Absolutely Astonished

I ran to the grocery store today to grab a couple of things, and as I waited to check out, I witnessed a shameful thing. The customers in front of me were two older women, I think one likely the mother of the other. They wanted to purchase five bags of oranges for less than the posted price. The cashier explained the lower price was for clementines, not the oranges, but they insisted quite loudly that the lower price was for the oranges. 

The cashier sent a clerk to check the price not just once but twice, and also the manager came over to confirm the price, but the women still didn't agree. They were quite rude and bullying, and the cashier, a sweet girl who looked about sixteen, started to get tears in her eyes. She kept apologizing to the rest of us waiting in line, and we all assured her we weren't in a hurry and it was okay. At one point she laughed at herself a bit for getting emotional, as one does laugh when embarrassed, and one of the rude women barked at her, saying "You think this is funny?" 

Anyway, the daughter finally backed down and just wanted to leave, but the mother was still upset. When she couldn't get the price she wanted, she reached into her cart, picked up the bags of oranges, and threw them with a loud thump on the conveyor belt, one after the other, hard enough to make them bounce. It was like watching a child have a hissy fit, and I was so close to snapping at her for acting like a baby about it. You're seventy years old woman! Act like an adult! And pay for the fruit you just damaged! But I decided that wouldn't be very adult of me. 

The manager finally coaxed the two women over to the customer service counter to deal with them, and the cashier tearfully apologized again to all of us in line. She said, "I've never been treated like that before!" and I assured her she shouldn't have been treated that way and I was sorry she had been. I gave her what comfort I could, and the others in line were equally appalled and offered their support.

As I left the store and passed the customer service counter, it was all I could do not to hiss at the older woman. You just made a perfectly nice girl cry at work because of a couple of dollars. You're getting ready for a big religious holiday dinner, but God is not going to hear your prayers until you go apologize for bullying that innocent child. She's just trying to do her job. I just don't get people like that. Nothing is important enough to bully someone else about it.

Only Death Gives Back

I was recently listening to a talk my biologist sister gave on environmental stewardship and how to overcome communication barriers around climate change. One thing she said really jumped out at me. She was speaking about how we can't live on earth without doing some damage. We can try to mitigate or lessen it, but we can't avoid it completely. Whether we choose to use cloth or disposable diapers, for example, both do different kinds of harm. The plants and animals on our plates were sacrificed so we could live. It's a painful reality. 

It got me to thinking, and it's true -- life requires taking other life. It's only death that gives back.

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are alive and well in Toronto!

Last night I had the amazing opportunity to see Tom Stoppard's play at the CAA Theatre with my husband and Son #3. Of course after a mild winter with no snow, nature decided to pummel us with everything she had last night, and I was praying we could get there at all, but my husband managed to fight our way to the subway, and it was smooth from there (the subway truly is the only way to travel in bad weather).

I love the magic feeling of waiting for a play to begin. I've done a tiny bit of community theatre, and that smell of --what is it? Chalk dust? Old fabric? Electricity? -- draws me in every time. The stars of the show, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, captured us instantly, from the first line, and the tangible rapport between them made the rapid-fire dialogue spark. Imagine memorizing three hours of dialogue! (The show doesn't feel that long. I could have kept going.) But I was impressed with the rest of the cast, too, especially Michael Blake in the role of the Player. Walter Borden (Polonius) had a resonant voice like James Earl Jones that filled the theatre. Imagine being on stage with Boyd and Monaghan! Wouldn't that be such a thrill? The set was simple and spare and completely sufficient, constantly in motion, supporting but not detracting from the action.

At one point the Player says "I have lines to learn." And Monaghan broke off-script, looked at Boyd, and murmured, "So does he." The actors froze for a second, you could see Boyd struggling not to laugh, and Monaghan looked at the audience and grinned, bringing us in on the joke. Then the action resumed, but as the characters moved up stage, I saw Monaghan pat Boyd fondly on the back. You could tell they were just having the greatest fun up there together. And now I want to dig out my copy of the play to see if Boyd had flubbed a line, to prompt Monaghan to make the comment. 

The whole evening was a delight, and it was fun to revisit a favourite play. Such profound observations on life and death, but so funny too. Now and then I'd glance at my son and find him dissolved in laughter. All the way home, we tossed bits of the dialogue at each other, and we've agreed our headstones should include the inscription: "Heads."

I saw an interview with the principal actors on Youtube the other day, and the interviewer asked them what it felt like to play characters who knew they were going to die. Boyd got a funny look on his face and said, "But we all know we're going to die." And we are. In the meantime, we get to laugh and learn. I'm grateful to these men for sharing their talents and bringing me that opportunity last night. 

The Odyssey - or - How I Spent My Vacation

I apologize, this is going to be a long post. I just returned from two weeks in Hawaii with my husband. The place itself is beautiful -- whales and dolphins visible from our balcony, giant sea turtles surfing the shore, mist-covered mountains and rainbows, sunshine, and one fun night watching sheet lightening over the dark sea. The boom and hiss and foam of the waves on the sand. Azaleas the size of trees in lipstick colours. Papaya, bananas, and mangoes growing everywhere. Pretty spectacular. I met some interesting people, including a couple who were refugees from Russia back in 1987. The local pipe major and her husband had us over for a wonderful lunch at their gorgeously-restored 100-year-old home. I read ten books in two weeks. In short, a wonderful break.

I have to say, though, that it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Humans have besmirched the stunning landscape. The area of Oahu where we stay is pretty third-world, with a really visible dichotomy between the rich and the poor. There was a homeless encampment at one end of the beach, there was the constant sound of sirens, and one poor fellow with insomnia spent every night zooming up and down on his motorbike, thus ensuring the rest of us had insomnia too. No one seems to be aware of their neighbour or worry about annoying them. They let their dogs bark incessantly, even at night, which surely must keep them awake too, but there's no attempt to hush them. There are roosters kept in little cages everywhere you look, and they don't confine their screeching to dawn like in the cartoons. Trash is piled everywhere, sometimes on fire, and no one seems to care. And one day a hiker fell from the next-door cliff and had to be airlifted out on a stretcher by a helicopter. I learned later that one person was charged $81,000 for such a rescue, driving home to me how grateful I am to live where I do.

I gained a little insight into myself while I was there, too. One day the police cleared out the homeless encampment, and I found myself siding with the displaced people. They'd found a pretty spot where they could be sheltered from the weather by the surrounding cliffs and could fish for their breakfast. It was government-owned land, but still, no one else was using it. The police pulled down their tents and tarps and left them with nothing. Not an hour later, though, the people were back, emerging from the woods, bringing suitcases and more tents, and setting the camp back up. And suddenly I found myself irritated that they were back to sleeping on our beach, leaving behind towels and dirty clothes on our sand, when I'd spent so much money to get here and... How quickly we slip into our roles and mindsets without even realizing it! I immediately felt acutely aware of my privilege, and I was ashamed of myself. I went for a walk through town, admiring the architecture, and asked myself what style the houses were...and then answered my own question. Colonial. If the homeowner isn't a native to Hawaii, the style is Colonial. There's no getting around it.

Anyway, I wouldn't call it the usual carefree sort of vacation, but it was still a nice break. And I feel I learned something about myself, which is always a good outcome of travel to foreign places.

The journey home was an adventure in itself. The flight to Calgary was fine, we had a two-hour layover, but then just as we were about to board the flight to Toronto, it was cancelled. We were bumped to a flight nine hours later...to Edmonton. (I now see the usefulness of cell phones. My husband had one, and we were able to keep in the loop about what was going on and what flight we were being put on. They also emailed us food vouchers to tide us over, which was handy.) So we waited all day, eating turkey wraps from Jugo Juice and trying to focus exhausted eyes on Sudoku... At one point, we were chatting with a friendly lady beside us, and there was a large family nearby. They were Ukrainian, three generations of them, all headed to Saskatoon. They looked like a lovely, close-knit family. But the lady we were talking with noticed them and suddenly turned nasty, spewing vitriol about refugees and how they were coming to take over our homes, and why should they get houses when we can't even afford them ourselves? Why did they get preferential treatment? My husband firmly reminded her that no one was bombing her home, and the refugees were being housed, not given houses. A big difference. I was proud of him. Surely in a land the size of Canada, we can share. 

That evening we finally got on the flight to Edmonton, only to sit on the tarmac for a further 40 minutes while a repairman in an orange vest knelt on the cockpit floor, trying to fix a communication signal light. I kid you not, it looked to me like he was just turning the computer on and off, the way the IT Department always tells you to just reboot when something goes haywire. I half expected him to just slap its side. Anyway, it finally worked and we were on our way. All of this for...get this...a 33-minute flight to Edmonton. Where we had another 4-hour layover, where I found a sagging couch probably full of ten sorts of diseases and tried to doze, without success, due to constant intercom announcements. It was a nice airport, though, I have to say, with interesting Metis displays, comfortable furniture, and a green wall. We finally caught the midnight flight to Toronto. We were supposed to have arrived home Saturday afternoon. Instead we got home at 8:00 Sunday morning, having gone without sleep for over 50 hours.

Luckily, through all of this nightmare, we hadn't checked our luggage, so we had access to everything we needed, from toothpaste to clean socks. We didn't have any small children or caged dogs with us, like some of the other weary passengers. All in all, it was manageable. There are headlines online about how to recover from losing the hour of sleep due to the changing of the clocks, and I just laugh.

Now I have the grandkids for March Break week, and they have raging colds. So much for wearing an N95 mask for two days straight on the plane...Ah well! I'm home, I'm reunited with Brio, and all is well.