Beyond Ridiculous

And they call it global warming...

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Remember my excitement about the daffodils and cherry blossoms? Well, they’ve been delayed by at least a month. Why? Because five centimetres of snow fell today. I will never be warm again.

Fondly I recall my disbelief when some of my students in the UAE wore long-sleeved woollen sweaters right up until the thermometer hit the 45 degree mark. Oh, what I’d give for a woolly sweater and a humble patch of sun-scorched desert sand.

I’ll grudgingly admit the snow is lovely – but we’ve already had two too many weeks of lovely snow - and it’s beating back the crocuses as they struggle to poke their purple tips through the frozen earth. My life has been frantic enough this past week without having to haul out my broom and dust pan for another round of snow shovelling. And I’m afraid the intemperate frost will ice the goose eggs and there will be no delightful little goslings this year.

As Mom would say, “It’s enough to drive a saint to drink.”

My existence is wearisome. Up at 4:00 to write a bit while I’m ‘fresh’. Leave by 6:15 to arrive at work by 6:45. Work till 2:45. Find out what my parents need. Last Wednesday it was a report on flat screen TVs.

Dad has admitted he’ll never make it downstairs again to watch their old console and – BASEBALL SEASON is upon us. Oh joy! Nym volunteered to help carry the old TV upstairs but it’s too big and certainly too unwieldy to be easily shifted from bedroom to living room and there’s no convenient spot to put it that wouldn’t interfere with Dad’s slow, walker-assisted progress around the main floor.

I suggested a flat screen TV as they’re light and cheap. My parents had never heard of such a thing but Dad was pretty much sold on the idea the moment it leapt from my lips, especially when I pointed out he could get one for a mere three or four hundred dollars. So, as I said, my job on Wednesday was a trip to Future Shop to prepare a report.

I have to interrupt myself here to say that in the past, extraneous purchases of any kind brought on weeks of research and debate. Before buying a Polaroid camera in the early 70s, my parents went to every store in the city that carried them. Dad interviewed the sales force while Mom made notes. Then they’d discuss and eliminate ad infinitum and ad nauseum. At least we didn’t hold family prayer sessions about it, although I sometimes worried that one was imminent.

At Future Shop I took plenty of notes about six different TVs. When I phoned to give Dad the rundown – I won’t bore you with minutia – he ran out of interest at TV Number Three, claiming he couldn’t hear me.

(Aside: Maybe this is because the Community Health Lady who came for a lengthy meeting on Monday – Tickles and I in attendance as well as Mom and Dad – said that even though he wasn’t wounded during the war, if he had something like hearing loss, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs might pick up the tab for homecare expenses anyway.)

“Which TV do you think is best?” Dad asked, cutting through my attempts to describe TV Number Four.

Rendered nearly speechless – but being me, it was only nearly – I replied, “Well, the LG 19-inch is the same price as the 22-inch ‘no name’ Dynex, $299.99, but the pixel count on the LG is higher and it’s a reliable brand.”

“Okay, dear,” said Dad, “That sounds just fine. How soon can you get it?”

“It’s too late today, but I could go tomorrow after work.”

“Great. What about delivery?”

“It only weighs about 15 pounds. I can easily put it in my car and bring it over later in the afternoon.”

Thursday, then, I knew I’d be doing TV stuff until nearly 6:00. Nym agreed to hook it up to the cable so I made myself a note to find out if he could drop over after his work to take care of that.

In the end, I managed to assemble the TV and hook it up to the cable and get the batteries into the remote control and run it through its automatic tuning programme. I left filled with the sense of pride and amazement Tabitha Stevens must have felt while she was learning to twitch her nose. I really do deserve a promotion out of the techno-peasant brigade. And I also thought I deserved a day off – I wanted to come straight home from work on Friday and blog.

Instead, my desk phone rang at 8:45 a.m. “Hi, pet,” said Mom, “I just wanted to remind you that you’re coming over after work today so I can go to my acupressure appointment. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

“Er..no, Mom, I haven’t forgotten because you didn’t tell me so there was nothing for me to forget. But it’s fine. Not a problem. I’ll be there around 3:30 – I just need to stop and get gas on the way.”

Speaking of which – none of you have probably noticed but here in Canada, as the global cost of gas tumbles, our pump prices just keep on climbing. We’re at 99.9 cents a litre, up 20 cents from a couple of weeks ago.

So I got home with just enough energy to make a couple of phone calls to people who’ve waited too long to hear from me. I always have enough energy to talk unless someone’s going to bribe me with books to make me quiet.

Saturday I was simply exhausted and did nothing except look around my apartment and mourn my lost housekeepers. It was also the day to ‘spring ahead’ so I also lost out on a full hour’s worth of sad contemplation.

One Sunday a month there’s a Healing Service at the church my Mom attends faithfully and my Dad used to attend sporadically (he calls himself a ‘Seventh Day Absentist’). Shortly after Dad fell, Mom asked if I would help her plan the service – on Miracles – and then come along and do one of the readings. Rather absent-mindedly, I agreed. We got the planning done while Dad was still in the hospital. Mom arranged for the Respite Person – who comes over so she can go out for three hours a week – to show up on Sunday evening instead of Wednesday morning.

Around about the time Mom got back from her acupressure session, these well-laid plans took a decided lurch toward the Ditch of Nightmare. ‘Ganging agley’ doesn’t come close to expressing the horror.

Dad decided he wanted to join us at the service. Keep in mind that the only time he’s left the house since his release from hospital was to go for a blood transfusion and Mohawk Man came in the Medi-Van to bear him away and return him, stress-free. This adventure would require him to walk down the stairs to an uneven sidewalk, navigate himself to the car, get seated in the car, be met by a wheelchair at the bottom of the ramp entrance to the church, find someone to help him out of the car and into the wheelchair, sit in the cold church for well over an hour and then repeat the entire process in reverse. And in the evening! The time of day when his energy is at its lowest ebb.

If he was my husband, I would have said, “In your dreams. Surely there must be a baseball game for you to watch on your new TV.”

But, for over half a century, Mom has rarely vetoed anything Dad wants to do. Kind of like the Queen, she retains the right to encourage, to advise and, in exceptionally dire situations – like being told housework doesn’t demand specialized skills – to warn. In this instance, she decided it was her duty to encourage. So – there we were, teetering at Ditch's Edge.

Mom managed to enlist the next door neighbour to help us get Dad out to the car and back into the house again but I had a sinking feeling. Did you know that your stomach can apparently go on sinking indefinitely?

I arrived for dinner – Mom insisted on feeding me – at 5:00, two hours in advance of the service. As we were eating, uncomfortably aware of Dad’s nervous tension, Mom suddenly said, “Oh, by the way, dear, could you lead the congregation in prayer just before your reading?”

I’m tempted to simply stop this account right here. To leave you all with your mouths open and your bellies heaving with laughter. I realized, however, that Mom wasn’t trying to lure me into the arms of the Church – something she’s been guilty of in the past – but that she hadn’t had time, what with the to-do over my Dad – to get one ready. And it was her Duty. She faced the terrifying prospect of Letting People Down.

She took my stunned silence as agreement. “It doesn’t have to be anything fancy,” she said, relief evident in her tones.

There’s no point wasting a lot of descriptive words here. I’d been backed into the most ludicrous corner imaginable so I headed straight for the bookcase and, in the vast and beautiful sea of English literature, found just what I needed.

God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Total disaster didn’t strike. With the neighbour’s help, I got Dad into my car. The service went as well as can be expected and now it’s gone. When we arrived back at the homestead, Dad was exhausted and blue with cold. His leg gave out on his way up the stairs. Fortunately, the neighbour caught him and he made it to his chair in the living room where he collapsed, tearful and shaking from over-exertion.

I was a nervous wreck and couldn’t calm down enough to sleep until well after midnight.

And no, I don’t want any cheese with my whine. It’s fattening and I’m gaining weight. How I miss those four or five hundred daily stairs I climbed in China, the unforced rambles through my neighbourhood where all necessities could be found within easy walking distance. No need there to seek activity – to stride the streets bathed in a self-important aura that shouts: I eat free range eggs and organic parsley! I carry my own personal grocery bags to fling at cashiers before they can ask, “Plastic or paper today?” I walk briskly, every day, on purpose, elbows swinging, and plot ways to save the planet. Especially if they involve hassling my neighbours. I swallow Echinacea gel caps, shade my eyelids with ginseng and paint my toenails with apple cider vinegar from a brown glass bottle.

No need at all. In the People’s Republic they say, “Sufficient unto the day is the exercise thereof.” And our hearts rejoice.

But I’m not in China, alas, and I do have to start walking or I’ll be obliged to buy a giant T-shirt that says, ”Behold! I am your own personal grocery bag.”