“Maybe I should’ve applied to do my Ph.D. in sociology too.” She frowns. “I’m discovering that historians stick their heads in the sand and ignore anything that smacks of innovative theory for as long as possible.”
“Well, here at the higher echelons of the ivory tower,” he says, rolling his eyes, “I’m finding an even greater gap between academia and the real world. A lot of the so-called knowledge that’s being created seems irrelevant.”
“Hard to reconcile sometimes.” She nods. “And you just turned twenty-nine. I remember that milestone … the big three-O just around the corner. Questions about purpose and contribution starting to nag you.”
He grins. “I thought the Ph.D. might give me a clearer sense of direction, but I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” he says, chuckling. “No idea where I’ll end up.”
“Hey, a dissertation looms on the horizon,” she laughs. “No problem with direction there.”
“Another bloody marathon,” he groans, sinking his face into his hands.
The white corner of an envelope peeks out of his mailbox. His grandmother’s familiar handwriting instantly lifts the gloom he feels in the cool darkness of his basement apartment, her words like rays of sunshine:
I hear you did great on your seminar presentation. You see, dear, you just don’t have any confidence in your ability. You have proven your intelligence so many times.…
Sometimes when I hear you talking, I wonder, how does he know all that? You are very well read and have a great memory. These are great assets. You are far too modest for your own good. I’ve got so much faith in you.…
You are so precious to me words can’t express it deeply enough. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of you in Ottawa, alone. Remember dear you are never alone although it may seem like it.
As with every letter, a single sheet of notepaper—I Love You written on the outside—enfolds a cheque, a welcome supplement to the pittance he earns as a teaching assistant and as a bouncer on the weekends.
He sighs, weary with the weight of ten years of student loans and the perpetual emptiness of his pockets. In exchange for taking classes at the Ottawa Martial Arts Centre, he mops the floors and cleans the toilets. Living on $ 13,000 a year, he can’t afford to buy the kind of gifts he’d like to give to Sylvie and his family. He picks up the book that he just bought to send to his grandmother for her seventieth birthday—The Royals by Kitty Kelley. He opens it to the title page and inscribes,
December 5th, 1999
Granny,
You are second to none
Your heart is full of courage
Your “way”—nothing but grace
You are the real Royal one.
IT’S THE FOLLOWING June, 2000. Sunlight streams through the kitchen window as Alma kneads dough for one of the big batches of bread that she bakes every week. Her kids want to buy her a bread machine. They say it could turn out loaves so much more quickly and easily. But she needs to make her six loaves by hand. It’s a ritual, an offering to her family. She thinks of them as she pushes and pulls the satiny mound on her wooden bread board, inhaling its yeasty fragrance. They’ll soon be coming home for the summer, and she’ll have lots of loaves in the freezer for them. Especially brown bread; Jeffy loves her brown bread.
The kneading is harder in the heat of summer. Her forehead and hair grow damp with sweat. She pants with the exertion; her chest heaves. Gasping for breath, she collapses into her rocking chair. She knows she can’t continue, or even wash the sticky dough off her hands before she picks up the phone to call her daughter. Marilyn arrives in fifteen minutes and drives her to the Emergency Room. An X-ray exposes a sizable tumour on her left lung. She stopped smoking seven years ago; quit her pack-a-day addiction cold turkey, hoping she might beat the odds.
“Are your legal affairs in order?” the grey-haired physician asks, scanning her medical chart. “You’ll have to be admitted to the hospital immediately.”
“But I can’t right now,” Alma protests. “I’ve just set my bread to rise.”
Back in the kitchen of her quiet apartment, the daisy clock ticks. A mound of dough balloons on a floured breadboard for the last time.
JEFF SLOUCHES AT HIS DESK, staring at the blank white page on the computer screen. The black cursor pulses in and out, a mechanical heartbeat. He’s waiting for the circuits to fuse between his sparking synapses and his fingers on the keyboard, willing words to appear. Finished his courses, he’s now alone with his stack of books and computer, reading for his “Review of Literature” exam and attempting to write the proposal for his dissertation. He plans to explore the concept of cool in popular culture, to use Foucault’s methodology to conduct “a genealogy” of cool—its evolution, its ethics, its geopolitics, its links to a political economy; cool as style, McLuhan’s notion of cool … But the words won’t take shape on the page. His head is too connected to his heart. All he can think about is his grandmother—the chemotherapy bombarding her cells, the chemicals shrinking her once robust body; her thick dark hair falling out in clumps into her white porcelain sink. When he talked with his mother last night, her fear filtered through the phone line.
He grabs a sheet of paper out of his printer and picks up his fountain pen. The blue ink flows onto the page, relieving the pent-up yearning in his heart.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m just taking a break from writing. Actually, I am having trouble writing—or with the discipline of writing. I am having trouble focusing and disciplining myself to write. I’m not exactly sure why—I know it’s something very personal though—it has something to do with that deep inner self: I might have spent too much time avoiding it, and now that I have no choice but to face it—I hesitate, out of fear—fear of loneliness, or worse, fear of myself! I know that this is something I have to do, but it’s not easy. Anyway, I sure miss you guys—I would do absolutely anything to be home right now!!!—enjoying sitting around the kitchen—talking and stuff. I have a thousand really good memories of being HOME—I really miss living close to you guys. I am really lucky to have a family like I do—you guys mean everything to me! I can’t wait to get HOME! The days are starting to get really hot—humid—you remember those Ottawa summers? It’s going to be difficult writing.… Anyway, I just wanted to write you and tell you how much I miss you guys. I am really looking forward to August (maybe July) and getting back home! Take care—talk to you soon. Love, Jeff
By the time the oak trees in the Halifax Commons are tinged rusty orange, Jeff is settled in the study his parents have fixed up for him in their basement. His books and papers piled high on the cherry-wood desk that bears the nicks and scars of his childhood. He’s skimming through an e-mail from Alan Hunt, who is now his dissertation adviser. Jeff’s preliminary proposal is interesting and viable, Dr. Hunt writes, but conducting a genealogy of cool could be difficult: “Like so many other tropes within popular culture, its popularity lies in the fact that it can be deployed in a host of different ways.… Indeed, what are the texts of cool?” Jeff needs to clarify his position, convert his document into something closer to a proposal, develop his ideas on the structure of the thesis; include suggestions about subjects for his two comprehensive exams. Jeff shakes his head at the jumble of words. He can’t clarify, or convert or develop anything—he’s leaving tomorrow for Fredericton where his grandmother lies in an intensive care unit with pneumonia.
The third-floor room has grey walls and smells of disinfectant and medicine. A sunless north-facing window overlooks a parking lot. One side of her thin face against a pale green pillow, she sleeps; an IV pierces her arm, slowly dripping morphine into her veins. Jeff keeps vigil at her bedside, leans in periodically to listen for her breath; he finger-combs her sparse salt-and-pepper strands of hair, the vestige of two onslaughts of chemo. She wakes, looks around the room, bewildered. She sees him sitting there, and her brown eyes soften. “Jeffy,” she sighs, “you’re here. Watching over your granny.”
He kisses her cheek, its familiar smooth softness. “I love you, Granny,” he says. She smiles, as her eyelids droop. And she drifts back again, pulled by Morpheus into her fathomless inner world. He’s there, as she slips silently through the thin veil, to a land from whence she returns no more. She never liked goodbyes.
On the last day of September, the Indian-summer sun warms the flat rocks at Fanjoy’s Point where Jeff spends all day writing her eulogy. He feels her in the wind, a soothing presence hovering over the waves, lifting the weight lodged in his heart, so he can express in words what is inexpressible. How can the world go on without her in it? He thinks about the synchronicity of her dying on September 28 at exactly the same time as Pierre Trudeau. How fitting it is that she be accompanied through the unknown, remembered gate by this Canadian hero—a mother of three daughters and a father of three sons, each leaving a legacy of love and service in their diverse yet common ways.
As a state funeral courses over the nation’s airwaves, Alma’s loved ones gather in a small cemetery overlooking the white-capped waves of the Northumberland Strait. Jeff stands beside the black granite headstone of his grandfather-namesake, and eulogizes about the amazing powers of his grandmother:
The world has suffered an incredible loss with the passing of our beautiful granny. Her impact was a blessing and a miracle in all our lives. She made us feel fully loved whenever we were in her presence, and the flame of that love continues to burn and give us strength. Granny always sacrificed her own comfort in order to calm and nurture us when we fell, or felt insecure about life’s uncompromising processes.
She could pull sunlight from thin air.
Jeff helps us dismantle his grandmother’s apartment, a space exuding the warmth of a life devoted to her family—every wall and table covered with photos of her ever-changing children and grandchildren, a visual chronicle of her proudest achievement. The movers arrive to clear out her furniture and the taped-up cardboard boxes filled with her belongings. We’re about to shut the door for the final time on the life that was hers when Jeff calls to us from the kitchen: “We forgot something.” Wedged between the counter and the stove is her breadboard, still floured and caked with dough.
III. CROSSROADS
What is our true, our highest duty—to others,
the values of the tribe, the family, to oneself?
Is it to God, to a higher calling of some sort?
This is the critical question of the second half of life.
What am I called to serve?
James Hollis, Creating a Life:
Finding Your Individual Path
IT’S MID-OCTOBER, 2000. Jeff and Russ are driving a military van through the flaming autumn woods of New England. They’re on a road trip to Virginia where Russ—Major Francis—will be working for two weeks, coordinating Canadian military personnel and vehicles for a NATO amphibious exercise off the east coast. In the sapphire skies above Interstate 95, Canada geese are honking their arrow south, so sure of their purpose and direction. During their long hours in the van—passing through Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York—Jeff questions his father about the upcoming naval exercise as well as the elite forces in the Canadian infantry and the SAS (Special Air Service), an intelligence unit.
Although the Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded after the Somalia affair in 1993, Russ tells him, the Canadian military still maintains specialized companies in infantry regiments. “That’s where all the exciting stuff is happening,” he says, “where all the good courses are. The skills you learn are phenomenal.” Early in his career, at thirty-one years old, Russ had tried to join the Airborne Regiment, lured by the adventure it offered. But he was denied—too old, they said.
“I guess you have to be super-fit, eh?”
“And super-committed,” Russ says. “These guys will go on a thirty-kilometre day hike during their weekend. Not because they have to—just to stay fit.”
“Cool,” Jeff grins. “Sounds like it’s more than a job—it’s a calling.” Long fascinated by the samurai class of warriors, Jeff wonders if the Canadian military’s Special Operations Forces could inspire a similar kind of dedication and self-discipline.
He tells his father that he’s been thinking about joining the military reserve as a part-time job while finishing up his Ph.D. “I’m really sick of not having any money,” he says. “And I’d like to buy a car.”
“That’s a great idea,” Russ says, smiling. “The pay is good. Once you’re trained, you can work in the summer with the regular forces and earn almost the same salary. And the armoury is just across the Commons from Williams Street.”
“I need a break from all the head work,” Jeff says. “Maybe it would help me feel more motivated about the endless reading and writing. And make me more disciplined about it,” he sighs. “I’m having a hard time staying focused.”
He has brought along his books, so he can continue reading for his comprehensive exams while his dad works. At Virginia Beach, their second-floor hotel-apartment, elevated on stilts, overlooks the blue expanse of Chesapeake Bay. Every morning, he loads his books, some snacks and a water bottle into his backpack and heads down to the ocean. In the mellow October sun, he walks for miles along the wide beach. Then, stretched out on the sand, he reads—not Foucault and the other theorists he should be studying—but a novel his dad has passed on to him: Andy McNab’s Bravo Two Zero, a true story of a British SAS patrol that McNab commanded during the 1991 Gulf War. He can’t put it down. While the Atlantic roars in the background and the surf pounds on the shore, Jeff is behind enemy lines in Iraq, seeking and destroying Scud launchers, facing bitter cold, attacks, captures and torture.
The first weekend, they travel to the world’s largest naval station in Norfolk, Delaware. They meet up with Jeff’s second cousin, Matthew Francis, a sailor on one of the Canadian ships in the amphibious exercise. Matt takes them on a tour of aircraft and missile carriers, submarines and frigates. The base is in a flurry of preparations for a repatriation ceremony and the arrival of President Bill Clinton. Two days ago an American ship, refuelling in the Yemeni port of Aden, was rammed by a boat loaded with explosives. The suicide attack—courtesy of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group, Al-Qaeda—blew up the ship’s galley and killed seventeen American sailors.
The following weekend, they visit historic Yorktown, Virginia, where the Americans routed the British in the decisive battle of the War of Independence. Jeff thinks about the American soldiers who fought to the death on this ground two centuries ago—they changed the course of world history. On a brochure for the Virginia Civil War Trails Historic Sites, he jots down addresses and telephone numbers of recruiting stations for the US Army, Marine Corps, and Navy—unbeknownst to his father. Just in case. In a few weeks, he will be thirty years old. Would the Canadian military deem him, too, past his prime?
When they return in early November, Jeff withdraws into the cave of his basement study. Every day he sits in his grandmother’s gold tweed La-Z-Boy rocker, cocooned in the multi-coloured woollen afghan she knit for him. A black-and-white-tuxedo kitten he’s named Ammie, his Granny Alma’s nickname, purrs on his lap. He strokes her silky fur, and thinks about Mica, continents and oceans away, teaching in South Korea. He glances over at his desk, at the teetering tower of books that he’s ignored for weeks now; an envelope with Joselyn’s handwriting nags at him. He received her letter weeks ago, describing her faltering progress with “that damned paper” and inquiring about his research and life in Halifax. But he doesn’t know how to reply, how to articulate his state of ambiguity to her—or anybody. The rain pelts against the window, muffled footsteps and voices above, then the ringing of the phone. The door opens, and his mom calls down, “It’s Sylvie on the phone.”
He picks up the receiver, listens to her cheery voice enthuse about the party tonight. “You go ahead,” he says. “I’m not really in the mood. And I should try to get some work done. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have fu
n.” The disorderly pile of papers—notes for his dissertation—and the blank computer screen glare at him accusingly. But they have no power to bring him back. Fogbound on a vast grey sea, he drifts without rudder or anchor. There is no safe refuge.
The steepled Wedgwood-blue building on the corner of Windsor and Compton looks more like a church than a Buddhist temple. But the sign above the door reads Ji Jing Chan Temple. Jeff steps across the threshold into an arch-windowed foyer fragrant with sandalwood. A low chanting echoes from the other side of the inner double doors. He turns the knob slowly. A spacious room with red damask walls, brass ornaments and soft candlelight envelops him in warmth and calm. He finds an empty cushion in the circle of people seated on the hardwood floor, their eyes lowered or closed. At the front, on a carved wooden altar, a large brass Buddha statue emanates tranquility. Below it, a man in a brown robe sits cross-legged, his upturned hands resting on his knees, his shaven head reflecting the glow of the overhead lamps.
The chanting ends, a space of silence. The monk opens his eyes and smiles. “Good evening and welcome. I am Bhanti Korida.” He scans the circle, making eye contact with each person. “Tonight, and for the next four weeks, we will talk about what freedom really means, and if it is possible to be free in this complex society. We have a lot of knowledge—libraries full of books, many people with Ph.D.s or even two Ph.D.s. We may be very learned and intellectually sophisticated, but unless we understand ourselves, our minds will always be in conflict and we will never be free.” A jolt of energy vibrates up Jeff’s spine as the sonorous accented voice resonates in the room. “We will see that freedom means understanding the self, understanding the nature of thinking, and the nature of time. This is the journey of self-knowledge.” Jeff follows the flow of the monk’s words for the next hour and is swept up in their currents of thought. He decides to travel with this guide.
For Your Tomorrow Page 8