When I Was Young and In My Prime Read online

  Grandpa grunted when I came in wearing it this afternoon. I paused, trying to interpret the sound. It could have been a grunt of greeting and recognition. Or it could have been mild disgust. Or something far less communicable than any of that.

  Now, in curtain-filtered dusk light, he’s telling me stories, a rare mode these days. I keep still and watch his lips as he speaks—the bluish purple bumps on them, just where the wet inner lip shows itself. They’ve always been there. What are they? Blood blisters? Something to do with blood.

  We sit at the kitchen table in the half-dark, two cups of bitter coffee between us. He speaks slowly, and my mind wanders during the pauses—What time does my shift start? Why can’t my tongue resist this canker? Shit I forgot to feed the cat before I left—each thought a kite lifting into another corner of the kitchen. I’m able to keep each line of thought taut, circling him, and still follow the slow line of his story. Sometimes he pauses so long I think he’s stopped, and one or two of the kite lines go slack, drop to the countertop.

  Grandma’s lying down in the front room. Every once in a while she calls out, “Peter?” He closes his eyes and, after a second, calls back,“Put your head down Mary, you’re napping.”

  A minute later his eyes are still closed. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s fallen asleep when he opens them wide.

  “Had it made the year before I married your grandmother. A month’s salary. Picked out that brown-green material. Wool. Houndstooth, they call it. Had it made by the tailor. Dammit. What was that man’s name. Pollack. Slowacki. Stan Slowacki. Yessir. I was the talk of the town. Peter Friesen, Alf and Evelyn Dowswell’s new farmhand with a houndstooth coat and a feather in his hat.”

  “The coat is older than your marriage,” I say, looking from the bumps on his lips into his eyes. My coffee’s finished but he’s barely taken a sip from his.

  “They don’t make things like they used to anymore,” he says. And for a moment I hear the phrase the way it must have sounded the very first time it was said.

  July 28, 1930

  Now by golly for another chapter: I have been in Winnipeg the reason was the supposed-to-be circus which took place on the 26th of July. It was quite interesting, but most of all I liked the exhibition of the wild animals who were put in one cage and one man amongst them. Baby! didn’t he fix them though, and all he had was a whip and a revolver with blank shells in it and a chair which he used as a shield. With all those animals like lions and tigers, leopards, wild cats, bears & others, I would not have wanted to stay in there with a couple of loaded guns and that fellow had the nerve to be in there with only what I said and do with them what he liked except petting them. I am just looking ahead for the big day I will leave again for the money-eating city called Winnipeg. How things will hatch out then, I will put down here without a doubt. With a little patience strong will good hope etc. one might find life interesting enough to have it worthwhile living for.

  The expenses I made on this trip:

  My fare on the train and streetcar.

  $1.85

  An underwear for the summer.

  .65

  The tickets to the circus.

  1.60

  And the ice cream and drinks roughly

  .85

  The total of my loss.

  $4.35

  (The money I spent on the big baboon Johnny Schritt is .75 train fare home + .80 circus ticket + .10 dinner + .15 streetcar = $1.90. Be gosh she’s going down like the grain in the grain exchange.)

  February 5, 1971

  Ice storm, driveway like glass. Astronauts

  Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell landed on

  moon 9:45 am today. Stuart Roosa

  orbiting. We carved with soap today at school.

  a list of birds

  1 the domestic goose (anser anser)

  When he is six years old, there are two wars: the Russian Revolution and his war with the goose.

  The path from the house to the garden is blocked by a gander from his mother’s flock. Several times now he’s been turned back, his shoulders beaten by the gander’s wings, his bare legs clamped by the gander’s bill. Told how he must grab the neck—just so, at the back of the head—

  he enters the barnyard. War has always been about territory.

  The goose charges, neck outstretched, wings flapping, bill open, hissing. The boy reaches, fumbles, falls to his knees, finally grips feathered muscle. Unsure for a moment what part of the goose he holds, he opens his eyes and stands—is soon seen by his mother from the kitchen window tapping the gander’s head in the dirt, lecturing it, dragging it forward until the thing follows in submission.

  Releasing the gooseneck, he feels five years older and free from that day on to walk anywhere in the yard his heart desires, the goose

  hissing like

  hunger from a

  distance

  2 the great grey owl (strix nebulosa nebulosa)

  Now he is a boy on his way home from school, where they

  teach in Russian and he may not speak his mother tongue.

  He passes a row of silver spruce in a fenced-in farmyard—

  unusual. If a man plants trees they are always fruit trees, who

  doesn’t need fruit trees more than silver spruce?

  Rumours of ghosts clamber about this house; its shimmering

  evergreens glow and moan when you pass at night.

  His sisters asleep in a row above him, he lies awake nights in

  his place at the foot of the bed, turning the mystery over in

  his mind. Sucking it slowly. Making it last.

  Finally one evening he climbs the fence to see for himself—

  taking care not to rip his pants or there’ll be hell to pay

  when he gets home—

  goose-pimpled he approaches the first tree sees

  nothing moves aside a branch and

  holy mother

  a grey and stately owl

  swivels its head. He follows its gaze

  to the next tree and there is another and

  another and

  another each tree loaded

  with great grey owls dozens of them

  all swivelling their heads,

  calm, real.

  3 the ruby-throated hummingbird (archilochus colubris)

  When he is seventeen he works on a farm near Winnipeg as hired man for a James Henry Lytle (hypocrite and as big a windblow as any of the Lytles are, but a good man all the same).

  One day he’s in the barn grooming the horses.

  He hears a humming.

  Out of the corner of his eye

  a flash then

  there it is still suspended like Christ himself then

  darting to fro

  up down

  like some kind of crazy pendulum.

  Insect? Moth? Bird? He hasn’t any idea what to make of it, thinks that, for all he knows, it could be a fairy, come to him with a message.

  Smudges in the air where the wings should be—like someone took a thumb to a fresh charcoal drawing.

  He lights the lantern—the hum audible all the while—and when the thing comes into view again its back is green as new metal and the light has sprung its black throat into a deep red.

  Nothing like it in the Old World, that much is for sure.

  And though he is late for the evening meal, and though he comes to them lightened with awe, and though they laugh and hoot and slap their knees saying, Oh that’s a good one, a fairy caught in the barn and can’t get out, oh that’s a good one, that is, he falls asleep content in this new country.

  The hummingbird will always be his favourite.

  (Try whistling that sound—can’t touch it.)

  4 the starling (sturnus vulgaris vulgaris)

  Though even he did not quite know it, he decided to marry her one Saturday afternoon while standing in front of the diner. Counting his change with the sun in his eyes, he spotted her coming out of the general store. A

 
starling swooped close,

  and she was not startled.

  5 the red-winged blackbird (agelaius phoeniceus)

  After share-growing tobacco in southwestern Ontario for seven years, moving his family nearly every spring to a better deal, he’s finally saved a down payment for his own farm: ninety-eight acres of mediocre land with thirty-two acres of tobacco rights, a debt-load he’s been trying hard to fathom.

  Spring’s come early this year—late March rain. The farmyard is bottomless with mud. The truck, loaded up and ready to move for the last time, spins its wheels in the melted lane, burrowing deeper and deeper.

  Some say red-winged blackbirds are the real harbingers of spring.

  The males come a week or two early—before the females. Come to claim their territory. Come bearing a red so handsome, so bold, so brand-spanking new it must mean God approves of machines.

  At the moment the first bird touches down on the naked maple beside the rented house, the neighbours gain purchase in the pushing, truck wheels engage solid ground, and he honks the horn:

  kong-ka-ree!

  Landowners.

  Think of it.

  6 the house wren (troglodytes aedon)

  One year the wrens nest in the mailbox. (That’s the year the crop suffers from too much rain.)

  Another year the wrens nest in an empty clay flowerpot by the shed. (That’s the year the crop suffers from too little rain.)

  This year they nest in the pocket of his canvas winter coat which Mary has left hanging too long on the clothesline because three times in a row

  just

  when it dried

  the sky up

  and rained again.

  7 the barn swallow (hirundo rustica)

  The morning he puts the question to his son he is near fifty. His son is thirteen. Swallows flash in and out of the barn above them.

  If you want the farm it’s yours. We can start this summer shifting the load. If not, there’s no point me sticking it out alone. I’m not getting any younger and the work isn’t getting any lighter and it’s a good time to sell. I’ll finish the season and sell in the fall.

  Choice is yours.

  A fork-

  tailed bird cuts

  between them. An awkward

  silence.

  I don’t know what it is I’m gonna be, but whatever it is it’s not gonna be a farmer.

  The boy pronounces each word as if he’s practised for this moment.

  The swallows twitter from their mud nest in the timbers.

  It’s done then, he says, and turns his back to finish the season.

  8 the chimney swift (chaetura pelagica)

  It’s early evening and he’s up the ladder, looking down the chimney to figure the obstruction, when a plume of swifts, sudden and soot-coloured, breaks

  into flight.

  (When that ladder tipped away from the house and I knew in my bones I was going over

  I tell you time

  stood still)

  His wrist bone snaps when he hits the ground, breaks

  through skin.

  Alone—Mary at choir practice, the kids grown and gone— he puts the ladder away with one arm, pens a note in childish left-handed writing, and walks to the hospital where he is a nurse (a male nurse, he always says), works six shifts a week.

  (Good thing we sold that farm I guess, moved to town.)

  Neighbourhood kids trail him, his bright

  bone a silent piping in the failing sun.

  9 the winter wren (troglodytes troglodytes)

  On the porch swing he tries to teach me the wren’s song. My lips ache and my whistle is vanishing into the thin winter air. I can do the chickadee, the robin, the goldfinch and the sparrow but

  wrensong is slippery and insistent, more fishtail

  than birdsong.

  To have a grandfather is to be spellbound and unsettled, to be surrounded by languages you can’t speak.

  10 the scarlet tanager (pirana olivacea)

  When my parents’ marriage ends my mother moves us to the outskirts of Brampton; our new house (along with forty- five others exactly like ours) crouches on a small circular suburban street called Tanager Square.

  Peter Friesen comes to inspect, sees the high-fenced yard.

  Postage stamp, he mutters, and spits, not enough room to grow a bloody thing. And it must of been a damn fool who named the place—you sure won’t be seeing any tanagers

  here.

  11 the blue jay (cyanocitta cristata)

  Aunt Anne was Grandpa’s favourite sister.

  She hated blue jays because they were greedy at her feeder.

  And that is all I know

  about Aunt Anne.

  did the question disturb you

  What is it Like to Have Alzheimer Disease?

  (from Alzheimer: A Canadian Family Resource Guide)

  Another way to find out more about Alzheimer is to try to imagine what it is like to have it. Obviously, you can’t know exactly what it is like. However, the following scenarios should give you some insights into what your family member is going through, and how he or she feels. All of the examples in the list happen to people every day; they were chosen because they are everyday occurrences that are analogous to having Alzheimer Disease. They are not signs of the disease.

  Think about the last time you lost your car in a parking lot. How did you feel—frightened, angry, bewildered, panicky? Did you feel as though you might never find it?

  How frustrated did you feel the last time a vending machine didn’t work? It wouldn’t give you what you wanted and it wouldn’t return your money and nothing you did (kicking, hitting, swearing) made any difference.

  Have you ever left your house and later were unable to remember whether you turned the stove off? Did you go back to the house to check? Did you call a neighbour to see if everything was all right at the house? Did you do neither of those things, and then worry the whole time you were away? Did you then become obsessive for a while, so that every time you left the house you went back to make sure the stove was turned off?

  How did you feel the last time you met someone you knew and couldn’t remember the person’s name? How did you feel when you wanted to make an introduction and could not because you forgot a name?

  Pussy willows for sale in buckets outside the corner store where I buy my cigarettes: sure sign of spring. Not to mention the fact that James and I are having twice as much sex as we usually do. But I know it’s officially, officially spring when my neighbours Connie and Bill emerge from hibernation.

  James and I live in a spacious one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a once-grand, now-verging-on- squalid old house in Parkdale, one of Toronto’s more liminal neighbourhoods (rich meets poor, crazy meets sane, old meets new, wild meets tame—meetings so haphazard and insistent that sometimes the aspect shifts, and you’d be hard- pressed to say which is which). Connie and Bill live on the main floor of the house next door. All winter we don’t see them, then one day they come out. After that, they’re around for the next four months, smoking on their porch, radio tuned to the oldies station. Billy used to be with the Hell’s Angels. He’s quiet, doesn’t do much else besides smoke and mumble the occasional greeting, one hand stroking his stubble. He’s always looking off into the distance, as if someone stole his bike some time ago and he’s been marooned here ever since. Connie, on the other hand, never stops moving.