You Bought A Zoo! I Went Swimming!

When I moved to my new neighbourhood in October, my good friend Kate, who lives right near here, made me promise that we would go swimming on a regular basis at the newly-renovated community centre pool which is literally a 2-minute walk from my place (and about 7 minutes from her place). Absolutely, I said!

Well, as you can probably guess, what then ensued was a weeks-long-turned-months-long set of creative excuses, day after day, why one or the other of us couldn't go swimming the next day. As Kate said at one point, we're such hipsters we stopped swimming before we even started. Ha.

But now! We are swimming! Last Friday, we actually made it out. Kate went another time this week as well, and then we went again tonight. And while I don't remember swimming ever being this...EXHAUSTING...it's fun! Tonight after work, I bought swim goggles because I realized last week that I'm slightly panicked about putting my head in the water and not being able to see (I wear contacts so I have to close my eyes).* I'm used to snorkeling and scuba-diving, see, and a key feature of those activities is that YOU CAN SEE. That's kind of the point, actually. My new goggles rock! Though it turns out I am TERRIBLE at swimming. It's a lot of work when you don't have a BCD or flippers! I may look into remedial adult-swim classes later this winter. In the meantime, there's absolutely no shame in swimming with a flutterboard in the slow lane, right?


* Wearing contacts, which I only started doing just over a year ago, is a definite plus. One of the reasons I was always reluctant to go swimming in the past is that I couldn't find my way around. Swimming is no fun when you can't tell the swimmers from the sharks in the pool.**

** When I was a kid, I was convinced that if I took my eyes off the deep end, a shark would swim out of one of the water-exchange grills. This was particularly a danger at the pool at my grandmaman's old condo in Quebec City, which was kind of dark, shadowy and mysterious, at least to a 10-year-old.

92 years ago...

Ma grandmaman Cosette dans la vingtaine, avec son chien, Loup.

As many of you already know, my grandmaman passed away last July, shortly before I left Japan. Aujourd'hui aurait fit sa fête; elle aurait eu ses 92 ans. Elle me manque toujours.

As you can probably imagine, I was really upset at the time. Devastated. It was a few weeks before I stopped feeling like I'd been punched in the stomach anytime I thought of her. About a week after she passed away, I sat down at work one day (I was leaving in a few days and had nothing to do anyway!) and composed a long, well, tribute, I guess might be the right word. It was a compilation of memories, thoughts, et cetera, about her and her life. I was planning on posting it to my blog. But Murphy's Law kicked in: I'd been so focused on what I was writing (just in a simple Notepad file) that I had neglected to save it. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what, inevitably, happened, right as I wrote the last word.

I thought about rewriting it. But it had taken a lot out of me, and the passion and drive just weren't there anymore. I've thought about that text a lot over the past six months or so, and have always decided to not rewrite it. Any attempt to do so would undoubtedly become an attempt to recreate it as faithfully as I can, rather than the simple collection of thoughts and memories that it had originally been.

Anyway ... c'était sa fête, je n'ai pas oublié. J'ai pris quelques moments, parmi la vitesse et les obligations de la journée, de m'en souvenir. Elle me manquera toujours, sans doute, mais j'ai mes souvenirs d'elle, et de plus, j'en ai beaucoup. In the absence of my grandmaman herself, those memories will just have to do.

Ma chère grandmère, c'est à ton tour...

Ma grandmaman Cosette fête ses 91 ans aujourd'hui. Elle fût née en 1916.



Ceci est un photo d'elle dès son retour des Caraïbes en mars 2001, où elle est allée avec mes parents pour un séjour, mais je ne me souviens pas quelle île ils ont visiter.

One of my favourite stories that I like to tell about my grandmaman:* When I was a small child (like 5 or 6), she would speak to us in a mixture of French and English. As I grew older, she spoke less and less to me in English. By the time I was 14 or so, and consistently ever since then, I have never heard my grandmaman speak English. She would sometimes be in Toronto visiting us and would seem slightly perplexed upon meeting some of my unilingual anglophone friends. Or sometimes, since my parents and I always speak in English together, she would remark (in French) how she couldn't follow our conversations. And she has often said how proud she is that my older brother and I have worked so hard at learning and maintaining our French so that she can have good long conversations with us (Robert is a lost cause - he will dig out his French somewhat unwillingly only).

So. Two or three years ago, Randal and I were heading to Montreal for a visit. He had never met my grandmaman before. He also does not speak (much) French. I apologized multiple times before going that my grandmaman was a sweetheart and spoke beautiful French, and that she used to speak English (she did live in Ottawa for over 30 years) but that I was sure she had lost any English she used to know. Randal says OK, that's fine, he'll fumble through dinner, etc., in what little French he knows.

When we arrive at my grandmaman's place, I introduce them, and she asks Randal, "Est-ce que tu parles français?" With a sad face, he responds, "Ah, juste un petit peu." She then proceeds to spend the entire weekend yammering away with him in ENGLISH. Almost perfect English, just like I remember her speaking. She shows him everything - her stamp collections, her photo albums from way back when, her extensive library collection. All in English. I couldn't believe it. Randal couldn't stop laughing at me. I think my jaw spent the entire weekend on the floor. When I asked her about this, she replied simply that if she'd let me speak to her in English, she knew I wouldn't want to speak with her in French. And she was right. And I thank her for that.

Obaasan [grandmother] wa suki desu.

(Now, I just need a Japanese grandmother who will refuse to speak to me in English, and I'll learn Japanese in no time flat. ...Oh, wait. I have an entire COUNTRY of Japanese grandmothers! So why isn't it working? Gah.)


* As I am much wittier in English, and besides, not all of my readers know French (though, of course, they should), allow me to make the switch. I plan on taking classes to further improve my French (especially written) upon my return home, however.

Better late than never...

It was my Grandmaman Cosette's 90th birthday on Monday, February 20. (Not the grandmother in the picture in the previous post with my dad - she sadly passed away in 2003 - but my mother's mother.) Lame excuse, I guess, but it's been a really busy week. I did send her a card (via my aunt who was going to visit her for her birthday) and a little package (ginger chocolates, of course!). I don't even know if she reads my blog (she does have email, and I gave her the blog address once), but if she does:


BONNE FÊTE, GRANDMAMAN!!!

All I know is, I can only hope that when I am 90, I am like my grandmother. She lives on her own in a condo in downtown Montreal. My uncle, who lives not too far away, goes to visit her at least twice a week, and helps her with any repairs, problems, etc., that she may have around her place. About seven years ago, she broke a hip, but still manages to get around. Once or twice a week, she picks up a bunch of her friends and drives them to wherever that day's bridge game is being held. In her house, she has a whole room just for her books. When she was younger, she travelled to some far-away places, like Australia and France. My grandfather (who died in 1985) was a botanist and in fact, I believe that's how they first met - in a botany class in 1939 at Université de Montréal:


My grandmother is the woman in the front row with the white lace collar, and my grandfather is sitting to her right. They got married in 1946, I believe, after WWII. My brother found this pic one day on the Université de Montréal archives' website.

Anyway, I will update you all on my thus-far much shorter life soon, but not tonight!

And the winner is...

As Rebecca would say, with her usual mix of eloquence and brevity, "Meh."*

When I was a kid, my grandmaman gave my brothers and I two great books. (I'm sure she gave us more than just two, but these two really stick out for me.) The first was It's Raining, Said John Twaining. A series of rhymes about a man trying to get out of the rain (at least, that's the fancy way of describing the book). Mainly, the rhyme sticks in my head for the third line, which introduced the notion to me of there being people in this world called "Wilmot" (though the Wilmot I later met spelled his last name "Willemott", if I remember correctly):

"It's raining," said John Twaining.
"Keep me dry," said John Rye.
"No, I will not," said John Wilmot.
"Stand over there," said John Square.

I don't remember the rest.

Anyway, the point of this post is the second book, "Could Be Worse!" by James Stevenson. A book about Grandpa who is never fazed by anything. When I decided I should post about the federal election, I'm afraid that the only thing that popped into my head was, "Could be worse!" But as bad as it looks, it could be worse: there could be a majority Tory government, for starters.

Not going to say much more on the topic; can't really add anything useful that the pundits haven't already said. I am interested in seeing how this minority government works out, and I hope that the other parties are able to keep a necessarily short leash on the Conservatives. Whatever else, it sure won't be dull.

* Actually, to be fair, she had much more than just that to say.