Why God Gives Us Dogs

Pensi just was. I was three when Dad carried her into the Haney house looking more dead than alive, a shaggy black and white sheep dog just out of the vet’s office.

“You have her bed ready, Betty?” he called to Mum, kicking the door shut with a boot.

“In the girls’ room!”

Linda, Tresa, and I, three little girls, two, three, and four years old, me in the middle, traipsed along behind him, trying not to get in the way as he entered our perfectly square room and eased Pensi down onto a collection of clean towels Mum had fluffed up in the corner.

“Daddy,” I said, “I think she’s dead.”

“She’s just sick. She’ll feel better soon.”

Mum arrived with another towel, this one warmed in the oven.

“She looks dead, Mummy,” I said again, alarmed at how Mum took the time to lift each paw to tuck in.

“It’ll take a couple of days. Remember, she had an operation—”

I couldn't picture how they "spayed" dog. So I imagined a man in a white coat setting the sharp tip of a shovel against Pensi’s belly, heel to the blade, and giving a sudden lunge. That’d stop a dog from having puppies all right. “Are you sure she’s not going to die?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine.” Dad was squatting, carefully gauging her condition. When he gave her a comforting pat, Pensi opened her eyes, too weak to do much more than stare at us through pain-laced eyes, but apparently grateful for the lovely warmth and soft scratching behind her ears.

In the morning I found Pensi gone. “She died!” I shrieked. “She died!”

Mum popped her head into the room. “She’s in the kitchen. Eating her breakfast.”

I jumped up and down in joy to see her lapping up a thin gruel. By the day’s end she was tearing all over the place, trying Mum’s patience, licking our noses, and whining to go out.

At the time, my father was building our new house in the next town over, deep in the forest and assessable only by an abandoned logging road. When he loaded up our ’52 Chev with his tools, Pensi was right there, good company for him while he hammered and sawed--when she wasn't stalking the surrounding woods for skunks and smelling out the raccoons, or sniffing the trail of an old bear. The days we went along, Pensi played with us on the cement chutes and in the gravel, barking happy barks.
I was four when we moved into our new house, incomplete. It had outside walls, partial flooring, and a roof. Each night Dad tucked us into three army cots. He zipped us into snug “mummy” bags, and we said our prayers while starlight fell through the gaping holes that would one day be windows. There were no interior walls to speak of, and before I closed my eyes I could hear and catch flickering glimpses of my parents talking quietly before a fire on the other end of the house—Pensi curled at their feet, one ear up, listening for danger we might need to fear. I was four years old, the nights alive with starlight and fresh forest smells, and never in my life have I felt so safe. Pensi on watch.

Our Auntie Vi was our mother’s aunt. She often visited from Victoria, a ferry ride away. She wasn’t a dog lover. Whenever Pensi licked our noses—or we licked hers, she’d squeal in mock horror; and I, at least, lived to make her squeal, for Auntie did such a fine job. “Ick! How can you?” she’d cry, throwing up her hands, rolling her eyes, the three of us girls giggling and laughing and rolling around on the sofa, begging Pensi to “do it again!”

“Don’t you know where that dog’s nose has been?”

We knew. Did we care?

“What about her breath?” insisted Auntie.

What about it?

Winter coming on, windows in, Dad installed the furnace. A huge thing, four by four and floor to ceiling, taking up a corner of the utility room. I was scared of it. At night I could hear it kick in, the flames ignite with a swoosh. What if it burst into fire and we all burned to death? But then I remembered Pensi. She’d bark and wake us up.

We had no running water. Mum sometimes called on one of us to take a pot out to the rain barrel. When it snowed? A whole new job! My grandfather used to say that dogs and children know what snow is for. We did. Out we tumbled in our snowsuits, with pots, pans, and Pensi. We discovered that if we packed a snowball and raised our arms, she’d set out pell-mell, snow flying, yelping for joy as we launched the missiles—only to stop dead in her tracks dismayed. Where’d they go? A small poof, and they were gone, a dimple in the snow.

That Christmas, Christmas Eve morning, Grandma and Grandpa and our Uncle Stan arrived from Vancouver to help Dad get his new water line hooked up to the newly installed city main. They suited up and grabbed their shovels. Grandma, Pensi, and us girls went out to get our last snow for morning tea. Grandma taught us how to make snow angels; Pensi taught us how to wreck them; and in the afternoon we all played on the iced-over swamp, prickled through with bulrushes and skunk cabbages. The men hauled the three of us around on brooms, swooshing us through the rushes and reeds and around in circles while Pensi slithered and slid from one to the another and on to the third, barking and dancing, her body twisting in glee so contagious we kept spilling off in fits of laughter. I tried to pull her on with me but we both went flying. I abandoned her; I needed my hands to hang onto the broomstick. She retaliated by yapping at my coattails and pretending to growl. That hallowed night the grownups got ready for Christmas Eve, getting out the ginger ale and finding safety pins so we could hang our socks, and Mum poured us a bath—our first since moving in. Pensi, remembering such things, slunk away and hid.

The house slowly went up around us. Next door, trees started to come down in preparation for a subdivision; and the old bear, hungry or curious or both, began making appearances. This made Dad and some of the other men nervous. More and more kids were walking the logging trail to school, civilization slowly making inroads into the forest. Dogs, I suppose, were insufficient protection and one day Dad and Pensi, along with some men with guns, went out to stop trouble before it could happen.

I was nervous—not for Dad. Dad could take care of himself. But one swipe and that bear could send Pensi flying, smack her up against a tree, and that’d be the end of her. No need to worry. The bear was shot and Dad, who’d done some taxidermy as a teenager, skinned it and began tanning the skin to make a rug. Each day after school, I came skipping around the back corner of the house and hopped onto the patio. I’d lift the heavy ceramic lid of the tanning vat sitting right by the back door and peer in with plugged nose, reset the lid, and bounce on into the house. “Is it ready?” I’d badger, finding Dad.

“Not yet.”

When it was finally done, he gave it to the LaRues in Haney. “But that’s our bear rug!” I was inconsolable. He tried to explain that he hadn’t done a good job, and that Mrs. LaRue wanted it, holes and all. But I wanted it! And hadn’t I kept an eye on it? Checked it every day? To satisfy me, Mum took me over to the LaRue’s, and Mrs. LaRue let me wallow in the cool lush fur. I’m not sure seeing the holes helped because for a long time I grieved the loss of that rug. Only Pensi’s cool, lush fur could comfort me.

Once she and Dad went for a walk and next thing we knew we could hear him hollering out by the swamp. Pensi had startled a skunk. Must have stuck her nose right up against its rump and gotten it full in the face, for she was banging her head against the ground, pawing her ears, whining and crying, groveling all over the ground and rubbing herself in the mud. Linda, Tresa, and I watched through the big plate glass window in the family room while Mum carried out some clean duds for dad and a shovel—going as far as she dared. “Here! I’ll get a tub going for you and Pensi!” she hollered.

To our amazement, she seemed to know exactly what to do. She set the hose into the tub outdoors, came in, started the electric kettle, dug around for what tins of tomato juice she could find—and took it all outside, along with the big bar of Fels Naptha soap.

I thought for sure Dad would have to drag Pensi bawling to the tub, but she came willingly enough. Her misery was palpable. Baths over, Dad went back to the swamp to bury his clothes.

“Why can’t we just wash them?” Tresa asked Mum, our noses pressed against the glass.

“They’d stink up the house for weeks.”

“Why not hang them on the line?” I asked.

“That kind of smell you have to bury.”

She didn’t let Pensi inside for days. The tomato juice supposedly cut the smell, but it was in her fur so badly it took a week of rolling around in the dirt before she got it all out.

She did hate to get her bangs cut. It took all three of us to hold her down while Mum went at the shag with determination; me scared the whole time she’d poke Pensi’s eyes out, Tresa crying over Pensi’s distress. On the other end of the scale, she loved chasing cars, which brought equal anxiety. At first it wasn’t much of a problem. Cars were few and far between on the old logging road. It was more of a problem when we went to the river park or into Vancouver to visit Grandma and Grandpa. On such occasions Dad’s uncharacteristically harsh commands went unheeded, and Mum, afterward whopping Pensi’s bum with a rolled up newspaper, only managed to send her skulking off. Next car that came along? Off she shot.

Sometimes I grew dizzy watching her race alongside the back wheel of a car. A sheep dog, she had lightning speed, and she nosed right in while I held my breath and teetered on my feet and Mum and Dad hollered. Eventually the car outdistanced her and she’d trot back, shying away from Mum and looking guiltily at Dad.

We’d probably been living in our forest house a couple of years, interior walls up and doors at least installed in the bathrooms, when Dad began spending his Saturdays working with a few of the men erecting Southside Baptist Church. He always took Pensi. One night he came home early without her. She’d been hit by a car while he and Jack Bariff stuccoed the exterior walls.

That night, after Dad tucked us in, helping us with our prayers and giving us each a kiss, Linda whispered in the dark, “He put her in the living room. She’s under a tarp. He’s going to bury her early in the morning." She always knew such things.

Our living room was Dad’s workshop—full of sawdust and saw horses, saws and tables. It’s where he hauled in the trees he'd felled and debarked them, and where he measured and cut the kitchen cabinet doors. I got out of bed and tiptoed down the long, cold hallway and cracked the fancy door Dad had made, leading into the living room. Moonlight fell through the bank of windows, casting an eerie glow and there, at the far end, a heap. Dead Pensi. An hour later I woke up crying.

Dad climbed into my bed. I came up for air, blubbering and tasting the salt of my tears. “Daddy? Can you make a rug out of her? Like you did the bear?”

I often wonder what went through his head. I’m surprised he didn’t laugh. That he understood my loss, though, is clear. “You’ll always have Pensi. Close your eyes, think of a special day you shared. Can you see her?”

I could. We were at Grandpa’s beach house, running through the waves with a crowd of seagulls cawing above us, looking like noisy hankies headed for heaven on a wind.

“Whenever you’re sad or lonely, or whenever you’re happy and just want to play, go there, go inside your head where Pensi will always live.”

“But she can’t make me happy, in my head.”

“You’d be surprised. It’s why God gives us dogs.”

Years have passed, decades in fact, and Dad was right. A thousand times I’ve gone there, a thousand times more, inside my head where Pensi lives, racing along the water’s edge, waves lapping, the ever-present gulls raising a ruckus. Sad or lonely, happy or scared, or simply skiing down a mountain slope in the pristine beauty and clear skies of our world, I find Pensi unbidden kicking up her heels, snow flying.

She barks, and licks my nose.

Six Orange Crates and "Stuff"

Wayne and me Spring 1970

Eighteen years old and headed for college--years ago. At the time I was living in Mesa, AZ, and on "move in" day at Grand Canyon College (now a university) my best friend Wayne rolled into the driveway with a borrowed VW van. I had everything ready: six orange crates packed with everything I owned.

Since then I've moved a gazillion times, each time with an ever increasing accumulation of life's flotsam. The last time, I got rid of an antique piano, six bookshelves of books and the books, bins of research, sacks of clothes I no longer fit, pictures, paintings, pots, pans, canning jars, salves, and ointments that my youngest swore were around before he was born.

The last time I moved, I tossed at least 300 books this time around. Hundreds of research files, box after box of ever more research, garden boots, clarinet music from junior high ("You're never going to  play music so many black notes," said the youngest child ), even paper dolls I've been hauling around since I was ten years old and living in Northern California.

Each time I go through this process, I inevitably thought of Wayne and that beastly hot day in Phoenix when he helped transport my six orange crates of belongings into a small dorm room and the rest of my life. Where did all this stuff come from? What happened to the days when I needed so little to create a corner of home for myself?

For six summers while driving tour buses in Alaska I lived in small spaces. I loved it. But I also knew I missed home, where my "belongings" waited my arrival for winter. The "stuff," I realize, provides memories--Grandma's pansy tea set; reminders of childhood Thanksgiving--the antique ad for "Swift's Premium: A Canadian Tradition"; and a place to sprawl--a sofa. A TV to watch, sufficient cutlery, decent pots and pans. I like comfort.

But should midnight strike and I lose my glass slipper, I'll still have six orange crates and not just Wayne but many friends. And I'll be bouncing down some freeway or the other, off to some kind of "college"and the rest of my life, where it truly takes very little to create a corner of home for myself. 

Let Me Speak: A protest to Donald Trump's "boys will be boys" defense

in response to video of Donald Trump and Billy Bush boasting about their routine violation of women.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. LET ME SPEAK.

The rape culture in which we now live is clearly evidenced by this article and today's Facebook commentaries that defend Trump by soooo many men, even women. LET ME SPEAK.

The rape culture began for me in Grade 8 in a science class at Slauson Jr. High in Ann Arbor, MI, 1968. A slip of a student teacher ironically wearing go-go boots told us we're responsible for exciting the boys in the class--and that it was up to us to hold them back lest they get to a breaking point. to the point they wouldn't be able to hold back their arousal. Here's me: skinny, shy, unseated by danger. I cast a quick glance around. Was I at their mercy? Their arousal somehow my fault? And how was I supposed to  know what would set them off? 

Was I expected to accept as fate any boy's violence against me?

I did something I NEVER did in class. I raised my hand and I asked a question. Fear overcame my shyness.

An inarticulate question, to be sure. I had no words. My teacher did not give me words. I had only this helpless angst. I tried: "Are you saying boys HAVE to hurt girls? They can't just go squirt their stuff into a toilet? It HAS to be IN a girl?"

"No, but it's not what they want. It's not fair to put them in that position."

LET ME SPEAK.

She did not tell me that putting it IN a girl without consent is illegal. She did not put the law on my side. She just said I'd be "unfair" to the poor, suffering boy, overwhelmed by his uncontrollable urges--and only God could know what THOSE urges might be. 

WAS DONALD TRUMP IN MY CLASS?

Was Billy Bush one of the sniggering boys?

LET ME SPEAK.

So is it any wonder, then, that at 17, when a doctor tells me to take off all my clothes, no gown, and then spends an HOUR--one HOUR--doing everything short of penile penetration?

My mother in the waiting room was frantic. I could hardly walk to the car. I was nauseous, faint, trembling, sore. I had no reason to believe that my vicious violation was illegal. Only that somehow I had been "unfair" to Dr. Don Mattson. I understood that I was to accept in silence this fate. My mother wanted to know what was wrong with me. What was I to tell her? My teacher's voice of four years before that fateful day of November 11, 1969, clanged in my ears. 

LET ME SPEAK.

A year and a half ago I had a double mastectomy. I have massive scarring on my chest. And every morning when I wake up, and I move, and I stretch, and I pull back the covers, the tearing and tugging I experience puts me right back in that doctor's office 47 years ago next month. Can you understand the terrible pain that any mastectomy brings? Beyond the physical? Add to the molestation so horrifying I had to bite my lips and go somewhere deep inside my head in order to endure. In order to survive. And now, my chest scarred and tearing, I have feel that doctor's hands tearing and tugging my body every day--for the rest of my life? 

LET ME SPEAK.

Donald Trump is not a man for presidency of even the local Elks Club. He is of the rape culture that continues to blame women and exonerate the boys who can't help themselves.

I have spent some of my day weeping for that girl forever lost. I emerged, though, to find myself enraged, ENRAGED, that THIS is STILL going on!

In the US presidential election.

LISTEN TO ME! And LET ME SPEAK!

"Stop the madness!"

Learning To Think

In going through some very old files while getting ready to move, I came across two things that meant something to me: One, a sketch I’d done of John Cabot in the late 1960s and, two, essays I’d written for my civics teacher in grade nine at Slausen Jr. High in Ann Arbor, MI.

I sketched a lot growing up and was sad when, having moved to Arizona for health reasons my senior year of high school, my mother threw out my art work. To her defense, there was quite a pile in the basement of our Iowa house. The two years I was at Maurice-Orange City High School (my sophomore and junior years), I took Drawing; and this consisted almost entirely of sketching classmates very quickly. We might go through five or six models in the course of one hour. I suppose, if I were my mother, I’d have given the whole stack a toss, too. Still, I’ve often wondered how good I was. And so discovering “Giovanni Cabot[t]o,” I was surprised to see I’d developed a serviceable skill at least.

My second satisfactory find was a sheaf of essays written for my ninth grade civics teacher at Slausen Jr. High in Ann Arbor, MI. I’ve always credited him for teaching me how to think.

He did this by handing off a list of famous quotes and requiring weekly opinion essays utilizing one of these quotes. “Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you” sort of thing. And so we’d write, he’d rebut, we’d rewrite, and he’d rebut our response. A single essay could go back and forth several times before being accepted, and not until he felt we’d sufficiently clarified and articulated our position. In this sheaf, I became intrigued by an essay using Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal.”

“All men are created equal,” I began, quoting Jefferson in his preamble to the Declaration of Independence. “But what does it really mean? I believe that when Jefferson wrote this, he meant that all men were born with the desire to have liberty, an opportunity to live, and to seek happiness.”

I went on in what is clearly a very un-Republican way of thinking with respect to government. The government needed to afford opportunity for everyone, I wrote. Not just the lucky few. My teacher's rebuttal was extensive. “Why should the government supply these opportunities? What status is there in being a ‘mere working man’? If liberty is inalienable, how come some are taken away—or never granted by some governments? Why does democracy tend to not try to take them away, but rather to protect them? Or does it?”

I struggled to clarify. “It is up to the government to supply jobs, or how would anyone earn a living? The country would rot away. It is up to the government to keep it strong. One way to this is to have jobs for everyone.”

He pushed back. “Why can’t the government merely see that private industry is prosperous enough to have jobs for all? Isn’t this what we want?”

I had to rethink my position. Finally, I wrote: “I think it’s up to the government to create an environment where job opportunities abound and where everyone can earn a livable wage.” I remember being pleased with myself, the clarity ringing clearly in my brain. I’d gone from vague to specific. Government providing jobs, no, but an environment for jobs? yes—two very different things. This teacher not only taught me how to think—but how to say it.

I’m approaching sixty. These essays and drawing are more than forty-five years old. Do I throw them out? They’ve served their purpose, I know. I can’t imagine anyone else being interested. But still, their discovery reminds me of who I am. An serviceable artist. An articulate thinker. What if I forget? I am pushing sixty.

I think, if it's okay, I’ll hold on a bit longer. Maybe when I approach eighty, I’ll discover them again. And again be surprised.

The Olympic Flame Is Out...

...and so last night my friend and I went up to join the thousands in downtown Vancouver to be "in the moment." 

What a moment! The torch flame out, only one bridge into the city left open (too many people!), we somehow found free parking, and stepped into a slice of history where my countrymen were not only buzzed from their record-breaking Olympic gold medals but intoxicated in the aftermath of a hard-won hockey Gold, the heart-stopping, lose-your-pulse greatest game ever! Canada’s Sidney Crosby making the winning goal in an overtime shutout with the US! 

“Ca-na-da! Ca-na-da!” chanted the surging crowd.

Madness! Euphoric madness! People dressed in flags, faces painted, fists in the air, horns going, the energy of pride, camaraderie, bursting into the air like the America’s “rockets’ red glare.” The Canadian flag very much there.

Oddly, Kay Dee, a displaced Texan, was more “in the groove” than me, letting out a shriek and a holler and a “Go Canada!” to passing strangers, fist-bumping people wearing flags like Super Man’s cape, high-fiving old and young. "Oh, Canada! Our home and native land! True, patriot love, to all our sons command..." she sang. Me, a misplaced Canadian living eight miles south of the border, I trudged alongside her with typical Canadian reserve but still managing to enjoy myself.

“Hey!” I grabbed Kay Dee’s elbow. “Take that girl’s picture!” Kay Dee trotted after Miss High Hair, me in pursuit. Epitome of grace, the lovely girl struck a pose. Cameras spontaneously flashed.

“Ca-na-da!

“Ca-na-da!
“Ca-na-da!"

All around me Vancouver’s majesty and beauty towered. Lights shimmered off the inlet. Flowers twinkled in the streetlight. I saw it all through the filter of time, as a child coming into the city to visit the dentist, running errands (like the day we bought a copper milk jug somewhere in the loop off Oak Street Bridge and Marine Drive), long days at Stanley Park, visits to grandparents, playtime with cousins. A whole history here of pleasure, a garden of adventure, a haven of allure. My city. My country. My countrymen. I suddenly missed my home and yearned for all the days when life was simple and predictably peaceful--but ripe.

“I have to have a flag,” I said. Everyone had flags.

We almost tripped over a pair selling them. Big ones, four bucks. Little ones, two. “Do you have a twony?” I asked. Kay Dee shuffled through my backpack where we’d put her Canadian change.

A flag now mine, I secured it to my backpack. Yup, I was getting in the groove.

“Not in My House, Not on my Land.”  We came across two posters we didn’t understand, held aloft by stationary strangers, a fixed point in a sea of humanity. We stood in the surge, trying to figure it out. A tall man, blond, blue-eyed, dressed in red, and leaning against a lamppost, shouted down from  his lofty height, “That’s our goalie! Roberto Luongo!”

“Not a protester?” shouted up Kay Dee.

“No! Our goalie!” He turned to sport his LUONGO #1 jersey. "Our goalie! He’s saying, ‘You can’t have the gold! Not in my house, not on my land!’”

“Oh!” shouted up Kay Dee and I, both thrilled to understand. I reached and offered my first fist. “Ca-na-da!” Touch. A fist-bump, a connection to humanity, a reminder that it’s people, not government, who live in this world. We belong in it together. To quote the Americans out of context, “We, the people…” When had I forgotten this? Yeah, go Canada!  Go world!

I turned around. Kay Dee? Kay Dee? One minute I was staring down into the public ice rink, ten second later… Kay Dee? Seymour and Pender, this was where we parked. This was our agreement; go back to the car, start over. But she had the map.

“I lost my friend,” I told the stranger next to me. “Can you tell me where Seymour and Pender is?”

“Two blocks up, three blocks over. Good luck!” Another fist bump.Touch.

It took awhile to push my way through the curb-to-curb. Finally! But, wait, the entrance doesn't look right. I head down the slope into the garage. Nope. I'm turned around. Coming in the out. Typical. I start back up the exit. At the top do I turn left? right? 

Miraculously—I do believe in God, I do believe in God—there she was, walking past the exit. “KAY DEE!” I bellowed. She whirled, saw me. Her face lit up, her arms went up. I chugged uphill, my own arms up, and just like all the slow-mo movies of lovers running through flower fields and blue sky, Kay Dee and I ran through concrete corridor and artificial light and happily threw ourselves at each other.

Headed back into the madding crowd, we tucked arms. “I don’t care if we look like lesbians,” she shouted, “we can’t lose each other again!”

I agreed.

We agreed too, to stop in at the Olympic Store, temporarily held in the Hudson’s Bay Company. I have to say, the Bay is my favorite store. In the olden days, this is where we'd stop in to use the bathroom—a huge, high-ceilinged affair, designed with black and white mosaic tiling, regal and majestic with tall mirrors, green fixtures, and golden taps. If my sisters and I were lucky, or if we were with an old auntie, hands washed and feeling better, we’d head for the basement where the food was. At the deli, Mum, or an auntie, would buy us “pigs in a blanket,” sausage rolls wrapped in flakey pastry—to be dipped, of course, in mustard. None of this exists anymore. 

What exists was a long line just to get in. Kay Dee and I inched forward, peering in through the windows where Olympic jerseys and jackets littered the floor and looked too much like Ross’s Dress For Less to suit me. A madhouse once in and a push and shove through the throngs in search of an Olympic baseball cap, for Kay Dee’s husband, that wasn’t white. 

“Hey, what’s this?” I squealed with delight. Maybe I’m in love with the Hudson’s Bay Company because I’m in love with their blankets. I grew up with the traditional white one, with its yellow, green, and red stripe, keeping me warm at night. Today I have two red blankets, with black stripes, a six-point and four-point. Meaning, once upon a time they cost six and four beaver pelts respectively. But here, on display and lined up in a row, mannequins sported a variety of coats and jackets created from the blankets. A contest, apparently. Only one was chosen for manufacture, a mere $695. Ouch. The fox, a lovely four-point coat, was not in the running. Too bad. Lose the fox, and I was in.

The bathroom is now in the basement, and is--no surprise here--now sterile and generic and very Ronald MacDonald in its sheer ordinariness. But surprise, surprise, coming back up the escalator, we found ourselves fenced off. What, what? We can’t get out? Help!

Finally! Whew! Back outside, the crowd was getting thicker, younger. A singular vulgarity suddenly interrupted world peace. “Fuck the USA. A whole new way!’ Okay, enough. We popped into Tim Horton’s to rest our aching feet, have some soup, a sandwich, decaf coffee. A security foursome was hunched over fries behind Kay Dee. Two officials with ear sets relaxed behind me. A trio of flag-decked kids tromped in. “Can I take your picture?” Kay Dee asks. We’re right back to goodwill, courtesy, and Canadian character.

The city could not have been prettier driving out, crossing back over the Burrard Street Bridge, cutting left onto Broadway, up Granville, cutting another left to Oak, up Oak, and then over the Oak Street Bridge—somewhere down beneath us a cluttered shop that sold my mum our pretty copper milk jug. An hour later I was in bed in the States. Outside my back window were the lonely but lovely lights of Cypress Mountain in the distance, twinkling in an inky sky, serene testament to two-plus weeks of peaceful world competition. Hearts  were broken, records were made, all testimonial proof to ourselves that, despite the isolated jerk free to chant vulgarity in our faces, we can, we’re capable, it is possible, to achieve connection to humanity; we can override governments and barriers, reach across divides and shake hands, and fist bump the world that is us. Touch, feel, be. The flame might be out but, “Yeah, go us.”