Back from British Columbia

But still heavily jet-lagged.   A couple of photos from my hometown are about all I can muster right now.

Now taking bets as to when this old shed finally gives in:

And one from around Kamloops, where my mother went to school during the war:

99 + 1 too many things about me

One of the things that used to hold me back from starting a blog was the thought of having colleagues read it, slide on over to me and say, hey, you are one bizarre individual… Then one day I said what the hell, I’ll start a blog, and they can read it all they like. I just won’t reveal too much about me.

Now after a year or so of posting, I figure they know as much as you do, so here goes:

1. See that photo at the top of this blog? Add a bunch of overhead cables and telephone wires, and that was our family’s view out of the front window when I was growing up.
2. When I was born, I was driven home from hospital in a banana box placed on the floorboards of an old Austin.
3. My elder brother wanted me to be a girl. I know because he wrote that in a letter to my mother right after I was born. I don’t hold it against him.
4. Had I been born a girl, my name would be Fiona.
5. I’m glad I’m not a girl.
6. My earliest memory is of me standing up looking through the bars of the crib, that same brother coming in and saying, “there he is.”
7. I don’t know if that was a dream or not, but I can see it clearly.
8. I was only three years and eight months old when JFK was shot, but I remember where I was and what was going on around me.
9. I’m the youngest of four children.
10. My sister, the family’s first born, was killed in a level crossing accident when I was seven. She was 18. Damn that Canadian Pacific Railway anyway.
11. They say she was like my second mother, constantly taking care of me as a baby.
12. I have always missed her. 
13. Not for what might have been, because my memories of her are vague, but for what never could be.
14. For the past six generations, my family has been afflicted with a hereditary skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa.
15. I consider myself to be very lucky, because I don’t have it, nor can I pass it on.
16. We didn’t have a television until I was nearly eight. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for holding out that long.
17. I grew up during the Vietnam war.
18. I’ve been fascinated with that country my whole life.
19. I started delivering newspapers when I was eight. I’d often read ours before starting the route.
20. The Canadian town I grew up in was a one-company mining town. Anaconda –  an American company – owned it.
21. I was skipped a grade. I did the first half of Grade 3, then was moved over to the other side of the room to do the second half of the year in Grade 4.
22. School mates were angry at me because they thought I’d deserted the gang.
23. I also had a terrible time adjusting, because all of a sudden I had to write with a pen, and didn’t know how.
24. I was an overweight kid from the age of eight ’til 12, when I made a conscious effort to lose weight. It worked.
25. Perhaps too well, because when I hit Grade 8, skinny and a year younger than the other boys, I was picked on.
26. Don’t worry, I’m over it.
27. I first went skiing when I was 10 years old, and hated it. I went another couple of times that year, and hated it even more.
    Then the next year, I went skiing again, and was hooked.
28. I am still absolutely nuts about skiing.
29. Photo break:
30. 
31. I wish we lived closer to the Alps.
32. I have a deep scar on my chin from a skiing accident when I was 12. Back in the day, they used to have so-called safety straps attaching your ski to your ankle, so that when you fell and the skis released, the ski wouldn’t flit down the hill and impale someone. I fell badly and my ski whipped around, smashing an edge into my chin.
33. That happened on the Harmony Bowl at Whistler, back when a lift ticket cost a kid like me all of four Canadian dollars.
34. Blood everywhere, six stitches.
35. I spent a year ski instructing at Cypress Bowl, one of the three areas close to Vancouver.  The job’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
36. We used to spend hours either playing street hockey, Canadian football, soccer or baseball until it was so dark, it was dangerous to play.
37. My first real girlfriend had an identical twin. They were beautiful girls, always leaving me at a loss for words not only for that, but because I couldn’t tell them apart when they greeted me.
38. Then on January 27, 1977 at precisely 4:20 pm Pacific time, I kissed one of them.  After that, the difference was unmistakable.
39. I learned to drive in a 1972 MGB, but I have fonder memories of a 4-door 1970 Plymouth Satellite.
40. The first three years I had my driver’s license, I was in five accidents. I haven’t been in once since.
41. If you don’t know what I mean by real girlfriend, then don’t ask.
42. I used to run around in the BC coastal rainforest behind our house from the time I was old enough to be let loose out the back door.
43. It was like a forest village, with a stream to catch frogs and make dams, great hiding places under old stumps and logs, a clearing to play little games of baseball, a hill for a lookout, and patches of huckleberry, salmonberry and blackberry to plunder as Spring slowly ripened to Summer.
44. When I arrived back from my first long trip away from home – a year-long jaunt with a backpack through most of western Europe, Egypt, Israel and Turkey when I was 20 – I discovered they’d clear-cut my forest playground to put in a fucking trailer park.
45. First day back from that trip, one of the first songs I heard was, “The Rodeo Song.” Its first line, “Well, it’s 40 below and I don’t give a fuck, got a heater in my truck and I’m off to the rodeo” didn’t make sense to me.
46. It made me wonder if I was coming back to the right place.
47. I miss Canada a lot, but I think it’s mostly nostalgia not for the place, but for the careless days of youth.
48. I can speak French and German fluently. I prefer to play Scrabble in French, though I haven’t for a while.
49. I sometimes dream in German.
50. The first five words I learned in Cantonese were five, four, three, two and one in that order.
51. I have an extremely good memory for places and dates.  That skiing photo was taken in February, 1992 at Owl’s Head, Quebec.
52. I can be very self-deprecating. That’s a good thing, because it puts me in some good company.
53. I love learning new things, even if some of them are unpleasant.
54. For example, I had to learn the hard way the meaning of narcissistic personality disorder.
55. I don’t have narcissistic personality disorder.
56. I dislike crowds intensely.
57. I have no superstitions save one: I never write anything in red ink.
58. I have climbed to the top of two of the three pyramids at Giza, Egypt. They say you’re not allowed to do that anymore.
59. In the winter of 1980 – 81 worked as a ski patroller at Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, Israel.
60. I paid my way through university and for that backpacking trip by working for the Canadian National Railway at a job that doesn’t exist anymore thanks to the fax machine, a device now overtaken by email.
61. Thanks to that job, I know what it’s like to live in pretty well every town between Prince Rupert, BC and North Battleford, Saskatchewan.
62. I used to work for Overwaitea Foods packing bags and stocking shelves.  One day, the manager came up and asked me to start stocking the frozen food section.  As I was doing the job he came up to me again and said, ”the reason I’ve asked you to do this is we’re serious about training you for management, and this is the job we give everyone who’s starting out in that direction.”
63. Feeling horrified, I looked up at him with a bag of frozen peas in my hand and said, “Well, I’ve registered for university in the fall.”  He looked disappointed, and two hours later, I was packing bags again. 
64. I was robbed in Nice, France in 1980. Two years later, I was robbed in Cannes.  Watch your stuff when you’re on the Côte d’Azur.
65. When I started scribbling things down for this, my goal was to have 100 entries in the list.
66. I believe the secret to boring the crap out of everyone is to tell them them everything, so I’m going to stop here.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

So close, so far apart

My daughter and her Oma spend a lot of quiet time together. I love it that they get along so well and always seem to have something to talk about, even during those times when there’s not much to say or left to do but play checkers for awhile.

But as much as I love to stop and look at the two of them in their calm togetherness, I can’t help thinking that by the very nature of our family, one part of her childhood will always be hopelessly one-sided.

Her German Oma lives only a couple of hours down the Autobahn and comes to visit us regularly, but her Canadian grandmother lives nine time zones and a long, expensive flight away. My mother is turning 85, still fit and active, still drives a car, goes out with friends and takes short trips, but understandably no longer feels up to the exhausting flight to Europe from the west coast of Canada all by herself. She’s made the trek three times in the 10 years we’ve been living in Hamburg, and we’ve flown there four, but now it’s all up to us.

I’d like to be able to offer my daughter what I feel is the best for her, and that includes regular contact with her grandmother. But by the very nature of having a family where grandparents live on opposite sides of the world, on this I fear we are always going to come up short. In contrast to the close, comfortable relationship she has with her Oma, her contact with her Grandma will always be like getting to know one another all over again. She’ll still be the red-haired girl, but each time she’ll have grown and changed into a new version of herself. Depending on mood, the effects of jet lag and any other combination of factors, there’s no guarantee the two of them will ever be able to settle into each other’s company, and after our time’s up and it’s time to go, that’ll be it until the next time.

We’re headed to Canada this year, not just because we want to, but because it really has been too long since she last saw her grandmother. It’s going to be a great trip: a week in Canada, then a wander down the coast of Oregon and California to Los Angeles. There we will stay with a friend of ours, before flying home from LA.

I really don’t know when the next time will be. And in the back of my mind, I’m always wondering: is this time going to be the last?

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Blogging into the Guinness Book of World Records

Lorelle over at Lorelle onWordpress has challenged bloggers to come up with a list of world records bloggers could break.

I don’t often feel compelled to respond to these things, but this one might be fun.

Besides, it’s been one hell of a long time since I’ve set any records.

Nothing close to Guinness Book material, but back in high school I managed to overcome a chronic state of laziness and sloth to set school records in the 200- and 400-metre sprints, advancing to the BC provincial finals in the 400. The school had been around for a few decades by then, so I figure I’d done pretty well. That is, until the next year, when both records were shattered by twin brothers, coached by the same teacher who trained us so well the previous year. Thank you, Mr. Hotston.

I came in last in the provincial finals race down in Vancouver that year, but in true Canadian fashion, I can still claim some victory: I had to beat out several others in heats to qualify for the final, ran a personal best of just over 50 seconds, and the CBC broadcast it live, so everyone in my home town saw me on TV. That was fun.

But Blogging yourself into the Guinness Book of World Records? Let’s see.

1. Deepest post. Submarines and oil platforms not permitted.
2. Highest post. No hand-helds, must be on ground.
3. Fastest post. Probably the space shuttle?
4. Longest post in shortest length of time.
5. Most posts in one 24-hour period. Minimum 500 words per post. Any language. No blogthings, no youtube, no plagiarism. One link minimum, one original photo per post.
6. Most posts in one 24-hour period without using your fingers, toes or voice software.
7. Greatest number of comments made in one 24-hour period.
8. Blogging marathon. One five-minute break per hour. Last blogger to fall asleep wins. Tea and coffee permitted. No energy drinks.
9. Greatest number of scrapers, sploggers and spammers kicked in the butt in one 24-hour period. That one I’d love to try.
10. Longest time spent staring at a screen logged into WordPress with a milk bottle balanced on your head while enduring the psychotic warblings of Mr. Bungle.

Better stop there. Quite honestly, I’m sure this post won’t set any records either.

© 2008 lettershometoyou