Moving Pictures

One of the most exciting things that could happen when I was a child was my father bringing home a borrowed videocassette player. We had a little 13" black and white television with rabbit ears that could pick up three channels most of the time, if you were careful. Two of them usually showed the same thing, so there wasn't really much TV to watch, but a movie was something else. The average movie would run about double my usual daily allotment of TV with no commercials and no twiddling with the antennae.

Dad would bring the big yellow padded suitcase into the living room and go to work connecting this exotic piece of equipment to our TV. There can only have been a couple of wires to the TV and one to the outlet, so it can't have been complicated, but to me it was pure wizardry. The top of the machine would pop up to accept a cassette, and we were ready for an adventure.

As kids, we had no say in when this machine would visit our home and we had no choice in the movies we saw. We could watch what Dad brought or go to bed. I had friends with colour television sets, VCRs, cable vision and less supervision, but there was little sense that I was being deprived of anything. My parents generally made time in front of the TV into a sort of currency, so we could negotiate a trade in foregone viewing time for things they would have bought us anyway. I earned my first canoe paddle and sleeping bag this way, one month each.

As a child, my view of history was entirely static, so the idea that watching recorded films at home was something new, or that one day perhaps it would become completely ubiquitous didn't enter my head. Videos were rare, the machines to play them were expensive, and all I knew was that getting to watch Herbie the Lovebug's black and white antics was the very definition of a treat. If the stars aligned just so, there might even be popcorn and half a can of soda to go with it.

Fast forward 25 years and I can stream Netflix on my phone any time I want. My TV is 6 times bigger than the old black and white model, remote controlled, highly defined, and rabbit ear free. I still have a VCR somewhere, but it is unnecessary. There is a little black box that gives me access to just about any movie I could think of to buy, borrow, or rent. I do hope I can always hear my five year old self having his little mind blown that we get to watch a movie tonight, no matter how easy it is.

Smile When You Lie

Eyes shining, smile moulded into permanence, he tells of the birth of yet another son. The grandfathers, the other fathers, the other men, they nod and smile and pat him on the back like he was a liberating soldier to a long-sieged city. He speaks of the bravery of his wife, the awe in his other children, his own calm handling of this newest arrival. Everything a man could want has fallen into his hands easily, though he speaks of it now as if he snatched it from the flaming jaws of a dragon.

I smile dishonestly yet again, but congratulations stick in my throat as I look for any reason to leave. These reminders of what I do not have and cannot be come more frequently these days. Dwelling on the fact is a road to bitterness, so I do my best to force the disappointment down and drown it out with a busy life.

I generally barricade the door with forced indifference. Friends and coworkers announce pregnancy, birth, and proudly tell stories about the latest phase their offspring are going through. Social convention dictates I smile and congratulate and nod sympathetically like all the other men. I do it mechanically and try to move either myself or the conversation on. Occasionally, regrettably, I become the focus of these discussions, with questions about when or if I will have children of my own. About why I don't already have a few. As if it were a simple choice, yes or no. I equivocate, maybe, we'll see, perhaps after (insert event here)...

Three and a half years of trying, surgery, praying, timing, and supplements. If it were a choice, we'd need a school bus by now. We've tried to force the issue and adopt. We are still thankful to have not experienced miscarriage, but when our adoption agency closed down suddenly last year, part way through our file, it felt about like that. We're nearly back on track now. Still haven't sent in the stack of paperwork for the new agency sitting ready on the desk. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that. Soon.

Climbing high

I've always been a climber. Every kid learns to climb: furniture, stairs, Daddy's legs... Some take it further; I took it outside. There was a big tree next to the house we lived in until I was seven. I remember it being huge, and while it was taller than the house, probably not actually that big as fir trees go. I could see up the trunk it was like a ladder going all the way up. The problem for me was the lowest branch was too high for me to reach. Ever watch little kids try to jump? All spastic effort and no lift, especially for spindly white kids. Dad said I could climb it when I could get up it myself. He probably figured he was teaching me some life lesson about independence while saving my mother's nerves.

I was more obsessed with that tree than Dad realized. Thinking that as long as I didn't have parental aid to the first branch, I would be abiding by the terms of the climbing rules, I talked my sister into giving me a boost. It was as glorious as I had hoped until Dad figured out where I was. I remember getting in trouble at the time, but soon after there was a rope hanging there so I didn't have to stand on my sister anymore.

My friend and I would climb up and down that tree, popping sap blisters and getting properly sticky. Sticky wasn't so bad, but it picked up all manner of dirt and didn't wash off with soap. We'd have to rub butter on our hands to get rid of it. Mom nearly had to cut out clumps of sapped hair after a long summer day in the tree.

That tree had a natural limit for climbing. Just below the level of the roof peak, maybe about 20' up, there was a thick mat of sticks and debris that somehow collected there. We would sit up under that mat and spy out the neighbourhood. Eventually, I got bored of only going to the sticks and had a closer look. I decided I could get through, and I was right. I only stopped when the branches became what I felt was dangerously small for holding my little seven year old frame. There wasn't much between me and the very top. Being quite proud of myself and not being a really forward-thinking child, I decided to shout and wave to my mother when she came into the backyard. That was the second time I got in trouble for climbing that tree. If that tree hadn't been so close to the house, I think she might have cut it down before my dad came home that night.

We moved when I was seven and I searched in vain for a new fir tree to climb. I did find plenty of aspens, and I figured out that I could shimmy up even the skinny ones. I wasn't nearly so high as the old tree, but these ones were so bendy, I would hang on as high as I could reach, and jump out. The tree would bend me all the way to the ground and then whoosh back upright when I let go. I quit doing that when one of the trees broke off as I was still a couple feet from the ground. I was still hanging onto the top half of the tree as it cracked me on the top of my head.

Now it is mountains, an occasional rock face, and my roof to clean the gutters, but I still love to climb. In a couple months I'll be out pruning my plum trees, climbing around hacking off branches, feeling like a little kid again (except now I'm allowed to play with axes and saws all I want). I should have bought a ladder years ago, but this gives me an excuse to swing around the branches and get in touch with my inner child/primate.

Change is coming

My parents are moving at the end of this month. Their house is sold, half their stuff is already moved, the rest is packed. Dad is retiring after 32 years of public school teaching. They will be moving away from the town they never meant to move to, let alone stay in. As it turned out, they built a life and raised a family there.

In some ways it seems like someone is dying. They have been going around doing things "One last time." Skiing the local alpine mountain, driving by their first house, visiting people they may not see again, remembering. They are excited about the move, being closer to family, not having to shovel nearly so much snow, but when we talked this week I thought all three of us might cry.

We talked about that first house, the climbing tree (story in process), and the street out front where I learned to ride a bike. The neighbours still live there, their children also flown from the nest. Before I left home, I spent my winters cross-country skiing. We started out at a golf course, then at a provincial park, then finally our club was able to put in dedicated trails with a proper warming hut. We all helped, marking out trails, clearing brush, putting up the building. Our family was heavily involved and deeply connected with that club.

I've been away more or less since high school, and each year my connections to that little town have faded a little more. Friends have moved away or drifted into acquaintance-hood. I know maybe half a dozen people at the church I grew up in. With my folks living there, there has always been a reason to return and a place to stay when I did. I can't say when the next time I'll visit will be. Maybe one day I'll have kids of my own to take on a road trip and tell boring stories about what used to be in that old building. That house I helped build when I was 13. When that whole hillside was just trees and I would run around building forts and spears with my friends and my dog. The old sledding track has been gone for years already, but we spent hours hauling sleds up that hill and building jumps at the bottom.

I worry that my memories of childhood will fade and distort without occasionally visiting those old places. It's as though one of the last ties between who I was and whom I will be is being cut. "Where I'm from" will slip ever deeper into myth. I've never had any intention of moving back; it was a fine place to grow up and to visit, but I don't want to live there. I don't think I expected or even wanted things to stay the same as they have been. Nothing wrong with looking back now and then, even if the old things seem so far away as to have been perfect. The view forward is dim and hard to make out, but it is coming regardless. It should be an interesting year.