Life is Great and a Complete Disaster: At the Same Time

A random ramble is coming.

How can one write about one’s family without causing even more emotional turmoil?

Honestly, much of what happens in my life, or your life, dear reader, can be seen as tragedy or farce depending on one’s timeline and outlook.  And I had a Sunday to remember, that encapsulated so many trivial and important things, that I am just going to share it with you, as impersonally as I can.

4:43 a.m.: moan in pain and reach for new iPhone and glasses (because when you hit 47 your eyes stop working, apparently, as an extra little test of character).   Get up and pee in strangely beautiful bathroom.  Go back to bed.

5:32 a.m.: moan in pain and reach for new iPhone and glasses and curse my loss of focus, both visually and mentally.  Experience the joys of my strange internal pains, and make a cup of medicinal tea.  After going downstairs, in my hotel suite.  Downstairs?  After booking a cheap rate on Hotwire?  Yes!

Flashback to 8:30 p.m.,the previous evening:  check into Renaissance Hotel at One Blue Jay Way in downtown Toronto.   Feel like cheap skate knowing they know it is a Hotwire rate, so happily surprised when nice check-in lady says, “We have upgraded you to a bi-level suite.”  Something similar has happened to me at this hotel before, but without the word “bi-level”, me thinks, and it was good.

[I don’t actually understand who exactly would use this suite.  A lot of drunken people standing up watching a ball game?  I think they might have had ventilation that allowed smoking [see the black vents on the ceiling, ed.], and there was a window that opened into the Skydome.  It was too unfurnished for the space – chairs for 4, and an occupancy of 15, as the door said.  But let pictures stem this flow of words:

A bathroom downstairs and a bathroom upstairs.  Maybe they move in stuff when rich people book the room.   There was only a bed upstairs.  I thought I better include my version of an off camera selfy, just to prove I wasn’t making this up.

But why, I hear you ask, was cheapskate Xty staying in a hotel booked at the last minute through a discount online website?  Because her poor old mum was needing respite, and being the only daughter, it is my responsibility and joy to take care of her, and I was there to facilitate moving her to my house for awhile as she enjoys some bed rest.  She has become very confused and wants little but quiet and cups of tea, and no strangers or strange things, all of which I can provide.]

6:32 a.m.: go for morning walk, to take in the fresh air and vastly improve my mood.  Stop moaning in pain, for a bit.  Do not make it as far as the Woodpecker Tower, but here is a picture of it anyway, because it is odd that it exists, and it is nearby:

I don’t know what it means, just being the messenger.

10:02 a.m.: drag reluctant self out of lovely, if strange and barren, hotel room, with bags packed.  Taxi to mum’s.  Rant with taxi driver about how much construction there is in Toronto.  A given.

10:45 a.m.: get out of taxi in front of fancy Whole Foods cafe in Yorkville.  Almost rescue incredibly cute, tiny, dog called Bella from evil east European owners, but don’t have the courage.  Somewhat shaken by experience, and consoled by other shocked patrons, purchase coffee, tea and the essential sticky bun that makes mum happy, covered in pecans.  Depart with goods for short walk to mum’s residence.

11:03 a.m.: many police cars, and a police paddy-wagon, clearly outside the front doors of my mum’s tony residence.  A tall man is in handcuffs.  It is my least favourite resident!  Thinks he owns the place, isn’t old like the rest of them, and worst of all, thinks he can claim a chair in the dining room, and of course it is the best one, for being an overlord, in the corner window.  Now if you don’t know what an old folk’s home is like, this will strike you as a small concern.  You would be wrong.  Watch in delighted astonishment as he is taken away,  still handcuffed.

11:05 a.m.:  am quickly escorted into the home so I will stop gawking.

11:06 a.m.:  bump into the nice young man who runs the dining room and ask him what happened.  He says he is dying to find out.  I say, “He isn’t my favourite resident.”  He says, “He isn’t anybody’s favourite resident.”

11:10 a.m.:  push elevator up button, vaguely aware that I might be about to enter a family situation, as I am suddenly avoiding a relative by marriage who is definitely ducking me.

[11:11 a.m. – 1:01 p.m. has been deleted by the more sensible ed., who occasionally polices Xty’s writing, although is in fact Xty.  It was incredibly funny and well-written but revealed too much appalling detail, including antics by relatives that are perhaps best kept in the closet.  Suffice it to say that an unexpected, but astonishing, thing occurred that in retrospect is funny and very revealing, but at the time felt tragic.  A phone call to hubby, that included the excellent advice to breathe, is the only detail that should be revealed, ed.]

1:20 p.m.  get mum and stuff downstairs and into waiting van, go back to sign mum out.  Ask nice reception lady what happened.  She says discretion is the policy.  I ask if she knows.  She says yes.  I ask if I can buy her a couple of drinks, and she says she gets off in two hours.  But, rather than drink with strangers, I get into the back seat of the van and off we go, having texted hubby in Ottawa to synchronize our departures.

Sometime in the afternoon:  transfer mum from one vehicle to another, after using her walker like a wheelchair and getting to the bathroom at the back of Chapters in Belleville.

6:30ish p.m.  finally home, drink wine amongst other habitual relaxing things, and put a very tired mum to bed.  Where she remains [after a very thorough shower, ed.], three days later, snug and relatively happy, knowing that if anyone comes through the door they will probably be familiar and go away soon.

Yesterday she asked if we shouldn’t take her back to her suite.  After starting to explain why that wasn’t such a good idea, I caught myself and asked instead what was she missing from there.  And she said if she went back she wouldn’t have to move again.  And I said she could just stay here, and then she asked, in a way I will never forget, if she could stay forever.  And I said yes, depending on how long forever was.

I don’t think she meant move into a different place, I think she meant move at all.

So this morning I dug up my last three geraniums and brought them inside because the frost is upon us, and am going to make homemade suet cakes for the birds.  I had to take down my bird feeders because there were too many pigeons, and it was sad.  So I replaced them with some suet hangers and it has been very successful.  Fewer birds and I miss the cacophony, but nuthatches and woodpeckers and chickadees, and even the occasional cardinal, and they hang down from the porch ceiling so are very close.

But what to do with the remaining bird seed I said to myself (because who would listen)? Apparently the web knows, and homemade suet cakes are my next unimportant but personally huge project.

And at that I will leave you, with some pictures of birds and my garden taken this summer, before the feeders came down.

If life is for the birds, then so be it!