XII - Fruit of the Vine

It’s been a year since I’ve written an entry for this blog. Incidentally it's also been a year since my father passed away. Truth be told, sometimes it feels as if he is still around, as if I could pick up the phone in Toronto and he’d answer in Winnipeg. But who am I kidding? I rarely called him and he rarely called me. 

It was my Mom who picked up the phone when I called. Eventually I might hear my Dad call out, "Who's on the phone, Marian?”

“Oh, it’s Sandy.” She’d pretend as if she hadn’t been whispering in order to keep me all to herself. “Do you want to say hi to Dad?”

“Of course.” I’d say.

A couple of years ago my father -  surprisingly - picked up the phone when I called. Was my Mom not home? Or was it that he was starting to feel his mortality in a more visceral way as his health declined? Either way it was nice to speak with him directly, at least for awhile.

“So Sandra, when do you think you’re going to retire?” he asked, like he often did. 

“Oh, I hope sooner than later.”

“You know Rod has money and you, you have that pension, you’ll be ok, but Vin, Vin has nothing.” he said.

I distinctly got the feeling he was thinking about how things would go for his wife and us kids when he passed away. 

“Well Dad,” I said, “not to worry, Irvin’s wife has a house on Vancouver Island - paid for” 

“Ya, but it’s not his.” I heard a sigh of dismay. “I don’t know how things will go for him.”

“Well he seems pretty good Dad. And he’s got a great lifestyle where he can take time any day of the week to go into the mountains and salvage wood or go for a paddle on the ocean.” 

I was starting to get annoyed. How could he say I was going to be ok? 

“Vin’s got nothing,” he repeated. 

“Well maybe if they would work a little hard…” I cut myself off. “I’ve been teaching for 30 years, Dad, day in and day out, with middle school students who might tell me off or walk out of my class at any time.” 

Did he not realize how much I was caught in the grind? 

“You should go into real estate.” I could hear his smirk over the phone. “You’d do well, like your mom.” There he was, equating her with me again. “I did ok,” his false humility surfacing for a second,”but your mom, she would have made so much money.” 

“Not this again,” I huffed. “Dad, I chose teaching. I wanted to make a difference. It’s, it’s honourable.” 

“You know Sandra, you got a combination, a combination of the worst traits of both me and Mom.” I laughed, for a second I felt proud of how I was my own person - my own difficult person. But after we said goodbye his comment lingered.

Was I really a combo of their worst traits? And what were their most awful traits? 

Last Saturday night after making plans with a friend earlier in the day, I waited for them to text and let me know they were free. I sat on the couch, knitting, focusing on the knit two, pearl two pattern, which became tighter and tighter as the hours passed. The text never came. I’d been forgotten, not worthy of a small. “I’m sorry - can’t make it.” 

The negative self-talk swirled in my brain like a nebulous storm cloud. I couldn’t stop it, or wouldn’t stop it. It was only when the dog poked me with his long snout that I was released from the looping forcefield and reminded of how often my mom sat alone, knitting and waiting for my father to come home at night. I distinctly remember one particular time when I was maybe 5 or 6, when he finally did arrive, it was late and instead of being happy he was safe she became furious and stomped off to her room. 

This past July Mom came to Toronto for the first time since my father passed away. She’d changed - her vitality had waned and her anxiety had heightened. The loss of my father, the stress of having to care for him for the last three years as his health steadily declined, Covid and the death of her older brother overburdened her nervous system and the vascular dementia worsened.

One evening in April, alone in her apartment after her brother had died she was home alone in her apartment she imagined she had murdered her friend in the next apartment. She left her suite, walked along the corridor and knocked on doors telling anyone who answered that Helen was dead and they all needed to plan the funeral. 

After a phone call from the supervisor at the old age apartment, my brother brought her home. He found her a new long term care home and within a month he had moved her into a private residence that guaranteed they could look after her and provide her with a sense of safety. They would hopefully keep an eye on her so she wouldn’t feel the need to plan funerals for people who hadn’t yet died. 

The Toronto visit was five days long and I had thought that it was do-able even though I worried how she would manage staying in my small bungalow with a big hound dog on her heels night and day. 

The first evening as she watched me slice apples, for the pie she said. “You know I’m going to die when I’m 90."

“What?”

“I’m gonna make it until I'm 90, and then that’ll be it.” She said as she sat with her hands folded at the table. 

“No, no," I said to her. “That’s Dad talking, those are his words, not yours. You are physically strong, you can walk for 40 minutes - no problem. You are most likely going to live until 100.” 

She seemed to take comfort in my words even though, who was I to make such claims? 

During the week, I drove her to both ends of the city to visit her grandsons.

“Wow you drive well!” she exclaimed as she held onto the arm rest and stared out the window.

“Thanks.”

“Oh my you drive so fast.” 

“Oh, I have to, it's the 401.”

“Oh this is a lot of driving.”

“Ah yup.”

“Nah Sandy you want to drive this far?” 

“Well it's where Ash lives so ya.”

Everytime we got in the car the conversation was the same. 

At home, my daughter cooked for us.

“Oh my that’s a lot of food Sara. You're working so hard Sara. Oh! that’s too much.” My daughter just laughed as she continued to cook the meal. “You have to take it easy. How many potatoes are you cooking anyway?”

The week went as well as could be expected at least until the last night. Instead of driving we stayed home. I was hoping she would be entertained with watching the dog snuffle around the backyard or with watching me pick slightly unripened grapes before the raccoons raided. But when I climbed the ladder, she called out, “Oh Sandy, that's too high. Sandy you should get down.” 

“Oh Mom, " I said gently, “I remember Oma on a ladder in her late 70s picking crab apples. Remember?”

She didn’t remember or she ignored me, I’m not sure which.  

Suddenly she stood up from the lawn chair to hold the ladder all the while continuing to scold. “Get down now Sandy, na oba!” 

But I didn’t. Instead of appeasing my 89 year old mother, I stretched for a bunch and flippantly tossed them into the lawn-waste bag she held open for me. I laughed. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I am fine.” 

And that’s when she turned. Her face contorted into pure rage. Just like when she got angry with my father who quite often pushed her beyond her comfort zone. 

“If you don’t stop I’m going to dump out all these grapes and make a huge mess in your yard. Get down!”

But this didn’t stop me. No, no. Instead I behaved just like him. 

“Oh Marian, this is nothing.” I said. The disdain I suddenly felt rising like bile in the back of my throat. With as much disrespect as I could manage, told her, “I’m fine. Relax.”

Abruptly she turned from the yard and stomped into the house. 

My daughter came out several minutes later. “Mom, can you get down? Oma’s stressed.”

“Oh, I, ah, yes of course,” Immediately ashamed of my behaviour and frankly stunned. I stood on the back patio wondering how I could have been so callous.

I don’t think my father was correct in saying I had their worst traits. Instead I think I learned from them and still, when under duress, behave like they did. It’s amazing how quickly they are evoked in my psyche and how my body still seems to hold on to them. 

Don’t get me wrong I am responsible for my reactions and hopefully I’m not pawning my bad behaviour on them but instead by understanding my actions/reactions I can, the next time, hopefully, take a breath, give myself a hug or a shake like the dog does and remember who I really am - not them.