Something wonderful happened this October month. Something that helped me soar over everything else that was going on.
We were enjoying a family birthday lunch for my daughter Maureen at the Cowichan Bay Pub when a woman whom my eldest son knew came to our table. She was one of those slender fit beautiful silver-haired women in her 80’s and she wanted to tell me how important my memoir Growing Up Weird was for her.
“We’ve all had those experiences,” she said, “I’ve lent it to a friend. I am so glad to have met you.”
And then a few days later, my son Mickey, same son, was chatting to another Cowichan Bay resident, again a professional woman close to my age who thanked him for giving her a copy of my book. She hinted at growing up with a similar background and had lent it to a friend who also resonated with the story.
There’s magic in the number three and October ended with a text from my sister Kate, “I was at a friend’s 80th birthday party yesterday and her three sisters were all raving about your book.” They had also grown up in Oak Bay.
The book Kate was referring to is my memoir of Oak Bay in the 1940’s and 1950’s. It wasn’t meant to be published, after all it held family secrets and uncomfortable subjects. It grew from a writing prompt twenty something years ago with my Chemainus Writers group. Once I started writing (there were harsh memories, sexual abuse, and normal growing up adventures), I became immersed in the past, and I often wrote in a child voice. It was cathartic and healing.
my mother, step-father, sister, baby brother and me
At that point I still viewed it as a record for my family and for my two siblings who were six and sixteen years younger and grew up with a different father and had different experiences. However, with encouragement from my writers’ group and my family I published Growing Up Weird – A memoir of an Oak Bay childhood.
I hoped by writing this book, it would not only give a snapshot of Oak Bay in the 1940’s and 50’s it would serve as an honest depiction about the difficulties many girls faced including the sexual abuse that we didn’t talk about. I hoped my story would help someone else. Help them to know they weren’t at fault, and they weren’t the only one.
And the ‘everything else’ that’s going on that I mentioned in the beginning?
Apart from climate change, the unhoused, the world in general, I am having health problems that have temporarily slowed me down but haven’t stopped me from writing.
To hear that my writing makes a difference is all I need.
And that’s what’s given me joy this October month.
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I journal. I have a basket full of journals. Some are embarrassingly needy, fuel for a bonfire. My partner’s daughter Cheri burned her journals last spring. I thought that was a terrible loss but after perusing my older writings, I realized fire would be their best ending.
Some journals are worth keeping such as the small diary with a brocade cover, a gift from my sister Kate in 1981. I used this as a travel journal for twenty-five years.
There are a few common threads in it, New Years’ resolutions, the usual stuff, however the rest of the diary is filled with stories of my solo trip to the UK in 1984. Vivid descriptions of walking tours in London, or visiting the Bronte house in Haworth, Yorkshire, travelling the rails on the Flying Scotsman, motorcycling on the Isle of Skye and having my passport and traveller’s cheques stolen in Paris.
Pages are filled with trips to San Francisco, where my eldest son lived, hanging out in Haight-Ashbury, exploring the Mission district, sipping coffee on the street in Noe Valley, hiking up the city’s many stairs and hidden pathways, visiting City Lights Bookstore and climbing up to the Coit Tower.
All these rich memories are nestled in my diary, ready to be used in a story or just enjoyed straight up.
basket of journals
I kept on journaling, recording most of the trips that Grant and I took, but in an assortment of books, often changing mid trip because I found a nicer journal, a more interesting colour, one that brought me more inspiration. These are the journals I used to write my latest book, my third book, the one that is still in the creating stage, now called Under a Salish Moon: Camping on the Coast.
I recently sent my ’finished’ manuscript to Michelle Barker, an editor with The Darling Axe editor group for a narrative assessment. In her detailed and extremely helpful, twelve-page assessment, she made positive comments:
“You add lots of local color with some good description.”
“You have a good ear for conversation and you’re able to catch people’s voices.”
“It was a pleasure to read this book. Your writing is vivid and made me wistful for the places you described…”
But.
There’s always a ‘but’.
There was this.
“The narrative often strays into feeling more like a journal (where you ate, who you saw, what you did).”
Well duh!
Clearly there’s a downside of relying on journals to add spice to my stories.
leather journal from Sheila, too nice to use
Never mind, I love writing and will be happily tweaking my Under a Salish Moon travel chronicles this winter. Spring release?
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I was doing a final round of the fruit aisle on my weekly grocery shopping trip when I ran into someone I hadn’t seen since last spring’s flu shot.
“Pam!” I said in surprise.
“Liz!” She replied.
We stood there and grinned at each other the way you do when it’s someone you like but you don’t know all that well.
“I’m enjoying your blog,” she said.
“Ah, thank you, I was thinking of skipping it this month. I haven’t missed one yet but…”
“No, you can’t!” she interjected. “I look forward to it. It’s the highlight of my month.”
“Even when I write about uncomfortable things?”
“Especially those things,” she replied laughing.
My step was lighter as I walked away. I love getting positive feedback, it inspires me to keep on writing. I am writing the kind of content that I want to read and as Pam is around my age, she is whom I write for.
I had planned on letting the blog go this month. I am immersed in revising and polishing my up coming book to send to my editor for a narrative review and the work has consumed all my creative energies. The book is important, but this blog is so much fun to write, I know I can squeeze out a little more!
So, Pam, this ones for you.
Have you ever thought how grocery shopping is like the long-ago days when the women gathered at the communal well? It was usually the women who walked with their children to the well and washed the clothes and talked and gossiped and kept that thread of community happening and knew who was okay and who wasn’t.
If that’s a stretch, think about the weekly village market, the social day of the week where women put on their best clothes, mingled with their friends and neighbours, bought vegetables and goods for their families and caught up on the latest town news.
I know, men shop too, of course they do, and our society is different than the old village days, but we are more the same than you think. When I shop, once a week, I dress a little better, still casual wear, and I always run into someone I know and have an uplifting conversation. Often it is someone whom I haven’t seen in ages, such as my old friend Connie, and we do the Liz? Connie? dance. At first not sure, and then the years fall away and we have a heart warming catch-up.
As it happened, I ran into Connie the same day I ran into you Pam and it hit me… we underestimate the value of a grocery store. Not only does the store, in this case, our local Country Grocer, provide groceries, it also offers community, a feeling of belonging and of being known. It almost raises grocery shopping to a spiritual level, where our senses are stimulated by perfect piles of shiny red apples and we marvel at the bounty of food. We are all on a even playing field as we push our carts around piles of stock waiting to be shelved as we mumble at the rising costs.
The warm glow I feel after re connecting with friends, old and new softens the blow of the checkout total. My wish is that we all extend that warm feeling to the hard-working people in the store. A smile goes a long way.
Thank you, Pam for the inspiration!
Just so you know, this is a No Frills post as I am writing at the blog post deadline, due to my previously mentioned book manuscript that is awaiting in the wings. No Frills meaning I have no relevant photos to grace the blog. But you can visualize women blocking the aisles as they talk, and talk. Don’t you just love us?
love from your Island Crone.
If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.
If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.
~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes
The Jazz Players
I know an artist who regrets each piece of art he sells. Years ago, when he belonged to a Chemainus Artist Group and was displaying his work, he sold his ‘Jazz Players’ to a woman from Calgary. Letting that painting go, was painful. He painted another, slightly different and it still hangs in our living room.
Yes. The artist is my partner, Grant.
Then there was the painting of the well loved Chemainus hermit, Charlie Abbott, shown walking along the railway tracks with the iconic Chemainus theatre in the background. Sold also to a woman from Alberta. Also greatly missed.
And his Arizona paintings, thirty- five small studies in oil of the churches, shrines and ancient symbols of the desert done over a winter in Arizona. We had an art show at the old Hummingbird Café in Chemainus when we returned, slapped a high price on them to discourage sales, which didn’t work, as he bid a sad farewell to some of his favourites, including his “Hoochie Coochie Girls.” He still talks about that one.
I know how that feels as I once wanted to be an artist. I studied at the local college, painted in oil because I loved the smell and painted trees, because I loved trees. There was one painting, a big one, of my eight-year-old stepdaughter Sue, sitting against the trunk of an old fir on the bank of the river. I captured her perfectly and had thought of giving it to her.
But an acquaintance saw the painting and wanted to buy it. I was flattered. However, she had no money and offered to do a trade, a hand-woven shawl from Guatemala in exchange for my painting. I reluctantly agreed.
A couple of years later, she asked for her shawl back in return for the painting. I said no. I was annoyed that she didn’t value my painting more than her shawl. I was annoyed that I let myself be manipulated and I’ve regretted that decision ever since for shortly after, the woman’s house burned down with my painting inside. (She had already moved out, as the house was condemned.)
I still have the shawl, but I never wear it.
There’s a moral here, but I have no idea what it is.
All I know, is that painting and writing are creative art forms, both arising from somewhere deep within. I have lost myself in both pursuits, reaching that altered state where time has no meaning and the art is flowing, an artist high if there is such a thing. It’s a wonderful state of being.
However, I find writing to be simpler than painting. I can print copies of my writing on a sheet of paper or as a book and still have my original. And delete is quicker than painting over. (Painters can print giclees but it’s more involved.)
The difference between painting and writing for me as a memoir writer, is that once my writing is finished, it no longer belongs to me, it belongs to the reader who hears my words filtered through their own experiences. Even I, upon reading one of my books years after I write them, am not the same person; I have separated myself from the stories. I hear them differently; they are no longer mine.
Paintings, although infused with the artists emotions, feel more static. They capture a memory that is frozen in time and place. Maybe that is why many artists have difficulty selling their work. They’ll never be that person in that time again.
Writing and painting, both laying bare our innermost feelings, capturing fleeting moments, are we doing it for ourselves or for an audience?
And does it really matter?
In the end are these just idle early morning musings because my cat’s insisting that I wake up and I’m pretending I ‘m still asleep?
The hardest thing about editing is knowing what has to be left out/slashed/deleted. If it doesn’t belong, or move the story forward, it has to go. This story is one I had to drop as it isn’t about travelling on the coast. Yes it is on the coast of Vancouver Island, Lantzville to be precise, and it does include a dog, but it does not belong in my upcoming book. It is a story I love, a casual meeting on a summer day at the beach and I want to share it with you. It took place on a day in June 1995, thirty years ago.
I meet Violet Margaret Norback:
On one of those days swimming in the waters off Lantzville and throwing sticks for Bodhi, with Grant lounging on the beach with a book, I noticed an elderly woman sitting on a weathered log. She watched as I emerged from the sea and shook the salt water from my hair. I threw another stick in the ocean for Bodhi and walked across the sand to where the old woman was sitting.
“Lovely day for the beach,” I called with a smile.
She didn’t respond and I was taken aback by her closed expression as she pushed away the thick white hair that hung over her forehead. Her pale cloudy blue eyes considered me for a long moment, then she patted the log beside her and said, “Come, sit with me. Don’t be shy.”
I nudged my wet bottom on the rough log and asked, “Is that your house?” pointing to the faded green two-story house behind where we were sitting.
“Yes,” she said as she glanced back at the weathered building.
We sat quietly for a moment or so, I wondered if that was going to be the extent of our conversation, but then she began to speak in halting sentences with spaces in between.
“Fred and I built it fifty-five years ago. I dug the basement with a shovel. We just built it. No plan, no design. It’s a good house, lots of room. We didn’t have much but there was lots of firewood on the beach. I cut it with a seven-foot saw and bucked it up myself.”
Her name was Vi, and Fred, her husband, had died a few years back. I studied her face as she spoke. I was struck by the grief etched across her high cheekbones and elegant nose.
“I’m not used to talking,” Vi said. “Fred was the kind of man who did not talk much. Just two or three words a day. But I miss him. I’m lonely. There’s lots of men out there. They come around but I don’t want them. It’s different when they’ve fathered your children but as my mother said, ‘you don’t need to wash another man’s dirty socks.’ Some days I don’t see anyone,” she added. “I go two, three days without talking.”
It felt as though she had weeks of talking to do and I was more than happy to listen. I learned that Vi was born in Scotland, in the Orkney Islands and emigrated to Saskatchewan with her parents when she was young. I leaned back on my log and stretched my bare legs in the sun as she continued to tell her story.
“I used to trap. Had my own trapline, made money, mink and racoons. Fred set the traps. He didn’t like to do the rest. It’s a cruel business. My mother always said if you took on a job you had to do all parts of it. The good and the bad. I was good at it.”
“Where’d you trap?” I asked.
“Oh, around here,” she waved her arm vaguely toward Nanoose Bay. “Four miles. Sometimes I went further on ‘Indian’ land, but no one knew. It’s so long ago. It doesn’t matter now.”
“And I brought food home, used the shotgun for ducks and I caught fish. Out by Maude Island. Have you ever been there?” She asked, pointing across the water to a small island in the distance. “I used to row over there before sunup and catch ling cod,” she said, not waiting for an answer. “Sometimes I would put some bread dough up to rise first and come back with a catch of fish for lunch.”
I glanced at the sturdy wooden rowboat hauled up on the beach and marveled that she could row it across the water.
“You remind me of my Sottish grandmother,” I said. “She was adventuresome, and we always went to the beach together. You even look a little like her.”
“Was she lonely?” Vi asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Ah maybe she didn’t say. Some women had it hard. It’s terrible being lonely. You take what life gives you and you don’t complain.”
Although I looked for Vi every time I walked by, I never saw her sitting on her beach log again, however I stopped by once and knocked on her back door. I couldn’t tell whether she was pleased to see me or whether I was an intrusion. She didn’t invite me in, and we had an awkward moment while we both looked at each other. Vi was wearing the same faded blue cotton house dress she was wearing on that day we talked on the beach. I wished I had brought her some cookies or muffins. An excuse for dropping by.
“We went out to Maude Island.” I said, breaking the silence. “In our canoe.”
“Did you fish?” she asked.
“No. No. We took a picnic and the dog, and I explored the island. It was beautiful and we had it all to ourselves. I want to go back.”
Vi stood with one hand resting on the door jam and nodded her head slightly. That was all. I walked down her stairs, turned at the bottom and gave a small wave goodbye. Vi watched. It was the last time I saw her.
Her two-acre waterfront property on Sebastion Road went up for sale a couple of years later. The town of Lantzville wanted to buy it for a park. The people voted against it. I was disappointed we weren’t having a park in Vi’s name but then I remembered Maude Island. There was more than fishing for Vi at Maude Island.
That day on the beach, when Vi had so much talking to let out, she added in a soft voice, her faded eyes gazing off in the distance, “I really went to Maude Island to get away, to be alone. But I was never completely alone,” she said, “there were spirits there too.”
I know, I felt them on the day Grant and I paddled to the island.
Violet Margaret Norback 1909-2000
Lantzville Beach
If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.
~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes
*Photo of my daughter Maureen and me was taken in 1997 on Lantzville Beach…I believe the small round looking island in the distance is Maude Island. The other photo is a stranger walking her dogs 1997, same beach. Best swimming beach ever!!!!
My neighbour has created a bee and butterfly garden, and it’s a lovely sight. She has terrible soil, we all do in our area, our homes are built on the old smelter grounds and as the story goes, the former toxic site was capped with clay and our small strata development was built atop the clay. I can attest to the clay!
But Sue has done magical things with her hard dried garden. A few years ago, she researched and built a ‘lasagna’ garden in front of her house. She piled layers of newspapers, soil, cardboard and compost on the unforgiving ground and now has a spectacular garden with Aubretia spilling over the rocks, small shrubs and Rhododendrons, spring bulbs and Euphorbia providing bloom all year round.
However, there was a strip of grass along her drive that never grew properly. She reseeded, fertilized, watered and yet the strange brown patches remained. One day she dug it up and announced she was creating a bee and butterfly garden. A pollinator garden with a mix of cat nip, California poppies, red poppies and Foxglove that maybe drifted over from my garden, blue Lupins, orange Wallflowers; a wild cacophony of colour, all in the sun and buzzing with bees.
My garden is across the road from Sue’s and is mostly in shade from the Katsura tree and the towering black bamboo. I also have a mix of perennials, shade loving plants such as Lady’s Mantel, Leopards’ Bane, Rose Campion, Foxglove, Japanese Windflowers, and tucked among the ferns I have water dishes for the snakes (yes, I like snakes), and fat bumblebees. My garden is not as structured as Sue’s, it’s even slatternly, but has its own charm. The Euphorbia wandered over from her garden and found niches to flourish and the poppies tossed their seed with wild abandon.
Leopards Bane
Its not everybody’s cup of tea, however we have two artists and one master gardener who live in our cluster of homes, and they love our gardening style. In fact, one artist, Beckie, gave me a painting she had done of my garden because it gave her such joy every time she walked by.
And what has all this got to do with “getting in shape”? Last month I told you I had joined a Choose to Move program via Zoom put on by Island Health and I would give you a progress report. I had ambitious exercise plans but then I had hand surgery, so no rowing machine or floor yoga, and a small health blip, so no hill climbing, however I could garden, and gardening counts for exercise! Yeah! To be honest I would rather be weeding and planting and designing hidden vignettes for cats to lounge than sweating over a hard metal exercise machine.
So, join me and don your garden gloves and hats and get down and dirty and move! It’s a win, win, all the way!
If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore. ~ Island Crone by Liz Maxwell Forbes
A few years back, when I was writing a monthly column for The Chemainus Courier, our local newspaper, I wrote about walking the backyard lanes. I loved poking around those overgrown hidden pathways and I would spend hours with my dog wandering up that lane with blackberries spilling over the old truck, picking and eating ripe berries as I went and then I’d walk down to one of the lower lanes where a plum tree dropped its ripe fruit over a compost heap, and then to another lane where I picked the grapes that were usually left to rot on the ground. And then there were the apple trees. And I would come home with my backpack filled with windfalls, apples that made the sweetest pies.
I no longer have the energy to walk up the hill to reach most of the lanes. We live in a seaside town on East Vancouver Island and typical of these towns, there is a hill with houses marching along the side facing the ocean. The lanes I like to explore run behind the houses on the hill and as I live at the bottom, close to the ocean, it’s the getting up to the top that’s the problem. It’s all about the hills!
However, lately I’ve been thinking about those backyard gems, those sometimes-grassy trails and the possibility of apples free for the taking, apples falling over a rickety fence, and I realized I needed to stop being lazy and get back to walking. It’s always so easy to say, “I’ll start tomorrow.”
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an add on social media for a program for seniors called Choose to Move put on by The Active Aging Society, choosetomove.ca. Grant and I went. (He wasn’t too thrilled about it.) Funnily enough, of the nine seniors there, six of us already knew each other, in fact three of us belonged to the same writers group. The focus of the proposed eight- week sessions, was not weight loss or doing exercises, the focus was on getting out, building community, looking at barriers to being active and setting goals. We were already active in the community and this course did not feel like the right fit, in fact all the people we knew at that introductory meeting decided not to join.
But I knew I needed something. Something to help me look at why I was slacking off. Not trying to walk. Yes, I am getting older. But old people walk. My lovely neighbour Sue was texting me for a while, “walkies today?” but I said no too many times.
I needed something I could commit to. Something to make me feel inspired. I like Zoom and I like questionnaires, charts and goal setting. And I like the fact that the course is part of a UBC study on aging and the results could help develop effective courses in the future for seniors. Meanwhile I think I have found a niche that suits me.
I went back to the Choose to Move site and signed up for an online Zoom course.
By choosing to sign up I will be able to discuss my health goals with a qualified instructor, have charts to record my exercise (I love charts!), and set realistic goals for which I am accountable. At least for the eight weeks of the course.
Chose to Move has a slogan: Being active can help you feel better, look better and live longer.
My short-term goal is to do the exercises already prescribed for me by my physiotherapist, my chiropractor and my family. “Use the rowing machine Lizzie,” instructions from Grant; “Use the stationary bike Mum,” a suggestion from my son Bruce; “Get out walking Lizzie,” loving advice from my sister Kate.
Just think, if I do even half of that I will feel livelier and healthier.
And the big goal is…I will be walking those lanes again, with ease. I might have to get another dog!
I am CHOOSING to improve my life.
Stay tuned for a progress report next month.
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Twenty years ago, when we bought this bungalow, there was a tidy front garden, a row of shrubs, a small, raised bed with two trees and the rest was grass. I dug up the grass and planted every inch of ground with shrubs and flowers including bamboo.
-High maintenance. Oh, how I wish I had left it alone.
Grant dug out the grass in the back yard and replaced it with terracotta pavers.
-Low maintenance. Sensible.
I planted every other empty patch with Rhododendrons, ground cover, flowering shrubs, and we put in a fishpond.
-High maintenance, not sensible.
I am not writing a blog this month because:
*Swimsuit season is coming up and I am working on getting toned.
Ha, ha, ha!!! As if!
*I am working on fitness, so I can work in the garden. I am doing stretches, promising myself that I will walk daily, meanwhile my hands are stiff with arthritis and it’s hard to type let along work in the garden.
I am not writing a blog this month because:
*I am pushing through with the editing of my up coming book, now tentatively called Coastal Adventures: And the Dog Came Too.
I am not writing a blog this month because:
*The blog I was writing this month just wouldn’t gel.
* It’s tax season!
* AND I AM FLYING MADLY OFF IN ALL DIRECTIONS!
I will come back to earth next month. Maybe read a bit of Stephen Leacock in between. Get the reference?
Meanwhile, lets enjoy this sweet time of year, spring with all her promises.
If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.
I awake at first light, the birds singing their morning song as I brew my coffee and head down the hall to my studio. The cat walks with me wrapping his tail around my legs, leading me to the front door.
Once at my desk soft light streams through my new stained-glass window and the hummingbirds work the feeders hanging outside. This is my sanctuary, the space I made for calmness and creativity. I sigh with contentment, reach for my notes, and begin editing my latest book.
A beautiful scenario you say. However, after months of procrastination, I am only just there. Last summer I had sent my manuscript to my first readers, received their insightful comments and put them aside where they sat through the long winter when I should have been writing and editing. Instead, I worked at decluttering, shredding old writing, getting rid of books, piling cardboard boxes with stuff, creating so much clutter that I couldn’t move let alone write.
I was stuck in a dark place.
I began to think about love, inspired by author Liz Gilbert, who writes letters of love to herself. (Look it up. Elizabeth Gilbert. Letters to Love.)
And I thought about my love for writing. Writing is my therapy, so why am I using my writing room as a dumping ground for all the homeless things in my life? If I were to write a letter of love to myself, I would say that I am loved, I have value and I am worthy of writing in a beautiful space, a sanctuary.
Last week something shifted. I moved furniture, cleared away the boxes, organized my manuscript and work notes, bought a woven throw-rug to brighten the room, and treated myself to a beautiful stained-glass window to hang over my writing desk. I created my sanctuary and began writing again.
If this is a bit woo-woo for you, think about this, another reason why I was suddenly able to work again: As of last week, Mars was no longer retrograde in Cancer. No longer stalling progress. Mars, which is involved in creativity in my chart, is flowing again. Hallelujah!
Whatever you believe, the fact is that this morning I awoke at first light….and with luck and a whole lot of love, And the Dog Came Too-Camping on the Coast will be published this year.
If you enjoyed this and are curious about more content from an Island Crone, please subscribe from my web page/blog sidebar. I promise to post at least once a month and sometimes more. But not often enough to bore.
Visiting my daughter Sheila and her friend Beth, Huntsville Ontario
A few years ago, on a flight to Toronto to visit my daughter Sheila, I sat next to a woman who looked like someone I could know. Someone I would like to know. But apart from a cursory acknowledgement of my presence she busied herself with reading and making occasional notes on her laptop. I got it. My fear when travelling is being stuck beside an insufferable boor for the duration. It happened once on a flight from Vancouver to San Francisco with a seat mate whose views on women and almost everything else were diametrically opposite to mine and I was too polite in those days, to tell him to shut up.
I knew this wouldn’t be the case with this woman sitting beside me and I hoped we could chat; it was a long flight from Vancouver to Toronto and I hadn’t packed a good book.
What was it about her that assured me that I would feel at ease talking to her? It was partly the way she was dressed. She looked like many women I knew on Vancouver Island and especially in the Cowichan Valley. Her casual slacks, cotton plaid shirt topped with a lightweight V-neck spoke ‘no nonsense, I am comfortable in my skin.’ Good leather walking shoes, short-cropped hair, warm-open face, no make up. Genuine came to mind, someone who would be fun to know.
What did she see in me that prevented her from engaging in conversation? Older, grey hair? Did I look fussy? I hadn’t been sure what clothes to bring to my daughter’s lake front home in the Muskoka’s.
Sharing a moment with Sheila on her 60th birthday.
“People don’t dress up to travel anymore Mum,” my daughter had warned me.
What Sheila hadn’t factored in was that her casual would be my dress up. Casual on the free-wheeling west coast is a different genre to conservative Ontario. I chose a careful middle of the road wardrobe, and I must be giving off middle-class vibes.
Earlier this morning while awaiting my connector flight from Cassidy Airport on Vancouver Island to Vancouver Airport I had also made assumptions based on how someone was dressed, and I was reminded how quick we are to categorize others. I love watching people and speculating about their lives. This morning, the woman sitting across from me was, I was sure, on a business trip. I mean who else would be wearing make up, nylons and heels and a flowered polyester dress at seven in the morning? And she had a new looking carry bag at her side. But no laptop, hmm maybe not.
She saw me looking at her, “I’m so happy to be going home,” she said, “just spent ten days visiting my brother and wife on the island. How about you?”
Well, there go my brilliant detective skills.
“Off to Huntsville, Ontario for my daughter’s birthday,” I replied. “Her sixtieth.”
“Midlands, Ontario for me, I much prefer Ontario to here, especially where my brother lives, Crofton, its hardly even a town.”
“Crofton?” I exclaimed. “That’s where I live. Maybe I know them.”
With a quick glance from side to side, she leaned across the space between us and whispered. “You wouldn’t know them. They’re hippies. Older would-be hippies but still decent people. He volunteers at the food bank.” She paused, as though searching for the right words. Then nodding her head solemnly she added, “They dress differently.”
Liz hippie vibes 1969
I mulled over that comment as I sat quietly in my seat on the long flight to Toronto. ‘They dress differently.’ That’s a laugh. They probably look like me. And dress the way I do which I can only define as Vancouver Island style. Now if I hadn’t been trying rock the well healed sophisticated jet setter vibe on this trip, that woman would have never approached me.
About one hour before we landed at Pearson, my seat mate closed her laptop, tucked her book and papers into a carry all on the empty seat between us, and turned to me, saying “And what brings you to Toronto?”
Well, ask a talker a question like that when she’s had a sock in her mouth for two hours, you’ll get a story. She got it all, giving up my daughter for adoption, reuniting with her, the cancer diagnosis and now her 60th birthday party. She listened with her whole being. She knew of similar stories; in fact, she was a writer and taught creative writing in British Columbia and had lived part time in Victoria BC. We even knew some of the same people. Time ran out before we had finished our conversation, she apologized for not speaking up sooner, but she had a presentation to complete. I was glad I had not interrupted her while she was working.
She gave me her card when we parted ways.
She was Anne Fleming. The same Anne Fleming who was a runner up for last years Giller Prize for her book Curiosities. Anne Fleming- Author https://annefleming.ca
Would I have pegged Anne as a writer? No, I assumed she was an academic, a University Professor, which is exactly what she was. Pigeon holing people is not an exact science. I still think if I had been wearing my jeans and Birkenstocks when I took the seat beside Anne, she would have put her work away and talked.
Do we owe it to the people we meet to show an honest representation of ourselves and our values by the clothes we wear? By dressing like a chameleon was I being dishonest? Pretending to be someone I am not? Does it matter?
I think it does. Its somewhat like choosing a book. It’s the cover that is designed to catch one’s eye, followed by the title and if those two important pieces of information interest you, you’ll pull the book off the shelf and take a closer look. Its very much the way we instantly access the stranger who holds the door for you, and a quick word or a smile are exchanged. In that moment you’ve made a yum or yuck judgement. Based on clothing? Or?
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