The term "rehab" sometimes conjures up a dreary setting or at least a Days of Wine and Roses scenario. But of course, not all rehab is like that. My mother just spent the better part of two months at Bridgepoint Hospital in Toronto. She began her stay at the old Bridgepoint after she was deemed ready for rehabilitation from a broken leg. A bout of C. difficile caused her to have to bounce (as it were) back to an acute care hospital, so she missed the long awaited move from the old Bridgepoint to the new facility on April 14.

What a change awaited her. Once the weather and her health improved, we went exploring.This is the entrance to the roof garden on the 10th floor. It was in the process of being completed when I was up there with her last week:

 

 

The roof garden, a xeriscape, has been planted with various kinds of sedum, over which bees were buzzing: 

 

 

 

There is a spectacular view of downtown Toronto through the plate glass:

 



 

 

Tables of some sort - maybe destined to be raised planters - had just been painted:

 

 

 

The door we came out of is at the foot of this amazing mirrored wall:

 

 

The old Don Jail - at least part of it- has been restored and refurbished to be the administrative wing of the new Bridgepoint:

 

 

Quite a difference from the parkette just around the corner:

 

 



How much does the environment affect the outcome for those using it - patients on the one hand and prisoners on the other? 



 

 

 

A new discovery in the world of staples

I received some nice presents for Christmas. Mind you, Greg and I don’t go overboard with the gift-giving, as we have so much stuff already. Where we do go overboard is in the food-eating, but that’s another story.

 

One of my favourite presents this year — until extremely recent developments — was a stapler. It’s a Swingline with a rather aerodynamic profile and a nice heft. Greg gave it to me because he thought I might like one of my own. Before I clarified this with him, I thought it was so I would not keep using his.




And it even has a low staple indicator.
 

My new office friend takes regular-sized staples.  This fact was essential, both to my stapling habits and to writing this blog, until only a few moments ago when I made a stunning discovery about my existing stapler. As a result, I have had to change the whole tenor of this blog, as you shall see ...

Yes, I still have my first and (up to now) only stapler. Greg said I must be one of the few people in the world who remembers getting their first stapler.

It is a small Apsco which I bought in the 1960s at the Oxford Book Store located in Wellington Square before Wellington Square was tarted up and renamed Galleria, in the forlorn hope that it would be an upscale shopping mecca. However, Galleria now contains an insurance company, a Rainbow Cinema, a few dollar stores and an annex for the local community college with an extensive food court. But that is beside the point now, as any planned analogy with my old stapler no longer holds true (Writing is a difficult art).

 

My  Apsco reminds me of a cricket - very eager.

 

My little orange stapler, by contrast is still relatively perky. It is in more or less in working order although it doesn’t stay closed. Made by a company called Isabergs Verkstads‏ located in Hestra, Sweden (which I shall have to find on the map), it is a model A 10.  According to the imprint on the finger rest, Apsco in “Toronto Ont. Can.” distributed it here. It could continue to function were it not for the fact that no one makes staples for it anymore. Or so I thought until, after squinting to see where it was made, I came across these stunning words along the staple-holder part: “loads standard staples.”

What a surprise that was! Years ago in the mid-90s when it was getting low on staples, I went back to the Oxford Book store (at its Richmond St. location as the Wellington Square/Galleria incarnation had bitten the dust) to find more. I was told there were none for such a tiny stapler. Both the clerk and I had these wee staplers, and together we bemoaned the apparent lack of the wherewithal to continue their useful existence.

Here the plot thickens – so much so that you might want to go get lunch, watch a re-run of As the World Turns or listen to somebody boring saying something pointless about the fiscal cliff.

Still with me? Then move the clock forward 10 or 12 years and find me at the check-out counter of the Parkhill Home Hardware store (before it also closed). Behold boxes,  each containing 5,000 standard-sized staples at the  unbelievable price of only one dollar. I bought three. 15,000 staples and only one stapler in which to use them … until today. With trembling hands I put those standard staples into my little Apsco. They fitted. I tested them on a sheet of paper. They work!

Suddenly we became a three-stapler family:

Greg's is an Ofrex Anglia II made in Great Britain.

 

I am not going to take the new stapler back, for it promises to staple up to 20 sheets. I don’t want to overtax my little Apsco; I’ll use it for up to five.

What has this episode taught me? The world is full of surprises. One should never jump to conclusions. Nostalgia is a good thing especially if it preserves what only appeared to be a useless little item.

Happy 2013!

Why, despite everything, I like being in Toronto

Every year I read the horoscope for my birthday in the Globe and Mail. This year the offering for the 17^th of October suggested I must become very flexible around new ideas and, what is more, that my world is going to turn upside down in the coming year. Oh joy.
 

I read that prediction while I was in Toronto looking after my mother, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia. This unexpected event did change my plans, but I can’t say my world was turning cartwheels. However, I did experience several opportunities, during those 10 or 11 days, to roll with some figurative punches.

***

I am not a person who enjoys public displays, but sometimes one can’t avoid them. Even bad hospital food is better than none (and to give credit where credit is due, after the first ghastly offering in emerge, the other meals were not too bad even though the yellow beans were always underdone, according to Mum).  Anyway, when Mum was moved (the sixth of eight moves in the fortnight she spent in hospital) to a new floor just at lunchtime, I made sure her lunch would not be forgotten. It was successfully transferred to the new floor.

However, just as it was being delivered, a porter arrived and announced it was time for a CT scan. Fearing lunch would disappear if we left it in the new room, I took it with us on the gurney. I steadied the hot food on the flannelette sheets to warm up Mum’s cold legs and in my other hand I carried a carton of frozen dessert.

Soon we were nine floors down, outside the Imaging Unit, waiting for the previous patient to finish.  So in the very public hallway, I served up what I nostalgically call “yuck slosh” — the name my daughter gave to good old hamburger casserole and prefaced by the words “not eating that.” Mum, however, did eat it; after, she continued on to what had once been lime sherbet, but was now garish green foam. And not one of the many passersby gave us a second glance.

***

The next day at Toronto-Western, it was wait for the eye doctor all morning in a room decorated with only a cross -section of the glaucoma-afflicted eye, and then after lunch, undertake a surprise visit to the x-ray department. While there, a gurney, occupied by a comatose individual and accompanied by two policemen, arrived and was parked against the wall near Mum. It was busy in x-ray that afternoon. The men in blue (well, black, actually) looked out of place amongst the gurneys; no one else was fully clothed or standing (except for me) or carrying a gun.  

Noticing her age, the x-ray tech had asked for her secret for a long life, and she said, “Oatmeal porridge every morning.”  When one of the policemen heard she was almost 94, he said she reminded him of his grandmother who was about to turn 95. Then the two of them chatted about the merits of hot porridge — with milk and brown sugar — which he enjoyed for breakfast too.

Then the talk turned to haircuts. Mum’s shortish hair had been pushed up to the top of her head and looked like a Mohawk do. The policeman said his hair was a lot like hers and took off his hat to reveal a very short cut with a bit of a fringe on top. Mum looked at it, didn’t miss a beat and said, “Well you certainly got your money’s worth.”

***

I decided to stop spending a fortune on cab fares and to take the TTC to the hospital. I hesitated before asking for my senior’s fare on the 18^th of October, as I did not have my birth certificate with me as proof. However without a moment’s hesitation, the attendant in the booth gave me my five senior’s tickets for $8.75. Emboldened, I asked what if I had to use them where there was no attendant, and he said I’d have to use regular tokens. This seems so typical of the poor old TTC.

I was slightly put out by that and by the fact that he did not ask me for ID. How times change yet stay the same. I recall being asked for ID in drinking establishments long after I turned 21 and being miffed by that too.

***

Travelling by subway is cheap but crowded. I eschew stairs now that I am a senior, and since the elevator at the Bathurst station was closer than the escalator, I opted to take it. So did a choleric elderly individual in a red Roots bomber jacket and red running shoes. Muttering loudly to himself, he punched the up-button furiously while a small older (than me? maybe not) woman, dressed in black from head to toe, joined us. I glanced at her and raised my eyebrows slightly, and she gently reached over and patted my arm.

An older man approached, hesitated, then apparently decided valour was more important than discretion, since two members of the weaker sex had stayed put (for I have an annoying conviction that even those with mental difficulties ought to be polite and share space), and he got on too. We three huddled at the rear of the car, while Mr. Hot Head ranted incoherently in the front. Too late, I realized he had a cane. I suggested not making too much in the way of eye contact, and he must have overheard me because he raised the volume, though not his cane. I began to re-think some of my stupider convictions.

The elevator door closed with majestic slowness, and we rose like a vertical Anglican procession to the next floor. Mr. Hot Head scurried out to take his place (unchallenged) at the head of the line for the Bathurst streetcar. Then the woman, again wordlessly, gave me another comforting pat on the arm and we parted with a smile. And that is why I enjoy being in Toronto.

***

After a few days, I had to leave Mum to go home for a while. At Union Station, I was listening to the Agnus Dei from Bach’s B-minor Mass, as I sat in pre-boarding for the train to St. Mary’s. There was an overlay of voices other than the alto: “Last call for Train 66”;  “Do you want the elevator”; I depended entirely on the kindness of strangers to carry this TV here”; I’m going to wait until I have my two days off to do that”; “The train for Ottawa is now boarding at 5:45, not 5:30.”

It was a bit like that wonderful Simon and Garfunkel tune where Silent Night is in the back ground — only less grave. The wonderful music was a surreal juxtaposition to the bustle of the station, especially when the next cut on my random play list was the 20-minute Lamentations of Jeremiah. I am beginning to like travelling with my computer — the Zen state of waiting is entirely different from that provided by a book.

***

Then a minor embarrassment — or too much of a Zen thing.  Once I was on the train, I plugged in the electric cord for the Wi-Fi, got my mouse attached, then decided to listen to my music, so I got out my ear phones and put them on. Soon I was hearing Dream a Little dream of me, but it seemed rather distant.

I noticed the passengers in the seats in front of me were suddenly restless and shifting in their seats. Even I could sense irritation in the air. Then I realized I had neglected to plug the ear phones into the computer. No wonder the music sounded so far way. Ouch.

After what seemed like an eternity, I found the right port and plugged in the ear phones. All was right with the world again. I listened to Philip Glass, Healey Willan and 50s faves, and the woman in front of me contentedly resumed reading Scoop.

Golf, breakfast, famous people, and sex ― or not

Having recently read Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending and feeling it was one of my better book encounters in 2012, I decided to revisit  A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters. It turns out I did not fully appreciate it when I read it the first time ― about 20 years ago.  I thought I was quite intelligent back then, but I guess I was wrong: so much escaped me in my forties.

Anyhow, being moved by something you read is often the product of the state of mind you’re in when reading the book. Where you find energy in the book is often where it is in yourself. And in re-reading Barnes’s earlier work, I was taken with the half-chapter entitled “Parenthesis,” a meditation on love, as well as with the tenth chapter, entitled “The Dream.”

In that sardonic final chapter, a man gradually finds himself bored to death in Heaven.  Two angelic messengers (pardon the repetition ― assuming there is one) instruct him about his situation. It seems there are two groups in Heaven. One consists of those who want to spend it with God, but their numbers are declining ― alongside the definition of what constitutes a good time there. The other consists of those for whom heaven is whatever they want it to be.  It’s a toss-up between eternal praise to their Creator for the one group, and eternal rounds of golf, breakfast, famous people, and sex, at least for the protagonist.

It got me thinking of what I would wish for in Heaven or put another way, what would be Heaven for me. It’s not that I don’t like golf, sex and breakfast, well actually, I have no interest in golf, but the idea of its being heavenly to do anything one pleases didn’t particularly appeal to me over the long haul.  Eventually, yes, it would get boring ― like chalking up the number of books one has read in a given year. After a while, so what!

And I am not sure about the conventional religious view ― blinding light, choirs of angels and endless praise. For an introvert like myself, it seems overwhelmingly brilliant and too noisy, but then I am seeing it from the outside as it were. From the inside, it could be what the ecstatic union with “what is” feels like, rather than an actual place full of choirs and jewels located somewhere up there for us after we die; sadly, the literalists seem to have won the day in insisting upon the latter configuration rather than the former.

Barnes is not all that far off the mark when he says, “Religion has become wimpishly workaday, or terminally crazy, or merely businesslike ― confusing spirituality with charitable donations.” Some would say having any sense of Heaven is terminally crazy.

But nevertheless, I wonder what would sustain me over eternity?  The other night, plagued by insomnia, I had a personal whine-fest about 4:00 a.m., in which I mulled over how often I feel forgotten: the Mother’s Days and birthdays gone unheeded, the reneged lunches not re-booked, the parties not invited to, the omission from photos everyone else is in.  And while I confess to this self-indulgent whining, nevertheless it hurts to be on the receiving end of ― nothing.

I expect I am not the only one who from time to time feels forgotten.  One of my Facebook friends posted this plea on his wall recently:

Good morning wonderful family members today is Aunt E’s 93rd birthday, can you all take a minute to give her a call, she will tell me that she has heard from no one in ages...........love and hugs

Now even if Aunt E is totally forgetful and her relatives do call every day, she fears she will be forgotten and that is what is important, especially as you grow older: the sense that no one wants to remember you. Hence, I suppose, the popularity of grave markers, and not just for the family genealogist.

The urgent plea for personal remembering occurs over and over in our culture. Sarah McLachlan sings, “I will remember you. Will you remember me?”   Hamlet’s father’s ghost intones, “Remember me.”  Christina Rossetti asks only that her reader should “remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land …”

In September 1914, Laurence Binyon wrote of his battlefield comrades in a poem called For the Fallen, “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.”  One of the most poignant parts of Remembrance Day is reading the names of the fallen soldiers.

Similarly in some churches (I’m thinking here of St. Thomas’s Anglican in Toronto), a list of the souls departed from the parish is spoken on All Souls’ Day. It may seem interminable until people you love have died, and you hear their names read from that list: they are remembered.

To be held in someone’s memory is a powerful comfort. At the crucifixion, the one thief asks Jesus only to “remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” Jesus answers, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Being re-membered is being put together again: reconnected and present with the essence of life. And many Christians reciprocate by participating in communion for “the remembrance of Me.”

I’m not about to make any claims for the existence of a literal Heaven nor am I about to debunk the idea. But I am ruminating on what is means to be remembered, for as Laurence Binyon’s poem continues, if the dead are remembered, whether by their human survivors, or by the energy of the universe, or by God, it is as if 

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

 

And the converse is also true, if we are not remembered while we live, we are as good as dead.  

I sometimes think that in remembering and being remembered, we are in something analogous to that eternal presence of Love, which, like the Higgs boson, makes everything matter (yes, pun intended).

Smokey Tom and the Virgin Mary

The trouble with not blogging regularly is that so many things happen it is hard to decide what to write about. Not only that, but the details get fuzzy.

So here is start on some things that have been going on:

Last Saturday morning, I attended a service at St. Thomas’s Church in Toronto to honour the Virgin Mary.   Her month is the merry month of May apparently.  In a brief homily, Fr. Jonathan Eayrs described how May, not April,  is really springtime here in southern Ontario (although today felt more like summer – more on that later).  

Creation rises anew. Mary provides (a symbol of) the connection between the divine and the material world.  Unfortunately, I forget what else he said, but it related to these lines of this hymn addressing Mary:

One in joyful songs of praise,

Let us pass from mournful days

To the Paschal mystery:
God arose who lived in thee!
Virgo Maria
…
Mother, let thy risen King

Rise in us a living spring

Virgo Maria
(French mediaeval melody harmonized by R. V. Williams)

I like  the pun on spring and the line, "God arose who lived in thee." Creation is not fallen by its very nature but, alas, only becomes so by what we do to it.

Also on a further tangent, I like to think that every baby is an incarnation of divine purpose, not only Jesus.  And I admire both Mary and Joseph’s courage in rejecting social pressure to feel guilty (the former) or to punish (the latter). 

But what I enjoyed most about this service was the procession to the Lady Chapel (Smokey Tom’s is Anglo-Catholic and considered nosebleed high by most other Anglicans around here). Why a  ladder was leaning against the wall beside a statue of the Virgin Mary puzzled me until it became apparent that a small boy, dressed in a red cassock and white surplice, was going to climb it to put a wreathe of flowers on the Virgin’s head:

 He made his way ever higher up the ladder but kept treading on his vestments and stopping to get unstuck. Finally she was crowned. It was delightful. That’s the way I like my liturgy.

And that was Saturday morning.

A cane changes everything – on public transit

I have moderate arthritis in my right hip. I hasten to say it is not the ravage of age, but the result of  “an old athletic injury.” The one time after high school when I played volleyball, I was clobbered by a larger team-mate going for the ball I had called.   That was at a company picnic nearly 25 years ago, and over the years, my hip has degenerated (along with my enthusiasm for athletic conviviality).

As a result, I now use a cane.  I bought it at Shopper’s Drug Mart. It is black, has nifty “brass” fittings for adjusting the length and a sporty handle. I have resisted the temptation to put my name and address on it with sticky tape or to tie a ribbon to it to identify it from a distance. To my eyes, it is a dashing as well as helpful accessory.

So far, I have not permanently misplaced it, but store clerks have reminded me when I have left it behind. I appreciate this. But there have been other more unexpected consequences — especially when I ride on public transit.  

Now when I take the train, no more standing in line for me and my aching hip; I receive pre-boarding no questions asked.  Sometimes upon seeing me and my cane, Via Rail personnel even call me “dear” and offer me the use of the elevator. When I get where I’m going, the conductor frequently offers his hand as I clamber down the steps. I take it. I feel it does most men good to feel useful (in an unencumbered way), and I avoid pitching headfirst onto the pavement.

But riding the TTC has been the biggest eye-opener. Normally, Torontonians do not give up their seats. Oblivious to those less agile, they sleep, or fix their attention on the latest bestseller, the commuter newspaper or the floor.  Despite those guilt-inducing public address announcements, they ignore the pregnant and elderly. But to my surprise, now that I ride the subway using my cane, people not only notice, they react. 

I have had several young men rise and offer me their seat.  Sometimes I am all right standing, but not often, and in any event, such gallantry should be encouraged, and I am happy to help. They are bashful.  It’s quite sweet.

My encounters with women have been a bit more complicated.  In one case, I happily accepted the offer of a seat from a strapping young woman, a Bay Street beauty with a fashionably draped scarf, sensible shoes and a Blackberry.  Too late, as I made eye contact with her mid-section, I realized that she was probably about four months’ pregnant and might have appreciated the seat herself. Or was she merely plump?  Fortunately she got off two stops later, thereby relieving me of that moral dilemma.

Just yesterday, I was packed with the other transit sardines in the first car of a subway train which had been delayed and took on more passengers than necessary. When it finally left the station, I was standing about half an inch away from a very affectionate pair of women. The taller of the two was a ringer for Jennifer Jones, and her partner had very short hair with lightning stripes shaved above her ears.  Trying to find somewhere else to look, I squelched the thought that the latter ought to be have been taller. The stereotype was unworthy of me and probably irrelevant, given the apparent nature of their relationship.

Thus, alone with my questionable thoughts, I became aware of Jennifer Jones looking at me with riveting concern and asking a bit too loudly if I wanted to sit down.  I said it was all right, I didn’t mind standing. Undaunted, she continued with fervour, “Because if you want a seat, I’d be happy to ask someone to give theirs up for you.” 

By now fully alert, I again declined her offer, but I did thank her earnestly for making it.  Idealism in the young ought to be encouraged. Then I oozed closer to the front of the car where I feigned interest in the next station and wondered why I attract this attention.  

Do I appeal to some primal desire to protect the weak and fragile?  Likely not, as Torontonians’ primal desires don’t seem to run along those lines, at least not on the TTC. Maybe there is an implied threat offered by someone with a cane, especially a dandy cane like mine.  Do people see my cane as a potential weapon?  Or do people simply fear I might topple over and land on them?  It is a mystery.