By Lucy

Sleep was hard to find Saturday night. I fell asleep easily but was up again at 3. I had a bite to eat, played around on the computer a bit. Napped some more. Even thought I couldn’t fall asleep, I also couldn’t be awake; couldn’t make my brain focus enough to do more than listen to Youtube.

This is annoying. I’ve never had this much problem switching back to day shift before! I wanted to do laundry and other things before I left.

I pared back my plans. I had enough pairs of underwear to last the journey. It’s fine. I packed up the last couple of Factor meals I had.

I left shortly around noon. Grabbed gas, an energy drink and a snack for the drive.

The tractor trailers were brutal! Tailgating, passing, making me nervous. One honked at me as if he expected that to make me pull over so he could pass. Another, who had the “heavy load” sticker, tailgated me so severely I couldn’t see his bumper in my rearview mirror. If I tapped the breaks for any reason, he’d paint me across the asphalt like marinara sauce.

Somehow I reached Dryden unscathed. I let myself in – Kathy was out at a friend’s – settled in the basement room, and went to the living room to watch TV. I still couldn’t quite make myself feel awake, so I watched a comfort movie; Pirates of the Caribbean. Kathy came home at some point and settled on the couch next to me. Scott had left for night shift before I got there, so I came and left without seeing him.

Went to bed, slept decently, was up before my alarm. Finally starting to sleep past that 3 AM cut off. Dressed and packed the car again, drove to Timmies for breakfast.

It started raining, and not just a light drizzle but an apocalyptic level of rain.

See, part of the reason you’re not supposed to drive on bald tires is because it lowers your ability to control your car when the road is wet. Especially when water was pooling on the road like it was now! I lowered my speed even more and turned up the wipers faster than they needed to be, concerned that I’d miss a puddle and fly off the road.

Eventually I hit the border with Manitoba and the rain went away. The highway widened to 2 lanes, so people stopped angrily tailgating me.

I was about an hour early for my appointment, which was good. I stopped for gas and lunch, then went to the doctors’ office.

First problem; they wanted my passport here. I mentally slapped myself; I had stopped to consider if I’d needed it and decided against it, which was stupid. Why not bring it just in case? But I’d included all the information on my passport, including the number, on my application, so why did I need it here? Turns out to confirm my ID. When they heard I’d driven from Thunder Bay, they accepted my driver’s license as ID. Phew!

Then the waiting game started. 2 hours before I saw the doctor, during which I filled out a bunch of forms and had to give them a pee sample. Good thing I knew they’d need bloodwork and had been slamming back Gatorades to swell my veins.

The forms themselves said I’d need to disrobe for an exam, but the doctor didn’t ask me to do that, which is good cuz I didn’t want to explain my surgical scars to him. I know the reason New Zealand wants to know if you have a health condition is because they don’t want you being a public health burden, but if my cancer comes back I’d have the time and wherewithal to come home and get it seen in Canada. Bonus with driving to Manitoba for an exam; they don’t have access to my medical records.

Duff called me. He’s been scaffolding by day, then going to the farm to work until midnight. He was feeling too crappy to scaffold today, so he was gonna go grocery shopping and then hit the farm. Unfortunately, I was stuck at the doctors.

The doctor looked in my ears and nose, listened to my chest with a stethoscope, and declared me perfectly healthy.

Across the road to the bloodwork lab. Another 45 minute wait.

Down the road for a chest x-ray. This was the one I was least concerned about; they’re just checking for tuberculosis, which I definitely don’t have.

The clerk at the desk stopped me. “What’s that?” She gestured to my neck.

What’s what? My tattoo, my scar, a mark on my neck I didn’t notice? No, my necklace.

“Oh, this? It’s greenstone from New Zealand.”

“I know that, but where did you get it from?”

The Kiwi accent was subtle, buried under the Winnipeg one. “Greymouth.”

She was from some place on the North Island. Hasn’t been back to visit for a while. We had a little chat.

The Xray was quick. Take off your bra, lean against the panel. Click, done.

However, all told, the appointments amounted to something around 6-800 dollars, since none of it was covered by any benefits. I’m too afraid to check. A small price to pay for another year in New Zealand.

I grabbed a donair on the way. Yum!

Drove up to where I was staying. I had found this cheap little place, ironically right near where I was staying before, so I stopped to say hi to Unity and grab the stuff I forgot.

This place was a house converted into a bunch of bedrooms. Like a hostel, it had a shared bathroom and kitchen, but at least I had a private bedroom, which was cozy. I got the code to check in in an email and even though the room next to mine was occupied, I did not see another soul the whole time I was there. I ate the rest of my donair, changed into my swimsuit and headed out.

To Thermea.

*Note; I grabbed these pictures off their website. I did not bring my phone into the spa.

It was probably more indulgent than it needed to be, but I could claim it on my benefits and get most of it reimbursed, so why not? I miss the Nordic spa they had near Barrie.

I spent 3 hours in the spa, cycling around. They have a dry wood sauna, 2 aromatic steam saunas, a hot tub, a “regular” tub, a cold pool and a cold waterfall. There’s some rest areas with wood fires, a rest area where you lay on warmed tile beds and listen to the sounds of nature, and unsweetened herbal tea like burdock and dandelion, or valerian. They also have a little shower area with a bucket of salt scrub.

I tried everything once, but I kept coming back to the scented steam saunas. One was scented orange and one was scented eucalyptus. I did the orange one first, then scrubbed myself down vigorously with the salt. Trying to get all the nasty stuff out from work.

I also sat through one of the Aufguss rituals. It’s basically a pretty girl fanning the steam around the room in a ritual dance. She used snowballs infused with camphor… really clean the lungs out.

I enjoyed the evening, although for whatever reason the spa was lousy with twenty somethings in thong bikinis giggling and telling jokes with their buds, which interrupted the peacefulness of it all. Occasionally an attendant would come around with a sign reminding everyone to be hushed, but it never lasted long.

I wished Duff had come here with me. He could use some relaxation.

I ended the day with a massage. It was a good massage. I really aught to find a therapist in town I like. I’m always one big knot, my back cracks if I breathe in too deeply. He paid special attention to my wrists and forearms, which were so locked up they were spasming as he tried to work the knots out. That’s probably more carpal tunnel than chemo-induced nerve damage, honestly. Yay.

Went back to my rented room. They had complimentary instant noodles and cookie in the room, so I ate those because I was too lazy and broke to track down more food, and curled up in the bed. It’s so nice to have a bed with a proper mattress…

Woke up at 6. Now what?

I had some vague plan to go to Ikea, but Ikea wasn’t open ’til 10 and I wasn’t waiting around for it.

I thought of driving out to see Duff, but he didn’t get up ’til noon and then he went right to work at the farm. Apparently he still has bed bugs, so it’s just as well I didn’t factor him in to my plans.

I still felt like I had driven too far just to turn around and go home again, but Paul talked me out of just wandering around the backroads of rural Manitoba. He said gravel roads would wear my tires down even faster than normal roads, and there was no guarantee I’d find any relatives.

So I headed home. Stopped at Tim’s for breakfast.

As I passed Steinbach, I pulled off the highway and drove ten minutes into town. The Mennonite Village is only 15 bucks to see and it would be nice to stretch my legs.

I recognize this place. No way my mother took us to Manitoba without stopping here. I remember… the church, the windmill.

Shortly after I got there, a busload of Asian tourists showed up and overran the place. I walked right to the back so I could see most of the exhibits in relative peace, swimming against the current.

As I wandered, reading plaques that told me nothing new, something clicked in my head. It was always a story in the family that Opa ran away from the family farm as a teenager and joined the military, and that the Mennonites kept moving because they don’t believe in military service, but seeing the emphasis against it on the plaques, in the heart of Mennonite land, really hammered it home.

Opa didn’t just run away from home. He threw away everything he’d ever been taught, to escape. He ran to the arms of the devil to get away from his family.

Funny how life repeats itself.

Also, glancing at the family names, I know my family has been here since the first Mennonites arrived in 1871. What didn’t occur to me is that the Red River Rebellion happened in 1870. My family weren’t just invited to settle the frontier.

We were tools in a war.

We were being used against the Metis and indigenous people in the area, to crowd them out and overrule them. To replace them.

Isn’t that just as bad as being soldiers?

I read about conflicts with the local indigenous tribes, blinking back tears. I had no idea how closely my family was wrapped around the bloody forging of Canada.

I had to go somewhere, do something. I could feel the blood in the soil, crying out.

One of the employees stopped me as I wandered around, despondent. She had piercing blue eyes like me. Are we related?

“I’m… um, my family used to live here. My great grandmother is buried somewhere in Steinbach. Do you know where the cemeteries are?”

“Oh, well, let’s see…” She gave me a run down of the local cemeteries. “If you don’t have an idea of where the grave is, though, you’ll be walking for a while.” She smiled kindly.

click. I went back to my great grandmother’s grave marker website. Not only did it say which one she was in, it said she was one of the oldest graves there, so she should be easy-ish to find.

I drove down the road. Parked on a back road. The cemetery itself is right on the main highway.

I assumed the old graves would be near the back. I was wrong. The oldest graves are near the front, right by the highway.

I found her.

I remember this grave. My mother’s voice comes back to me, dredged through the years, talking about how old and unreadable the gravestone is. It’s more legible in person, but I didn’t see a point in cleaning it up to post on a blog.

Some of her siblings are still alive. She died young. But she was also one of the older siblings.

I used to laugh at my mother for her relentless search for her family. Blood means nothing to me. Who loves you is what matters. But I’m starting to see the threads, how my family was shaped, by Prussia where it was born, by Ukraine which we left, how the early years of Canada decided where we stayed. What kind of person Opa was, to flee to the military.

I dropped to my knees, hands over my face, overcome with tears. This rock tells me nothing. Nothing about the marriage, or her death, or her relationship with her son. How she felt about moving to a strange land. Why he left. Why his siblings stayed.

That’s what really cuts. There are people out there, living people, people who remember my great grandfather and Opa and Oma, but my mother keeps me from them and dead men tell no tales.

I could have been raised here, Mennonite, farming. I could have grown up and gone to school with Duff. I could have been a completely different person.

And so it was, that I found myself crying on the grave of a woman who died before I was born, who probably wouldn’t accept me were she alive. Crying for the persons I could have been, but for a twist of fate or someone else’s choices. Crying for the family I’d never have, the warm loving home that existed only as an ideal. Crying for all the things I should have let go of sooner but didn’t know how, how we cling to the devil we know, and how terrifying it is to jump in with both feet.

I needed to talk to someone.

I called Hanuman and talked to him for a bit, but it occurred to me I did have a family member I could call. Doris.

I tried to keep my voice calm, but failed.

“Are you ok?” She asked, alarmed. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no, I’m fine… I’m in Steinbach…” The story poured out of me, in gasps and shudders.

She’s at a loss for what to say. She tells me bits and pieces when I ask. She says Opa’s dad was a hard man, although I feel like I remember someone mentioning he didn’t like his stepmom. My great grandmother died of meningitis. She makes it sound like Agatha died suddenly, but that’s not how meningitis works. It’s not a quick, painless death. He’d know his mother was unwell. Maybe he blocked it from his mind, her last days in pain, intractably vomiting, unable to turn her head or tolerate daylight.

“They came back.” I say. My mother had stories about Oma on the farm.

“Yes, they did. Your grandmother was a glamourous woman, from big city Saarbrucken. She made all her own clothes. She loved Jackie Kennedy. She’s get all dolled up to go to the store and the local women would stare at her. She wasn’t made for the country.”

I know this logically, but it’s hard to square with what Oma became in her later years. I can imagine it now; the coiffed hair, the simple lines of the dress, the string of pearls around her neck and the cigarette in its holder (Oma smoked).

How did they come back? Opa joined the military. He married a woman who wasn’t a Mennonite, who was the definition of “worldly”. They let him come back?

Doris remembers other things. Living in Germany as a toddler.

“Why don’t you talk to your mother?” She asks. “She knows more about this stuff than I do.”

My tears dry and my voice goes cold. “I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

I’m tired of having this conversation.

“We don’t talk about anything in this family.” Doris notes.

Exactly. Why start now?

My mother let Opa die without letting me see him again. He died of a hospital acquired infection, but I have it on good authority it took him a week to die. If anyone had called me within that week and mentioned what he had, I would have dropped everything and went right to Quebec to see him. But they didn’t. They texted my ex husband to tell me he had died.

I hated that I didn’t really have a chance to ask Opa anything. He died… 2019. Before I felt real. Before I had context. What did he think of me not talking to my family anymore, knowing he’d made the same choice at my age? I’ll never know.

I admit, I’m mad at myself cuz I lost track of Opa towards the end. He tried to send me birthday cards, but I think he had the wrong address. I tried to call him, but he was in and out of hospitals and care homes in the heart of Quebec, and I didn’t have the patience to deal with the Quebecois. I didn’t try hard enough. I should have tried harder.

I like this picture of Opa. It’s the last time I saw him. I asked Ken if he could do a family photo shoot and he was all for it because he’d had some temporary fascination with shooting wrinkles. Opa hated the picture because it makes him look, well, old, but he looks exactly as he did when he was alive. Like he is still alive.

“What if you guys did therapy?”

“Do you even know where I’m living now, Doris? We can’t do therapy.” And I can’t imagine a therapist unpicking all the trauma my parents did.

She sighs. “Well, you know your mother has all that stuff online. You can just find it if you sign up for Ancestry.”

Not wrong. Well, sort of wrong. You can’t find living people on Ancestry. But it’s something, I suppose. I hesitated to because it would mean letting my mother know I have accessed it as well, but then she’ll hear about this too, so what do I think I am hiding?

What’s cold to the degree of being almost unbelievable is the extent to which everyone is in lockstep with my mother. Except they aren’t. My family has always been the kind to go their own way. Doris has always been distant. Denise isn’t distant, we actually had a good relationship and hung out regularly for a while, but she is flighty and hard to keep track of. She keeps getting new phone numbers and new Facebook accounts and it’s hard to keep track of. Oma and Opa were always willing to talk, but they’re dead now. And the less said about Bubi, the better.

And we’re disconnected in other senses. Oma was the only one to come over from Germany, but her family would probably be willing to talk to me, if I could reach them. Opa’s family… well, it’s hard to say, if they are true-believer Mennonites. They certainly wouldn’t appreciate me as I am. Tattooed, a divorcee, a woman with my own money in a man’s career.

But the unfortunate truth is, my mother has positioned herself as the great connector, the spider at the centre of the web, and the way everyone else just… “oh, why don’t you talk to your mother?”

You know what terrifies me? What if I become famous? Lots of celebrities with absent families have stories about family members suddenly becoming amenable to having a heart-to-heart after they make it big. I can’t think of a single version of that story that ends well, and yet I can’t deny it is seductive.

That’s not true. It’s not that we don’t talk. It’s that we don’t listen. Doris is listening to me bawl my eyes out in a graveyard hundreds of miles from home, and beyond her initial concern seems to not really care. She was talking, but there was no “call me again so we can catch up” or anything. It was very matter of fact.

Though I’ve never been through hell like that
I’ve closed enough windows to know you can never look back

Eventually I let her go. I kept burbling a bit longer to myself, listening to the trucks driving by on a highway and the wind whistling through the trees. What a terrible place for my family to be buried. I know it wasn’t like this when Agatha was placed here, but it seems lonely, nothing but the highway for company. And to be one of the oldest graves here. Why did they make a new graveyard? Why here?

Eventually I got back in the car and left. It felt like I was abandoning a puppy in the woods.

Should I call Doris again? My family is so disconnected I have no idea what normal contact is like.

I had fresh eyes for the drive home. Yes, I remember this pit stop, in the centre of the median. Playing my Gameboy. Watching the rocks fly by.

Sometimes I wonder if some seed was planted in me back then. If I moved to Thunder Bay because it reminded me of something warm and compelling from my childhood. Or if my bones yearn for what Opa threw away.

After Oma left Opa, she moved to the big city; Toronto. Of course, people forget that back then, Montreal was actually bigger than Toronto, but Toronto was catching up. It was hip and happening and growing, I learned that when I read Hard Road. And to an extent, my mother took after her mother. My mother has always been a city girl as well; she never misses an excuse to hop on a train and go downtown. Opa kept moving because his military service compelled him to. He only retired when he reached the age of mandatory retirement, and to my understanding he settled in Quebec because his wife was Quebecois.

Some times I wonder about his last wife too. I never called Anne Marie my grandmother, but she was kind to us and I have no ill will towards her. Occasionally I google her name; so far as I can tell, she’s still alive. I wonder if she thinks about us?

The road slides by. It doesn’t rain this time.

I reach Dryden at the make or break time. I could stay; I could keep going. I check the wear bar on the tires. Not much worn today. I decide to keep going.

I get back to Thunder Bay at 9 PM and crawl gratefully into bed.

Speaking of family… there’s a wildfire burning uncomfortably close to the French Shore. Annapolis, Lequille, Bear River… all places I have family. More than that, places my family build with their own hands. Houses and churches. History at risk of going up in smoke.

I slept in Wednesday. My brain finally broke and I slept for 12 hours, which I really needed. When I finally peeled myself from the bed, I called Jeremy and we went for a long walk at Boulevard.

Went home and played Minecraft for the rest of the day. Could not be bothered.

Thursday was a busy day. Yolanda is in town, so the ladies had lunch at some bougie place downtown that I couldn’t really afford.

Later, Paul came to town and we got some chores done. I finally emptied out my locker, swept it and reported it as empty so I could get my security deposit back. One less thing to worry about.

Then I dragged Paul to the dealership with me. Paul’s got half a brain and I wanted a man with me to try and sell my car so people don’t try to give me a hard time.

It did not go well. The dealership doesn’t buy used cars, just trade-ins. Select iCar won’t buy cars over 160’000 kilometers. And with that, I had run out of options for places to sell my car. Time to do it privately.

Yay.

Part of my debates just getting fresh summers, an oil change and just driving the car to southern Ontario and selling it there. I know JD Coates will give me 8K for it, no questions asked.

Friday was run around time.

I had to renew my license and health card, so I swapped over my address to the PO box. There was a long line and 2 clerks open, but what can you do? 2 very rude men stood in line behind me bitching the whole time and at one point tried to cut the line. I was very tempted to throw a fist at them.

The sign behind the clerk says, “Everyone brings joy to this office. Some when they enter, some when they leave“

Over here, over there, papers and more papers.

My last task was a bust. I wanted to make a certified copy of my birth certificate and name change, just in case something happened to me when I’m travelling. The lady at town hall told me I needed a lawyer, so it occurred to me I know a lawyer. I called K.

“Hey, I was just thinking of you. You’re off night shift now, right?” He asks.

“Yep. Hey, I need a lawyer.”

“What did you do now?”

“A shorter list is what didn’t I do.”

Speaking of law abiding citizens, they’re firing up the old Choice club again. To be honest, I was counting down the days until that happened. I know ol’ Bernie was so Canadian he’d bleed maple syrup if you cut him, and he only agreed to the patch over to stop the bloodshed with RM. But that’s 20 years buried and HA is very American, which is verboten now. It wouldn’t surprise me if all the Thunder Bay guys patch over right away either. Aside from what I’ve read, I know what the Vagabond has told me.

“They wouldn’t patch me in, would they?” I ask Paul.

“No, cuz you have breasts.”

“Oh darn.” Those pesky things. Why can’t there be a woman’s auxiliary? I guess there kind of is…

After sailing Friday evening a bunch of us went out for pinball. The crew wanted to listen to the band – it was Ribfest by the waterfront – so I told Chris just to pull the boat up next to a pier and I’d just jump off it while it’s moving. He didn’t believe me, but I did! Then I grabbed Jeremy and ran to Pinball.

It was John’s first “meeting everyone in person” and it went well. He’s an excellent addition to the group.

Saturday I cooked a whole bunch. I have a pallet of chickpeas and I am beyond broke at this point, so why not cook my way thru 12 cans of chickpeas? I made chickpea soup and homemade hummus and a form of mousse you can make with aquafaba, the liquid that comes in the can with the chickpeas.

My dad has a story about one of the times his brother got out of jail and had to have an apartment for bail, so dad used all his money to get an apartment for the two of them and had 10 bucks left for food (like 40 years ago) so he bought ten pounds of potatoes and ten pounds of hotdogs and that was all they ate for a month. It’s one of those “aren’t you so lucky you won’t have those experiences” stories except that’s basically my life. 12 cans of chickpeas and one bag of rice, plus all the spices Hanuman has in the pantry.

Me and Paul go out for coffee (Paul buys). No one else shows, oh well. We pick the darkest corner in the coffee shop to lurk in cuz no one would overhear our conversations without wanting to call the cops, then walk around downtown a bit.

Then over to Jeremy’s. The next Sakuraco box came in, oh joy! A break in the chickpeas. This box was from Okinawa, which I have a special fondness for because it’s the setting of the first season of Blood+ (yes it’s spelled like that). Most of the snacks were good; some things, like handpies with ube filling, don’t surprise me but are very confusing for Jeremy. He’s still jonesing for more konyac jellies and he’s been buying edamame to snack on, which does neatly sort out his need for a complete protein. We had one complete miss; a so-called Okinawa sweet plum. I dunno if it went bad in transit or if it was supposed to taste like that, but it tasted like wine gone bad and half turned to vinegar. It was nasty to the point that both of us spit them out and rinsed out our mouths.

I grabbed the cartion of hemp protein I gave him before cuz if all I’m eating is rice and chickpeas, I’ll need it. Then I spent the rest of the day playing Minecraft again, cuz frankly I’d earned it.