Dateline: Moncton, New Brunswick

--------------------click to enbiggen any images--------------------

489K today, an ambly kind of day. It needs to be, as driving through hundreds of miles of forest can be brain numbing. However the smell of the impending ocean compensates greatly and the clam chowder I put away at lunch made up for the catatonic state I was in.

I pulled over for a short nap by a little church and peeped around the corner and there was a hive of activity in the farm at the back, overfed geese wandering about, several farmhands and cows busy-making. I don't get too near such places with Ansa as some ancient instinct takes over her brain and she goes into immediate herding mode. One time I was totally impressed with what a tidy package she had made of about twenty five cows in a tiny corner of a field but the farmer didn't share my awe. I only now take her where her skills will be appreciated.



On these lengthy journeys across eastern Canada I welcome the ghosts that pop in and out of my head. My parents, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, my great grandmother and dear departed friends. The luxury of time alone affords such visitations. Some memories make me laugh, others make me cry just a little.

CBC had a lovely programme on in the afternoon, co-hosted by Rita MacNeil who invited listeners to share their memories of the songs their mothers and grandmothers had sung to them as children. I was surprised by how many I knew. One was my 'baby' song which was sung to me by my father every night at bed time "I'll take you home again, Kathleen". And my father told me my first ever sentence was: "Sing-ee Kath-ee Daddy." I've never ever tired of it. To this day. And it's not even an Irish song!

After dinner tonight (a soothing salad after the richness of the crepes!) we walked along the shore of the Tidal Bore which I've written about before, here. The tide was low tonight, the moon, large and golden, suspended like a balloon over the water lost in admiration of its own reflection, millions of seabirds sounding irritable in the darkness, muttering and squawking their peevishness to the only human inhabitant of this lovely spot, me.

And here I rest, preparing for the final leg of the journey tomorrow, through Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.

Dateline: Edmundston, New Brunswick

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Double Click to Enbiggen~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A distance of 455k covered today, most of it south of the mighty St. Lawrence river - a total of just over 1,100k in the 2 days I've been on the road so far. This part of New Brunswick is very French, I'm staying in a motel I've stayed in many times before which has a fabulous restaurant attached. Right in the middle of nowhere.

It was raining all day, ao I tucked in behind a Honda delivery truck for most of the distance. It helped through some of the mountains which had pea soup fog. Caused in no small part by this factory, Norampac





Road music were albums by John Denver and Cherish the Ladies followed by a CBC programme on how classical music influenced contemporary, like did you know that John Lennon came in one night and found Yoko Ono playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and told her that was easy peasy so to speak, and to really impress him she should play it backwards. She did. And that piece of music is The Beatles' "Because".

I'm a good driver. My dog rides beside me and she says so. Here's proof:




Posted Later

And here is where the French charm the pants off me: Dinner tonight was crepes. But oh what crepes. The older chef who moved like a ballet dancer. One crepe at a time he prepared: seafood, chicken, vegetarian, you name it, fresh grated local cheese top and bottom, fresh steamed asparagus laid just so on top, beauchamel sauce over, pasta pecan salad on the side. Dessert was the same but with chopped fresh fruit, custard, whipped cream AND double Devon cream laid on board like an artist's canvas. All there allowed me to speak my French and encouraged me greatly. Merci beaucoup, mes amis.

After this, the dog and I waddled a few miles up a wonderful converted railway track by the river in the rain and got into stride on the way back.

Dateline:Drummondville, Quebec

Distance travelled today, double click to enbiggen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~Braindrops from the Road~~~~~~~~~~~

Poignancy:
I think this is my last road trip. From here on in it will be air, if planes will be operating a year from now. I travelled 655 KM today and felt it. The highway is mesmerizing, lulling me into a 'ready for a nap' state consistently. So I did. Twice. It could be something to do with the acute bronchitis I've had, still present in the lungs from time to time. But lucky me I can nap on a clothesline just about.

Juxtaposition:





The gas station with ancillary fast-frankenfood pods, the truck speeding by, the floodlight for night sight, the lovely old operating farm across the road.

Radio:

Best of both worlds, NPR just across the U.S. border and CBC. NPR jawing about Bill Haley and his Comets, offering prize to anyone who can call in and tell how many Comets there were. I'm a little disturbed by the sponsors, i.e. those who fund NPR, mainly medical and dental. One a specialist in face reconstruction.

CBC reviewing "The Cove" a documentary about the secret dolphin slaughters in Japan. Dolphins have a bigger brain than humans (I didn't know that) and their vocabularies exceed ours, we just can't understand the incredible variations in their speech patterns.

A stranger in a French land:

And then silence. Me and the dog. The only Ontario car passing through and around Montreal. And those Quebecois drivers. Sacre Bleu! They squeeze me close to right off the road at times. It's a game. I'm a no-good anglaise on some monarchy sponsored anglicising mission and they will annihilate me.

And in Quebec restaurants I speak my fractured French as I order and it never fails. The servers respond in impeccable English. Every time. End of day scorecard: English 0. French 2.

Road Trip (again!)

A big mistake this, I'm in a hotel attending a conference which is about 400km from my home. I don't know what possessed me. The drive was in fog and rain and I arrived looking the worse for wear, stressed and tired. I retired to my room early.

I took a photo of my luggage before I left this morning. You'll note the trees are yet to leaf in Newfoundland. You'll observe I keep a very old licence plate on car for sentimental reasons (plate has been on five cars and is now 25 years old!). That will soon change as I need to switch the registration of the car to Newfoundland plates.

The back of the car is jammed with a small bag of dog food, her dishes, her water and her leashes. Laptop, camera, knitting, and very little clothes, just a change a day fill up the rest. I'm one of these people who never overpacks. And I can go for a month with one carry-on bag. That's my French Roast coffee in my Goofy mug (thank you, grandgirl!) and an apple. And one jacket - not rainproof - note to self, bring rain jacket always.

STUFF. It looks appallingly too much, doesn't it. And all necessary.

More Rules of Life on next post.

The picture below is one I took near Kelly's Mountain in Cape Breton a couple of weeks ago. I love the justaposition and flow of the lumber, the water, the mini iceberg and the to die for blues. Click to enlarge

On the road again...

This time on my way back to the city, much against my desire or wishes but yielding to the plea of my beloved granddaughter for our annual road-trip. I think I will head back in a matter of a month or so to the fair land I've left behind.

Some random observations:

(1) I have a book offer from a publisher, very, very thrilling. A collection of my short stories. However, I am currently suspended in a form of writer's amber. Paralyzed. Numb. Frightened. The realization of a dream is the running up against myself. Now what? My babies toddling off by themselves into the real world with real critics. Lash of noodle on self. Get to it girl, stop the dithering. Stop the distraction of the day-job now. Screw the money. Let go of the fear. Stay in your bliss, in your life-long dream!

(2) A RANT: Why, in this twenty-first century of ours, hasn't some genius perfected the design of the toilet roll holder? With what dread do I enter every single stall of every ferry, every restaurant, every hotel room, to be greeted by kicked in huge plastic containers that hurt someone's fingers one time too many as they scrabbled for a hold on a skinny sheet underneath its deadly saw-edges. Yes, they finally cracked up, whimpered, and took off the stilletto shoe and beat the thing to death, leaving its huge rolls floating on the wet floor. And for variety, the gaping jaws of long empty containers greet me after I have urgently done my business so I am left perched and waiting for a kind soul to enter and pass me something, anything, an old Kleenex from their purse, under the door. The crammed single sheet metal box dispenser that doesn't, is another challenge. The tightly jammed paper will not yield to any type of pressure and is often a victim of a nervous breakdown, beaten to a pulp by an irate user, its contents thrown into an over-flowing toilet. We've come up with the automatic toilet flusher, ditto soap and water dispensers and hand dryers, even automatic paper towel dispensers and we cannot come to grips with a design for a functioning fool-proof dispensing toilet roll??? Come on!!!!

(3) MUSIC: We have a long ride, 3000 klicks, the grandgirl and I. We take turns with the music selections. Some, I'm pleased to report, we agree on (Abba, Beatles, John Denver (John Denver!!!!)Joni Mitchell, Elvis (Long live the King!!)) but I'm up against my own creeping decrepitude on some of her choices. Isn't this the way of the world, though. But yay Nora Jones and Motor Five, not bad, not bad at all.....

(4) SIDEBAR: My beloved niece tells me she has found me a lovely man who is very keen to meet me. This will have to wait as he is a Newfoundlander but has all the criteria that appeals to an ideal me in an ideal world.

More from the road later.

Road Trip Part 3

Travelling all the way to the core of our beings. How many of us get this chance? There are always so many distractions in my life. My work, my writing, my family, community, volunteer, theatre, friends, music. Whirl.

I needed this trip to be alone with myself. An old woman once said to me that to be truly successful in a relationship we first of all need to be totally comfortable with our own vibrations. Four days on the road presented the opportunity to me. Anonymous motel rooms, Carole King and her Tapestry album. J.J. Cale. Christy Moore. Beethoven's Fantasia, the precursor to his glorious Ninth. And on. Backdrop to my thoughts.

I've travelled a lot with others. Partners, family. Sometimes alone. But rarely this alone, no home to leave, the future so uncertain.

My father and I travelled around the Northern United States and Maritime Canada together, many times. I reflected on those times with him. We were thrown together a lot and this normally reticent, proud man would open up to me as much as he was able.

He was a long standing widower, a daily Mass attender, a Knight of Columbanus, a Vincent de Paul collector. He didn't believe in re-marriage although he assured me he had lots of opportunities. Parish priests in Ireland in that era presented him with many available women. I would like to think that it was the undying love for my mother that kept him devoted and celibate to her memory(and of that I have no doubt). But that would not be the truth at all. My father's firm belief was that remarriage created havoc with the original children and he wasn't going to have that kind of discomfort in his life. Plus he'd be taking a chance that it mightn't work out and the neighbours would have a field day with his troubles. So he confided. And I've no reason not to believe him for the time that it was in Ireland then.

I don't want to live his life and wind up as he did with his faith shattered by the freshly erupting scandals in the Catholic Church in Ireland then. Shaken to the core particularly by the Bishop Casey scandal (he worshipped Casey). My compassion for Dad was great. He was literally gutted by it all and I do believe his faith in God and the hereafter left him. And I think that in some ways he must have felt he missed all sorts of opportunities that were lost with the noose of his formerly strong faith around his neck. He was a broken man at the end.

I don't want to end up my days alone like him, cursing the darkness and my own belief system that has held me to this independent walkabout. I saw my own defects quite clearly on this trip. I saw him in me also. My rigidity, not suffering fools gladly when they have equal rights on this planet. My intellectual snobbery which intimidates, my "ICanTopThatitis" which is distancing and self-defeating. My thoughtlessness. My arrogance which can be downright funny when I think of it. I need to pay more attention to everyone and everything more often. I need to be more humble.

Thank you, Dad.

(picture taken a few days ago near my house in Newfoundland)

Road Trip Part 2

There was a lot of hustle and bustle here in the last few days. A beloved niece and her toddler were here and that kept me engaged and busy. She is twenty-eight and her mother, my sister-in-law, died when she was thirteen. At the age of forty-two.

We are very close, this wonderful young woman and I, she is closer to me than my own daughters, we have no emotional baggage, we just love each other to pieces. And share our lives with openness and honesty. We also recognise that this is a rare gift in this world, this special relationship we have.

I told her of this road-trip and my thoughts and longings. And the wide open spaces in my soul. And how all the relationships in my life had brought me to this point of not really knowing how to be in a successful relationship.

She is in the same boat. For such a young woman she's had a series of rocky heartbreaking liaisons. And we tossed all that around for hours, our difficulties in:

(A) Being attracted to men who treat us badly
(B) Wanting the 'nice' guys who don't seem to want us.

Why not? we pondered. Conclusion: we give off these independent woman not needing a man kind of aura. We are not honest when we like someone, we back off. Our signals are extremely mixed. For instance, I've had a few compliments from R, my widower friend, which I've dismissed, as I always do. Examples:

R: I really like the way you're wearing your hair at the moment.
Me: Oh I only do this with it when it needs a haircut, I call it my emergency upsweep.
R: I could get your car road-worthy for your trip if you like.
Me: No worries. Jack the mechanic takes care of all that.

I'm beginning to get it. Slow learner this strong independent woman.
The more I'm immersed in the beauty all around me here, the wider my heart is becoming and I'm finding that I may have to untangle all the ropes of past relationships and start over from scratch. And just risk, risk saying what I mean, flirt again, allow men to do things for me. Cease this endless solitary plodding.

I invited R here to spend some time alone with me.
He has accepted. Sometime in August as July was conflicted for each of us.
No matter what happens in August, I am prepared to risk now. To permeate this tough old exterior I've spent so many years growing. To sand off all the battle-wounds and scar tissues of past relationships and feel renewed and maybe hopeful again. To allow someone in. To be gracious. To not worry about outcomes or expectations. To be in the moments that R and I can give each other and to be honest about all the tumbling feelings I've had on this trip.


And my niece? She's gone back to her home today, ready to invite this rather nice client of hers home for a cup of tea on their next appointment at her office.