Friends

Tuckered squirrel on the fence. Our backyard, April 23 2023.

To promote her book about the "quiet catastrophe" of loneliness in America, Sheila Liming talked to Ezra Klein about "the devastating fact that we've grown less likely to spend time together outside of work, our partnerships and family."

The "we" they were talking about seemed to be themselves: two thirty-something, well-off Americans with white collar jobs, homes in the suburbs and young families. Their deepest wish was that they had more time to spend with their friends.

Whether or not their situation is truly devastating, they made me think about what it is exactly that makes a friend.

Liming and Klein talked about friends in utilitarian terms. Friends are people you can rely on to help you, who you can trust to take care of your kids when you're in a bind, who can make your life easier by being available without having to plan a month in advance. 

Liming's idea of hanging out sounded like life in university, where you had a group of people you could spend ample time with having pointless conversations and, probably, drinking quite a lot.

So here's the thing. Most of the people who have helped me recently - like that blue-eyed kid when I fell at the corner of College and Grace Streets - were complete strangers. 

So people don't need to be your friends to help you out.

And the other thing. I hung out a lot in university, but not with just anybody. I selected a group of friends and then I spent thousands of hours yakking and drinking with them. 

Proximity, familiarity and willingness to assist are nice things to have in a friend, but these are not what make a friend. 

A friend is the person who has seen you at your worst, your most vulnerable, your most annoying, and still comes back the next day as your friend.

Liming gave the example of a man she always fights with whenever they get together. They disagree vehemently and part in fury, but, after all of that, they still feel a mutual warmth and fondness. 

So it comes to this, anyone who both knows you well and forgives you is your friend.

Thanks for reading!

Karen 

Hopeless

Because cameras record only light waves, this picture does not convey in any way the incredible cacophony of frog calls coming from this otherwise not-very-lively-looking marsh at the Greenwood conservation area in Ajax, Ontario. 9 April 2023.

This past week I went to the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre to buy a new iPad. My old one was a 7th generation model from way back in 2019. 

I took them up on their offer to start my new iPad under supervision and sat at the table set aside for customers to bring their Apple devices to life (I think they called it the initiation table, which has a creepy ring to it). 

For the purchase, I’d been helped by a guy with “Twix” on the badge hung around his neck, which I assume is what people call him and not his favourite candy bar. I’d so confounded him with my old woman powers that he forgot to try and sell me AppleCare insurance. When he finally remembered he was supposed to extract another $80 from me, I told him the moment had passed. 

At the table of initiations, I took a seat next to a middle-aged woman wearing glasses and a mask, and holding like it was a sick kitten her iPhone 7, issued into the world in 2016, approximately 100 years ago in Apple time. 

She expressed six degrees of dismay to first one and then two and then three different Apple people in green shirts whose job it was to help her, but none of whom could. I was focused on what I was doing so I missed the gist of the cause of her otherwise palpable unhappiness.

I got my gizmo to the point where all it had to do was download my content from the cloud. There was no saying how long this would take and she was sitting right there, and all the Apple people had fled, so I asked her what was wrong.

Long story short, she’d never upgraded her operating system. So she was, what, ten, a dozen, versions behind. Her phone had stopped working. She couldn’t retrieve her photos or open her email. She couldn’t just get a new device because there were things on her phone that were not in the cloud, and she couldn’t bear to lose them. She mentioned she didn’t have a job, and so perhaps her other problem was that she couldn’t afford a new phone.

She thought this might be Apple’s fault, and wondered if next time she shouldn’t just get an Android device. I decided not to say that those also need to have their operating systems updated.

She was in a terrible, entirely self-made bind. I felt bad for her, but, geez. 

Then my device was ready to go. In what could be described as the very least I could do, I called over a fourth Apple person, a fresh one who didn’t know yet how hopeless this all was, and asked if he could help my friend. 

Thanks for reading.

Karen

Goliath, Again

First bee of the season; Allan Gardens, April 13, 2023

The struggle this time is with the City of Toronto.

But I'm not in search of a solution that affects me directly, except for my sense -- a hangover from my twenty years as a public servant -- that government is there to look out for our collective interests.

During the pandemic a plot of dirt on Sherbourne Street between the bike lane and the sidewalk (where a tree once grew) took on the aspect of a sink hole. The dirt in the plot would wash away in the rain and reveal beneath the road surface a quite shockingly large hole. The kind of hole you see on the news with a half-submerged car sticking out of it. 

This plot of dirt is directly in front of our condo complex, so my neighbours and I felt we had something to lose if the hole were to grow.

We have, over the past three years, contacted the City maybe half a dozen times asking that they fix the hole and plant a new tree in the plot.

So far the City has placed a series of hazard cones on the dirt plot (many of which have grown legs and walked away) and dumped some clean fill down the hole.

We knew that approach was futile, as this video, recorded on April 5 2023, shows:

I have written my local council member a time or two about this matter. 

The video may do the trick.

Maybe some day soon, this week's picture will be of a nice new tree on Sherbourne Street. Failing that, perhaps the photo will be of a car sticking out of a sink hole.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Trigger Warning

More cold Bay of Quinte Geese, March 2023

Last August I found a box of old journals in the crawl space. The box has sat there ever since like a grumpy ghost annoyed that I was ignoring it.

I got around to looking at the journals this week.

The first of the volumes - there are 20 in all - is from 1976. I was 19. I kept a record of the month I spent in London, England with family friends. The last volume, just a daily calendar really, is from 1998. 

In the years between the first and last books, I met Bruce, graduated from undergrad, worked at a series of unsatisfying jobs (during which time my father died), attended and graduated from law school, articled at the Canadian Environmental Law Association, and then worked at a series of unsatisfying jobs. 

I'd like to share some of the notes I recorded around the time of dad's death.

It was July 1985. Bill had been battling cancer for about six months by then. It started in his kidney. After some astonishingly brutal treatments, the cancer had seemed to settle down. Dad had some good weeks. And then the cancer came back. The doctors found it in his liver and then everywhere.

It started like this:

On July 20, a Saturday, dad's friend Blackie Lidstone drove him up to the Martyr's Shrine in Midland in search of a literal hail Mary. It was a six hour trip there and back, but dad slept most of the time. Once home, he served drinks and then excused himself. We figured he wasn't feeling well and needed to go be sick.

After about a minute, he called my mother. I decided to listen in. I heard my mother say "Oh my God!" and guessed then that dad was vomiting blood. I told the people in the living room what was happening and said Dad needed to go to the hospital.

While mother ran up and down the hallway saying "Oh my God" every time she passed the bathroom door, I held Dad while he was being sick, and helped him wipe his face when he was done. I was completely calm, which surprised everyone.

Dad lost a lot of blood, more than they actually had for him in Trenton, so he and my mother travelled by ambulance to the National Defence Medical Centre in Ottawa. It was touch and go. We didn't know if he would survive the trip.

Bill had children in Los Angeles (Cathy), Comox (Carol), Trenton (Kim) and Toronto (me), all of whom had to figure out how to get to Ottawa in time to see him alive one last time. Kim got there first, and I wrote down some notes to prepare for the call I was going to have with her:

1) Is Dad alive?

If yes, we'll come to Ottawa. If no, what are the plans? Will you bring him back to Trenton? When? Should I go to Trenton?

2) Who's taking care of the dogs?

3) How's Mom?

4) How are you?

Dad's pain medication had made an ulcer bloom like a red, red rose in his stomach. At the hospital, the doctors talked about surgery to fix the ulcer, but the cancer had more immediate plans. Dad's liver was failing. His heart stopped just before six in the evening on August 2, 1985, almost two weeks to the day after he'd asked the Virgin for mercy.

Thanks for reading.

Karen

Icy End of March

Geese pointing into the wind on the Belleville shore of the Bay of Quinte,
March 30 2023

Mallards, grateful for their down jackets,
South Foster Park, by the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail, Belleville

Synchronized snoozing;
Canada geese by the old Bakelite Plant, Belleville

When the weather’s bad, the only thing there is to do in Belleville is eat, but you have to drive forty kilometres out of town to find a decent meal.

 

So, we had lunch on Wednesday in Napanee at a place called Spuds, a throwback diner where everything - the menu, the staff, the clientele - is vintage 1950's and 60's. We had supper on Thursday in Bloomfield at Flame & Smith. The chef's table* was spectacular, but the cocktails were a bit of a dud.  We drove all the way to Madoc on Friday for lunch at the Iron Rooster, a better than you might think biker bar, with a real life display of classic 'cycles.  

 

Between those meals, on cold, windy days, I took a lot of blurry, focused-on-the-wrong-thing photos of waterfowl and whitecaps. 

Brrr.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

1953 Vincent Rapide C

*Starter: charcuterie. Appetizer: yellow pea fritters with tzatziki; cod croquettes with tartar sauce. First course: roasted mushroom salad, ceviche and home-made corn chips, escargots. Main: Flame broiled Tomahawk steak with blue cheese butter. Dessert: dulce de leche banana pie and chocolate cake.