Posted on September 6, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

“Only 194 more days of making lunches”, thought the harried mother of three on the eve of the first day of school.  She tucked them in the fridge and headed to bed anticipating an uneasy sleep.  She wasn’t disappointed.

She awoke, distracted and distraught knowing that the youngest was starting school for the first time, which represented a passage of sorts.  It is always bittersweet watching the youngest head towards freedom.  And, for the first time, the three children would all be attending different institutions but luckily within a stone’s throw of each other.

She walked the youngest to the bus stop and shed a tear as he climbed on the bus.  She couldn’t resist the urge to see how things would unfold at the other end so she and her husband jumped in the car and surreptitiously made their way to the elementary school, hoping that they wouldn’t meet any of their neighbors.  When they arrived, they counted 19 other parents who lived in the same subdivision.

The buses pulled in and sure enough bus number 402 was amongst them.  The toddlers disembarked and the anxiety level crept up a few notches.  This turned into full blown panic when their son failed to emerge.  One of the children indicated that their son had somehow managed to pass himself off as a junior high student and was over at the junior school about 100 yards away.  She ran at a speed that would have left Usain Bolt in awe.  She nearly steamrolled a bulky male physical education teacher in her quest to save her son from the perils of junior high.  That would have to wait another 6 years or so.

The crisis avoided, she dropped her husband at work and returned home to pull herself together after a stressful few hours.  Not even a double-double at Tim Horton’s could salvage the start of this day.

She drove into the yard and returned the composter to its rightful place, this being garbage day, another minor inconvenience.   She looked at her tear stained blouse in the hall mirror and walked into the kitchen.

It was at this point that she noticed the three lunch kits lined up like little soldiers on the counter.  “There goes my Mother of the Year award”, she thought, momentarily.

She hurriedly dressed and made her way to three schools.  Do you have any idea what it is like on the first day of school?  Finding your child would be akin to seeking and finding the Dead Sea Scrolls.

She arrived at work, twenty minutes late, looking very much like someone who had just survived a twister.  The receptionist, a good friend and parent as well, casually asked how the send-off went.  She couldn’t even muster a smile or a grunt but merely gave a subtle raise of the eyebrow.  It was one of those gestures that say “Don’t ask”.

She sat at her desk and exhaled.  She flipped on the radio which happened to be playing oldies.  She heard the familiar strains of Gloria Gaynor, a disco queen her parents played often back in the ‘70’s.  The song she was singing … “I Will Survive”.

Posted on September 3, 2013 under Storytelling with no comments yet

You can feel it in the air. There is coolness in the early morning and late evening breeze that is a harbinger of fall.  Some leaves have already fallen off of the trees although this can be attributed to some disease affecting the maples in our neighborhood.  The days are getting shorter and you can almost feel the angst as teachers gird themselves for another year of reining in children for whom September has come too soon.  Summer is drawing to a close, which also means it’s time for the Fall Fair.

It seems like nothing stays the same any more.  The world is moving at warp speed.  Everything happens quickly and it seems that even what you had for breakfast can be transmitted to your breathless friends on Facebook.  Might I suggest you just chill out for a moment and hop on the Merry Go ‘Round.

The local Fall Fair, otherwise known as The Eastern Nova Scotia Exhibition, has been going on for an eternity.  Some records place the beginning sometime in the late 1800’s and early on, the Exhibition grounds were located at what is now Columbus Field.

Earlier this year there were some doubts as to whether the community would have the Exhibition at all.   My favorite event at the Fair is the tug of war…. no, not the one waged recently between the Town and County at considerable expense over unpaid taxes.  Talk about a Merry Go Round.  We should have just asked the carnies to sort that one out.

All of these Exhibitions have their roots in the agricultural community so it is no surprise that one of the most important days of the Exhibition is 4H day.  I never truly appreciated this until some of our children took part in 4H.  The chickens and rabbits got better care by exhibitors and judges alike than many human beings do.  Including the poor parents who fed and housed the menagerie in the off season.  Did I mention that some things never change?

With all due respect to agriculture, the Midway is the centrepiece of the four day spectacle if you are a child or still young at heart.  The adrenalin starts pumping the moment the Ferris Wheel appears above the tree line on Fairview Street.  For those with the stomach for it, the Tilt a Whirl is a staple.  My personal preference is the Caterpillar ride.

When it comes to food, it can be pretty well summed up with two words: French fries and cotton candy.  The fries are generally soggy and constitute “heart attack on a plate”.  And when it comes to cotton candy, it is an all-out territorial war between small children and the wasps that inevitably hover close by.

And carefully orchestrating the entire spectacle, like the Wizard of Oz, is Donald who quietly and efficiently masterminds the Exhibition.  He has been doing this for a very long time, although I doubt even he remembers the Ex at Columbus Field.

Don’t expect the find any cronuts at the Exhibition.  These tasty morsels have garnered a lot of media attention lately, most of it bad.  You see, the Exhibition is about tradition and Donald isn’t likely to have an appetite for exotic grub.

Fare is fair.

Posted on August 31, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

We take our senses for granted.  Actually, we barely notice them until something happens to one of them.  This occurred to me a few days ago after having minor surgery on my ear.  Is there anything better than listening to a magnificent piece of music?  Or gazing in wonder at beautifully manicured flower garden?  Or smelling a freshly mown crop of hay?  Or the divine taste of the first bite of a lemon meringue pie?

Growing up, I had a pretty keen sense of hearing.  That is, until I got married.  I have discussed this perplexing issue with my physician on numerous occasions.  Seems that he has the same affliction.  I can hear water dripping from a faucet three floors away in a hotel, yet my wife says I don’t listen.  I can go to a symphony concert and hear every note being played by every instrument, yet my wife says I don’t listen.  My clients at work have commented on my ability to listen yet my wife says that I don’t listen.  Kind of reminds me of the Simon and Garfunkel tune, Sounds of Silence – “People hearing without listening”.

I come from a musical family and everybody has a pretty good ear for music.  We all have, at some juncture, either played an instrument, sung or did both.  Our parents were musical and when we were kids, our house, “39”, was the epicentre for house parties.  Before the advent of television, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, house parties were the prime source of entertainment.  We owned a piano and over the years our parents’ friends would congregate at our house to drink, smoke and sing.  And speaking of the sense of smell is there anything more charming than the aroma of cigarette smoke?  They all chain smoked and the living room would be filled with the acrid blue cloud.

Our own children have inherited the musical gene and like “39”, our house has always been a place where musicians are not only welcome but encouraged to come for jam sessions and family get- togethers.  The kids, too, have a good ear for music.

Not surprisingly, I have come to the conclusion that hearing and listening are two distinct skills and in the presence of my wife, I only exhibit one of those.  I would feel rather bad if I was the only man on the planet who has been accused of not listening to his wife.  It seems to be a very common phenomenon and just another one of those mysterious differences between men and women.  Maybe it has something to do with familiarity.  After all, what single voice have you heard more in your lifetime than that of your spouse?  Most times, that voice is soothing and familiar, like an old sweater or a pair of slippers.  It is a voice that comforts, encourages, chastises and occasionally praises.  And sometimes it is the voice that grates like fingernails running down a blackboard.

How and when do men arrive at that singular defining moment in their marriage when they start to tune out their wife’s voice?  For some, it is moments after the wedding ceremony when the bride tosses her wedding flowers to a roomful of hysterical single women at the reception.  For the rest of us, it just happens over time like erosion at the beach.

And so, I make my way to Amherst to have a small lesion removed from my ear.  My brother is an ear, nose and throat specialist.  While some question his dexterity with a hockey stick or golf club, his surgical skills are unparalleled.  Just ask one of his recent patients, Vincent Van Gogh.  Many years ago on an annual golf vacation, I commented on his golf swing after a particularly frustrating round of golf.  “You look like you’re swinging a baseball bat.” “But I like baseball”, was his quick rejoinder.

I hadn’t thought of either of my ears lately.  Have you?  My wife suspects that nearly fifty years of golf with exposure to the sun, may have something to do with the growth behind my right ear.  I have my own theory.  In my youth, I was an altar boy.  In our parish there was a priest who had suffered a debilitating brain injury and his ability to say mass was severely compromised.  I was conscripted by the pastor to serve mass for this priest on a daily basis in a small chapel at the rear of the cathedral.  This, I did, without argument.  At the end of every mass, he would grab my ear and twist it.  I guess this was his way of offering the sign of peace.  After multiple twisting’s in my youth, I think my ear is now ready to fall off.  I wonder if I will be trading in my glasses for contacts should the surgery fail.

I shouldn’t complain.  I have a friend from the United States who inexplicably lost hearing in one of her ears and suffers from vertigo.  That’s the bad news.  Of course, when she wants to tune out her husband, which oddly enough happens from time to time with women, she simply has to tilt her head in another direction.

The procedure goes without incident, although the attending nurse in day surgery is in therapy undergoing counselling after listening to the verbal exchange during the operation.  They don’t teach that in nursing schools.  My brother suggested that I cover the ear while showering for the next few days and to avoid scratching the affected area of the ear.

If you saw me you would understand why I don’t own a shower cap.  The afro that I proudly wore in the late ‘60’s looks like stubble in the field after a combine has passed over a crop of wheat.  My wife can now buff her fingernails on my head and save herself the price of a manicure.  The affected area of the ear had stitches and was slightly inflamed the morning after the procedure.  After careful consideration my wife wrapped a compost bag around my head and captured the image on her Blackberry.  The resulting picture looks like a cross between Gollum of Lord of the Rings and Mr. Condom head.  I won’t win a beauty pageant with this picture in my portfolio.  However, I emerged from the shower without undue harm to the ear.

It is day two and now I am detecting a slight itch behind the ear but my brother’s words are reverberating inside my head – “thou shalt not scratch”.  I am not the only member of the family with a slightly warped sense of humour.  My wife, recalling a surgery on one of our cats, thought a protective cone around my head would do the trick.  Using brown wrapping paper, she tailored a perfect replica of an animal cone and placed it around my head.  At last count, it had received 100,000 hits on YouTube.

I don’t think the operation will improve my listening skills when it comes to my wife.  So I will continue to keep my nose to the grindstone and my ear to the ground.

Ear today.  Gone tomorrow.