The Valley Girl and the Wrong Trousers

Growing up I had no special fondness for my home and native land, California. The way I saw it, the 'real' United States lay east of the Rockies, where the mayonnaise  labels read 'Hellman's' rather than 'Best Foods', and where winter meant snow.  Not until I left the West did I come to appreciate its beauty and its relentless appeal to my soul.

Last week, during a visit home, I stopped by my father's office on Ventura Boulevard, in Encino, and feasted my eyes on his view northward across the western San Fernando Valley, mountains in the distance-- the Santa Susanna range running into the San Gabriels-- under a wide cloud-brushed sky.  As a child I had looked at the same view many times, counting the backyard swimming pools and disdaining the suburban sprawl. I fancied myself a cosmopolitan type and determined to live in the heart of a city when I grew up, not to skulk around its outer edges.

San Fernando Valley in December

I was always bad at being a Valley Girl. I failed my spoken 'like' quota and I truly loathed shopping. I still do; I'm terrible at it, always making silly mistakes and bad choices. Nonetheless, I found myself at the Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills on Christmas Eve day, prepared for fight and poised for flight. But it all turned out okay. Pre-teen daughter needed to do some gift exchanging before our return to Toronto on the 25th, so while she considered her choices, I browsed the sales rack, where I found a pair of nice black trousers, not jeans, with an interesting cut and a mysterious size label that made no sense. Held against my legs, they looked about right and just what I needed for work. I asked the shop assistant where to try them on; she gave me a funny look, but pointed the way to the changing room. A hasty check confirmed that the trousers zipped up and didn't require hemming and that the price fit my budget. They were $9.99! How could I go wrong? They also had enormous pockets. How, um, handy. I bought them. Daughter meanwhile selected bath bombs, lip balm, and walkie-talkies.

When we got back to my parents' house, my sisters had gathered with their children for an impromptu farewell deli brunch. Before piling pastrami on rye, I showed everyone my new purchase. One sister gave me the same funny look as the sales clerk. "Aren't those men's?" she asked. "No, they can't be. They were in the women's section," I replied confidently, but of course she was right. Stupid me. This explains the strange sizing and the backwards buttoning, as well as the capacious pockets. From the thighs down, the trousers fit me perfectly, like a glove. From the hips up, they are oddly roomy. Comfortable, mind you, and very convenient should I ever have a spare banana I need to store somewhere. 

I really am, like,  a terrible Valley Girl.

Warm with a chance of sane

Canada feels different lately. For one thing, today is December 11th, and it's practically balmy in Toronto: we had sunshine and a high of 14C (aka 57F). This is not Los Angeles warm, I admit; but just as I've converted from centigrade to Fahrenheit mentally, I've converted from southern California to True North sensually. (When I was a child, anything below 80 degrees Fahrenheit meant we had to wear a cardigan to school.)

The warmth extends to the social as well as the meteorological outlook. Yesterday the first 'wave' of Syrian refugees arrived at Toronto's Pearson airport, and the media coverage highlighted the effusive welcome extended to these new Canadians. That's what they were called, on CBC radio. The contrast to the media coverage of Donald Trump's 'keep out the infidel' rhetoric couldn't be more stark.

My Canadian friend, Nicole, says 'It's Trudeau. That's what's different. So quickly, it's like we are living in Canada again.' Her words make me all warm and fuzzy inside and lift my hopes for the quality of life here in the north. I'm worried about the USA though.  No doubt about it: Trudeau trumps Trump in every way possible. The First Amendment and the Constitution's insistence on a system of checks and balances may be all that stand in the way of (another) bigoted despot's attempts to destroy the American way. I wish Trump and his misguided supporters would read the poem by Martin Niemoller, 'And Then They Came for Me':

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me .

(http://hmd.org.uk/resources/poetry/first-they-came-pastor-martin-niemoller)

Lost and found

Once, in my freshman year at Cal, I lost an earring at an Oktoberfest dance. A few girls from my dorm, Cheney Hall, had piled into someone's car to drive over the hill to St. Mary's College in nearby Moraga. We felt bold and adventurous leaving our own domain. Arriving at the small, pretty campus, we found our way to the festivities, drank illicit, bitter beer, and turned our attention to the heaving room. One boy invited me to dance, then another. Being asked to dance thrilled me more than the dancing itself, which in the crowded darkness involved more dodging than actual dancing. There were flashing colored lights and a hanging mirror ball. Sophisticated it was not. Somewhere after the third or fourth boy I missed the earring, and became upset; it was an opal, one half of the first pair my parents had given me when I got my ears pierced, age thirteen. The friends from Berkeley and my dancing partner kindly helped me look, but for nought. No earring. I resigned myself to its absence, mourned, moved on, kept its lonely twin in my earring tree, to remember. Freshman year held much of excitement, and there were classes and exams and term papers, too. I recovered. 

In late spring, a friend,  Carol, who also lived in Cheney Hall, invited me and a couple of other girls to stay at her house in the Waimea Valley, near the University of Hawaii’s Honolulu campus, in the summer vacation. I couldn't wait. As soon as finals were over, I packed up my possessions, moved them back to my parents’ house in Los Angeles, and flew to Hawaii from LAX. (Eventually, that is. I decided not to board my original flight because the airlines received a bomb threat. The flight departed anyway, and was fine, but I opted to go on the next one, which also got a bomb threat. By that point I felt as desperate to get to Hawaii as I was scared of blowing up, so I boarded. The plane arrived safely. Obviously.) 

Carol's house was lovely, and had as much living space outdoors as in, with guava trees and plumeria and birds of paradise in the garden. The four of us girls crammed into Carol’s bedroom, on mattresses and folding cots and sleeping bags. I didn't really unpack, just shoved my suitcase into Carol’s closet, shaking out and hanging up the one dress I’d stuffed into the sea of shorts and tank tops and bikinis.  I don't recall us sleeping much; we were too busy. We hiked and snorkeled and shopped. One night we attended a comedy show at which Carol had to translate for the rest of us, because we didn't understand the lingua franca, Hawaiian Pidgin. 

Her closet had two sliding, overlapping hollow-wood doors that ran in a track, and on the second or third day, I found I couldn’t close one of them. To my dismay, it was stuck. Shit, I thought. I had broken Carol's closet and dreaded having to tell my hosts, her parents, a lovely Okinawan couple who spoke minimal English. How much might it cost to fix a closet? How many travelers cheques did I have with me?  It was as embarrassing as blocking their toilet. Before confessing, I investigated, discreetly,  having really no idea how the thing worked, just praying. Lo and behold, I found the problem: my opal earring lay there in the middle of the track. Its 14-carat post was slightly bent but the opal and its setting looked completely unscathed. I pinched it out from under the door's leading edge, stared at the thing in joy and amazement, and carefully secured it in my zippered jewelry bag. The closet door now slid smoothly; no confession necessary. I reunited the opal with its mate two weeks later back in LA.  The whole thing seemed miraculous and unbelievable. Eventually I settled on the explanation that somehow, the earring had been jostled during the dance at St. Mary's, had fallen into my clothing and become entangled, had hidden for months in a drawer in my dorm room, and then had ended up packed in the suitcase I brought to Hawaii. The scenario reflected badly on my laundry practices but short of invoking perfidy (someone stealing the earring and covertly returning it?) I could think of no other. I still can't.

I often remember this earring when I've lost something. Lost things and found things, the impermanence of possession, the illusion of loss. One of my children recently unearthed a cache of photographs and fridge magnets that had been packed away since the most recent move (2.5 years ago) and which I thought had gone for good. Now here the things are, back again, competing for space on our crowded refrigerator and on the bulletin-board photo gallery mounted on our kitchen wall. The kids as babies; husband and me on a holiday in Wales before we had any children. Things found, for now. Memories held, for now. Our eldest child, a tiny newborn in a fading snapshot, is currently applying for university places. He is already anticipating what he will need for his own dorm room, in his own freshman year. 

Talk about impermanence. 

I wonder where the opal earrings are now.

Rocky trip

Every year, thousands of anthropologists gather to talk to each other. It's kind of weird. We could all email, or phone, or facebook, or tweet, and in fact, we do quite a lot of that too, before and after and even during the meeting. Yet we still seem to want to get together face-to-face, microphone to mouth, bum to chair. (Good anthropological subject, no doubt.) This year, the conference took place in downtown Denver, mainly at the convention center, a place with the cavernous feel of an airport, albeit in this case an airport under attack by a giant blue bear. 

Blue Bear outside the Colorado Convention Center

Denver is an odd city even discounting King Kong's ursine cousin. Spread on the high plains that abut the Rockies, it has a western feel, though it lies east of the Continental Divide, an invisible geological feature that figures strongly in the Coloradan imagination. 'The Divide' comes up often in names of Denver's restaurants, bars,  menu items, and, cleverly, a fencing business. The downtown pedestrian mall looks shiny and tall and new, but is also home turf to a downtrodden lot of individuals who, in mid-November, already looked pretty darn cold. Upon arriving at our hotel we went for a walk and right around the corner found a posse of six or eight thick white policemen surrounding a small, dark, handcuffed man. "You're fine," one officer said cheerily to husband and me, "Go on through," as we hesitated, wondering whether to cross the street. Sure, we were fine. 

In the olden days, when they were small and inexpensive to transport, husband and I packed up the kids too and dragged them along with us to whichever North American city was hosting the anthropology gathering that year. We would fly in from England, and my parents would join us from LA,  to bond with and babysit for their grandchildren while we attended symposia, dinners, and business meetings. A little chaotic always, but fun. One year, in Washington DC, when the second child was a toddler, he got hold of his father's glasses and yanked, breaking them. Husband does not function well as a visual being without his specs, and the very next day he had to deliver an important paper (well, important to his audience). Disaster! My mother and I took three little boys-- my two plus the infant son of a friend-- to the Washington Zoo, down the street, while my father served as guide dog to my husband as they sought out an optometrist who could repair the damage. Fun times (mostly).  

The kids are less likely to destroy personal items these days but are also too old and too busy with their own concerns to tag along with us; they have school and friends and activities. (Plus we would have to pay the full price for their airfare.) So they stay in Toronto and I spend about as much time sorting out their schedules as I do preparing my presentations. Phone calls, emails, texts whiz back and forth.  Complex negotiation coupled with a sort of auctioneering generates a spreadsheet. "Who will have this child for Thursday night?... Sold to the highest bidder."  Eventually, we establish which child spends which night at each venue. But then who will walk the dog? Back to the drawing board. 

This year we considered leaving eldest son, age 17 1/2, in charge. But it turned out that he had joined his school's Model UN team and would spend three of the four days of our absence in camera at the university, arguing the case of Persia in the Peloponnesian War. Impressive and all that, but not much use to us. 

A workable spreadsheet emerged eventually, a column per child, a row per day. A list of names, numbers, email addresses below: in case of emergency. Kind friends new and old stepped up to the plate. The kids helped each other too. Everything sorted; we could head to the airport confident that our children would be safe, fed, and warm. The pets too. Off we flew, ready to conference. We kissed the children and told them we would see them in four days. Except, of course, that's not really how it works any more, is it? Before we even boarded our flight inToronto, we rang the elder two to ensure they had woken up in time for school. "Don't forget to walk the dog!" we admonished.

Soon after we reached Denver, eldest child emailed to ask where his father keeps his dress shoes, required for the Model UN stint. From our hotel room in Denver that night, via the magic of Google Docs, I helped youngest child edit an assignment she had to hand in the next morning. (The only problem was that she was working on it in real time, with me, and it was midnight in Toronto.)  The next day, after my presentation finished, I found a quiet corner of the convention center, beneath the Blue Bear's beady gaze, and set about sending and receiving a dozen texts to ensure that the younger two had met, walked the dog and that elder had escorted younger to home of the weekend hosts. "She hasn't arrived yet," reported my friend, the incipient hostess. "Where is she?" I texted middle child to find the answer. "Where are you both?" I typed, hoping he couldn't hear my gritted teeth. "At home, drinking tea," he replied. "We'll leave when I'm done." He had instructed his younger sister to walk the dog while he put his feet up, it seemed. Not a lot I could do about it.

And so it continued. I lived in two worlds, anthropologist at work and play, and mother supervising the home front. On the one hand, how nice; I could be away and yet still feel connected. On the other hand, 'connected' wasn't quite the right word. 'Tethered' might be more accurate. Electronically staked out. Unable to escape. Unwilling, perhaps, too, but sometimes that's not the point. Often we don't want what it is we actually need. (Who sang that?) 

Still, it was a good trip. I presented some work on how clinicians manage their chronic pain patients; husband spoke about seduction. I obtained a wonderful new book by Frances Larson, published by W.W. Norton: Severed: the Story of Heads Lost and Heads Found, a historical perspective on decapitation. I met interesting new people, real people, not their email accounts. Husband and I managed a romantic interlude, skiving off for the last half-day of the conference to visit the gorgeous, delightful town of Boulder on a sunny blue day. We wandered the Pearl Street Mall, and the university, and then we managed a short steep hike up to the Flatirons, stopping only when the trail became too icy. 

As soon as I could, I emailed a photo to our children. "We're on our way home!" I told them. "We can't wait to see you." 

But of course, the electrons got there first.

Decline and Fall

Autumn has been both mellowly fruitful and ferociously fraught. One of my brilliant, beautiful, beloved nieces, a college student, became critically ill and hung for a few days on the edge of tragedy, multiple organs failing, in first one then another ICU in Los Angeles (the second one far far better). She is, thanks to the magics of medicine and mother-love, on the mend (not to downplay fatherly devotion, but it does not alliterate). When I last saw my niece, 3 days ago, she was totally sedated and hooked up to numerous devices. Today she ate ice cream and texted my daughter. Miracle girl. The power of youth.

Only days before her precipitous decline, I had been thinking about mortality and the continuity between life and death in a completely different context. I produced these great thoughts while riding my bike through a graveyard. As one does. Toronto is home to the cheerfully-named Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, which is like a huge park that happens to have dead people under it. It has lovely winding paths, greenery, flowers, and now, autumnal colours.

Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, with jogger

I cycled under great arching orange-leaved trees, sharing the way with a mother pushing a baby buggy and a jogger. Life and death united in the nicest possible way. Completely unlike the ICU.

Our own house fares well in the fall, too, mainly thanks to the neighbours' gorgeous Japanese maple. We are grateful.

Our house and the neighbours' maple

'Tis the season: Toronto turns technicolor

Toronto is showing off lately. The Blue Jays (baseball team) *almost* got to the World Series. Our new prime minister beams from the front pages of the paper. The weather has not been awful. And best of all the leaves are strutting their stuff, changing to their annually marvelous colours. At least, I think they are marvelous;  a colleague at work disagrees. "I grew up in the north," she told me. "Surrounded by sugar maples. Now those leaves are really brilliant. Down here you don't get anything like such intensity. Once," she reminisced, "we had an early snow followed by a sunny day. The red of the leaves against the white drifts..." She gazed down the fluorescent-lit corridor of our uninspired building, seeing beauty.

Autumn in southern California, where I grew up, is a poor show in comparison; any leaves that are not evergreen turn a soft shade of yellow and drop uncertainly and sparsely. Someday perhaps I'll head north -- further north-- to see the sugar maples in their autumnal glory.  For now, I am happy to enjoy the entertainment offered by the trees of Toronto, our (self-proclaimed) 'city within a park'.

Sunny day in Sunnybrook Park, with daughter and dog 

In Which Canada Votes, I Don't, and Justin Trudeau Wins

Like the rest of the country, I can hardly believe it.  Conservative PM Harper's out; Liberal Trudeau, a former teacher, is in. Not at all what the pollsters predicted. Bless.

Canada feels different already.

"I am not the one who made history tonight," says the new prime minister in his victory speech. "You are. You put me here."  Well, not me per se, since, as a non-citizen, I cannot vote.

In fact, Trudeau said it in French first. The man's got all the right words, in English and French. "This is what positive politics can do!" he exclaims. "Kids, Daddy will still be there for you!" he reassures his (currently sleeping) offspring. It's a little like a fairy tale.  

Being a leftie-liberal-hippie-pinko type, I have not been best pleased to find myself living on the side of the border ruled by an evangelical, anti-abortion, tar-sands-exploiting, trickle-down economics guy,  who to top it all off, forbad federal scientists from speaking their own minds.

Those days are history, at least for the moment.

I'm keeping fingers poised to pinch myself come morning. I have had weirder dreams.

May I say 'YIPPEE'?

Refresh in: 36Seats to form majority: 170

PARTY NAME	LEADING + ELECTED	ELECTED SEATS	POPULAR VOTE	CHANGE IN SEATS (?)
Liberals	184	174	39.6%	42.7%
Conservatives	100	92	32.1%	-22.0%
NDP	43	30	19.3%	-18.1%
Bloc Québécois	10	8	4.9%	2.4%
Green	1	1	3.3%	-0.3%
Other	0	0	0.8%	-4.5%

88% of polls reporting

From The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-election-2015/ridings/

Got milk? A rant.

Our house has only a tiny back garden, with no lawn. In front, though, there is a little square of grass. In addition, our street possesses what in local parlance is called ‘a boulevard’, meaning that a width of grass runs the whole length of the block, on both sides, between the pavement and the road. (In the L.A. suburbs of my childhood, this was called ‘normal’.) Recently, I've been looking at these grassy stretches with an appraising eye and wondering what the law says regarding common grazing rights. How much grass do cows actually consume? I'm thinking I might get one or possibly two. In my beloved BBC Radio 4 soap opera, The Archers (“an everyday story of country folk” -- known to us ' tweetalongers' with its hashtag: #TheArchers) , I listened the other day to an episode in which 21-year-old Pip milked the whole of the Brookfield Farm herd while flirting with one of the Fairbrother boys. (Toby, the dashing, dubious one.) As I listened, it occurred to me that milking just one or two cows couldn't be all that difficult. Could it? Jerseys maybe. All I want is enough milk for my little family.

I’m driven to such fantasies by the difficulties I face obtaining milk in local stores. My requirements are simple: I want healthful, safe, and tasty milk for a reasonable price in a simple, sensible, rigid container with a reclosable top. Modest desires. What I can get within my budget at grocery stores, however, is a floppy plastic bag filled with white liquid. Yes, that’s how most milk is packaged in Canada, or at least in Ontario. After five years here, I'm still shocked.

It’s like this.  Three 1.3L transparent plastic sacs of milk are nestled into one large colourful bag whose top is secured with a twist-tie, making up four liters in total. At home, the hapless consumer wrangles one of the three small bags into a small container with a handle (purchased separately for the purpose), leaving the top of the bag poking out, but hopefully not too far out, because then one snips off the corner of the milk bag with scissors, or if they are missing, a knife. Too small a hole and the milk won’t pour, but too large a one leads to messy overflow. It’s sloppy even with a perfectly-sized hole (I'm told, not having achieved such nirvana myself) because some drops of milk will always dribble down between the bag and the container’s interior. Almost nobody washes out the jug between bags.

And in a family of five, a liter-and-a-bit sac of milk empties in day or less, triggering the annoying rigamarole of Changing the Bag with great frequency. A sort of hot-potato game evolves, to avoid finishing off the last of the milk, at least when there are witnesses. (Where are those damned scissors? Oh never mind, I'll just have green tea. Even though it tastes like dirt.) And, adding insult to injury, the milk is left in the fridge with its gaping hole, easily spillable, and, you know, open. Yuck.

It's a crazy state of affairs, I tell you.

Why is it thus? I asked the locals when we first arrived in Canada, to no avail. I present my case: milk is a fluid, gravity exists, plastic bags are flexible and pierceable and really pretty unsuited to the transportation and service of milk. Shrugs. I, however, have not accommodated. My irritation and annoyance have only grown with the passage of time. 

Milk in cartons can be had, albeit at double the price:

Milk in bags (4L):                                     Milk in cartons (2L):

$3.97 ea ($.10/100 mL) $4.39 ea ($.22/100 mL)

Hence, the recent bright idea of starting my own dairy herd.

Luckily, though, in the nick of time, someone mentioned to me Mac's Stores. I was already vaguely aware of this chain of convenience stores with a winking red owl as their logo. Apparently, went the rumour, Mac's were allowed, by special dispensation from the Queen or some such (I made that up) to sell milk in 4-liter rigid (though still plastic) jugs. I ventured in one day, and sure enough, it was true! Four liters of milk in a decent-sized container WITH A TOP. At the moment such treasure costs $4.99, plus a returnable 25 cent deposit. Calloo, callay!

All is not perfect, however. Perish the thought. Mac's stores in Toronto generally do not have car parks attached, so acquisition is a bit tricky, and outings to purchase milk have come to seem like surreptitious forays for contraband. Psst. Got any 2% left? Often I swing by the Mac's on a corner near my office, riding my bike. I can fit two 4-liter jugs in the basket.There's another Mac's just next to the orthodontist's office with street parking nearby, if it's before 4:00 pm.

It may not be the Queen herself who issues the Dairy Decree, but the Government is involved in regulating milk packaging. In fact, Container Controversy still rages. A year or so back, Mac's wanted to sell milk in three-liter containers. Horror! The Ontario dairy industry along with various provinicial ministries reacted strongly against this apostasy:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/12/11/its_official_you_can_buy_3litre_milk_jugs.html

I can't help but think they are all totally nuts, but as long as i get my fix of milk in a container that respects gravity, I will be satisfied. At least I'm not entirely alone, as I discovered recently:

http://www.producer.com/2014/08/ontarios-great-milk-jug-debate-puts-dairy-industry-in-odd-situation/

The most recent twist in the story has me a little scared. Mac's Stores are being taken over by a US-based chain called Circle K. Their logo is, unsurprisingly, a letter 'K' inside a circle. Farewell, then, to the winking owl. I can live with that. But I am on tenterhooks waiting to find out whether they will still sell milk in jugs. Until I can be certain, I'm keeping my eye on the price of Jerseys.

Great lake

When I was a map-reading child, I loved the idea, the sound, of a region called 'the Great Lakes'. Why couldn't we refer to California as 'the Wonderful West'?

Now that I actually live here, the Great Lakes often disappoint me, even though I came to understand that 'great' refers to their size, not their aesthetic supremacy (or Superiority). However, last month, en route home from a work trip to Kingston, Ontario, I decided to stop in Prince Edward County, because so many people had told me of its loveliness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought, dubious. I have not been overly impressed by the local landscape. (Well, okay, Niagara Falls deserves its rep.)

I had toted my bike from home all the way to Kingston, 300 km away, on the back of the car, which I now parked in the small town of Picton. After a frugal lunch of tuna salad sandwich in the bookshop cafe, I rode the 15 km to Sandbanks Provincial Park, on the shore of Lake Ontario.

All of it impressed me: the cute town of Picton, the kindness of its bookshop employees (here, hey said, take my map), the rolling agricultural landscape of the county, the judicious sprinkling of art galleries, and finally the widely dramatic sweep of the lake beach at Sandbanks. I sat there listening to the rush of waves for as long as I dared before dusk crept up, and then rode the 15 km back to my car.

It's not the Amazing Pacific, but it will do. Quite nicely in fact.

Spartacus and the Shoreham air show crash

Home again in Toronto, reunited with my pets, my garden, and my beloved tumble-dryer. The garden has run amok. There's an impenetrable jungle of tomato plants in which the ripe fruit hide, stems of gigantic squashes grabbing at our ankles, and towering Jerusalem artichokes blocking the sunlight. A vine toward the back has produced gorgeous purple trumpet-mouthed flowers but they are mostly hidden behind other foliage. I've got my work cut out for me and I look forward to pottering around in the warm sunshine tomorrow. I would look forward to it more if pottering weren't going to be accompanied by the sound of screaming jets.

It's the air show at the annual Canadian National Exhibition, or 'Ex', a sort of county fair on steroids.

The Ex was one of the first topics of conversation among the kids after we arrived in Toronto because we passed it on our slow way home from the airport. "Can we go? And when will they have the airshow?" asked the youngest, looking out her window, staring upward at a ride that seemed to swing occupants into the clouds. She had already had two visits to the amusement park on the Brighton Pier and one to Canada's Wonderland this summer. (She did wangle a trip to the Ex, as it happens, but not during the air show.)

"In a week," I said. "For Labor Day." Well, it is now Labour Day weekend and the jets make a huge racket over our house on their way to the lakefront to perform their daring tricks.  I cringe even more than I did in previous years because only a couple of weeks ago we were on the fringe of the Shoreham air show tragedy.

On our last Saturday afternoon in England I sat with two friends in a shady grove in Bentley, East Sussex, while our daughters swung from ropes attached to treetops. A beep indicated a WhatsApp message on one friend's phone and she read it out. "I heard about the air crash. Are you okay?" The three of us automatically looked up. The only things crashing through air were our children, who were secured by harnesses. My husband, returning from Norway, had sent a message only moments earlier to say he had landed safely, thank goodness.  A quick internet trawl found early reports of the horrific crash by an old WW2 jet onto a busy road, the A27 in Shoreham. We had driven the same road, further east, an hour earlier, to reach our bucolic woods.

Yes, we were okay, but I feel have been on the fringe of too many air show disasters (which I know is a silly statement as any is too many). The Shoreham crash happened on a stretch of road only a few miles from our former home in Hove. I travelled it often. The airshow is, or at any rate was, annual, and we saw some of it most years that we lived in Sussex, though without ever attending it on purpose. One year we were picking blackberries along the link trail to the South Downs Way while airplanes were doing tricks over our shoulders. Another year we watched it in the background as elder son's football team, the Southwick Rangers, played on a pitch at the edge of Shoreham. Parental attention wandered from the action on the field to the action in the air. A murmur went up from some of the adults on the sidelines. "Where did it go? Did you see it come back?" An old warplane, flown by an ace, had crashed. The pilot died.

We used to have occasional outings to the Shoreham Airport (now renamed Brighton City Airport, I notice), the base for the airshow. It's tiny and in Art Deco style, the only airport I know to which the adjective 'charming' could be applied. When characters in Agatha Christie stories are filmed flying someplace (usually Paris), footage of the Shoreham Airport is used. We enjoyed going to the little airport cafe for tea and cakes, because it's that cute. I helped organize a field trip there for younger son's primary school class, during a unit on transportation.

'Brighton City' aka Shoreham Airport (from Worthing & Adur Chamber of Commerce)

Finally (I hope finally) many many years ago, when I was an undergraduate studying at the University of Sussex, I went with some friends to see the Red Arrows, the British team of elite performing fighter jets. Actually I'm not sure they fight, but they do perform. I watched the team swoop and dive over the Brighton Pier, a few yards off the seafront. The pilots pretended almost to collide with one another. They reminded me of the preschool boys I babysat that summer, feinting and saying 'ka-pow' with toy cars in their tiny fists. The Red Arrows divided into two groups, four heading west, five east. Then they looped around, the western group heading east and the eastern ones west, racing toward one another with trailing streams of exhaust so they looked like scarlet fingernails on clasping hands. The planes slid past one another with seemingly no room to spare.

"Wait. One is missing," said my friend. We counted. She was right. We could see only eight planes turn tail and head north, ending the show. In those pre-internet days, it took some time for the news to filter through. One of the pilots had panicked, thinking his shiny red fingernail was about to crash into his opposite number, and he had ejected, leaving his plane hurtling uncontrolled toward the pier, which was packed with onlookers and consumers of fish and chips.

It missed. It also missed every one of the myriad small boats bobbling in the sea. The pilot lived, to face disciplinary measures. The plane plunged deep beneath the water about fifty yards from the pier and the military quickly erected a security cordon around the area until they could retrieve their treasure.

So that makes three air show disasters in my sight or near vicinity. And I'm not an airshow aficionado, which makes me think that a) airshows are too often disastrous or b) it's me.

I'll go with (a). So, why are they allowed?

"You could ban them but pilots taking calculated risks in exciting manoeuvres is what people want to see... This is a gladiatorial display – that is what people go to see,” said David Learmount, a 'consulting editor' (what's that?) at FlightGlobal magazine.

Gladiatorial, indeed. Mr. Learmount seems to think that's a good thing. Would Spartacus agree?

The Canadian equivalent to the Red Arrows is the Snowbirds. The name makes them sound delightful and friendly, but these are loud, fast, frightening machines that consume masses of fuel and create more noise pollution than the M25, for the purpose of entertainment. They scare the horses, along with the dogs and small children beneath their path. This weekend they will shriek overhead while I wrestle with my unruly squash blossoms.

Pegging out

Instead of an engagement ring, I sometimes think I ought to be wearing a tumble dryer on my left hand. A dryer was the first major shared purchase husband and I made when we began living together, and as such it had huge significance, at least to me. I've discovered anew how important the machine is to the running of my life, though perhaps not quite on a par with marriage. I say 'perhaps'.

My family and I have spent most of August in England, having swapped our house in Toronto with that of friends in Brighton. It's lovely, our borrowed home, perched on a hill in a neighbourhood not far from, but quite different to the one that used to be ours when we lived here. Ours was on a flat tree-lined avenue by the seafront. We love getting to have a vacation in our old hometown and at the same time to explore it from a new angle. 

This house has comfortable sofas, large and light rooms, and cosy studies for self and husband. It has numerous floors and an interesting layout, and for several days we amused ourselves getting lost on the way to the bathroom. It has a dishwasher and a washing machine, two ovens and an elegant, four-footed cast-iron wood-burning stove in the sitting room. There's a television with a games console on which the boys are currently playing FIFA 2000-something. It has wi-fi.  There is a charming and well-tended garden filled with fruit and flowers and curious cats. We have picked all the ripe produce we could reach; several apple crumbles have been baked. There are friendly neighbours next door.

The house has, however, no tumble dryer, something which does not make it at all unusual in this part of the world. I'm not sure I know anyone in Toronto who has a washing machine but no dryer, while I have discovered anew on this visit that quite a few of my friends exist in what I see as a laundry half-life. During my five years of living in Canada I had forgotten about the puzzling English indifference to this convenient contraption, and thus I decided to conduct a casual survey, the better to understand, in keeping with my mission, the transatlantic divide. A few sample responses to my questions about ownership of a dryer: 'It damages the clothes, doesn't it?' 'Dryers use so much energy.' 'Clothes smell better when they've dried outdoors.'  Some respondents (aka dear friends) who confess to possessing a machine-- and it does come across as a shameful weakness-- are quick to say that they resort to it only occasionally, when necessary. They lower their voices. You would think I'd been inquiring about their cocaine habits.

'Pegging out' wet washing on the line is regarded as an undertaking that requires moral as well as physical heft, and friends/respondents wax poetic about the scent of clothes dried outside in sunshine and wind compared to those flung about inside a hot metal drum. Never mind that clothes left hanging to dry acquire the texture of cardboard and require rigourous ironing to be wearable. Never mind the time it takes to hang each individual item and secure it with clothespins (no, North Americans, these funny little clips are not only for kindergarteners' wet paintings). Never mind that in England, stretches of uninterrupted dry, let alone sunny weather are few and far between. I recall numerous 'mums' day out' lunches brought to an abrupt end by approaching rain clouds: 'Oh dear, my washing is on the line! Must dash.' 

I guess I here reveal, and succumb to, my essential American-ness. To me, clothes that have been hanging about outside seem less clean than before washing. Outdoors is where knickers and linens encounter dust and muck and bird droppings. An Anglo-Canadian friend (she swings both ways) recently described to me some former neighbours of hers here in England, an American couple who kept trying to use a British contraption called the 'washer-drier', a machine that claims (falsely) to be able to dry as well as wash a load of clothing. The neighbours' dogged persistence with the appliance allowed my friend the full use of the circular clothes line in the shared back garden. Eventually, after some months, however, the Americans 'went native' and began competing for space on which to hang-dry their wet washing. Soon thereafter they gave up and fled across the Atlantic, back to laundry sanity.

It's not that I don't care about the health of the planet and environmental sustainability; I do. It's just that, in pursuit of eco-credentials, I would rather ride my bike, or walk, and eschew driving my car, than give up the tumble dryer.

Let me hasten to add that on this visit I have also been reminded of other, more essential aspects of what I love and miss about England, as well as what I appreciate about Toronto. 

What I love and miss about England:


1) The countryside 

Walking in Firle, East Sussex

2) The sea, the sea

Shingle on Hove seafront

3) The history

A window in Durham Cathedral, depicting the story of Northeast England

4) The vampire rabbit

In Newcastle-upon-Tyne

5) The Sussex coast

One of the Seven Sisters

What I appreciate about 'Toronto the Good':

1) Our home, our neighbourhood, and the friends, pets, cafes, and culture that go with it. See you soon!

2) The ubiquity of tumble dryers. 

Wet day in Brighton

And now, must dash. Laundry on the line!

My Ten Plagues

They say bad things come in threes, but this summer it's been more like tens. The ten plagues. And July isn't over yet. I'm quaking in my flip-flops. Pardon me while I smear some lamb's blood on mine doorpost. Oh wait, I can't; mine doorpost has been shattered by the burglar who kicked in the door.

Hang on. In the beginning...

1) In the beginning the fridge leaked.  A lot. A friend getting rid of her old fridge said we could have it. Hallelujah, we said, and praise the lord. The lord laughed; friend's fridge would not fit through our hallway nor through the back door. Sayonara, friend's fridge. In retrospect, this was so frivolous a trouble that it counts as entertainment.

2) Knowing we were planning to engage in a house-swap in August, exchanging homes with friends from Brighton, we looked at our surroundings with a more critical gaze. The staircases, all three of them, were in a dire state, and husband decided now was the hour to rectify that. We selected a lovely shade of slate grey for the 'step' part of the stairs, and a creamy white for the 'riser'. The tricks involved in getting lines where the two colours meet straight and the paint smooth eluded us, as did those in achieving cooperation from the household pets.

Cat + toy + wet paint = *&^%#

And on top of it all, the stylish slate grey turned out to be more of a muddy brown. We are just not fancy folk. (I tell people that our decorating scheme is shabby chic without the chic.)

3) Then the black cat got sick. The kids call that cat Cottontail, because he has a little dot of white on the end of him, but I call him Bazooka, for his endless destructive activities. In this case, he destroyed our peace of mind and our bank balance, requiring emergency hospitalization and then a series of tests, which were all inconclusive. After the cat endured days on IV fluids and a variety of medication, the vet sent him home to us, undiagnosed, and instructed us to shove drugs down his throat, coax him to eat and drink, and prepare ourselves for the worst. One night we had a power blackout and I found myself feeding my struggling and ungrateful cat disgusting puree through a syringe by candlelight, wondering how I got here.

3a) Husband left town. Not me, just town.

4) They say that Toronto has two seasons: winter and construction. Well, it's not winter. The houses on both sides of us are undergoing noisy renovations. Workers friendly, noise intermittently loud and annoying.

5) Work: now I've got too much of it, but I learned recently that come spring, I'll have too little, as research funds dwindle. Desperately seeking more grant money. Academia is really a life of semi-dignified begging. I sometimes wonder whether I'd be better off brushing up on my juggling skills, learning the banjo, and staking out a street corner with a Starbucks on it.

6) The cat, Bazooka the trouble-maker, took to disappearing. We found him twice on the roof of the single-story extension, which is overlooked by the laundry room, whose window was open wide, rather than its usual 2-inch cat-proof gap. 'Who opened that window?' we all hollered at each other. No one 'fessed up. I postulated silently that the cat was looking for a private place to hide and expire. Then at 4:00 am on Saturday, Jordi the dog began barking in my bedroom, truly, madly, deeply. He was so insistent that instead of shushing him, I leaped up and followed him down the hallway to the laundry room. The sick black cat slunk out, looking guilty as all get-out, and I charged in, flipping on the light. The window was open wide, indeed was opening wider as I watched, the screen flung on the floor, and two tiny hands gripped the edge of one sliding pane. Pressed against the glass on the outside was the hulking shape of a raccoon's haunches, though in that light and at that time, it could also have been a bear's. Well, a cub's. I shoved the window closed, fortunately not taking off any little fingers in the process, and latched it. The dog continued to bark and my heart to pound as I crawled back to bed. That's how the cat had been getting out. Except for the dog, surely we would have had a raccoon invasion. I've had those before, in California, and I felt grateful not to have the experience again. Good dog.

7) I felt less grateful to him Saturday evening. The kids and I had trooped off to see the track and field finals of the Pan Am Games. We had a wonderful time watching relays and high jumps and javelins. We had a less wonderful time coming home, laden with Thai takeaway,  discovering that the house had been burgled, apparently with the willing cooperation of the dog. He despises  raccoons, but loves humans, apparently any humans. Bad dog. We lost laptops and jewelry and some cash. We lost that night's sleep. The police arrived (eventually) and stayed for hours, taking pictures and fingerprints and interviewing neighbours. After they left, a door repairman was sent by the insurance company. He arrived at 4 o'clock am (24 hours exactly after the raccoon) and stayed for an hour, talking steadily to himself. Bless.

8) The sequelae: dealings with police, insurance, security companies, replacing laptops. Decisions, decisions, decisions, and deductibles. So very un-fun. And did I mention husband left town? Oh yes, I did. But I'm not bitter. Not a bit.

9) Terse message from my father: time-sensitive information from UCLA. Prepare to receive. What, Dad? What? I imagined the worst. UCLA has a major medical center; there must be some dire diagnosis on its way. Finally the letter arrives, and it is indeed from the medical center. It's been hacked by cyber-crooks. I am among the 4.8 million people whose patient records may have been compromised. Last time I was a patient at UCLA medical center was over two decades ago. I find it hard to worry, but my father has enrolled me in an identity-protection scheme. I am not that sure I want to keep my identity at this point. Maybe it would be a good thing to let someone else have it for awhile, someone who is better at deciding on alarm installation companies, and who wants to clean up cat vomit. Come on, you hackers, I dare you.

10) The house swap. This is going to be fun. I'm really looking forward to it. I am, honest. I am not, however, looking forward to preparing for it. Clearing up, making things clear. Lists and more lists. When do the bins go out? How many drawers to empty? Where do we keep the lawn mower? Did I mention husband is not here to share the burden? Oh right, I did. I also mentioned that I'm not bitter, not one tiny little bit. I am grace itself.

Well, I've reached ten so I'll stop. To show my good attitude and gratitude,  why don't I list a few blessings. 1) The cat seems to be on the mend. 2) The fridge leakage was repaired for a small (ish) sum by a repairman. 3) The Pan Am Games and associated events have brought joy and delight to the city. 4) Husband and I had a wonderful day at a spa to celebrate our anniversary, the day before he left town (but I won't dwell on that).  5) The weather is beautifully warm, proper summer, just the way I like it: #yesIsweat 6) The raspberry bush is fruiting, tomatoes are ripening, herbs running rampant. 7) The stairs are painted now, and not at all badly, if you don't examine them very closely. 8) Wonderful family and friends have been supportive and helpful about the break-in, and I got to meet and talk to lots of my neighbours because of it. 9) The burglars shut both the front door (where they entered) and the back door (where they left), which ensured the pets did not escape -- though perhaps not for that reason. They made no mess at all and carefully did not steal passports or other documents. As a friend in England wrote, 'Even Canadian burglars are polite!' 10) If I can make it through the next few days, the kids and I will be heading to England, my first visit there in over a year. It's going to be great. I'm quite sure.

There. Even steven.

Forgive me as I scan the skies for locusts. Is that hail falling?

The Postman Always Sings Twice: #Panamania

The Brighton Festival, and the Brighton Fringe, formed an annual highlight to our cultural year when we lived in Hove. In fact, sometimes they were our cultural year. I found out recently that there is a Toronto Fringe, though not, apparently, a matching Toronto Festival, so it's unclear what this Fringe is fringing. Never mind. Husband and I attended a play called Mandelshtam,  performed in the basement of a tiny synagogue near us, and were impressed  http://fringetoronto.com/fringe-festival/shows/mandelshtam/.

At the Pan Am Park

Now the Pan Am Games have come to Toronto, and along with dozens of sports, we also have a panoply of interesting artistic and cultural events under the aegis of 'Panamania'. In fact one such event, the staging of an innovative play called The Postman, happened at the park across the street this very evening. Drama delivered to our doorstep! The kids and I wandered over, dragging our lawn chairs. Husband popped along later, kindly delivering cups of tea. What a perfect way to spend a warm, light Saturday evening.

Finale, with Mrs. Jackson, a descendant-in-law of Albert, seated

The Postman uses words, music, movement and clever costuming to tell the story of Albert Jackson, the first black postman in Canada. Jackson was born into slavery in Delaware, and as a child, youngest of nine, made the journey by Underground Railroad with his mother and siblings to freedom north of the border. They all settled in Toronto.

The play gets performed in different venues around our neighbourhood, sometimes on the front porch of a house that Albert Jackson himself once owned. The music is terrific, the writing wonderful, and the acting engaging. I really hope this play gets a wider showing, as all the performances for Panamania are apparently sold out.

 http://thepostmanwalks.ca/

In Which My Colon and I Offer Thanks to David Sedaris

I'm a David Sedaris groupie. And this week I've had cause to be grateful for it.

Only Mr. Sedaris told me the truth about having a colonoscopy. His essay 'The Happy Place' (in Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls) describes his own experience of the procedure. I don't understand why no one else, those near and dear to  me, bothered passing on such crucial life information. My parents, for instance, explained sex to me in nearly forensic detail, back when I was too young to need it. Perhaps modern parents could amend the lecture and call it 'The Birds and the Bees and Colonoscopies'. Many of my friends and relatives in the US and Canada have undergone the investigation, and no one, not a one, described it as thoroughly as did David Sedaris. The only problem with his rendition is that because it is so funny, my laughter undercut my comprehension. I didn't actually believe much of it. I should have.

***

I got a letter in the mail notifying me that my time had come and I was due for some bowel inspection. My family doctor referred me to a local centre which he said was the High Temple for dealing with all aspects of the gut.  I shall call it God’s Clinic. "That's what they do there, day in and day out," said my doctor. "That's the place to go." I agreed, and shortly had an appointment with a Dr. Moses (not really), who asked me when I'd last had a colonoscopy.

"I don't see it on our records," he said, flipping pages. I confessed that the answer was never.

His glasses nearly fell from his nose. "What? And how old are you?" He looked again, tutted, and said, "At your age! We need to see what's going on up there." 

"I once had a screening test,” I offer, knowing this will be seen as weakness. “My family physician says there's a small but significant chance of perforation..."

"Your doctor is wrong," said Dr. Moses. "It is not significant. The risk is 1 in 3000. I will see you next week." And out he marched, leaving only the whiff of burning bush behind. In the literature given me by the clinic staff, the risk is listed as 1 in 4000. So Dr. Moses may be wrong, too.

***

The eight pages of instructions for preparation look draconian, and indeed, when the time comes to implement them, they are. For four days before the procedure, I am allowed no nuts or seeds or anything that might contain them. No tomatoes, no cucumbers, no strawberries, no blueberries. No watermelon. In summer! It's hard to remember. And ambiguous. Is tomato sauce allowed? To be on the safe side, I scrape it off the chicken parmigiana served at a work lunch.The salad has cucumber in it. No, thank you.

The day before the procedure, the going gets really tough. No solid food; clear liquids only. I learnt afterward that I could have included chicken broth and Jell-O in my diet but instead I subsisted for forty hours on PowerAde, ginger ale, sweet tea, other sugary liquids, and water. I am not a fan of sugary liquids (unless they incorporate vodka or rum). Forty hours felt like forty days. I could definitely have done with some manna. And then worst of all is the purging, aided by the consumption of laxative tablets and four litres of a disgusting electrolyte solution designed to clear the entire gut. Awfulness on top of horribility. For the final two hours, not even liquids are allowed to pass my lips. By the time I got to the clinic I resembled a limp rag, barely able to locomote, and quite unable to be civil to anyone who mattered (ask my husband).

"How are you today?" asked the chirpy receptionist at God’s Clinic, when I staggered in the door, and because she didn't matter, I managed a polite reply. Nonetheless, she understood. “I guess you've been better.”

A nurse, or at least a female in pink scrubs, escorted me to the exam room, where Dr. Moses sat at his desk drinking coffee right in front of me. How could he? It was fromTim Hortons, but still. I sat in the upright wooden chair across from the desk, ignoring the vast plane of the paper-lined table across the room, clinging to dignity until ordered to relinquish it. As I sat down, the doctor rose in response to a summons at the door, and departed. In his absence, one of the nurses (another had appeared) instructed me to climb upon The Table, and I obeyed. When Dr. Moses returned, however, he scolded them. "You can't just jump the gun like that. I have to talk to her," he said. 

"But you talked to her last week," protested the one in pink. 

"Never mind. Sit there!" he said, pointing me at the wooden chair. Obediently, I crossed the linoleum tiles again, perching while the doctor sipped his coffee and looked at a piece of paper. In fifteen seconds he nodded and then said, "Okay, now." And I walked for the final time to the seat of operations. It was a lot of exercise for someone in my condition.

"Oh, has she signed the consent?" one nurse asked the other.

"No," whispered the first. 

"See!" barked the doctor, overhearing. "That's why you can't just rush these things. Put your name here," he said, dropping a clipboard in my lap. I paused to read the several paragraphs above the signature line and one of the nurses huffed noisily. If there's one thing I know, it's consent procedures, so I ignored her. 

"It says here that if I don't want a colonoscopy, I can have an X-ray instead. Would an X-ray do as good a job?" I asked. 

"No," Dr. Moses said. "Not as good." I sign. I’m a researcher; I know consent procedures, but I also know when I'm beaten. All I can do is try to remember this experience next time I’m the one asking for consent.

I have told the doctor, and the nurses, and written on my intake form at the previous visit that I am worried about sedation, that in the past I've had struggles coming out of anaesthesia, and that I think in my case, a little goes a long way. David Sedaris describes the sedative as the best part of the procedure, the route to the 'happy place,' so I don't want to forgo the experience, but I do want to survive it. I suspect that in my current condition a glass of wine would do the same trick as fancy drugs. I remind them again about my worries.

"Yes, yes," says Dr. Moses. “You can tell the anaestheiologist.” Meanwhile he inserts a needle into the back of my hand. "Roll onto your left side." I do so while the nurses work to ensure that my (still clothed) body remains covered by large paper sheets. My back is to the door so I can’t see anyone going through it, but a moment later a man leans over my shoulder and starts pushing an ampoule into the needle in my hand. I never even see the whites of his eyes. I never see anything of him, in fact, but his fingers. I say, as quickly as I can, slightly desperate, "I have concerns about the amount of sedation. I've had experiences before..."

"Why are you waiting until now to say something?" says the bogeyman behind me, irritably. 

"I didn't!" I protest. "I'm not! I told them, I told them all, many times..." I feel myself fading, and I contemplate death. Then I decide this might not be a good last thought, and instead, conjure up David Sedaris. Happy place, happy place. And I'm out.

***

I'm vaguely aware of being prodded into a wheelchair, but don't really come round until I'm lying in a La-Z-Boy in another room. There’s a line of them, in black vinyl, each slightly torn or scuffed, each with a vital-signs monitor beeping next to it. Without the monitors, it could have been a beauty parlor. I have a cuff on my right arm and a clip on my middle finger, and my machine is beeping too. I feel fine, pleasantly sleepy, and cold. A nurse reads my mind and puts a blanket over me. Is this the happy place?

Dr. Moses comes in holding a battered leather briefcase and wiggles my stockinged toes. “All good!” he says, cheerily. “See you in 10 years. Bye.” He disappears out the door, down the corridor. I drift off.

***

As I gradually awake, I have questions. Can I eat now? Drink? Yes. The nurse helpfully fishes out the travel mug I brought with hot sweet milky tea.  Why is my blood pressure varying? The nurse says she is not sure, but is not too worried; for the next few days, she suggests, I should go to Shoppers, a local drugstore chain, and check it again. I heard her give the same advice to the woman next to me and was not impressed.

I ask the nurse whether I can consult with a doctor about my blood pressure. Moses has gone but I know there is a doctor about the place, a thin man with white hair, white skin, and pale eyes. He made me think of skim milk. Earlier, I had watched him speak to a patient in another La-Z-Boy, a woman looking smarter than most of us, in a print wrap skirt, high-heeled sandals, and a neat chin-length bob. The milky doctor had rested both his hands on her bare shins and said “I bet you do a lot of walking.” 

The nurse fetches him. I see from stitching on his white coat that he is, in fact, Dr. God, the head honcho. In response to my query he says “Oh, it’s just nerves. You're a woman. You see, I'm married so I know all about you girls.”   I tell him he is lucky he didn't say so at a conference in South Korea, but apparently he has not followed the #TimHunt news. I ask when I can resume exercise.

“Two days,” says Dr. God.

“So I can play soccer the day after tomorrow?” I ask.

“Sure. Well, it depends. Do you know how to play soccer?”  Cute.

“Yeah, yeah. And doctor will I be able to play piano afterward,” I respond.

He takes this as humour. Fine, let him. “She's sharp, this one,” he says to the nurse. Annoyed would be closer.

Husband is in the waiting room, ready to escort me home. I’m a little slow, a little fuzzy, nowhere near as happy as David S. promised. (I knew I shouldn’t believe everything he said.) What I am mainly is starving, so we stop in the deli downstairs for a sandwich, which goes a long way toward waking me up. Within an hour, I’m feeling fine, and we head off to collect daughter from her friend’s house.  “Don’t turn left here. Take the next street,” I instruct. “Watch the pedestrian!” I’ve signed an agreement that I won’t drive for the next 24 hours.

“You’ve recovered,” sighs my husband, resigned.

***

David Sedaris lives in England but had his colonoscopy while he was visiting the US. According to the NHS, bowel cancer screening is recommended to people between the ages of 60 and 74, and by ‘screening’, they mean sending off a stool sample to a lab. If the sample is abnormal, only then does the NHS offer a colonoscopy-- eventually. Meanwhile, in Ontario, it seems, everyone over 50 gets a colonoscopy right off the bat (although the webpage for the Cancer Society of Canada says that ideally, the lab test should be offered first).

Does it make a difference, this widespread deployment of invasive investigation? I sure don’t know. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and the interweb has all of them ready for me. Five-year colon cancer survival rates are ever so slightly higher in Canada than they are in England, by about two percentage points. I don’t know the data and have no information about how the calculations were done or on what population.  I do know that googling ‘bowel cancer survival rates UK’ led me, at very first go, to an immaculate, easy-to-read table¹. Doing the same for Canada took me to pages within pages of text before I located a cautiously-worded rendition of (possibly) comparable information².

About the behind, Canada seems less up-front.

***

The ever-ready net tells me that, in fact, it’s perfectly okay to exercise the day after an uncomplicated colonoscopy, so I allow myself an easy bike ride and a Pilates session. I find myself looking at other people in the class, and wondering. Has she had one? Has he? We need a secret sign. “Arms out, and squat,” says the instructor.

That could be it.

1.        http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer/survival#heading-Zero

2.        http://www.cancerview.ca/idc/groups/public/documents/webcontent/rl_crc_snapshot_three_en.pdf