WHAT A LONG STRANGE ROAD

   
I have not blogged in a while, having suffered through an extended bout of PTSD these last months; Present-Toronto-Stress-Disorder. 

A while ago we put all our worldly belongings into storage, and set out on a six month long adventure, hoping to change our lives en-route.


During this journey we've carried keep-sakes and photographs to remind us of friends and experiences. 
These pictures are of some of those reminders. 
Our other belongings remain in storage four years later. 

When my mother died, that sad event affected so many things. A by-product of her death is the continued care of the ninety-two year old Crankiest Pensioner ever. 

It's daunting to return to a childhood home, a place with few happy memories, to look after the architect of that unhappiness.  But this is where we remain today, at least for another week or so. 
   

                                                                




Cranky? Honestly, how cranky can a ninety-two year old be? Aren't you exaggerating just a bit? No. No I am not. Imagine a man who loathes others' happiness so much that he presses cat-faced coasters in front of the television to block out the exuberant smiles of a victorious Andy Murray. CP dislikes genuine joy. It makes him very mad.

It must be war-time residue, that perpetual anvil dangling over his head, that causes him to yearn for the end of the world. It is a betrayal that the place still exists at all.

CP has made it plain he does not want things to continue on after he's gone. He would like the entire planet to just disappear the second he leaves his mortal coil. While he dislikes pretty well everything, he does not want to miss a moment of misery. Dickens couldn't invent a grimmer character.

His favorite TV viewing is the Weather Channel, the section where they show catastrophic events from around the world. Tsunamis, blizzards, floods, and ice storms, you name it, he loves them. 'How close is that to us?' he asks hopefully about the Costa Rican hurricane. 'That volcano erupting on the other side of the world could wipe out Etobicoke'. He's optimistic the lava flow will somehow find its way from Mount Etna to Toronto.  

Just when I had gathered the strength to blog again, the wind was knocked out of me by the election. A bout of Permanent Trump Stress Disorder displaced my pre-existing Present Toronto Stress Disorder. 

Perversely, this election cycle should bring great joy to CP, someone yearning for the end of the world could actually glimpse it now. But the fates are toying with him. The downside of the onset of dementia is that Cranky Pensioner has forgotten there ever was an election. Something that could have made him so happy is beyond his grasp. 

 
So how do Husband and I maintain our sanity in this situation? Well, as mentioned, we carry with us keepsakes to remind us of friends and experiences. Photographs are an obvious and easy take-a-long. Pictures flicker across our computers as ever-changing screen-savers that bring smiles and good memories.

We travel with fabrics from trips to India, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, as well gifts given us by friends. The Pink Cottage was decorated with them to give us a sense of home. And now here in Toronto we do the same. Our personal memorobilia does battle with the unfriendly reminders of an unhappy childhood that lurk around each corner. Old versus new, and new is winning.

A bonus of this time in Toronto is returning to school and renewing old friendships. 

Much life has happened in the ensuing years and the opportunity to catch up with friends, some not seen since high school, has been amazing. We've also made excellent new friends and created great new memories that we'll take along with us on the next leg of this journey. 

The only constant is change. Even though we cannot wait to get back there, Post-Brexit England is not the same place we left last November. Post-Election, the US is not the same place we left nearly four years ago. And, when we leave Toronto on our reprieve, it will not be the same place we landed in last year.











Cranky Pensioner, while still praying for the end of the world, is being pacified by his burgeoning dementia. The roar is leaving the lion. In its stead is a person who has actually expressed some gratitude for the care he gets. It's nice to finally see a grateful person emerging from his casing of lifelong anger. 


Alas, I speak too soon. The other day I heard uncharacteristically hearty laughter coming from upstairs. Some newfound joy in life perhaps? Turns out a soccer match had been rained out and the players milled miserably around the field while sodden fans trudged out, some huddled under umbrellas, others comforting disappointed children.  Cranky Pensioner was beside himself with glee.

    

RETURN TO THE GULAG... OR DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

From This....

I had the strangest dream.  I dreamt Husband and I were living in a village in Somerset in a pink cottage.  Sheep roamed the field next to us, and in the spring lambs bounced across it like puffy ping pong balls.  Peacocks called at the backdoor for mealworms before bedtime.  The countryside was surreally green.  We knew lovely people and went to parties lit with fairy lights.  We walked for miles, learning the landscape.  But then I woke up somewhere else entirely. 

... And This

This new place is grey and bleak and in the throes of a mostly snowless winter.  The landscape is brown and the trees barren.  

To This....

And I am in a house, a very familiar house, where I had an unpleasant childhood.  And lo and behold the architect of that unpleasantness, Cranky Pensioner, is in a room in the house, wizened and ancient, and while not entirely his old self, there are definite glimmers of his irritable stubborness.  Welcome to this new reality.  While it is a temporary reality, I must still remind myself, it is the journey, not the destination, that is important.  I think I smell a life lesson.  

... And This.

Sister has been here for great chunks of time since our mother died, and now Husband and I are performing our tour of duty.  Returning to your childhood home for a length of time is a fraught situation... on many levels, and apparently a very popular past-time. Just Google 'dysfunctional family films' and watch as relations return to the fold, and explode.

Anyway, rather than dwell on the fraughtness, better to dwell on the absurdity. Husband and I went from lurid greenness to bleak grey; from the countryside to a suburban sprawl, from BBC I-Player to TV-Ontario, from available and affordable organic everything... to the opposite of that, from peacocks to feral cats, from umbrellas to mittens, from living on a country road busy with tractor traffic where we had some wonderful neighbours, to living on a suburban street full of commuters where we know virtually no one. Quite an adjustment. 

Farewell

The Whitaker grass-
hopper
Says Farewell to the
Pink Cottage

Cranky Pensioner remains Cranky, even as he lurches towards ninety-two.  You can take the boy out of the war, but you cannot take the war out of the boy, especially when the boy was fifteen when Nazis occupied his home town, and so you end up with someone whose world view is dictated by fears from the past; a life defined by war.  When Russia recently nibbled away at the Ukraine CP was beside himself with joy at the prospect of military conflict.  War is his comfort food.  It's how he lives every day of his life... how he always lived every day of his life.  Each new twenty-four hour period lies before him like a minefield to be navigated.  Every fluffy cloud has a black lining, but much to his surprise our arrival has revealed a silver lining to CP, something entirely unexpected.

The Whitaker Grass-
hopper meets snow.

Cranky Pensioner has fallen in love... with Husband.  Husband is the son he never had, another male presence in the household where formerly he was the sole man among three women.  CP has a buddy.  Someone he can watch soccer games with.  As a dyed in the wool misogynist he now has someone whose advice he can actually seek and take, though this is rare since CP will be the first one to tell you he knows everything.... EVERYTHING.  

CP has turned into Stanley Kowalkski bellowing for Stella.  He wanders around the house shouting Husband's name; wanting to share things like his inexplicable hatred for Lionel Messi, his utter contempt for men with beards, (even when he himself has not shaved for a week and is sporting one), his undying devotion to Roger Federer, his love for kittens, his belief that raccoons are pointless, and his befuddlement on learning through commercials that women shave their legs and underarms, though I am certain he was in possession of this information as a younger man.

Patient Chilled
Husband

Patient Husband has heard the same war and work stories so many times that I can see his lips moving while CP tells them.  Since Husband is tall, and CP has shrunk, they make an unlikely duo.  The Goliath and the Gnome.  Still, it makes CP happy to have Husband around.  Just the other day they were out together shoveling the dusting of snow that graced the ground for mere moments. Husband plows the snow like a madman leaving the edges for CP to clean up.  

Coping Mechanism
One

Husband is trying to finish something he's working on, but CP follows him like a persistent puppy, making work difficult.  Now Husband has to hide to work... which isn't too difficult with CP's flagging vision. The other day Husband lay motionless on the bed and CP mistook him for discarded clothes.  In order to complete his project Husband may have to remove himself from the house entirely, perhaps take himself to the local library.  Such are the pitfalls of popularity.

Coping MechanismTwo
Back to School 

Husband and I are staying within walking distance of our old high school... we went to the same high school at the same time, but never knew one another.  We go to the same library we went to as kids.  I haven't lived in this city for thirty years and it is weird to be here.  Husband and I are two Alices fallen down the rabbit hole, here to care for the Mad Hatter.  We miss the Pink Cottage, and we will return to Somerset.  

 

The Silver Lining;
a Relatively
Snowless Winter.

As I see it, the best way to deal with this new strange chapter is to embrace it as yet another interesting and educational left turn on the peculiar road that is life. Wish us luck.