40-year-old letter gets an update

Dear Aunt Margaret,

Guess it’s been a while since I wrote to you, and a very long while since you received that one. It must have been 1967 or ‘68, because I was in Grade 2 then and Mrs. Green was our teacher. I suppose an update is in order.

I was playing grass hockey here when I first arrived, but the team disbanded and I haven’t taken it up again. I play tennis on Sundays if I’m not working. We are going skiing soon.

I went to California many times, and enjoyed it very much.

The weather has been very, very bad. It is raining today.

I have finished my arithmatic and submitted my taxes, but get the feeling nobody else has. The German tax office has sent me a request for more money.

In grass hockey I played defense.

Our practises were on Friday night. Most of the other players smoked, something I could never figure out.

Gordon doesn’t have a paper route any more. Now he plays with trains.

I don’t know where Doug Hoodicoff or Mike Horyza or William Whiteside have ended up, but I’d like to thank them for helping little kids have some fun.

Bruce has many customers, maybe 80 or 70. He’s very, very busy these days.

love,

Ian

© 2007 lettershometoyou

Desperation, courage, dreams of Lotus Land

Dear all,

An American blogger based in Cologne whose writings I’ve only recently started to follow in any depth came out with something today that made me think hard about why I left Canada. In his Karnaval 2007 entry he says, “anyone who leaves the known for the unknown has to be a little desperate, a bit brave and a little bit of a dreamer, and it is the dreamer part of the equation that interests me.”

Is that why I left? Was I a bit desperate? Was I a bit brave? Was I just a dreamer?

Just the other day I got into a taxi and after a while the guy says to me, “hey, you’re not from around here, are ya? You from Denmark?

Then I tell him that I grew up in this little town just up the road from Vancouver half-way to the tiny little ski hill where they are going to hold the 2010 Olympics and if you’ve seen the movie Cousins or dozens of other films and TV shows you’ll know the road. It’s cut into the side of a fjord and incredibly beautiful!

Having already launched into my schpiel I go on to tell him that the mountains plunge straight into the ocean, the town where I went to High School is right at its head and calls itself the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada because you’ve got the ocean and rivers and lakes and a 300-metre-high waterfall and hiking and fishing and camping and mountain-climbing and mountain biking and kayaking and windsurfing and sailing and lots of wildlife such as whales and bears and more bald eagles than in Alaska! Even if you live in the city you can be on your windsurfer in the morning, get bored, pack up your gear, strap the skis on the roof and be skiing a half-hour later overlooking the city. Hey, they call it Lotus Land!

As I’m saying all this I can see out of the corner of my eye he’s looking at me like he’s picked up a REAL LOSER for this fare, boy, cuz why would anybody with the birthright to stay in such a place pick up and leave to go live in what he called a dump like Germany? By then of course the ride was over and I never got a chance to say much more than, “cuz I just NEEDED to…”

Canada may be a magnet for people from all over the world and the West Coast the place many born in Canada dream of living one day, but I always thought I was destined for somewhere else. Though I grew up enjoying most of everything this treasured jewel has to offer, it wasn’t me. We grew up with the sons and daughters of miners and loggers, pulp- and sawmill workers: solid, salt-of-the-earth people who would go out of their way to rip the shirt of their back to help you, and then give you their back.

Not all of their kids grew up to be miners or loggers or millworkers, but many did, some starting out by lying about their age so they could get summer jobs at those high union wages. Once out of school, they were there full-time. I admire them immensely, but it wasn’t a life I saw myself leading. Teaching? Nope. I neglected to consider all those little brats running around. Journalism? Great, but by the time I figured out that’s what I wanted to do, from my vantage point in Sherbrooke, Quebec I saw myself moving on to Flin Flon, Manitoba, and then, if I got really, really lucky, Winnipeg and maybe even Edmonton. Nothing against any of those places, but by the time you’ve worked your way through them, you’re 40 and frost-bitten.

So if there was desperation and courage in my decision to pack it all in and drive a fully loaded car clear across North America - twice - once to leave Vancouver for Montreal, and then back to Vancouver again four years later to sell everything before flying to Hong Kong - it was grounded more in a desire to jump-start my life to the next level than anything else. It stirred up the pot, forced me to tackle new challenges, surmount new difficulties, make mistakes, fall down and get back up again.

Then I look at the boatloads of desperate and courageous Africans and Asians who spend their life savings to make their way through perilous seas, risking their lives in leaky tubs to arrive in the Canary Islands or Lampedusa, hungry and drawn with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and no guarantee they won’t be sent from this far-flung toehold on European affluence back to the life with no future they left behind and I think: not only do they have 10 times the courage and desperation, they have their dreams of a better life, too. We all do, wherever we’re from, wherever we’re going.

© 2007 lettershometoyou

Talking about condoms with a nine-year-old

The German education system is not concerned with character-building or instilling moral fibre. Instead the aim is to load you with qualifications which will earn you respect and promotion in the marketplace.

Dear Brothers of the frozen wastes,

That’s taken from the Xenophobe’s Guide to the Germans, my Amazon gift to you of some Birthdays Past and quite possibly the thinnest coffee-table book in the world.

I was reminded of it the other day talking to your little red-haired niece.

____________

(ring-ring-ring, opens door) Hi Sweetie! How was school?

Hi Daddy! Look what we got to keep at school today. (flops wrinkly yellow condom onto kitchen table) Wanna try it on?

Uhh…no. (trying to think quickly and failing miserably) Actually, as you probably learned, once you roll it out like that you can’t put it on any more, because it will never fit right and so it won’t work properly.

I know that! We learned lots about these things today.

Like what? (bracing myself)

Well, they make your fingers smell! (shoves fingers under my nose)

Ewwww. I know, I hate that smell. But what did you learn about them? What good are they for, anyway?

Well, if you have sex with someone, you can catch a bad disease if you don’t use one.

Yeah, that can happen. What else?

The lady can have a baby.

You’re right about that, too. You know, you’re lucky you’re growing up in Germany. When I was a kid, they didn’t talk to us about this stuff in achool at all until we were about 12. And even then, they had the boys and girls go into separate rooms. They showed us guys a film called, “Boy to Man.” The girls got to see “Girl to Woman.”

Sounds boring.

Well, it wasn’t boring really, just kind of weird. Why couldn’t people be open and honest about things like they are here? You could tell the teacher was uncomfortable talking to us about it. So was your Grandpa when he came to tell me what we used to call “the birds and the bees.” He just gave me a couple of books, said I should read them, and if I had any questions, I could always ask. And then he sort of walked away like he didn’t want me to ask, ever. I remember one book was called, “What Teenagers Want to Know.”

(pause for a while, wrinkly condom still lying on the table)

So guess what’s the only think I’ve ever stolen from a store in my whole life.

Daddy!! You STOLE something from a store? How come?

Cuz I was too embarrassed to buy it.

I don’t know.

You’re looking at it.

A condom? Why did you steal a condom?

Well, actually, it was a little package of three. They would have cost me all of about 95 cents, but in the little town I grew up in, everyone knew everybody else. The man behind the counter in the drug store knew me, knew my parents, knew my girlfriend, knew my girlfriend’s parents, everyone. We knew we were going to want to use them, I just didn’t know where to get them and I was too embarrassed to ask a friend or one of your uncles to buy them for me. I was just a 16-year-old kid, you know.

God, that sounds old.

Yeah, we thought we were too.

© 2007 lettershometoyou

Advice column debuts, world stops spinning

Dear Bruce,

You might have noticed that this space has changed somewhat since the last time you opened the envelope. I’ve added something I’ll admit is blatantly derivative but what the hell. I intend to have fun with my advice column even if I do have to invent the queries myself. The name you will of course recognise as my nickname in High School combined with a word which you as a student of German will immediately recognise, all wrapped up in a loose anagram of the name of that uptight biddy whose widely syndicated column we used to chortle over every day in the Living section of the Vancouver Sun.

She, by the way, was one of the reasons my customers on that route I took over from you often had their paper delivered a few minutes later than they might have been. On days it wasn’t pouring with rain or if I wasn’t rushing through to get home to play street hockey before nightfall and if their damn dog was tied up, I would take a break on Greenlee’s porch and read her column. Funny uncles? Our uncles were funny, but they weren’t that funny…

I still do something similar to that today. Der Spiegel lands on my desk once a week with a crashing thud, but instead of plodding through the latest ups n downs of German Political Life and the Sorry State of the World, I immediately turn to the left-hand column on the back page for the latest reader-submitted nonsense culled from various German news and advertising sources. Something like Jay Leno’s headlines thingy, and often just as hilarious. If I find a gem or two in the next little while, I’ll let you know.  Melanie, tell me about railway tracks and Pierre Elliot Trudeau.  Thank you.

Headlines I still remember from paper-boy days were: Ike Dead, Soviets invade Czechs, Man Walks on Moon, Freighter Rams Ferry in Active Pass (the ship was named after a poet!) They Did It (’72 Canada -Russia series) and Nixon Resigns, the latter two of which I found most satisfactory indeed. Do you recall the four of us visiting the press room at 2215 Granville Street Vancouver 9, BC at the invitation of the circulation manager? The Vietnam War was still raging because I recall reading wire stories on it as they rattled off the Sun’s telex printer.

You’ll also notice the page entitled En francais, s’il vous plaît. (Apologies, I can’t find the frickin’ cedille on this laptop.) Anyway, it’s something I’ll be writing occasionally as an outlet for a part of me that hasn’t had much to work on these past 10 years living on the Teutonic side of the Rhine. It is in no way to be construed as exclusionistique, mon frère. You can even contribute! I know Gordon will: Quelle heure est-il maintenant, ou pas?

love,

Ian

© 2007 lettershometoyou

Talking about death (and life) with a nine-year-old

Dear Mom,

So if you’ve read my most recent letter already, keep going, otherwise scroll down to read that one first! K. said she really enjoyed talking to you the other day on the phone and was sorry that getting your granddaughter off to school cut things short a bit. I was in the salt mines at the time as she probably told you.

This is the conversation we had on the way back from her voltigieren (horse vaulting) one day.

__________________

Daddy, why did Grandpa get burned?

We don’t say “burned” in English, sweetie-bear. We say “cremated.” Can you ask the question again with the word “cremated?”

Why did Grandpa get cremated?

Because he wanted it that way. That’s what I want to happen to me, too. I want to go out in a blaze of glory.

When you get cremated, do you put the ashes in the ground?

You can put them in the ground, or you can scatter them to the wind, or let them fall into a river, anything - it’s your choice. Then you can put a plaque in a cemetery if you like, with the person’s name, the dates he was born and died, and a little saying maybe. Do you remember driving for three days to get to the very middle of Canada almost to be in the little town where Grandpa’s ashes are buried?

Yeah, that was a long way.

(something else said here, but I don’t recall what)

Was Penny cremated?

No, Penny was lowered into the ground in a coffin. I remember seeing her before, though. I went with your two uncles and your Grandpa. Grandma was too devastated to go along. She knew she was dead, she didn’t want to see the body.

What’s “devast… …”

It means she was very, very, sad. She was sad for a very long time.

Did you take a picture?

No, I didn’t take a picture! There are some things you don’t take a picture of, some places where you should never bring a camera, and that’s one of them. It wouldn’t have been dignified.

What’s that?

It would mean that you wouldn’t have shown respect for the specialness of the person who died.

It’s too bad we’ll never see her baby.

That’s true, it is too bad. But maybe there is a way to find her. If I put her story out on the internet, maybe someone, somewhere out there will see it and recognise it as her own. I’ve often thought of trying to find her, but it just seemed so hopeless. Besides, unless you’re the mother of the baby that was given up for adoption, they don’t just let anybody look into records to try to find people. It’s funny though. The world is very big, but at the same time, very small. I might have been sitting beside her for hours in an airplane, and never known who she was. Or she might have been living on another street in the same city.

When you’re trying to find someone, the world is very big, and when you’re trying to get away from someone, the world is very small.

Hey, you got that right! I wish I had a pen so I could write that down! I’m going to write that down as soon as we get home.

(pause)

Did she want to have a baby?

No, she didn’t want to have a baby, but she made a mistake. As we’ve told you, if you have sex with someone and you aren’t careful, you can have a baby, or you can get diseases.

But why did she give her baby away? Didn’t she want to keep it?

No, she was too young for that. She had no home to bring it back to, she didn’t have a job…

What did she look like?

I don’t know. None of us ever saw here. But maybe one day.

____________

love,

Ian

© 2007 lettershometoyou

Talking about death with a four-year-old

Dear Mom,

I’m writing this in a time zone ahead of yours so technically it is still your little red-haired granddaughter’s 10th birthday. I have to catch a train in a couple of hours to go meet everyone out in the country for a little celebration, so I’m going to have to do this on the fly. There are lots of things to tell you, but for now they’ll just have to wait for another letterhometoyou.

The other day I was going through some old notes and papers I’d put aside, scribblings of what she said, places we’ve been, talks we’ve had. I came across this and just had to laugh, because I remembered it while we were having a similar conversation just the other day. Later I’ll send that one and you can compare. This is dated April 2, 2001.

love,

Ian

____________

Daddy, when you die, you turn into a skeleton, right?

Yes, that’s right.

Grandpa died, right Dad?

Yes, he died.

Why did he die?

Well, first of all, we are all going to die one day. Your Grandpa was old, but he was also very sick. He had a disease that made his brain not work right. He couldn’t walk anymore, and soon, he couldn’t even eat anything. So he died.

What kind of clothes was he wearing when he died, outside clothes, or inside clothes?

Well, I guess he was wearing inside clothes. He died in hospital. Why does it matter?

Because if you die, you’re really cold, right?

Well, I don’t know. Nobody really knows what it feels like when you die.

But when you die, you become a skeleton, right? The flesh goes away and then you’re a skeleton.

Right. It all goes back to dust. But that’s not going to happen for a very, very long time. Do you know why the flesh goes away?

Why?

Because bugs eat it. Many bugs. Many, many bugs eat all the flesh. And when there isn’t any more, they go somewhere else. But the bugs only eat dead flesh. They wouldn’t try to eat you or me when we’re alive.

But what happens when the bugs die?

Well, I guess even smaller bugs eat the other bugs.

Dying is really boring, because you’re dead for a long, long time, and you don’t do anything!

Well, I don’t know about that. Some people believe that after you die, you become another person. And other people believe that after you die, you can become another animal. In another life. So they say that’s why you should be good and kind to all living things, because it could be someone you once knew. Like Grandpa.

(Very long, thoughtful pause)

Yeah, but when you die, you become a skeleton, right?

© 2007 lettershometoyou