Episode 4 - the final entry

The stop at the acreage in Bon Accord was crushing.  The place was unrecognisable; like the pea-cultivated lands of dad’s youth and my memories of running wild.  We drove past the place the first time.  Nothing was the same – or familiar enough to bring back memories of the place that meant so much to me. 

Nothing was recognisable.

The house was gone, the circle where we tried to grow roses was over grown by a large tree, and the forest had almost completely taken over the fields where we once baled hay.  The only parts I remember were the carpet of wild strawberry plants covering the entire back field and the purple flowers I loved to pick in the early days before I learned they were weeds. 

Maybe that is where the teachings are here:  the heart is in the soil and the foundation of what it taught me – of who it make me…created me to be…is in the soil.  the heart carries the lesson of the place, regardless of what the physical change may be and it will bear fruit in its season.  Nothing can uproot the memories of the place…it carries us even into the grasses an smallest, ground crawling plants…growing strong and resilient in spite of frost, heat, and being trampled by man, beast, and machine. 

I am reminded of the story of the heartberry (wild strawberry):  the broken hearted Iroquois mother, planting heartberries in her dead son’s body, to remind her of him and a gift of  forgiveness for her sons who were told to stop play fighting before one of them was hurt.

It was the perfect place to end the journey; I see now:  heartberries at my feet…the prayer of forgiveness echoed back to me as dad and I drove off into the Prairie sunset on our first night in Saskatchewan. 

And, as if to punctuate the teaching, I felt compelled to return to the Bow River in Cochrane, for river rocks, and to hear the water and remember the days when I forced myself to let the hurts go to make a peaceful, pure ending…shift to the earthly relationship with mom.

It makes sense now.  I feel the teachings now.

All I could see were wild strawberries under all of that forest and encroaching plant life.  All I could see were the tiny strawberry leaves and runner stems. I wanted the land to say my name – to remember me and I was angry it didn’t say my name the way I wanted it to say it: to scream out to me how it missed me and run to me, arms open – like my Aunty and Uncle did at the lake. 

I was angry and hurt – scorned that it didn’t remember me…but it did.

It held me close to it and whispered to me how it loved me and had forgiven me for leaving.  It carried me in its heart through those little, precious heartberries – that memoir whispered to me through out…I remembered the wild strawberries of that place, too.  The outward appearance, like those other places, had changed, but the soul of the place, the heart of the place, remembers and carries us all.

I am so profoundly grateful for these teachings.

Dad said, “it’s too bad we can’t put everything in a time capsule,” when we were driving away from the acreage.  I was sulking and angry with the place and silent.  I told him I was sad about the changes and he offered up that regret.

Perhaps the teaching here is that the time capsule is the heart.  Everything and everyoneis the same there – better than the same…the perfect version of the place, people, and pets we needed at the time.  Time freezes in perpetuity there.

Honestly, I am glad the land was left to run wild back to its original way.  The new owners love the land so much – they have raised children, are raising grandchildren, and inviting friends to the place to encourage them to love it like they do.  That makes me happy.  The land is loved very much there. 

At our old house on Fisher Street, a man was in the garage, working on a project and watering the plants in the front of the house.

At the house on James Cres, the owners painted the house, putting their mark on the place…loving it their way. 

But we are there, too:  in the layers of paint under it, in the soil particles once worked with our fingers or collected in the dust in between our toes.  We are there in the corners of the room or the running, tiny strawberry leaves.  We are there.  The wind whispers our wishes and the trees chatter with our laughter.

We are still there.

What a blessing to be gifted with this teaching.

Episode 3

We left the next morning for Tisdale and points north.  Stops included Leroy, the Leroy cemetery, the site of my father’s former family farm, Tisdale, Tobin Lake, and Nipawin. 

We started the tour that day at the Leroy cemetery where my dad’s parents and some cousins are buried.  It was strange to see the new headstone.  The last time I visited the dead in that place was, easily fifteen years ago.  My grandmother was still alive.  The only headstone marked my grandfather’s place, a lovely stone with a horse head carved into it.  The new one is a shiny black one, with a lovely thank you on it to both of them for all they gave to make the lives of their children better. 

Cousins I remembered from my childhood, and aunties and uncles were there, too.  My father’s people rested in this place for at least 3 generations.  Pretty impressive for a kid who has only ever lived in one place for a maximum of 6 years. 

The rain the night before dampened the dust a bit on the roads, fragranced the air with the scent of wet earth and warming grasses…the olfactory memory of my earliest remembrances.

The house my grandparents bought in town, when they moved from the farm, was up for sale.  Dad took the number.  I wonder if he ever called it.  The current owners had added on to the front of the house and had built a deck on the side where the bathroom and dining room used to be.  I wondered how different the layout of the inside would be from what I remembered it to be in the early to mid 70s when we would spend Christmas’s there and when I would visit for summer holidays. 

We then drove out to the old farm location.  Nothing stood except for the well hole which has fostered a cluster of little bushes in the middle of a pea field.  It struck me how sad it was that all of the places I loved and that I loved had changed so much.  I wept in the field, with my dad, for the places that changed.  I asked why everything had to go away.  The house on James Cres looked smaller, the school where I attended grade one…the school where I pulled the fire alarm was completely torn down.  My Granny’s house in Tisdale, the school my mother attended, and the grain elevators I pretended were monsters, had all been replaced or removed.  Time had marched on without me and that was fine.  What I couldn’t accept was that no traces of my people were to be found.  I could not feel my Granny or my mother there at all…except that the sidewalk in front of the lot where my Granny’s house was exactly the same.  Who knew that a crumbling, old slab of concrete would bring so much comfort.  I really wanted to bring home a piece but there were none to be had.  Pretty good for a 40+ year old side walk job!

After seeing all of the changes to the places – how they have aged and grown and created new lives for the new people, it was crushing to be at the old land to see nothing but crops. 

The pea field on dad's old farm land.

I had yet to hear more stories of the place but the ones I knew had no place to haunt except the well site.  My first free run was on that earth and it remembered my tiny footprints.  I could feel it as palpably as I could feel that connection when I crossed the Alta-Sask border onto the legendary horrific roads of my birth province.  It felt like home: the bumpy roads where the government is too “poor” and the people too busy on the land to fix the highways chewed up by the grain trucks and the bite of deep frost in the epic winters. 

That land, in the pea field, knew me.  The families of that land were/are third generation farmers – caretakers – of that land.  Their ancestors were beneficiaries of the theft of the land from all of the original inhabitants: people and more-than-human kind.  It was very uncomfortable to listen to conversations about immigrants and farming at the table of my Aunty and Uncle, listening to Aunty talk about her mother’s people (my dad’s mom) and her father’s people homesteading the area that had been cleansed of Indian and buffalo.  I wanted to speak up but stayed quiet.  I could feel the fight in me between the settler and indigenous self.  One benefitted from the sacrifice of the other:  the true story of Canada, I believe. 

That conversation was days before the Tisdale trip, but still hung around me as we visited these places where my father’s family still farms the land.  It was/is a sense of pride that my family still makes a living farming land their great-great grandparents farmed…the land stolen from the original people.  It is a constant struggle in my heart.

After a nearly complete loop around Tobin lake to find the cabins my dad was looking for, and a drive in a prairie down pour, we headed out to Alberta via Batoche.  I had not been there since grade 12 when my Socials teacher took the grad class in 1985.  I only remember the farm house.  It’s still there and they are doing repairs to it. 

We took the shuttle around the property (there was no shuttle in ’85, I’m here to tell ya…we hoofed it around the place) and even walked a part of the Carelton Trail! 

The Carelton Trail

I was thrilled.  Dad seemed to enjoy it, too.  After that we headed to Bon Accord, just outside of Edmonton, and the place I have carried the longest.  The place that has meant the most to me of all of the places I have carried throughout my life.  

Episode 2

As I said before my wander into my uni-memories, my father remembered every house. I was super impressed.  I also felt heavier with every stop…how was he holding it together?  I could not imagine the agony he must be feeling as he walked to the houses to take pictures of the places where he made homes with my mother.  It must have been excruciating.  He walked into the shrapnel hurricane of memories like a fucking champ, once again reminding me why he is one of the strongest people I know.

Only one house got to me.  Only one house augured holes in me so palpably, I remember feeling pain in my solar plexus that nearly doubled me over.  James Cres.  The last house where I was part of the family…the last house I lived before I moved out here…It did not look at all like I remembered it.  For one thing, it looked significantly smaller than I remember it being when I lived there.  I was 23 when I moved out of that house, so it wasn’t the whole “everything looks big when you’re little” argument…I mean… I am pretty short but I don’t think that was it.  The trees were much bigger, for sure and the dark colour of the paint may have had something to do with it.  It just seemed so much smaller.

After wandering around the city, we drove out to the lake where we had a cabin for a number of years, and had arranged to meet my Aunt (dad’s sister) and Uncle to follow them to their house on the same lake.  It is a paradise. 

We enjoyed a lovely dinner and were having nice conversation when they began to talk about the Humbolt Bronco’s bus accident and how my cousin was there to reconstruct the events…walking among the horrors the morning after.  Something inside me snapped.  Only 24 hours prior, on the way to Regina, I was pulled over to the broad shoulder of the prairie highway, to receive a phone call with the news that yet another student had died in a car accident – bringing back all of those feelings from 6 years ago. 

I sat at the dinner table listening to them talk about my cousin dealing with the heads and legs and arms at the scene of the accident and I could not contain the tears.  I tried so hard to be together until after dinner.  I tried so hard to be an adult and to “be strong”  in the face of all of this, in the face of this loss, my loss, their loss…and I couldn’t do it.  I pushed my chair away from the table.  The last thing I remember was my hand on the door handle.  I felt the steepness of the wooden stairs to the beach and I remember the water.  I sat in the lake and sobbed.  I have not cried that hard in a very, very long time.  I cried angry tears for all of the days I walked as a silent monument to mature grieving, the days I held it together at school, the days I held it together for my dad, for my children, for my sister who doesn’t even talk to me anymore.  I cried for the pieces of myself that were gone into the decades I left in this place that barely remembered me anymore.  I felt myself dissolve into the sandy lake shore and gave it all to the waves splashing over my weary legs. 

I understood the story of half-boy – how the angry young man became whole by weeping into the river, by seeing who he really was, who he saw himself to be.  The harder I cried, the more I felt myself re-membered to this lake where I had cried, broken hearted, so many times.  Of all of the places I carried, I least expected this one to be the place where I was to be re-membered the most. 

I am not sure how long I sat in the water but when I “came to,” I felt so embarrassed for rushing away from the table like a moody teenager, that I almost didn’t join everyone on the side deck.  I almost went to bed because I didn’t think I could face my dad or my aunt or uncle.  I chose to put on my big girl panties and joined them with a mumbled “sorry.”  They were great and after some time visiting, I decided to take my drum to the water and sing for everything I had cried for.

It was perfect.  The sun burned off the remaining afternoon clouds, creating a magenta road to the horizon…like the vision Wab Kinew described in his memoir that helped him re-frame his role in his father’s life as he died of cancer.  I thought about this sun road as a path the newly deceased young woman would take back to the spirit world, the path my mother had to take.  I smudged, prayed, and played the song I was promised I would hear if I listened to my heart beat.  I drummed to the beat of my broken heart and sang the song to the sun, the dead, the living, the broken, the healing.  I opened my heart, opened my mouth, and stood in the water and kept singing until I saw her wave to me as she walked into the sun…the young woman.  I knew mom was there already and she showed me by making the clouds resemble feathers.  It was beautiful.

We rested for a day in this paradise. My uncle nailed it when he said it was a healing place.  I don’t know about dad, but I really needed that rest day.  

The rest of the journey - Episode 1

There is no way I will be posting the whole thing at once.  I just finished writing up the rest of the trip and it is NINE pages long. 

I will give you a few now and a few tomorrow and a few the day after...keep you wanting more, maybe...

I wander a bit, like our trip did, but it's ok.  I think.

Enjoy: Episode 1

I so desperately wanted to daily record answers to these questions as I roamed the land that made me.  I so desperately needed to be present to the whispers and roars of me in those places that shaped me…so did my father.  In the end, the post I wanted to break up into several will be one. 

Perhaps that is the most appropriate.  Bring together all of those pieces into the mosaic that is me now, 51 years old, fragments mortared together with Prairie dust and river water, hail and rain and sweat; sweetgrass, wheat, and grasshopper legs…and the blood of slapped mosquitoes. 

Honestly, I just wanted everything to be as I remembered it. Needed everything to be as I remembered it because then I knew, somehow, I would find my mother there whole and hearty – smiling at the many kitchen tables, laughing in the many “rumpus rooms,” drink and cigarette in hand, filling the house with the parts of her I wanted to remember.  I needed there to be a place where I was, where I existed, that held me before the now, before the miles had been put on that wore holes in my heart and made my skin thin and threadbare in patches, belying the wear of the corduroy roads on my frame.  I needed the places that carry me and I needed them to be *exactly* as I remembered them.

I needed that.  That is not what happened.

In true Stones fashion I didn’t get what I wanted but I found I got what I needed.  And there lies the teachings.  As usual.  And, as usual, it took some distance from the places and the visits to gain some perspective…if any can really be had from such an emotional place.

If I remember correctly, the last place my last post left off was our arrival into Regina. 

The Queen city is, like our current regent, a little in need of updates and, like our current regent, is in the act of trying desperately to bring itself, slowly, into the current century.  We were greeted by massive construction on the highways leading into the city which, in the rising blood moon, was disorienting and did nothing to help my memories locate the places I remembered until we got to the Parliament buildings, half way down Albert St.  Even then I barely remembered the buildings or streets…30 years create fog banks to make recognition of places and faces nearly impossible. The darkness didn’t really help either…take that how you will.

In the morning, we decided we would partake in the local coffee establishment: Robin’s Doughnuts as an homage to the days before “Timmy’s” and set the plan for the day.  Robin’s held many a high school conversation between myself and my friends:  plans for the weekend, plans for grad, plans for what came after all of that.  Stress about homework, relationships, sex…all of it hovered in the mocha-scented air of these gritty coffee joints. 

As for me and dad, we really didn’t need to plan the day.  We knew we were going to be stopping at all of the houses we lived in, maybe not in chronological order, but however we happened upon them.  The order ended up being chronological.  Dad remembered them all.  This impressed me to no end.  I hardly remembered the most recent place I lived in with them as a family.  It did not look the same to me at all and I probably would have been able to emotionally buttress myself better for that realisation had we not started at the Fine Arts building…the old Fine Arts building – the place we (those of us who attended before the upgrades) affectionately referred to as the “old campus.” 

Walking up to the one hundred year old steps softened me in a way I had not expected.  I wanted to weep walking around the front of a building I had given so many hours of my early adulthood to – hours which I see now had a tremendous hand in forming the foundation of the person I was to become.  I thought of all of the people I loved and lost, all of the projects which had come to fruition, and the many wonderful teachers I learned from…not merely about theatre but also about how to be a thoughtful, compassionate, passionate human being.  If I had had any tobacco on my person, I would have left some for Kerry, for Bill, for Jake, for Denise, for Michael, for David, for Trish, and even for Gregson (who turned out to be a total fraud…faked his credentials to get the gig.  We didn’t know until the following year – thought all of Jake’s grumbling about this was just bitchiness).  These were people who recognised me as an individual – strong and passionate and a bit of a pain in the ass.  Bill Dixon called me out as his “answering machine” in Drama 100 (essentially a drama lit class in the lecture theatres on the main campus) in the early days.  I did not see this as an insult at all.  Being his teacher’s pet was the best thing I could have ever done for my blossoming intellectual ego.  As it turns out, he and I became quite good friends.  I am sure he has passed by now.  I loved him very much.

The same story could be said for my theatre history prof Kerry, from my grad year.  He was one of the top three teachers I have ever had.  He recognised my passion for dramaturgy and how I was underappreciated as an acting talent in the department, and encouraged me to boycott my obligatory audition in my final semester of my fourth year because I would not be cast in the roles I deserved due to departmental politics.  No one had ever addressed the politics before.  He could.  He was an “outsider.” 

I took his advice and never regretted it.  We remained friends until his death in 1997. 

How do I carry that place?  In my fiber.  In my marrow. 

I remember walking past the entrance to the SIFC (Saskatchewan Indian Federated College) during my years in the “main buildings,” before the FA campus claimed me full-time, wishing I could go there, too.  I didn’t know who I was then.  I only felt this magnetic tug and envy of those who got to go to that school.  I wanted to know what they were learning.

How do I carry that place?  In the resonance of my heart beat – the halls of both campuses stamped on me the mark of the first grandchild, on both sides of my family, to attend university.  No pressure.  Literally…no pressure.  I don’t think anyone really gave a shit.  I defined myself as separate from my family unit in those halls.  My sister dropped out after one semester, my dad didn’t graduate, and my mom took an extra year.  School wasn’t really a priority for them.  They did, however, support my love of school and helped to ease my pressure by paying for my tuition, letting me live in the house rent free, and giving me a car and gas.  I had it pretty damned good. 

This place was love for me.  Pure and simple.  I got to do everything I loved with the people I loved most in that place.  I had a short, torrid affair with a married man; I had a short, torrid affair with a sculpting major; I had a short, torrid affair with theatre which would haunt me for decades after, like ghost pains of amputated lovers.

That first stop that day would be the only place that hadn’t changed.  It was the only place that still remembered me in any recognisable way.  It was the only place where I could recognise the parts of me still haunting the spaces.  I could see myself in the hallways and window panes.  Having said that, I did not go inside to witness the changes brought to the spaces.  The building now houses film production companies and the classrooms and acting spaces have been converted into offices.  I don’t even know if the theatre is still intact.  It’s a good thing, for sure, that I didn’t go inside.

We moved on to the main campus book store where I dropped some significant cash on poetry, indigenous history, and indigenous research methodology texts.  I held back from dropping even more cash on Cree language resources and so much more poetry.  I felt the familiar pangs of jealousy of being on the outside of all that I wanted to learn, this time feeling the total weight of the passage of time and how there would never be enough time to learn what I long to learn.

Driving away from the campus, I felt the pull of memory to the icy winter nights spent on top of the science building, star gazing for my astronomy class…the air so cold as to freeze the ink in our pens when we tried to take notes on our observations.  Fingers became achingly cold in seconds.  More time was spent going back and forth between blue-lit rooms to warm our hands and our pens that was actually spent outside in observation of the sky.  I smiled to recall the sense of pride at surviving that lab class. Biology or Chem students didn’t have to deal with that.  A different breed of person took astronomy…one with math skills, evidently (that is a whole other blog post).