The Comfort of Lunacy

I've mentioned before I have this kind of face. Total strangers come up to me and confide secrets:sadness, joy and everything in between.

I was at the deli section of my local grocery story today. I love how delis have adapted to aging single people. Love how I can get a 1/2 cooked chicken for $5. Local and kinda organic too. I wonder about their demise as chicken catcher jobs are frequently advertised in the local papers. I envision these lithe young people hoisting butterfly nets and chasing unwilling birds around the green fields of our enormous local chicken farm giving me the illusion of chickens with a sporting chance of escape. But I digress.

This old man stood beside me and asked me how my eyes were. I said grand. He asked me to read him some labels off the 1/2 price deli items. I obliged. It truly astonishes me the number of old people I know who refuse to wear their glasses or have inadequate contact lenses. I read for them a lot. Large store banners, worrisome traffic signs, library book spines, etc. But I digress again.

OM: Oh I could tell you my life story.
Me: Really? (not really interested, want to get home)
OM: I used to be a train driver on the Newfoundland Railways.
Me: Seriously? (I love railways, old abandoned, spanking new, riding the rails has been a joyful part of my life, he's got me)
OM:Yes, I was a train driver for 35 years, could tell you the names of all the little stations on the route. And then I was a worker here in Sobey's, a meat cutter for 25 years. See I know all the people in the butchering department (and he waves at them). I was forced to retire at 65, not too long ago. I loved my job.
Me:Interesting life indeed (having done the math on his life, I realized he was around 5 when he took over the trains of Newfoundland).
OM: You don't know the half of it. I also played banjo with Great Big Sea and I was featured on CBC with these artistic key rings.

And without a pause, he hauls out of his pockets a series of shortened bicycle chains with small key rings attached to their ends.

OM:See, they're works of art. Individual pieces. A lot of work. After the CBC show I sold 10,000 of them.
Me: Oh well done! Now my husband's waiting for his supper so I have to leave you, goodbye!

A Stranger's Eyes

I was sharing the following with Grandgirl today. She's here for far too short a spell, she arrived late yesterday and leaves on Tuesday. We did some serious hiking today, capitalizing on the glorious weather. As we were climbing the woodland trail at the back of the property, we both turned to look at the panorama of ocean and forest and distant headlands. I was reminded of a visit from a technician the day before.

We greeted each other like old friends. Us CFAs tend to do that. He nailed my accent as very southern Irish. I nailed his, first time, as Liverpool. I was a friend of a friend of the Beatles. Yes, those ones. Another story for another time. So we shared some backchat. As one does. He was ex-airforce and on the side had his own diving company. He asked me could he walk about outside, it being another Denim Day on the Bay and I agreed. This fine weather has been trailing me since I left here for my trip to Ireland in mid-August and got back here early September. Maybe talking about it now is going to jinx it.

Anyway, as I was saying. Yer man walks about the meadow, then out front to the water then back again up to the barn and then to the Tigeen, shaking his head.

He finally came back in again and said:

"You know you live in Paradise, don't you?"

Well, I do know that. Of course. But lately, that paradise feeling had been overlaid a bit with my stay in West Cork and then the excitement of Grandgirl being here for some days taking precious time away from her second year university courses.

So I told her what the tech had said. And we both stopped to drink in the grandeur and majesty of the my forest trail and the sea off in the distance.

"Sometimes," she said, "We need to revisit our world through a stranger's eyes."

Ita's List

The graveyard had a festive look to it. A light layer of snow had smoothed out the hodge podge of headstones, black, grey, white, marble, wood, stone, cast iron. Gave it a pleasing December uniformity. I slowed and stopped, taken by a stooped figure bent over a grave.

Her appearance was edging more towards the grotesque than the eccentric. A long greenish coat, hooded. Footwear that could only be described as old-fashioned with ancient galoshes, unfastened, flapping around her ankles as she trod gingerly around the oversized graveyard plot, leaving huge footprints.

A massive scarf, knitted in the colours of a shabby rainbow, bleeding dropped stitches and a half-hearted incomplete fringe at one end was thrown around her neck. She had stuffed a large pair of snow-mobile mitts into each capacious pocket of the coat.

The hair I could see was scandalous. Her yellowed scalp bore an inch of white roots followed by the lankest blackest straightness of any hair I'd ever seen. I felt an unwelcome revulsion at the filth of it.

A much younger woman stood off to the side, bored, texting furiously on a pink pad. She didn't even raise her eyes to look at me as I approached the older woman.

She was very busy, I could see that. Draping pieces of Christmas tinsel on to some small wooden crosses. Standing back to evaluate her handiwork. Moving forward again to adjust the sparkled thread in some intrinsic pattern only she was privy to.

"A time of remembrance" I said to her, a bit nervously, for how dare I intrude like this. A stranger. A nosy stranger.

"Yes, my darling," she said, as only old women of Newfoundland would speak to someone they didn't know. Something caught in my throat. How long had it been since I'd been someone's darling? I wanted to hear it again.

"A lot of family graves here, then?" I gestured at the many crosses.

"I replaces them every few year, my darling", she stood up painfully. I was surprised at her height. A tall outport woman, far, far older than I had originally guessed.

I told her who I was. I told her I was a writer.

"I'm Ita O'Neill, my darling," she said, "and this here is my family!" and she slowly waved her hand out over the plot as if introducing everyone. I bowed generally in their direction.

"I'm ninety-one," she said then, "and over there is my great-grand-daughter, her nose and hands so busy with no one who is here, the way of things now, right my darling?" I nodded. We are all so busy with no one who is here, I thought. It is easier than dealing with those who are.

"And these," and she spread her hands outwards and over the graves, "are my babies."

"Your babies?"

"My ten babies. Imagine that. All dead within a week of their coming into the world. Some right after their birthing. Some within a few days, no doctoring then. No reasons at all. All born with my black hair. All dying. None to have a birthday or Christmas or schooling." She draped a piece of tinsel over the last white cross.

"Well nigh over sixty years ago now since the last one. Albert. I gave them all names when I put the holy water on their foreheads. I never had the money for a real headstone. With the names all fancy on it. A list, like."

"Maybe this way is better," I offered, "Now they've all got their own markers."

"And I'm the only one now who knows which darling is under each cross."

"Tell me," I said, "I'll remember".

Bernadette. Rosemary. Peter. John. Annie. Bernard. Sheila. William. Agnes. Albert.

Lexilove

Hello, my name is WWW and I am a Lexulous addict.

Lexulous is a scrabble type game available on FaceBook amongst other lesser known sources. Well, I should say I am controlling my addictive self to the level of playing 10 games at a time. I could be up to a 100 if I let myself go. I've always loved scrabble and adored crosswords (non-cryptic) back in the day but find them a little too easy now, all the words overused, etc.

Interesting how all types of personalities are represented by Lexulous players. Some are in it to pursue sexual innuendos. Others (like me) for the love of the language and the game and some light chatter: how's your weather? Some state they love the (clean)chat. Some are courteous – oh well done, good game. Some are snide: Now where did you learn a word like that? Some apologize for placing the words vagina or penis. Some are whiners: oh, this game is rigged as you got all the good letters. Some are ignorant: What state in Canada is NL? Some are enthusiastic: oh please let's play again, I really enjoyed this!

Some of my friends challenge me, I mean how hard is it to lay down a few words? I always warn them I am really, really good but what can that mean, huh, and then most concede before the game is even over. One old friend insisted we never go vertical with the letters at the start as it made her head hurt, they had to be horizontal. Seriously. No, I don't play her anymore.

One stranger has played me for well over a year and is unfailingly cheerful and congratulatory as I am with him. We share a love of words, the more obscure the better and always rhapsodize on bingoes (7 letters off in one go) or super-bingoes (8letters off in one go on a double triple).

But most are my real life friends. Others are my blog readers never met in the flesh but over the years have graduated to friendship and full identity reveal.

But it is the fleeting challenging stranger players who provide me with windows on our endlessly fascinating human condition and all its foibles.