Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir (22 page)

Back at the car, I took a T-shirt from the trunk to dry my feet and for Yeats to wipe the condensation off the rear window. The defrost was on the fritz. We were two happy drowned rats. Three new species and a very peaceful walk in the rain.

As I was lacing up my dry shoes, a young couple drove up and parked next to us.

The woman rolled down her window and said, “Did you see anything good? Is it worth all this rain?”

“We saw a Wilson’s phalarope and a greater yellowlegs.”

“Oh! A yellowlegs?”

“Yes. But it’s really muddy . . .”

But they weren’t listening anymore; their faces were shining. They were anticipating getting out there, mud or not.

We drove home along the north shore of Lake Erie and stopped at a couple of provincial parks along the way. The rain was still pouring and it was extremely windy. We were the only people around. At every stop I pulled on my rain pants and soaking shoes, and we trudged along the lake and through wooded areas, hoping to see something. We never did.

The only interesting stop was at Long Point, which is a sand spit that juts about forty kilometres from the north shore of Lake Erie, roughly
200
kilometres from Point Pelee. There used to be a life-sized diorama of Long Point at the
ROM
. You walked out along pine boards towards a painted scene that depicted the lake with a marsh in front. You stopped at a railing and looked down on stuffed bird and mammal specimens and out at this beautiful painted scene of a summer’s day in paradise. We went to see this exhibit every time we visited the museum, probably thirty times when Yeats was small. Come to think of it, this diorama was around the corner from the bird room — a large exhibit filled with taxidermy birds from all around the world. Yeats and I spent a
lot
of time there, marvelling at the tiny hummingbirds and the giant ostriches, and the birds’ multitude of colours and shapes.

Each time we went to the bird room we had to look in every drawer and inspect each bird. Sometimes we went with the other children and Ben, and inevitably someone would say, “Which bird is your favourite?” All of us would look up at the hundreds of birds hanging from the ceiling and in the glass cases. Yeats usually went for the smallest ones — the hummingbirds — maybe because he was the youngest. But the Long Point diorama was by far his favourite part of the
ROM
, and when the museum was refurbished and they took this diorama out, he said to me, “Poor Taylor and Noah. They’ll never get to see that.” He was crushed.

Only researchers can go to the tip of Long Point. That area has been declared a bird sanctuary and that’s a good thing, but we wanted to see something interesting, so we drove as far as we could, to the southernmost campground. Out there, the roads weren’t paved, they were made of sand, so in the downpour they were pretty dodgy. I didn’t have much experience driving in sand, but when I treated it like slushy snow, the car responded wonderfully.

We parked in a lot ringed by dunes and I put my rain gear back on. I opened my door and it was nearly ripped off the hinges by the crazy wind. We went up one dune but the rain was driving straight into our faces, blinding us. We turned around, crossed the parking lot, and headed up the other dune. It was too loud to speak. Crashing waves, howling wind. We stood for a second at the top of the dune and then Yeats tugged my arm and ran back down to the car. I took in the scene — the lake looked like a roiling ocean, the sky like a scene from the Old Testament, thick with dark clouds swirling across a sun-spackled sky. It was scary and exciting and not for people. The wind had whipped the lake up into a frenzy of rolling waves that crashed onto the beach and right up to the foot of the dunes. There was no way I was going down there, but seeing this wild side of nature quickened my heart, and I had to stop for a few seconds.

I was afraid that if I ran back down the dune I’d fall, so I pushed slowly against the wind and made it back to the car out of breath but exhilarated. While I’d been up there contemplating the wildness of nature, Yeats had been waiting for me in the safety of the car. We were both soaking wet.

A park warden drove up and shouted over the wind that he was locking the gates to this part of the park. It wasn’t safe to be out here. We followed behind his truck and left that place.

Yeats said, “That was scary, Mom. We were crazy to think there’d be birds there. Why did we go out?”

“Because we wanted to see what it was like. That’s why.”

Silence from the boy. Maybe he was too freaked out to contradict me, or maybe he knew I was right. Sometimes you just had to take a risk, step outside, and find out for yourself.

TWELVE

A SUMMER RAIN HAD
passed and I was watching the cottage deck dry. Steam rose from it in waves and suddenly there was a dry patch of deck, light brown and hot now with the afternoon sun. Steam off the deck, steam off the roof, imaginary steam coming from the forest. Drops of water fell off the trees; leftover rain and sunlight turned them to gleaming gems. And on the forest floor, shadows of spiderwebs laced with raindrops.

I walked to the top of the hill where the moss was spongy. It didn’t crunch underfoot anymore, but gave gently as I stepped, springing back again, green. The rocks were steaming at the top of the hill and everything smelled of the hot Canadian Shield, mixed with the heat coming off the sumac and a hint of juniper. Some of the junipers were dying. These giant junipers expire in the middle first, so that after a couple of years, there was only a large circular green fringe of plant. The centre was all dried, white bones.

Everything has a lifespan.

The air was still after the rain had passed. The sky was clear, the horizon close enough to touch. From the lookout I could see the mass of black cloud receding, moving south, moving west. It was someone else’s rain now.

Down below, on the dock, the children were swimming. I couldn’t see them through the trees, but I heard their voices, laughter, and splashing as they practiced cannonballs and backflips. I imagined my sister watching the children, standing up because the chairs were still dripping. She was holding a mug of coffee, face turned towards the sun, breathing in this rain-freshened air.

Sometimes, if I sat still for long enough on top of the hill, the
broad-winged hawks
flew right overhead. One would fly over, then circle back to take a look at me. Then another would appear, and sometimes even a third. One might fly so close that I’d hear the wind whooshing through its wing feathers, imagining I felt that wind against my raised face. My heart would beat faster and I would dig my fingertips into the yellow lichen that clung to the rocks. Then the bird would be gone, just as suddenly, but the power of that encounter would linger and I stayed a while longer, absentmindedly picking at the lichen and gazing out across the lake.

I felt my heart in my breast and my breath in my belly. I heard the laughter from the dock and felt that joy in me, too. The rain clouds receded, out over the horizon. It was another summer in Muskoka for me, another summer of our kids working in the bookshop and Ben coming up North when he could. Yeats had been accepted at the University of Toronto and so had Rupert, so they’d be off to school together in September. Titus was going to Seneca College and Danielle was in her final year at Western. It felt like a time to breathe easier, a time to be thankful.

BEN WORKED WEEKS FROM
Tuesday through Saturday, and then joined us at the cottage until Monday night. He phoned me most nights from the city and we exchanged news of our days. One day he called from work to tell me that part of the tree in our backyard had fallen in a windstorm.

“A big limb cracked right off the trunk and onto the house. Thankfully, the only damage is a dent in an eavestrough. The limb landed on the house next door, too, but miraculously nothing was wrecked. We were lucky.”

“Did you hear it?”

“No. It must have happened in the middle of the night and I slept right through it. You know me.”

“Only a bomb would wake you.”

“So what do I do? Who do I call?”

“A tree guy.”

“What tree guy?”

“I don’t know. Look in the Yellow Pages. Best to get a couple of quotes.”

“What?”

“Get a couple of quotes to take down the limb. Go with the best one, or the guy you like the best. Your choice.”

I thought to myself,
Well, this is good. Let Ben see what kind of work I have to do around the house sometimes.

He called the next night to say the limb was gone. He sounded proud of himself for accomplishing this domestic task, and so quickly.

The next night Yeats and I went to pick Ben up at the golf club. He loaded all his stuff into the boat and went to park the car. It was a beautiful night, warm and quiet. Yeats and I sat on the back of the boat, looking at the stars. When I saw Ben coming down the dock, I moved forward to turn on the engine.

Instead, I fell. I tripped over Ben’s things and started falling into the windshield. I twisted as I fell so that I wouldn’t hit the metal point where the windshield splits, and I landed funny in the gap leading to the bow rider.

I cried out. My right shoulder was searing with pain. I’d never felt anything like it. I writhed and screamed for a few seconds before I came to my senses, and then I pulled myself to my knees and grasped the shoulder hard with my left hand, sliding the shoulder back into its socket.

I was sobbing and gasping, and my guys were saying, “What happened? What is it? Are you okay?”

They were hovering over me and all I could think about was getting back to the cottage, where I’d be safe and sound. So I took a deep breath and said, “I’m okay. Let’s go.”

I drove the boat back to the island, the shoulder screaming at me every time I moved the accelerator stick. I’ll never understand why I didn’t get Ben or Yeats to drive. I guess I was on automatic pilot.

The pain had been cut in half as soon as I shoved the shoulder back into its socket, but even so, it was bad. It already felt inflamed. All the way back to the island I chanted to myself,
It’s getting better, it’s getting better,
only partly believing it.

I couldn’t carry anything so Ben and Yeats took everything up to the cottage. I iced my shoulder and took Advil and an arnica pill. I rubbed the shoulder all over with arnica cream. The next morning, after nearly no sleep at all, I did the same again and Ben took me to a clinic in the closest town, Bracebridge, to make sure nothing was broken.

The doctor at the clinic said, “You’ve had a partial subluxation. But I’d expect some bruising.” He was turning me around and looking at my shoulder from all angles.

I mentioned the arnica and he shrugged. “I want you to go to the hospital for an X-ray to make sure everything is okay, no bone chips anywhere. Then you can start with physiotherapy.”

Bracebridge had exactly two physiotherapy clinics. One was attached to the hospital, and was only for its rehab patients. The other one was booked until September. I found a physiotherapist who could take me in Gravenhurst, and Laurie drove me there twice a week for a couple of weeks. The physiotherapist gave me tiny little exercises to do, which caused the muscles to cramp and spasm. I stopped with the exercise. I iced the shoulder and took Advil. I didn’t sleep.

Almost every time he saw me, Ben said, “Sorry, heart.” Over and over. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault, Ben,” I said. “It’s no one’s fault. I just tripped.”

“But you tripped over my stuff. You were picking me up. I shouldn’t have put the stuff in the middle of the boat.”

“We always put the stuff in the middle of the boat. Stop with the apologizing.”

“Sorry.” He took on the guilt and that made me angry. Why did things always have to be someone’s fault?

I felt like my body was on full alert at all times. If someone bumped into me, I recoiled. If I moved too quickly and jarred my arm, I was rewarded with instant searing pain. I was told not to wear a sling because I needed to keep the shoulder moving, even if it hurt like heck.

I decided to stay at the cottage until Labour Day because there were people there — Mom, Laurie, Yeats, Ben on weekends — to take care of me. I needed someone to do everything, including washing my hair and doing up my bra. It was hot but it hurt to swim. Sharp pains, throbbing pains, itchiness deep inside the socket, strain and sprain in the deltoid. I could only wade into the water at the beach and stand there, feeling sorry for myself. I’d had my last kayak of the season, my last real swim, my last game of badminton in the field. I felt miserable and exhausted by the pain, as well as useless to my family.

The dislocation of my shoulder led to a long season of lulls. Long days sitting in chairs in the shade. Laurie said, “I guess you’ll be reading a lot of books.” She laughed because that was what I always did anyway and had done since we were kids. She and Greg would be out there running around and I’d be lying on the deck, reading books. Now I had a good excuse.

This enforced rest period coincided with blackberry season, and that year our canes were loaded with fruit. They grew on a steep slope directly in front of the old cottage. From my bedroom window I looked down on ripening blackberries and then out through the birch and hemlock to the shore of the lake. The lake was easier to hear than to see from my window.

I carried a light cardboard container in my right hand and picked with my left. I picked only from the bushes at the very top of the hill and then took the path that led around the hill and picked at the bottom. I couldn’t risk the slope, and another fall.

Blackberry canes are prickly and my left hand was not as adept at picking as my right, so most times I came away covered in scratches. As the container filled, it became too heavy for my right shoulder to hold so I returned to the kitchen, dumped the berries into a bowl, and went back with the empty container.

Picking blackberries was one of the few ways I could contribute to meals. I couldn’t chop vegetables or wash or dry the lettuce in the salad spinner. Everything I did was at half my usual pace. But everyone loved the berries on their ice cream or morning cereal.

I found a flip-flop in the blackberry bushes closest to the cottage. I picked it up and put it on the deck and kept an eye out for the other one for the rest of the summer. It belonged to Lauren. The kids had been playing Roof Ball and Lauren’s loving brother had flung her flip-flops off the roof.

For Roof Ball, one person stands on the roof — the old cottage, with its gently sloping roof, was perfect — and the other people stand on the deck on either side of the cottage. Someone pitched the ball up to the person on the roof, who hit it with an oversized plastic yellow bat. The game was always played at dusk, and it became more and more of a challenge to find a lost ball the darker it grew. For some reason, Roof Ball was always accompanied by Donovan singing at top volume on the stereo. You know, “Mellow Yellow,” “Season of the Witch,” “Atlantis,” and my favourite, “There Is a Mountain.”

The kids, including any friends they had over, knew all these old songs because we played them so often, so they’d be singing along and whacking the plastic ball with the plastic bat and laughing at one another with crazy abandon. It was a wild game, and no parents or small children were ever invited to play.

Once Donovan was finished the kids would run down to the dock for a swim. The sun would have set by then, and maybe the stars would be out, maybe a couple of bats or flying squirrels. The screech owls would be starting up over on Fairylands, but they’d be drowned out by the noise of splashing and laughing and carrying on.

I’d turn off the stereo but always forget to lower the volume, so that the next day, if I put Harry Manx on, I’d get a shock of sound from the speakers. I’d jump out of my skin, shedding my old complacent self for one split-second, and then resume my usual shape.

Ben went back to the city to find our hot water heater had stopped working. Danielle, who was living in the house for the summer, said it had just stopped that day. He called me to find out what to do.

“Call Enbridge,” I said. “It belongs to them and they’ll send someone out to look at it.”

“Where do I find their number? Do you know our account number? Will someone have to be at home?”

“Look in my files. You’ll find a bill there. Yes, someone will have to be at home.” Good grief.

Danielle stayed home to let in the man from Enbridge. He said the heater was irreparably broken, and was twenty-five years old and inefficient besides.

Ben called that night. “He couldn’t install a new one because we need a new kind of flue or something. They have to come back tomorrow. Danielle has to stay home again. It’s a pain in the ass.”

“Oh,” was all I could muster. I’d be damned if I apologized for not being there to deal with this crisis. He’d dealt with the tree limb and he could deal with this. I didn’t begrudge Ben’s lack of expertise in coping with household troubles, but it was an eye-opener for me to realize how heavily he relied on me. I was sure he’d be able to do all this without my help, just as he was able to deal with problems at the store, but he wasn’t as confident. I couldn’t help but feel he resented me not being there.

BEN CALLED TO SAY
he was coming up on Saturday night after work, but to go ahead and have dinner without him. We waited anyway, all eleven of us. I decided I had to make an effort to show Ben that I didn’t blame him for my pain, since he still insisted on taking responsibility for the accident, so I went with Yeats to pick him up, even though I was still feeling far from spry. Yeats preferred to drive the smaller of our boats, the Scout, and the little boys wanted to come, so the four of us went together, wind in our hair.