Back in the saddle again (for Delores)

It's been a while since my last posting. I can offer the excuse of a busy fall teaching term--4 classes, commuting 3 hours a day 5 days a week--but that is only part of the picture. This writing project (and the remembering that goes along with it) demands energy and discipline that I find hard to maintain. I'm getting to an age where if I don't HAVE to do something, I sometimes don't do it. After years of doing things because they need doing, this is revolutionary. I'm increasingly taking as my mantra Danny Glover's statement to a pre-melt-downed Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies: "I'm getting too old for this sh@%t!"

But this writing project has gotten under my skin, wiggling away like a worm (icky metaphor, but apt). While I spent my Christmas break recovering from a crazy schedule, making baby quilts (2 new grandkids on the horizon) and watching too much television (I've become addicted to Modern Family), I kept eyeballing the computer, purposely refusing to visit my bookmarked blogger site. While I merrily emailed, checked Facebook, prepped for January's classes, surfed the net for important information (was the guy who played Dan-o on Hawaii Five Oh still alive?), the niggling, wiggling writing worm was doing its sub-epidermis boogie.

So here I am, back in the saddle again (to continue the over-arching cowboy-herding boys metaphor), a little creaky from lack of practice, but here, nevertheless.

Of course, I had to read over all the previous blogs to see where I left off. Despite wincing at my usual writing infractions (too many adjectives, too many annoying intrusions tucked between brackets), I felt okay about what I'd written thus far. It didn't completely suck. As my own literary critic, this was more than I'd hoped for.

One thing that I did accomplish over the break was re-connect with many of the people in this blog--Herbertians past, present and honorary. The older I get, the more precious these relationships become. Distance has made them tenuous, and I realized they needed tending. So I had a lot of long-distance conversations--how lovely to pick up the phone and dive into a conversation with people you share stories and histories with.

Which brings me to Barb and Eldon Derkson. Barb and Eldon lived across the street from us in Herbert. You may remember Barb's famous statement from a previous blog entry--she encouraged me to enjoy the kids when they were little, because the older they got, the bigger the problems became. You will also recall that I thought she was nuts, but have since re-considered, and realized that Barb was right, as she is about everything.

Barb and Eldon now live not far from us in a small town up-island (I've become a real Vancouver Islander--don'tcha know--anything north of Victoria is "up-island"). Barb is battling illness, and she is doing it in her usual gallant, funny and fierce way. Eldon is her stalwart caretaker. It's a job he is superb at.

While Barb has grown physically smaller (she jokes about being able to finally wear skinny jeans, but her toe ring has become too large), she has become awesomely great in all ways. Her great heart, always large and loving and funny, has taken the illness, swallowed it whole, and used it as fuel. I don't know how she does this, but it is an act of supreme heroism and love--love of life, all who live it, her family and friends, and the world. I am gob-smacked by her.

Jack and I are going to visit her tomorrow. I am feeling many emotions about seeing Barb and Eldon. I want to tell Barb many things. I want to tell her how much she has meant to me over the years, especially those early years of struggling to not kill the kids. She would phone and invite us over for coffee, sending over their youngest son (the only one left at home) to baby-sit. We'd go over, drink coffee and laugh at her stories of raising their five kids in Herbert. She seemed to have a sixth sense for how close to the edge I was--I'd be careening up to it, and she'd phone with an invitation, or she'd pop over for a visit, or she'd have some scheme for fun.

My mental photograph album is full of Barb's fun schemes. She was an avid Dallas fan, that eighties prime-time soap opera. When Miss Elly got married, she invited us over to watch with her. She decked herself out in a big floppy hat and a flowing thrift-shop formal. The effect was marred somewhat by the gigantic cast she had on her arm, as she'd broken her wrist a few days before. But that didn't stop Barb from celebrating Miss Elly's wedding in high style.

She was famous for her Hallowe'en costumes. She would make herself completely unrecognizable, and hit Herbert's streets (all eight) with the kid-hordes. Because Barb was usually the only adult trick or treating, you had a pretty good idea who the tallest kid was standing on the doorstep. But she was so good at entering whatever bizarre character she'd invented, you were never sure, and so you just handed over the candy and marvelled at her moxy.

Last night I was on the phone with Dee and Rollie. We'd not spoken in some time, and had a long and wonderful conversation. When I mentioned Barb and her struggle, Rollie recalled the cross-country skiing episode. We roared with laughter--we all have told it so many times to so many people, it has assumed mythical status.

It started, of course, as one of Barb's fun schemes. She organized a cross-country ski trip. In Saskatchewan, cross-country skiing was the only kind possible, given the lack of vertical slopes. Barb and Eldon always skied the pristine pasture of their friends, the Blacks. There was a small trailer tucked away in a clearing, with a fire-pit. The trailer had blankets, a kettle, and tea-bags. Everything else was packed in.

I can't remember who baby-sat for us--likely Barb's boy, Will. Thrilled with any activity that didn't involve hauling around toddlers and a baby, we packed our skis, wax, poles, mitts and tooks and away we went. Dee and Rollie, Jack and I, Duane and Natalie, Ramin and his recently-arrived sister Noushi (Ramin and Noushi were Iranian refugees who'd sought asylum in Canada after the revolution and had become part of the Herbert family) caravanned out into the countryside, parking on the snowy grid-road flanking Black's pasture.

We parked in single file, cars leaning into the shallow ditch. Eldon parked behind this line, having lead the caravan safely to our destination. Car doors slamming, skis and poles stuck into the snow like giant toothpicks, we donned boots, hats, mitts, and broke out the wax. This was before waxless skis--so we had flat plastic tins with little cylinders called "farts" (to the delight of the boys).

Barb had marched around to the back of their station wagon. Leaning on its rear bumper, she balanced on one leg while jamming her other foot into her boot. Suddenly, the car lurched backwards and knocked her on her ass into the snowy ditch. Sputtering expletives and brushing off snow, she climbed out of the ditch and grabbed the boot she'd been trying to get on her foot. Balanced like an angry flamingo on one leg, still swearing at Eldon, Barb was jerking at her boot laces when the car gave another backwards lurch and bounced her back into the ditch. As she hauled herself to her feet yet again, she turned the air blue with invective, all of which she hurled at Eldon.

Eldon, in the meantime, rolled the window down, leaned out and, oblivious to the carnage he'd just caused, chirped, "Everything clear back there?"

Barb called Eldon names I'd never heard before. It was impressive.

Rollie said after that he thought it must have been some shtick that Barb and Eldon pulled regularly, because who would back into his wife twice and THEN ask if everything was clear? To this day, we're not sure, but it was entertaining, to say the least.

Waxed up, be-tooked and be-mittened, we set off into the snowy pasture, cutting trail in the new snow. The sky was white, I remember, and the skinny aspen bluffs were silent--no birds sang and all the little critters were bedded down for the winter under their blanket of snow. Except us. We sang, hollered, bantered, puffed and generally had a great time sliding over the snow.

Rollie, Jack, Eldon and Duane took turns breaking trail. Ramin, whose entire skiing experience was one two-hour trek around Herbert's grid roads the previous week, was coaching Noushi in the finer points of Nordic skiing. "Isn't this great?" he kept yawping, swinging his poles alarmingly. Noushi had arrived from the balmy Phillipines, where she'd been going to school, two days previously. Swathed head to toe in borrowed winter gear, her lovely face pale as the snow surrounding her, her eyes glazed in what we later understood to be terror, Noushi simply nodded and shivered, nodded and shivered. (Nushi told us recently that she had nightmares about that ski trip for years--some welcome to Saskatchewan!)

We finally arrived at the trailer in the clearing. A tiny, round-shouldered coffin with a window and a door, it promised hot drinks, blankets and a fire. Someone had left wood in the fire-pit, and we soon had a fire. Eldon pulled out blankets and we hunkered into these as we watched the flames. Barb filled the kettle with snow and laid it on the fire--yellow flames turned to red coals slashed with grey-white cinders. Bits of ash floated up into the still, white air, like topsy-turvy snow. During conversation lulls, we noticed the silence, and sat on the logs around the fire, leaning into each other for warmth.

Eldon went to the trailer for another blanket. As he pulled it out and flapped it open, a tiny field-mouse popped out and onto the ground. It appeared asleep.

"Would you look at that?" someone said, I can't remember who--someone who had a poetic and sweet view of nature, apparently. "Mother Nature looks after her own--this little guy is sleeping until spring."

Jack nudged the mouse with his booted toe. "It's dead." he announced. "Frozen." and gave it a kick. It bounced off the trailer, hit a tree and careened off into the snow like a ping-pong ball. It seemed to bounce forever, that frozen little mouse-orb. We hear it yet--ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!

Chastened by our lesson about nature's red tooth and claw, we turned back to the kettle, waiting for the water to boil. By now, the temperature was dropping, and we were getting cold. We needed some hot tea in our bellies before the return trip.

It takes a long time for water to boil in a metal kettle on a small, aspen-twig fire in sub-sub-zero weather. Cold was creeping into our toes and fingers. We pulled the blankets tighter, on the lookout for frozen rodents in the folds.

Finally, Barb said "To hell with this--it's close enough" and dumped several assorted tea-bags into the barely-bubbling water. She jammed a spoon into it and furiously mashed the tea-bags. "It's ready," she announced. "Who's got the cups?"

The great silence of the northern plains in winter continued. Cups? Weren't those in the trailer? Because no one had brought any. Apparently cups weren't in the trailer. No cups--nothing to hold the hot liquid.

Those who say necessity is the mother of invention are right, although sometimes the inventions are lame. Functional, but lame. Duane, inspired by invention's mom, suggested we use the wax tins. So we did--we opened them up, hoicked out the wax tubes and carefully poured in the tea. Waxy globules bloomed on its surface. We were cold--we didn't care.

Because we had more people than tins, we had to pass them around. For those of you who remember those farts tins, you will recall their shallowness--an inch deep on either side. While this facilitated rapid cooling so we didn't burn our lips, it also set off tiny tea tidal waves that splashed us as we moved them around.

Warmed by the tea and our success at roughing it in the bush, we tucked away the blankets (Rollie wanted to find the mouse and put him back, but Dee called him an idiot, which dampened his enthusiasm) and the kettle and geared up for the return trip. By this time, Noushi was almost comatose with cold, but valiantly set off, propelled by visions of a warm car and an end to the madness.

We hadn't really figured on the temperature. It was December, and Saskatchewan. A deceptively mild morning had lulled us into a false sense of complacency. While we'd huddled around the fire, kicking frozen mice and drinking waxy tea, the cold crept in. The short day darkened the white sky to a dull grey. The air bit at our nostrils, and the snow squeaked under our skis. The return seemed longer and harder, the twin grooves in the snow from our trip standing in purple shadow.

We didn't holler or talk or sing on the way back. We simply skied, heads down, arms swinging, trying to outrun the cold. This was the part that Noushi night-mared about for years. She said in her dreams, the purple snow-tracks went on forever, as did she, until the inching cold froze her stiffly upright in her skis. That was the point where she always woke up, thankful that she never had to ski in Saskatchewan again.

We did fine until the last gully before the barb-wire fence skirting the grid-road and the cars. On the way out, the gully had been no more than a fun slide down and up shallow banks. Returning, tired and cold, we approached its now steep cliffs with dismay.

We all managed to get down without falling and scrambled back up without incident, if not without grace. Form was forgotten. Even Ramin had stopped giving pointers and was simply moving one foot diggedly in front of the other. We all managed, that is, except Barb. She fell spectacularly on the way down, poles and skis pinwheeling. Rollie, directly behind her in the ski-line, helped her up. Cursing, Barb looked at the looming embankment, turned to Rollie and said, "You'll have to push me."

"What?" Rollie asked, the cold appearing to have slowed his thought processes. "You'll have to PUSH me!" Barb said again, setting her skis in the tracks, grabbing her poles, and yanking at her scarf. Rollie, shifting from boot to boot, didn't quite know what to do. He tugged at his took, took off his gloves, put them back on again, adjusted his poles, and finally said, "Uh, what? Uh, push? Uh, how?"

"Put your hand on my ass and PUSH!" announced Barb. Rollie blushed and adjusted his gloves again. "Uh, gosh, Barb, I don't think I really know you well enough to..."

"PUSH!" hollered Barb. "It's goddamn cold and I want to get the hell out of her so PUSH, for Chrissakes!"

Flustered, Rollie brought his hands up to Barb's butt--not quite sure where exactly to place them, his hands moulding the air like a Balinese dancer's. "PUSH!" she yelled again. Rollie bit the bullet and, laying his hands on Barb's rear end, shoved her up the bank.

The rest of us, waiting safely on the up-side of the embankment, chanted "Push! Push! Push!" in a kind of fascinated rhythm. You'd think Rollie was helping Barb birth a baby to hear us.

Finally, Rollie got Barb up and over the embankment's far side. Barb adjusted her scarf again and ski-marched the last quarter-mile to the fence. Oh, the blessed fence, which meant the blessed cars and a blessed end to skiing.

Fortunately, no one backed into anyone as we clambered, frozen stiff, into the cold cars. Thankfully they all started, for the temperature had plummeted to battery-freezing levels. We all survived, and Noushi reports that she no longer has nightmares (although it took a long time).

This is our favourite Barb story--the mythical December-in-Saskatchewan cross-country ski trip. I see her yet, Rollie shoving her up the bank, the rest of us chanting like some insane Greek Chorus. I see her yet, skis flying, catapulting into the snowy ditch, and Eldon, smiling, asking if it was all clear. And Barb, cursing him out like a sailor. I learned some new words that day.

I learned much more from Barb--who has the equivalent of a PhD in parenting and grand-parenting, and who has been amazingly generous with her time, her affection, her humour and her energy. Barb's family has all re-located to Vancouver Island. Indeed, when all our kids wound up on the island, we claimed to have "pulled a Barb-and-Eldon." But of course, her family is much larger than her children and grand-children.

Barb and Eldon adopt willy-nilly. We've all become her family. Barb and Eldon, Saskatchewan gardeners extraordinaire, have adopted us all, have loved and cherished us all, have shared their considerable wisdom and experience with us all. And oh, those fun schemes!

Time and energy may be winding down, but her affection and her humour seem to grow exponentially. She has a heart as great as the white skies and endless snowy plains we skied through all those years ago. Barb's great heart has given so many of us so much. Her fun schemes have supplied laughter and stories.

She is simply the best. I love her.