Erin's Journals

Just a thought… I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. [Gilda Radner]

Welcome to Wednesday and thanks for being here. Oh, it was heartbreaking to read so many people’s own stories of distancing from elderly parents in the comments section of my Facebook page in response to yesterday’s picture of my dad and lady friend in their masks. It just goes to show you that no matter what you’re going through or how very solitary you may feel, you are never alone.

One woman even said how badly she needed a hug, and got them online right there on the page. I’m happy to see that Facebook truly can be good for something other than people dumping all over the PM or explaining why we should have the rights to guns that eviscerate their targets. (If you’re that bad a hunter, maybe it’s not your thing?)

Anyway….

It’s all getting pretty confusing, isn’t it? Here in BC we’re hearing of a gradual loosening of the self-isolation rules, but how widely and when? While healthcare workers make up about a fifth of all COVID-19 cases, there are still calls here for more PPE; masks are being reused like never before. And yet…loosening.

I’m not getting it. But I’ll do as I’m told. There’s a very real risk of spreading the disease before it’s eradicated (which won’t happen until there’s a vaccine or it dies off as SARS did 17 years ago); how cautious will we have to be?

So many questions with much at stake.

We’re hearing the words “the new normal” a lot these days. With so much evolving, for a great many people, what they do will depend upon whom they believe and where they get their news. Heaven help us, the lunatic fringe has as loud a voice as anyone – sometimes louder – and it’s difficult even for the biggest skeptics among us to discern what’s true and what’s not.

More importantly, the question to ask is who is behind it, and why? Some people defy and deny advice and orders in a time like this because they either hate government, or hate this government. Logic be damned, I can’t stand the guy in Ottawa, they think.

Even a beautiful piece like the Heritage Minute put out to salute the 75th anniversary of Canada’s liberation of the Netherlands, posted this week, had comments from the hard-of-thinking calling the PM a “Nazi” over his stance on guns. If these pampered basement- dwellers had any idea of the challenges faced during real hardship, they’d eat their misspelled words.

Here’s that piece (with comments turned off, thankfully) and, yes, that is the voice of Peter Mansbridge.

Oh, and finally today, back to masks. Rob was completely delighted to find this link on the weekend and each day as I sit down to write and muse aloud, “Hmm…what is tomorrow’s journal going to be about?” he asks if I’ve shared his discovery yet!

So, without further ado, how to change the settings on your iPhone so that it will recognize you with a mask on. Here’s the link. There. Now my editor is happy, and so am I!

Back with you here tomorrow. Stay well.

Just a thought… Invisible threads are the strongest ties. [Friedrich Nietzsche]

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. So here are about 380 more of them, to go along with a special shot taken yesterday.

Today, as we heard of a friend’s mom passing away at age 87, not of COVID-19 exactly, but most likely, her son says, due to the loneliness of the disease’s accompanying enforced isolation in her seniors’ residence, we were reminded of the importance of connection.

Matthew had been to see his mom, who lives in Montreal while he resides in Toronto, just the day before. She wasn’t ailing, but was frail; just the same, her passing was not expected and she will be sorely missed by the friends and family she leaves behind. As always, the “at leasts” are for them to say.

It just reinforces that it’s not so much the material things that we long for these days, but the hugs and the smiles, the heartfelt relatedness that lets us know we were part of something bigger. Something solid.

When I last saw my dad, it was to celebrate his 86th birthday. He was – as he is now – in good spirits and healthy for his age. And as we read the daily news, we are grateful for those things, but especially for his companionship in the form of the “girl next door” where he lives: his sweetheart Dawna.

My two Kelowna sisters are responsible for this picture: Heather, who sewed masks (one with musical notes for Dad, the other in a tiny floral print for Dawna), and Leslie, who delivered them and took this shot.

No, the doggie in the window in that shot isn’t real, although I had to do a double-take, too! And that heart? I assume it’s a paper one stuck in the window, but you just never know, do you?

With the breadth of despair hitting so many families who have loved ones living in senior care, many of whom – like our friend – are having to plan long-distance funerals on Zoom these days, we count our blessings that fate was so kind to my dad in bringing him a late lifemate, especially during these times of such aloneness.

I hear from so many readers who are heartsick at not being able to visit their aged parents, many of whom don’t have the mental capacity to grasp what it is that’s keeping their families at bay. And we know that Dad is in good hands in so very many ways. How lucky we are!

And if everyone rushes back to “normal,” the last seven weeks will have been for naught. Will this be the hindsight that 2020 provides?

I’ll be back with you tomorrow.

Just a thought… In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. [Donny Miller]

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve friends like the ones who dropped off a chocolate Bundt cake (with icing and chocolate chips drizzled over the top), peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, homemade pasta sauce, plus dry pasta and fresh basil yesterday. But whatever it is, Rob and I will try to keep doing it!

We’d already promised them a drop-off of chicken cacciatore (plus dry pasta and a chunk of Parmesan wrapped with bows) but honestly – dessert, too? We’re not worthy!

Just seeing them in our driveway yesterday for a brief, distanced chat raised our spirits immeasurably. As usual, talk turned to masks and Rob and I remarked that our recent rare grocery outing saw us as two of only four people in the whole store wearing masks. I just don’t get this. And I’m going to keep wearing a mask so I don’t  “get it,” if you know what I mean.

I don’t care if we look as if we’re erring on the side of caution; I keep in mind that I wear mine not to catch it, but to prevent spreading it in the highly unlikely case that we have the virus. (Where would we get it – dog walks or freshly baked cookies? Doubtful.)

As voices around us in protest over self-isolation and the shutdown of so many sectors of our economy continue to get louder in their agitation – and don’t get me started with the COVIDiots with their guns in Michigan recently – I’m still going to withstand the online taunts that I’m some cowardly granny. I don’t give a rat’s behind what some stranger says.

I was gearing up (in my busy, busy head) for someone at the store to laugh at me or say something about my mask. I was prepared to lie, borrowing my sister’s illness and saying, “How do you know I don’t have lupus, a–hole?” just to see what their response would be. I don’t have it. But what if I did?

That imagined altercation was sparked by a conversation we had with our friend and my former radio pal Mike Cooper. He said he was in a store in Peterborough a few weeks back and was wearing a mask while trying to avoid a fellow shopper who was back-to-back with him in the aisle. The guy said to Mike, “You know the whole thing’s a hoax, right?”

I’ll give you a multiple choice option as to what you think Mike responded. Was it:

a) Please tell me what the source of your news is. I’m most interested.

b) Hmmm….I hadn’t though of that – you’re probably right!

c) Oh, f–k off, you f–king idiot.

If you guessed a) or b) – Welcome! I bet you’ll really enjoy meeting Mike one day.

Of course, the answer was c). And then – after we’d stopped laughing – Mike told us that, naturally, the guy was right behind him at the checkout!

I reminded Mike that – mask or not – he has some of the most distinctive eyebrows on the planet! And that is, if his voice didn’t give him away.

Then again, the guy he had the “discussion” with probably tunes into Rush Limbaugh anyway.

That’s part of what made Mike and me the team we were: such polar opposites. While I would have fretted for days about even asking someone why they’d comment on my mask if I had an auto-immune disease, Mike revelled in letting the expletives fly and land where they might.

I’d say we all need a little Mike in us, but then he’d take that entirely the WRONG WAY (while correcting me about the “little” part).

Hope you got a laugh as we all get through this together. And thanks for coming along for the ride.

Just a thought… Sometimes laughter or crying are the only options, and laughter feels better right now. [Veronica Roth, Divergent]

I hope you’re doing well on this Sunday. Even though we’re freelancers and many of our days are the same as the previous and next, our weekends are quieter and at a slower pace here; I don’t have as many auditions to dash into the studio for, no phone meetings or recordings to do. It’s quiet.

A bit of cleaning, some chicken cacciatore bubbling in the slow cooker, rain outside our windows, frothy cups of cappuccino, a video call with Colin and his family, a deer nibbling determinedly at whatever she can find growing in our backyard. Nothing here to complain about at all.

I thought that since I’m in a mellow mood today, I’d just take a little break from putting words in order, and share with you a video that was sent to me.

If you’re like me, you’ll notice that the videos come in in droves: inspiring, profane, funny and profound. These times are giving people the space to be creative and, more often than not, that’s a very good thing!

This video of a song about our Great White North is sweet and, oh, so Canadian. I thought you might enjoy it – Rob and I sure did, as have nearly a million people (as of this writing).

Take good care and I’ll be back here tomorrow. Oh, and see if you notice the hunky Aussie whose picture is shown where a Canadian playing a superhero should be!

Remember when you wished the weekend would never end…?

Thanks to totimes.ca for this little write-up about the song you’re about to enjoy.

“Up Here, in Canada” video features a clever Canadian song by BC musician, Clark W. The YouTube video released a few days ago already has over 21,000 views. It is no surprise as the song and a video provides humorous insight into who we are as Canadians. In fact, it could go down as one of the most defining Canadian-themed songs outside of our National Anthem and Bob and Doug Mackenzie’s “Twelve Days of Christmas.”

According to the musician and The Okanagan Mixing Studio that created the video, it is “dedicated to all the good people in Canada and all the things that make us uniquely Canadian” covering pretty much everything that makes Canada the greatest country in the world.

Just a thought… What’s a week-end? [Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey]

The question was posed by @ThatEricAlper this past week: what happened to you in grade school that you remember to this day?

There are a great many things. There were the awful occurrences of bullying (a girl named Susan who would wash my face with icy snow when I started grade 5 in Alberta, a girl with whom I eventually – and successfully – made the effort to become friends) and the wonderful moments like making my drama teacher pee herself laughing at a mime sketch.

But the answer that I gave was a misspelling that I’ve never forgotten.

It was the word “rhythm” which is ironic because that’s the failed birth control method my Catholic parents used, resulting in four children! I have never forgotten the order of the consonants in that word. Anyway, my lack of rhythm got me bumped from a spelling bee. Maybe it contributes to my crazy eye for misspellings to this day?

There was an incident that comes a close second, though, and it also comes from being a newbie: not just in a school, but in a country.

Miss Bridger was a spindly, humourless and brittle woman who taught one of the forms I attended (rather than grades) at Fox Hills Junior School in Bracknell, Berkshire, UK. At the time, I thought she was about 86, but she was likely in her forties.

I have good memories of those days that year, most of them strangely centered around food: little glass bottles of milk for each student, with a foil top that hid a delicious, thin layer of cream on top; ice cream that was served in a cylindrical paper roll at lunch. Custard (the Bird’s Eye type) that accompanied nearly every meal we had at school, and the mandatory learning of “Hot Cross Buns” on recorder.

But again it was a spelling test that stands out most clearly from those days in Miss Bridger’s class. As she paced the aisles between neat rows of desks, she dictated the words we were to spell.

“Aeroplane. Aeroplane.” (In my memory I hear her voice as that of Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey.)

I reluctantly rose my hand and said, “Could you repeat that?”

She said “aeroplane” again. I shook my head, not recognizing the word she had said.

“Don’t you have aeroplanes in Canidder?” (And yes, that’s how she said Canada. I remember it that clearly after all of these years.)

Of course, I spelled it arrow-plane and, you guessed it, I got it wrong. What we call “airplane” is called an “aeroplane” in the UK. Lesson learned.

So here’s the big question: after all this time, why do these moments stick out in our minds? Is it because the hot flash of humiliation that I felt that moment comes back in HD clarity? Perhaps.

I don’t remember the words I spelled correctly that day, but I am reminded of the wisdom of the Dalai Lama who said, “If you lose, don’t lose the lesson.”

Spell ya later. If you would like to add the word that caught you up, please join the conversation at facebook.com/erindavispage.

Talk to you here tomorrow!