Judith Pettersen

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before

The Beatles song, Long and Winding Road, might be about love, loss and loneliness.  But as I travelled from northern Manitoba to the town of Whistler BC, the title took on a whole new meaning.   I”m fairly sure that I have seen this road before, though its been awhile.  And it wasn’t until we left Salmon Arm that the long and winding road became a bit of a nightmare. 

We spent the night in a small, privately owned motel in Bumcrack, BC.  (The name has been changed, for obvious reasons.) The building looked quaint, almost charming, on the outside, especially when compared to the rest of the town.

Our first clue regarding the accomodations might have been the shriveled looking creature curled up on a lawn chair outside the front entrance.   Think Gollum, with a tan.  Add in a can of beer and a haze of smoke to complete the picture.
 
There were no sheets on the bed in our room.  The guy at the front desk, (like George Carlin, but with bad teeth) gave us an aw, shucks grin.  “Gollum!” he called.   “You make up that bed properly!”  Turns out, Gollum was the chambermaid.  The little man loped towards our room, sheets clutched in his grimy claw.  I took them before he got in the door.
 

Did I mention that the sheets were made of a rubber, polyester blend?  The floor looked like it hadn’t been vacummed in a while.  The walls were covered in bug carcasses and what looked to be bloodied hairs from a deer carcass.  At least, we hoped that’s what it was.  The TV remote didn’t work and George Carlin showed up to change the batteries.  Another aw, shucks grin.  On the plus side, the toilets flushed.  And the door locked, if you heaved your whole body against it while sliding the lever over. 

It was the next day that we found out the reason for the rubber sheets.  On the long and winding road from Cache Creek to Whistler, it’s almost impossible not to piss yourself.  The narrow road shoots through valleys and then climbs up to impossible heights, twisting and turning like a roller coaster designed by a crack smoking engineer.  The lack of any kind of barrier inspires a type of exercise called keegles, which most men have never even heard of, followed by  bum clenches, thus ensuring that we didn’t crap ourselves. 

While driving along this twisted, crazy highway, various signs would pop up in front of us. ‘Danger of Avalanche.  Watch for wild horses.  Deer crossing.  Goat trail.  Loose cattle.’  All this, as we’re crawling along doing our keegles, holding hands and saying goodbye.  By this point, we had knots our back so large, we looked like Quazimoto.

Mostly, we were travelling thirty kilometres an hour.  We kept trying to pull over, to let braver or more impatient drivers pass us by.  The road was too narrow.  There were a few viewing points, but if anything, they increased our exercise activities.  Clench.  Squeeze.  Lift.  Breath.  Whimper.  Begin again.

“But the views were beautiful!” everyone gushed, when we finally arrived in Whistler.  Thinking back on it, I guess they were.   But it’s the last time I’ll see that long and winding road.  We intend to go back, and we’ll meet you at your door, Heather and Adam. But I’m pretty sure we’ll take the long way around. 

The whisper runs through the garden like a faint breeze, lightly masked by the nighttime serenade of frogs and insects.  It begins with the frantic mumbling of the smallest beet at the very end of the row.  “The dandelion!” it cries, in a tiny, frightened voice.
“Dandelion!” mocks a tall bean plant, its tone scornful and defensive.  “Try growing next to a wall of  stinkweed.” 
Laughter from a multitude of weeds adds to the growing storm of whispering voices.  To the beet, the sound is enough to freeze the scant water trembling within its tiny stem.  ‘It’s leaning over me,” it cries again, faintly.  “I won’t be able to grow.”
“Pick on someone your own size,” begs a voice from the row of peas planted nearby.
‘Fat lot of good the peas are,” murmurs another bean plant.  “They lie there all day, and we’re left to fight the enemy.”
“Like we have a choice?” whines yet another pea plant.  ‘If the farmer was paying attention, we’d  have a fence to climb.  Then you’d see what we have to offer.  But where is the farmer?”  The voice overflows with cynicism and despair;  it’s question rhetorical.
“Sitting on the ledge of her dwelling, drinking that strange water that makes her laugh too loudly.  It makes her step on us when she comes down into the garden, late at night.”  It is the delicate fringe of a carrot planted at  the far right of the garden that speaks.  It has the best view of the house, and is considered to be an authority on all things ‘farmer’ by most of the other vegetables.
The small beet ventures a fear filled glance at the tall Dandelion looming over it.  “I didn’t ask to be put here,’ the dandelion protests in a voice not unlike James Dean, if he were an effeminate weed.  “I should be on the lawn with my friends, but I got stuck here instead.  Just wait until my hair changes, then I’ll be seen in all kinds of places.”  The dandelion laughs hysterically and the plants nearby shiver in silent protest.
One of the beans sends a silent creeper that wraps around the stem of a chickweed plant which seems to have sprung up overnight.  “I’ve got one!  I’m holding on!  It’s going  to be okay, everyone!  Its going to be…!”  The voice is snuffed quickly, without the slightest sound.  A shudder ruffles the leaves of every vegetable in the garden.
We must not give up hope,’ cries a tomato plant.   “I can see the farmer from here.  I think she’s getting out her weeding tools!”  The plant swings its leaves toward a cluster of foxtails creeping into the soil behind it.  “You’ll all be gone before you know it!”
“Yaaaaay! cry the vegetables, the little beet in particular cheering as loudly as possible.
“Unless she decides to weed tonight.”
“No!” cry the others.  “She learned her lesson the last time!”  More voices chime in as the the fear spreads.  The  smallest beet cries one more time and then collapses to the ground.  “Tell the other seedlings that I tried to hold on.”  It’s voice is very faint.
“Don’t give up,” urges the giant bean plant.  “Morning will be here before you know it.  The other farmer will return, and all will be well.”  Cries of ‘the other farmer!’ ring out around the garden, but are drowned by laughter from the various weeds.
“Laugh if you must,” cries a cucumber plant, desperately trying to lift its tired leaves from the dry ground.  “But we will prevail.  The farmer always come through, in the end.”  A hushed silence falls after the cucumber’s words.  It might be out of respect from their fallen comrade, the tiny beet.  Maybe its a truce, after a long, hot, and unwatered day in the sun.  The vegetables sigh, the weeds chuckle, and the garden is quiet at last.  “The farmer,” is the last words heard from the smallest beet.  “Amen,” says the tomato.

Every morning, for at least the past six weeks, a cheerful little robin perches on the high wire above our back alley and sings its little heart out.  This tiny harbinger of spring puts everyone in the mood for summer.  A friend who knows about birds told me why they sing so hard, and why you don’t hear them in the month of August.  The male robins go through puberty every spring of their four year life, and sing to attract females. 

I swear that its the same robin up there every single day.  He puffs out his fluffy red breast, tilts his little head and starts to whistle.  He’s been doing this for so long, I’m becoming a little anxious.  My husband, and at least one of my sisters,  would say (with a certain amount of eye rolling) that not everything is about me.  Somehow, this feels like it is.  Here’s why.  The plucky little robin who tugs on my heartstrings every morning is bringing back bad memories of my first junior high school dance. 

I know I’m not the only one who shudders a little when they recall this particular ordeal.  And it’s true that I had girl friends to dance with.  But every boy that did NOT cross the floor, tap me on the shoulder and invite me to dance? Well.  It felt like the whole gang of them was sending me a message.  In my crazed and pubescent brain, the lack of invites meant there must be something seriously wrong with me. 

Maybe it was my clothes, a real possibility when I remember the new striped tee shirt and matching green cotton pants from our local Robinsons store.  It might have been my hair style, which resembled that of a prison camp inmate, thanks to the local barber.  Perhaps it was my shy manner, my way of literally running from the room if a boy I didn’t know walked toward me.  Mostly, though, deep, deep down in the depths of my twelve year old heart, I knew that it was my complete and utter lack of coolness.  I was every awkward, clueless girl you’ve ever met  A Jethro Bodene in a vaguely female form, but with less self confidence and enthusiasm.  Even while married to the man who loves me, I still carry the sneaking suspicion that the first time he asked me out, it was motivated by a mixture of pity and arm twisting by my girlfriends.  He reassures me that its not so, but any man will say the right thing when its two in the morning and he wants to get some sleep. 

It’s my tender heart that takes me out to the deck each morning to holler at the female robins.   To ask them to give this guy a chance, for God’s sake  Because, underneath that tiny bird brain, cheerful song and fluffy breast lies a wonderful personality.  But its also that small, awkward, insecure girl hiding in the corner of my amygdala, who knows that puberty is hard enough the first time.  That first dance is agony for almost everybody.  Now imagine if you had to stand there and whistle. 
    

There are some things I’ve discovered over the course of my life.  Some, I’ve known for a while.  Other are just becoming  apparent to me.  Maybe life has to slap you around a little before you discover the truth about yourself.  Like the fact that I’m a slow learner.  And that I’ll never skate in the Olympics.

I will never fold laundry like my mother in law.  I don’t know if its an eye-hand coordination  thing, or if it involves math.  What I do know is that I suck at folding sheets.  I’ve tried using a table, the sofa, the bed and the floor but nothing seems to help.  I end up with a sad little pile of wrinkled bedding that makes me feel like taking up antiquing.  I shove them into the linen closet where they sit beside the wrinkled napkins and badly ironed table cloths.  The door stays firmly closed.

My mother in law made Martha Stewart look like an Appalachian hillbilly.  No matter what was happening in her life, her house always looked its best.  She could whip up food for forty people in under an hour and keep her cool when visitors turned up out of the blue, expecting to stay for two weeks.  I learned a lot from her over the years, but that kind of graciousness is not in my DNA.

I’m never going to be good at yoga.  It would probably help if I took some classes, but still.  I’m just not that bendy. Ten years of ballet and I never mastered the splits.  I will never dance with the Stars, or be one.  No one will ever think that I can dance.  Especially me.  But still.

Somehow I’ve managed to end up with people who love me.  I have children that I respect and adore, a mother I cherish and a husband who still makes me laugh after thirty-six years.  My sisters and brother will always have my back, even when I drive them crazy.  And what I’ve realized is, its never too late to learn something new.  Okay, too late for skating, but Yoga is a strong maybe.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’ve had some regrets.    Unlike him, I’m completely comfortable mentioning them.  Now I’m going to follow the rest of his well sung advice.  I’ll continue to fold sheets, take classes and move my life forward.  I’ll just do it my way.   

About a week after my dad died, I felt the  Earth tilt.  I stepped out of bed one morning and fell toward the ceiling.  My whole world was upside down and spinning.  It was like riding a tilt a whirl at the fair.

  I am living with Vertigo.  It’s often connected with blurred vision or earaches.  My sight has been a little smudgy since dad passed on.  I’m okay if I stare straight ahead, don’t tilt my head up, down, or to the left.  Lying down is the worst. When I get into bed at night, I hold  my pillow close, thereby ensuring a soft landing.  Then the room begins to spin. The child in me enjoys this part, even as the adult feels like throwing up.  In the daytime the vertigo catches me unaware, like a surfer being overtaken by an unexpected wave.  Its weird.

One of the things I’ve  learned about myself is that I don’t handle change well.  I enjoy a boring life.  (Not that I have one, in spite of it.)  But I like a  routine.  I like eating regularly and watching the same television shows.  If I enjoy a certain book, I’ll read it again.  If I really like it, I’ll read it thirty times.  Same with movies.   I’ve watched ‘You’ve Got mail’ once every couple of months since it came out in the early nineties.  I don’t even know why. 

When my mother in law was dying, I started experiencing chest pains.  I actually went to emergency twice.  The second time it happened, a nurse very tactfully told me that when your heart is breaking, it can feel a lot like a heart attack. Aahhh.  So now, I wonder about the timing of this vertigo.  Not that its a figment of my imagination.  It’s very real.  But maybe it has something to do with the fact that my whole world is off kilter.  My dad is gone, my mom is a widow, and the world as I’ve known it is changed forever.

So If you see me staggering around town, please know that I’m not drunk.  And I’m actually doing very well.  Because my sadness about dad is tempered by my faith.  I believe that he’s having a well deserved jam session with all of his musical heroes.  He’s harmonizing with Frank Sinatra and playing clarinet with Benny Goodman.  So he’s fine.  But until I get used to the fact that he’s not here, holding up his corner of my world, then I’m going to be unsteady on my feet.  Getting out of bed in the morning will require some concentration.  My world will spin out of control for awhile.  But it’ll stop eventually.  I’ll regain my footing and carry on.  I just need a little time to adjust to the change.

Last night I dreamed about my dad.  He passed on a week ago, Saturday.  For the first moments when I wake in the morning, I forget that he’s gone.  I feel the weight of something pressing on my heart, and I wonder at it.  That’s when I remember.  I lie there, feeling the loss of him.  Knowing that I will never hug him again in this life.  I’ll no longer wheel him to dinner in the nursing home where he lived.  I won’t  attach his bib, organize his cutlery.  I won’t tell him that the lift in his bedroom is a really cool ride and that he would have loved it when he was a kid.

 I won’t get to stroke the soft gray hair away from his forehead, or fetch a facecloth to wipe his face. I can’t kiss his cheek, so carefully shaved by my mother, or turn my face so that he can kiss mine.  I’ll never hear him say, ‘Love you, dear.’  Not in this life.

 He’s free from his wheelchair.  No more blood sugar checks, no more insulin.  No more eating pureed food and drinking thickened coffee.  Imagining him in heaven with God and family gives me comfort .  I know that I will see him again.  But for now, it doesn’t take away the pain of his absence.  I feel like a five year old who has let go of her father’s hand in a crowd.  A panicked, worried child.   

To a certain extent, our roles had reversed.  I took care of him in the way that he used to care for me.  But he remained my father to the very end.  I remember being sad about something terrible that happened in our community.  I went straight to the nursing home, and over to the table  where he was seated.  I pulled my chair close to his and laid my head on his shoulder.  As I cried, he patted my hand, making those reassuring sounds that parents do.  Itt was so comforting,  like a blessing from God.

My dad was kind.  He was considerate and thoughtful.  He has helped so many people, friends and neighbors, because he always cared how people were doing. His life was hard when he was young.  Raising seven children, six of them girls, cannot have been easy.  He made mistakes.  But he never complained, even when life got more uncomfortable at the end.  He had the gift of gratitude, and he’s done his best to pass it on.

I’m grateful for you, dad.  I’m proud to have been your daughter. I’m so happy that you’re in a better place. I know that you’ll always be there waiting for me, for mom, and all your children. In the meantime, you go on ahead.   Have a visit with Count Basie and Oscar Peterson. Listen to some Stan Kenton in the jazz room.  Have a wonderful time in heaven, and don’t forget to give Uncle Walter and Grandma Ann a hug.  I’ll be seeing you again.

In the movie, The Hunger Games, the main characters spend a lot of time running for their lives. Its a little like the game of Survivor, except the voting is done with weapons and its not just your torch that gets snuffed. For thousands of years, human kind has loved a good contest. Think gladiators. Think Olympic curling. Different events but for both, an enthusiastic audience.

The competitions we watch entertain us. They also distract us from the biggest reality game on the planet. While we’re busying ourselves with school, work, children, parents and (for Clarence) shopping, we’re all racing along a path toward death. Yep. At some point, we’ll all be D. E. A. D. Drop everything and die. Do everything and die. Don’t even argue… Well. You get the picture. Leaving out the whole life after death thing (which I totally believe in, thank you God!!) it still means that our earthy form will expire. But while there is no way out of the death race, there is still a way of winning.

Welcome to the Aging Games. Each contestant in this race has only one goal, and that is to make it to the finish line in the best shape possible. There are a few things that will help you along. A few obvious ones are:

Don’t smoke (or quit. Quit right now!)

Eat sensibly…overdosing on vegetables is always a good idea. Drop the sugar habit.

Keep moving. Obviously, we’ll all approach this differently. Some will jog, lift weights and engage in iron man triathalons well into their seventies. Others (like me) will skip and do light aerobics while watching television. The point is to keep moving as much as possible.

Enjoy yourself. Be with people that make you laugh. Do what you want with your spare time. And when you meet up with a senior, appreciate them for the warriors that they are. Every single one you know is struggling in some way to keep it together, to live their lives, and to make them count until the very end.

They may be in pain. They might be having memory problems. But they are in the last push of their lives, the hardest part of the race. I salute them all, and I salute you, future warrior. Fight to the finish. And if you believe in life after death, then I’ll see on Redemption Island.

Now that I’m spending more time in Winnipeg, I’ve been struggling once again with an inability to find the way to and from…anywhere.  It’s like someone has taken a sponge and wiped out parts of my brain.  A number of years ago, I couldn’t find the Sport-ex in the town of Creighton.  I had to go home and admit to my husband that, no, I would not be picking up our daughter from skating.  He thought I’d had a stroke.

I would have loved to have had a good excuse for embarrassing myself that way.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me, that I have such a hard time getting from one place to another.  I also struggle with guessing distances and height, so maybe its a spatial thing.  Whatever the cause, I’ve discovered a few helpful tips.  I try to look around more  when someone else is driving.  And I use map quest a lot while I’m in the city.  Our next vehicle will have a GPS, but for now, map quest does the trick.  Except.

The other day I carefully and successfully navigated my way down Pembina to a second hand book store.  Something that I hadn’t  counted on, though, was finding my way home.  Because (and perhaps you already know this, dear reader) the street names change.  For example, Osborne, depending on where you are, is also called Isabel, Colony, Memorial, Dunkirk and Dakota.  For someone who gets lost a lot, this is a nightmare.  I didn’t know about this little complication or I would have map quested my way home.  Since I didn’t, I ended up someplace downtown during rush hour, where the traffic was basically stopped.  That didn’t prevent me from lurching into another lane. I would have been proud of my move if I hadn’t scared the crap out of a pedestrian.  I was at least eight feet away from him, but he obviously felt threatened.  He shook his fist and yelled so loudly that I banged an elbow in my haste to roll up the window and lock all the doors.

Stalled traffic also presents an opportunity for homeless people to make a little extra cash.  They hold up signs saying things like ‘have no work or food.’  The jury is still out on how to handle this one, but I have a hard time saying no.  So in between trying to get in the right lane, avoid hitting pedestrians and still the panic building inside my chest, I had to roll down the window and hand out loonies.  I had quite a few, since I’d been planning on washing the car.  For some reason, I didn’t feel I could stop until the coins were all gone. 

Once the traffic started moving again, things didn’t get much better.  I kept circling the same block over and over again, until finally I cut through a parking lot and temporarily derailed my driving purgatory.  It started up again, though, when I found myself shooting down Main Street in the wrong direction.  How I finally found my way back to Osborne Village, I’ll never know.  The good news is, I haven’t been lost since.  Scaring the crap out of myself had some valuable side benefits.  Now I always make sure that I know how to get there AND back again. 

A positive side to all the driving mayhem was my realization that every journey, whether physical, spiritual or metaphorical, needs a destination.  Never mind the saying about the journey being the thing.  Yes, we’re supposed to enjoy the ride.  Take in the scenery.  Pull over every once in a while to eat some lunch, or pee in the bush.  But overall, we want to be headed somewhere.  Maybe the most important thing to ask ourselves is this.  Where do we want to go?  Which is another way of saying, what do we want to be when we grow up?  Some of us are still trying to figure it out.  The next time I’m lost, I’ll remember to ask myself the big questions.  Where am I going?  And how do I get there?  Hopefully, I’ll arrive at an answer.

      Its been creeping up on me for a long time.   I finally have to acknowledge something that my children have known about me for awhile.  Like my father before me, I’ve begun whining about How Much Things Have Changed.  Sure, I never walked five miles to school, uphill both ways, in 40 below weather with a lunch bucket frozen to my hand.  Dad, you win that one.  But!  Brace yourself for this, and Clarence, thanks for bursting my bubble. I just found out that there are hotels in the Himalayas on the way to Mount Everest.  Hotels!!  Nothing else could signal so well the collapse of the world as I knew it.  Next thing you know, people will be driving around the golf course in cars.  Wait.  They do that already.  But back to the Himalayas.

     Way, way back, in 1979 to be exact, Clarence and I were hiking to the Everest Base Camp.  Those of you who know me well will understand that this was not my idea.  On the other hand, being only twenty-four at the time, I was eager to take part in it.  I mourn that change as well.  But anyway.  We walked about 250 miles over 24 days.  That’s two hundred and fifty miles! It was mostly uphill!  There were no hotels, per se.  Instead, we stayed with the Nepalese people in their homes.  While this was a rich cultural experience that I in no way regret, it probably explains my tendency for intermittent coughing.  The people built huge fires in their small huts, and at night they closed all the windows and doors.  There were no chimneys.  So the smoke just built up until you couldn’t even see the person lying next to you.  On the other hand, it helped hide the rats that lurked in every corner. 

     On second thought, they didn’t lurk.  They gamboled around the room, having an especially good time on top of my sleeping bag.  Then there was the food.  It was mostly rice and dalbaht.  (I may be spelling it wrong, but I can’t find my diary.)  There was no butter.  No salt and pepper.  Just rice.  The chai was good, though.  We stayed one night at a monastery and bought a wheel of yak cheese so large, it would have looked comfortable on a tractor.  We could barely carry it between four of us.  Still,  we ate it in three days.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry.  Nothing gets plugged up when you’re walking for eight hours a day, uphill.  Its an impossibility.  (Side note: when I came back to Canada I searched everywhere for yak cheese.  Apparently, they don’t export it.)

     Rats.  Plain white rice.  Two hundred and fifty miles uphill.  To make matters worse, Clarence lost thirty pounds and I gained five. I could go on (and  will, if someone asks me to.)    But my point in all the whining is this.  What’s next?  Sliding floors that help you move faster?  Wait.  They have those in the airport.  You get my drift, though.  Why does the next generation have it so much easier?  And will they at least appreciate the hardships we suffered?  I’m begging all the baby boomers who read this to take up my cause.  Whine to the next generation.  Carry on the grand tradition of belly aching about change.  After all, I’m only one woman.  I can’t carry the load alone.