought… There are memories that time does not erase. Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable. [Cassandra Clare]

She was one of us.

A young woman named Jennifer Casey died yesterday: a Halifax native who was part of a team of nine Canadian Forces Snowbirds, bringing hope and smiles to a nation in need of a reason to look up – literally.

A year not even halfway through has been rife with tragedy. From the crash of a plane in Tehran in January that claimed the lives of dozens of Canadians and others who had ties to our country, to a horrific, violent swath cut by a madman who took 22 lives in Nova Scotia; it’s been hard for us all to catch our collective breath.

Even taking that much-needed breath has been challenging: a mysterious and deadly virus hit the world and paralyzed our own country, causing some 5800 deaths here in Canada and infecting tens of thousands of others.

Just last month, our Canadian Armed Forces suffered the loss of six of their members, when a helicopter crashed off the coast of Greece. We paid our respects at a distance; people were asked not to line the Highway of Heroes from Trenton to Toronto – a tradition to honour our country’s fallen servicemen and women – so as not to gather during a pandemic.

And then, yesterday’s tragedy. The CF Snowbirds lost a team member. And so much more.

She was one of us.

Taking off from Kamloops in BC’s beautiful but cloud-laden interior yesterday, Jenn and the rest of the team were coming over to Vancouver Island’s YQQ – CFB Comox – to reposition. Like countless Canadians, many of whose feeds I watched with glee to read of the Snowbirds’ passing over the GTA on Mother’s Day, Rob and I were excited at the prospect of watching our red and white team perhaps mark Victoria Day weekend near Victoria!

I had hoped that our view of the city’s airport would afford us some good shots to share with you as we, too, were uplifted and thrilled at the thought of watching these small Tutor jets as they roared over our island. And then the news.

We held our breath, waiting to hear if all had indeed ejected safely; we saw video footage that clearly showed someone getting out as the jet nose-dived towards a neighbourhood in Kamloops.

Thoughts ran through my mind all day; the footage I saw was all too eerily reminiscent of the Snowbird crash that was seared into my brain from childhood when I saw one go down at CFB Trenton. My dad, an Armed Forces pilot at the time, tried to turn us away as he saw what was happening: a crash that resulted in the death of Capt. Lloyd Waterer, aged 24.

We never talked about it as a family over a quiet dinner that night. The sick, sad feelings that we all shared I now realize were overshadowed by the fear that I’m sure my mom must have experienced. There, but for the Grace of God….

Yesterday, the pilot, as it turns out, did eject safely, and according to @CFSnowbirds, did not suffer life-threatening injuries. But Jennifer Casey was not as fortunate.

Although details – some true, some blurry – have come in, I know you’ll have been updated on what happened (as much as we know) by the time you read this.

The sadness of hearing of the fatal crash yesterday was compounded as we learned that Jenn was a former journalist, a one-time member of my Rogers radio family. (Jenn also worked in Belleville, where I got my start. Radio is a small world, and one that is feeling much sadness today, too, I can guarantee you.) She was one of us.

That picture reminds me of the last shot taken of our daughter before her maternity leave; she would not return to broadcasting. Jenn, who had a degree in journalism, had joined the Armed Forces in 2014 and become public affairs officer for our aerobatics team. Having had a chance to fly with the Snowbirds back in the early 90s, I’d have leapt at an opportunity to do their PR. 

photo courtesy Kelowna Capital News

My heart aches for her family, for her colleagues in military and civilian life, and I join your hands in support for them, along with all of us who found or sought the joy that Operation Inspiration was meant to spark.

We grieve for those in Halifax and its surrounding areas who have already suffered so severely this year, and lost another of their own brave women, 23 year-old Abbigail Cowbrough, in the crash of that Canadian Forces helicopter off Greece.

When we ask how much sadness one province – one country – can take, we are coming to fear the answer these days because the tragedies keep mounting. Even a cross-country display of hope and optimism in the form of nine little jets has been hit with disaster.

202o has brought so much sadness and devastation that stopping to take it all in is a heavy task. And yet we must. Rest in Peace, Captain Jennifer Casey. You had the guts to follow your dreams and I hope you knew through your gifts you helped make Canada a happier place, at a time we needed it most.

She was one of us.

Just a thought… Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Really time is your soul mate. [Bob Dylan]

Well hello, Friday. This has been a week. If the tone of my journals has been a little less than cheery, I thank for you putting up with me. Like so many of us, I’m feeling the daily ups and downs – sometimes in the same day, several times over – as we wait, watch, wonder and worry.

Of course, the days of Sunday and Monday were especially cruel, and I had put my hopes in a big sign from Lauren. You see, I heard from a NYC agency on Friday that I’d been chosen (just by sending an audition for another product – I didn’t even get the option to read their script) for a big national job.

The product was milk, a word that Lauren would say in a funny voice to Colin. The agent was Brooke. This had to be, right? They even asked what days I was available for a directed session over the phone. So yes, all signs pointed to good things. A real morale booster and something to look forward to.

Until…Monday. That’s when I wrote to the person who’d first contacted me and I asked if I should still be reserving some time for the next day and they gave me the phrase every performer dreads: “The client has decided to go in another direction.” I won’t lie – I cried, which isn’t typical of me.

I cried tears of disappointment, but mostly anger at myself for believing and for setting my sights on something. It’s hard to get your hopes up for anything these days as cancellation upon cancellation clears your calendar, but I had gone ahead and crossed my fingers. I even excitedly told a friend about it. She understands this business better than anyone, and she knew how disappointing it was. She’s been there.

Instead of wallowing (a word I hate), I guess for a little bit I was channeling those feelings into something akin to anger. Frustration. Fed up-edness.

None of this is important in the big picture when so many people are battling for their lives or helping to fight to keep others alive. I try not to let images of a full bar of unmasked partiers in Wisconsin on a Wednesday night get me down, as people just throw any caution to the wind so they can get together; I remember the Serenity Prayer and the wisdom in knowing what I can affect, what I can change, what I can’t.

But I can change my attitude. I can find the joy in a daily dog walk among lilac blossoms that I check for bees, then bury my face in to inhale their sweetness. I can seek the company of a wonderful group of women via Zoom, whose book club meeting I invited myself to (since they were discussing my Mourning Has Broken) and rejoice in the laughter, the frank and open discussion and the connection that we have all been missing so very much lo these past two months. Thanks, Sue, and everyone who made me feel so welcome!

(And I am totally up to doing these for your group, too – just email me. I’ll check my, er, schedule…yep. Wide open.)

I can be grateful for a full fridge, friends in my inbox and texts, an elective but necessary girl-stuff surgery that’s been rescheduled for June 11, just three weeks after it was initially slated, and for the knowledge that my family here in BC and in Ottawa are safe.

And I can also let my heart leap with happiness at being able to watch via FaceTime as our sweet Colin said good-bye to his first baby tooth.

Brooke let us be a part of that and Colin was brave – no tears – and wonderful. He is such a good kid. He’s understandably rambunctious these days, itching to get out and play and burn off some of that energy. But he’s also knee-deep in Toy Story and we’re loving watching that from afar, from donning his Woody cowboy hat to flying his Buzz Lightyear that Grama and Grandad Banana (us) sent him this week.

There’s so much to focus on when we can see through the clouds. As Oprah said in a clip I shared on Twitter this week to a graduating student, she loves flying because as the plane takes off through the clouds, in just moments, you see the blue skies above them – the sky that was always there.

Don’t forget that tomorrow at 8 pm ET all major US networks are airing President Barack Obama’s new graduation address to those whose ceremonies have been cancelled or postponed by COVID-19. I know I’ll be watching. And feeling terribly wistful. And yet…optimistic. There are actually three speeches being delivered (and with special guests). Details are below. Check your local listings for tomorrow’s broadcast, if that interests you.

Sometimes we forget that above the gloom there is sunshine. It’s always there in our days, even if we can’t see it. And that life is good.

We can do this.

I’ll be back with you Victoria Day Monday. I’m going to keep posting on Facebook on Saturdays and Sundays, but I’m cutting back from 7-days-a-week journals if that’s okay with you, as life returns, just the slightest bit, to normal. I hope you’ll understand.

Just a thought… When arguing with fools, don’t answer their foolish arguments or you will become as foolish as they are. [Proverbs 26:4 NLT]

Thank you for your feedback on yesterday’s journal on my Facebook page. I got one tweet from a woman in the US who told me my message “wasn’t very Christian.”

Do not get me started on how completely lacking in brotherly love the whole “me me me” movement is in the time of a pandemic. But to cut her some slack, clearly she had me confused with the Erin Davis who is a Christian author. Goodness, girl, don’t come for me if you don’t even know who you’re actually writing to.

For the record, I’m not Miles Davis’s son, Erin Davis, either.

It makes me grateful not to share my name with a serial killer. I can’t imagine how someone who is unfortunate enough to have the same name as someone famous, infamous or notorious puts up with the grief or teasing they get. (Hands up, all of you Tom Joneses out there.)

Actually, I can imagine, since our dear friend Helen’s grandson is named Mike Harris, and he was teased mercilessly at school (including by one of his teachers) during the years that his namesake was Premier of Ontario. 

When I was growing up, there wasn’t an Erin for miles around. My grandfather, who had Irish roots (as opposed to my dark ones these days), heard the name Erin on the radio and suggested it to my parents. I like to joke that, being their third kid, they were out of inspiration.

But I’ve grown to be grateful for a fairly unusual name that actually increased in popularity in the 80s thanks to Erin Moran (Happy Days) and Erin Gray (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century). And who can forget Erin Murphy, who played Tabitha on Betwitched in the 60s? Oh, you did? Okay. Moving on then….

Many of us grew up with the consistent disappointment of not getting to buy placemats, key chains or door signs with our names on them. Then, with the popularity of names with a variety of spellings (how many times has my niece Meaghan had her named spelled Megan, Meghan, Meghann or any of the myriad other ways that lovely name can be conjured), that ship sailed, big time.

But there’s a name today that has been besmirched (yes! I said besmirched!) by some very negative associations: Karen.

The name has been around officially since 1881, but became popular in the 1940s. It continued to rise into the top 10 names list for the next two decades. In fact, in 1965 the name Karen was third most popular in the US.

But here we are 55 years later and Karen has come to mean something completely different. The woman caught on camera having an absolute meltdown about her wait at a Red Lobster in the US, which trended yesterday, was nicknamed a “Karen” even though, if you watch the clip, she gives a completely different name. Ah, but that doesn’t matter anymore.

Someone who calls the cops because she sees people she deems suspicious (of a different skin colour, always) doing something completely innocuous is called a Karen. A meme that arose from entitled white women. 

The person with the severe hairdo who demands to speak to the manager and is a Facebook-posting antivaxxer? Same.

(NOTE: I feel bad if you’re reading this for the first time and hadn’t had the experience of seeing the whole Karen thing going around. You’re probably lucky; as is so often the case on social media, it may not be worth your time or effort to look into it and you were possibly better off not hearing about it. But there’s a very good chance you will now notice it as a poke or a punchline somewhere. Here’s a link to a story in The Atlantic, if you’d like to read more.)

It bugs me that the name is being thrown around in the worst ways, the way #OKBoomer was meant just to say, “Your opinion doesn’t count, so just sit down” to anyone who might be, like, older than they are.

#OKBoomer doesn’t bother me. I couldn’t care less what someone who can’t use his or her words thinks.

But Karen? That’s a different ballgame. It’s not fair.

Sure, it’s not the first time that a person’s name has become a punchline. Just ask any Dick. It’s been going on for decades (likely centuries – a little digging into Shakespeare would probably bear that out).

But I’m peeved about it because a very sweet and dear cousin, who’s only in her thirties, is named Karen. And she couldn’t possibly be a better person. She is none of those things that her name has been associated with. She’s lovely and level-headed, smart and kind and, with two little ones and another on the way, I know that our Karen has many more important concerns than her name as a meme in 2020. Plus, she’d laugh and say, “Whatever.”

And let’s face it, so do we all.

Yes, YES, YES!!! there are a lot more things to worry about today than some pop cultural slights that are happening, but with any kind of luck, this will soon fade back into the troll cave these things come from. But that doesn’t make me wrong for carin’ about Karen.

And here’s a mean twist: the aforementioned grandson Mike Harris? His mother’s name? Karen. 

Back with you here tomorrow.

Just a thought… Nursing is not for everyone. It takes a very strong, intelligent and compassionate person to take on the ills of the world with passion and purpose and work to maintain the health and well-being of the planet. No wonder we’re exhausted at the end of the day! [Donna Wilk Cardillo]

Here we are, smack-dab in the middle of Nurses’ Week in Canada, and one day after International Nurses’ Day. Sorry I missed yesterday as an opportunity to tip my cap (which I remember mom wearing, that starched, velvet-banded nurse’s cap) to those women and men who are working tirelessly – I won’t say fearlessly – for the health of us all these days. And a huge hug to their families for the sacrifices and the worry they endure every single day.

I can only begin to imagine the fury and tears that were felt by healthcare workers locked behind the windows of a Vancouver hospital Monday as a group of COVIDiots stood outside in the ambulance bay, loudly protesting closures and isolation due to this virus that, so far, has claimed over 5,000 lives in Canada and some 290,000 worldwide.

The misinformation that is rampant among the foil-and-MAGA-hatted morons on our side of the border, as well as theirs, is just unbelievable. They swallow in one gulp absurd theories just because someone posted a video. They call Bill Gates a monster because he’s trying to help humanity. Shame on a billionaire for doing that! Vaccines? He’s Hitler!

This man has done more to help the planet through his work to eradicate polio than anyone I can think of in this century. Yet those people, who, in earlier days, would be locked inside rooms with padded walls, are intent on convincing us all that he’s evil. We’re all being injected with tracking devices or worse. I mean…I can’t even fathom what kind of a mind invents this insanity, never mind follows, retweets and shares it.

I’m fed up with so much these days – and I know you probably are, too – including the uncertainty of when to get out, what to do, why people aren’t wearing masks and the myriad questions that are swirling through our heads every single day. But I have no time and zero tolerance for people who are actively putting others at risk.

Children have been relatively unscathed by COVID-19, but now there are bizarre manifestations of the disease in younger people (and this isn’t from some website that makes the National Enquirer look like the New England Journal of Medicine).

There’s so much about this virus that we just don’t know and yet people are screaming about getting their hair cut. Damn it, I’m at the point where I want to shave my head, but I’m not going to picket and protest and show the world just how little I care about the well-being of other people.

I’m sorry, this was supposed to be about nurses. I guess, in a way, it is: these men and women who have upended their lives – and given them, in some cases – so that we can be helped and protected from a virus for which there is no vaccine, no timeline and no certainty.

My own mom lived with hepatitis after getting a needle stick during her career as an RN; she never talked about it. The only time I ever heard her say anything that even sounded like a complaint was at the end of a long shift at a nursing home, when her back ached from lifting patients.

That was who she was: keep calm and carry on and just do your job.

But I know if she was here today she, like me, would be wearing a mask but no filters when it comes those who call us “fearful grannies” as they take up the anonymity-cloaked weapons of their crumb-covered keyboards or greasy smart (pfffft – yeah, smart) phones from deep in the safety of mom’s basement.

Those intrepid ferrets who are out there with their big, scary weapons strapped to their concave chests, who are in reality white terrorists led in spirit by a mealy-mouthed cotton candy-haired liar who is calling on Americans to be “warriors” when he himself had five deferments from military service due to the bone spurs which – you can look it up – seemed to hit an alarming number of privileged young men in the 1960s.

In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m fed up. And I know with every fibre of my being that my mother would be, too.

We could do all nurses a big favour and follow what the grownups in charge tell us to do. Our feelings and some idiot politicians’ “instincts” don’t supersede or overpower a deadly virus, no matter how worried they are about their “numbers.”

There will be a second round of deadly infections (in my opinion) and it appears that everyone who is demanding that other people get back to work – whether it’s to cram into deadly meat-processing plants or return to a factory that makes luxury cars in California – should be denied the compassionate and dedicated care of the nurses we salute this week.

They won’t be; that’s not who nurses are.

Just add that to the long list of reasons why I don’t have the right stuff to be a nurse. And if you do, you amaze me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.