A MESSAGE FROM THE GULAG

Husband is content at the Pink Cottage feeding the muster (yes this is a correct term for a collection of peafowl) of birds, revising his novel, breathing in the fragrant spring air and watching the daffodils nudge their way towards sunlight.   

Contented Husband 

Wife, that would be me, isn’t quite so ecstatic.  I am relocated temporarily from Somerset to Toronto; fulfilling my tour of duty tending to the most Crotchety Pensioner (forthwith referred to as CP) in the GTA (that’s Greater Toronto Area.)

Recently the Economist named Toronto the World’s best city to live in.   Perhaps from April to October, but from where I freeze I beg to differ.  I contemplate heading out in temperatures hovering around -25, or with the wind chill factor, -40.  The Friday before I left the UK the sun shone down on Somerset, the robins, blue tits, and chaffinches sang joyously, and even the jackdaws greeted us en-mass out the back of the house, clamoring for breakfast.  The hillsides were so green they looked photo-shopped.  The day I flew out the verdant countryside was lousy with leaping lambs.

Then....

....And Now

 Three hours of shoveling snow can shrivel the bloom off the rose that is Toronto.  The neighbour next door flaunts his fancy snow blowing machine, the newly blown powder drifting down onto the driveway I’ve just finished clearing in order to make my escape.  CP doesn’t believe in newfangled machinery.

A Nice but Frigid Stroll  By My Alma Mater

Out on the street the beauty of pristine white snow is fouled by splotches of dog urine, then stippled with motor oil and sprinkled with salt.  As reluctant as I am to venture out into this subarctic hell, getting out of the house is a necessary ordeal.  It takes fifteen minutes to layer on enough clothing to protect against the elements.  Then bundled up like a Siberian Cosmonaut ready for a space walk, I realize I’ve forgotten something.  I pull off salt chewed boots and tip-toe back into the house to retrieve a bag of garbage that I will ferry out into the world and deposit in one of the many public garbage cans that Sister and I have identified throughout the GTA. 

No Words Needed

Refuse must be removed from the house covertly, before CP gets hold of it.  It seems as time slips through his hands, he refuses to let anything go.  One characteristic many elderly folk acquire is the inability to throw anything out.  When the pensioner is also a World War Two survivor, you can ratchet that trait up a gazillion fold.  Nothing should be tossed out, ever… because you never know when you might need it; no can, plastic container, nor their lids, no piece of foil or defunct car battery.  My father has lived in this house since I was ten…. he started collecting things on the day we moved in.  If it weren’t for diligent culling by my mother…  well, I wouldn’t be able to find the back door.  When our mother passed away, or escaped, as some have said, her daughters took over.

In his dotage CP has become McGyver. “Don’t throw that out!” he shouts when he catches us removing blown light bulbs, TVs old enough not to work but not so old as to be vintage, ancient tinned goods, prescriptions that expired a decade ago, emptied paper towel rolls, shoes that fit no one which begs the question where did they come from, used cat litter and a fake Christmas tree from which most of the fake boughs have mysteriously disappeared,  “I can use it!” 

Vintage Fruit Cocktail

He once fashioned a winter hat from a section of our mother’s discarded leather coat.  It was red with a black fur lining and trim.  The hat was pointed.  CP looked like an insane elf when he wore it.  Now he wears multiple hats underneath it.  “Have to layer for the cold,” he says.  Yes, I agree, but he wears so many layers it's like he's mummified.  Perhaps he is pre-mummifying himself for us.

CP has shrunk with age, as one does, as I will and you will.  He’s also partially blind and partially deaf, and moving pretty slowly.  This makes it easy for us to race past him unnoticed on garbage days with empty boxes, cans of solidified paint and six foot long rolls of decomposing carpet.  Had he noticed us he would have claimed there was some use for every one of these items.  In years gone by everything removed, upon our mother’s request, was scrutinized.  Sometimes CP dragged things up from the bottom of the driveway, and then relocated them in the basement, or the family room or the garage, and there they remained, unused and gathering dust. 

 

Before we started our removal program, under our mother’s direction, the family room and the garage were unusable.  To this day the garage is the repository for an un-drivable car, an un-floatable boat, fishing poles, nets without bottoms, tents and other remnants of a former sporty life.

Stuff

Sister and I filled a dumpster with unusable detritus several years ago.  We personally hauled 1.7 tons of formerly used lumber.  It was during a heat-wave.  She and I were out in the driveway wielding a chainsaw.  The city had ordered CP to remove this build-up from his property under threat of fine.  Even so he tried to squirrel away bits and pieces of rubbish for future use.  The garden is now usable, at least when it’s not buried in three feet of snow.  

Thanks to our endeavours the family room is now perfectly habitable, but not in time for our mother to enjoy.  The two family cats have taken it over as a refuge; a necessity since CP’s diminished sight means he routinely sits on one or the other of them as they nap in the living room.  

Don't Tell Him Where I Am

 

There’s still no room in the garage for the rental cars Sister and I have when we’re here.  CP was hoping we could use his un-drivable car with its manual choke, different sized wheels on front and back, and engine the size of a skidoo’s.

In The Driver's Seat

 Come Rain or Snow or Sleet...

Disposal of things broken and useless is a Sisyphean task, and we are mindful of not removing items which have real emotional meaning to CP, but we’re pretty sure he won’t miss the box of ancient rubber bands which decomposed upon touch or the carpet sweeper that fell apart when CP picked it up or the copies of the Etobicoke Guardian dating from nineteen-eighty-three.  I haul these things across snow banks the size of Somerset sheep making my way to random dumpsters in windswept parking lots.  This is my battle.  At home, CP has his own battle; a daily one, to hang on to his memories and his mind, and wonder where the hell that box of elastic bands disappeared to.   

Meanwhile.... Back in Somerset