ALERT<––>CITY PLANNERS

ALERT<––>CITY PLANNERS

Transform the city’s core. Enter high rises and locally operated businesses. Parking lots convert to corner-store grocery shops, accompanied by cafés, flower shops, hairstylists, pubs and maybe a pastry outlet, all within walking distance or within public transit. Into the heart of the cement and glass environment equality demands incentives for three and four-bedroom facilities. Families seek city-center access. Watch for sunrise requests––playgrounds close by for children.

Not yet peeking over the horizon will come cries for green space to be carved out of the scarce high-priced land. For a growing downsizing grey-power-people shopping appeals are weak, as are pubs. Provide a park, with grass, and benches near the playground. Include a Tim Hortons kiosk and planters with shrubs and flowers. Color and fragrances attracts seniors like honey to flies. A multigenerational element enriches the city center community.

Take a look in the window of a retired couple that has the means to create a park-like setting around their home. My novel, Baggage burdens. provides an opportunity to view the pleasures elderly experience from the gifts of Mother Nature.

 Jill looks at her grandmother’s bulky photo album, a catalogue of flowers conveying a gardening history of her grandparents and their efforts to create a parklike setting.

Jill flips back to the first page of the album. The pictorial recording begins with her grandparents’ arrival at the property. Josey said, “We came to view this two-story house because it had three bedrooms. We wanted enough room for our children and grandchildren when they’d come to visit.”

 “Seeing a hedge of yellow roses, Golden Wings, bordering the long driveway to the house hooked us!” Josey exclaimed. “We had to explore the rest of the yard. Before we entered the house, George knew he wanted to buy the place.”

An enlarged rose bush picture, Josey’s pride and joy, graces the second page of the album. It commands attention from anyone who approaches the front door. Ignoring the notations at the bottom, Jill flips the page, content that the sight of the yellow roses triggers their name.

The next page illustrates a second row of roses that border the driveway. Artistry, recalls Jill without the slightest desire to peek at the name jotted below the photo. The hybrid tea rose with cupped, luminous, orange-coral flowers and bluish-green leaves even makes a few appearances at the front row where some Golden Wings had died.

Another page. “Ah, the fragrant roses.” Their smell makes sitting on the patio a favorite retreat for Jill.

“George planted these flowers there so the afternoon breeze would carry their scent and impress the guests,” proclaimed Josey one afternoon as she and Jill sat on the patio.

Jill had memorized the names of the fragrant flowers first. The largest clump of patio roses was called Betty Boop. Their ivory-yellow blooms with a strawberry-red edge produced a fruity smell. My favorite. Next to them was Alec’s Red. The orange-red blooms located in partial shade brought forth the Dolly Parton name. What a wonderful spicy fragrance!

 haiku capsule:

swings, slides, kids laughing

grandparents watch, sip coffee

community park

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Tell It to the Judge

Shouldn't Have Said That

Shouldn’t Have Said That

“Once words leave your mouth, you can’t take them back, so watch what you say.” Mom’s wisdom.

Wish I’d remembered that before my irritated response, “leave me alone. I’m the driver, not you.”

“Just trying to help.”

Pain in her voice was lost in a fog of earlier uninformed driving directions and heavy traffic.

I should have said that following her regular bus route home meant crawling through a construction zone.

From then on she took the bus. If not the bus, then a taxi. Guilt compounded. A month later I learned she waited an hour for a cab to go to the hospital.

“You should have called an ambulance,” the doctor had chastised. “At your age this could have been serious.”

She wouldn’t. She was too cheap. Her cast-in-iron depression-years-mold instructed spend only when you must.

Thank God she only had a mild heart attack.

In my novel, Baggage burdens. that same rash action and guilt is seen.

Amber’s father is called out of a meeting. “Emergency,” he’s told.

The vet reports his daughter’s horse is seriously hurt. He must be put down. Joseph agrees. Two days later Amber hears about her horse’s death from a friend. She’s hurt and angry.

Very unusual business demands prevented Joseph from reaching his daughter earlier. When Joseph came home very late, she was ready for him.

 “When did you plan on telling me that you killed my horse?” Amber leans forward as if to attack. “I had to hear that Hoss is dead from Eve.”

“Amber!”

“You couldn’t of called me first, couldn’t of given me a chance to say goodbye to Hoss? How could you? How could you?” Her angry words fire out like bullets from a machine gun.

“Amber.”

Her tone switches from anger to pain and her volume rises. “He was my horse, my horse. Do you hear? I loved him.” Tears pour freely. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She stamps her foot in anger, like her mother.

Joseph gets up to give Amber a hug.

“Don’t touch me,” warns Amber. She steps back. “You don’t love me. You don’t love anybody. All you care about is your work. Just like Mom says. Money is all that is important to you.” Amber backs up again. “I hate you. I hate you,” she screams. Amber turns and runs to the stairs.

Joseph starts chasing after her, wanting to hold her, to explain, to apologize. He calls out to her. She turns. Her anger stops him. Her pain burns fiery red. The need to spit out poison bites at her. Amber turns and charges up the stairs.

Hoping to talk to Amber when she has cooled down Joseph plans to talk to her before supper next day. Amber avoids him by going to visit a friend. She doesn’t come home for supper. Desperate to talk to his daughter he goes to her girlfriend’s home.

Joseph tells Amber about the vet’s emergency call pulling him out of a meeting with Mr. Olsen’s suppliers. Then he relates the vet’s diagnosis and recommendation. As he suspects, Amber listens even though the information is several days late

“I thought of calling you then, but the vet didn’t want to have to make a return visit to the Wicksbergs. I’m sorry, Amber. Maybe I should have insisted that he come back, but lately life at work has been a major turmoil. I thought I couldn’t handle any more situations.” He holds Amber’s attention. “When the vet asked if I wanted to prolong Hoss’s suffering, I gave in. Please forgive me.” He hopes her silence means she’s considering his request.

Joseph describes the events of the last week to his friend. “I drove to Amber’s friend’s place to talk to Amber, to apologize, to say I’m sorry, to see if she’ll forgive me.” Joseph pauses, uncertain if he should continue.

“And?” asks Thomas.

When Joseph looks up, puzzled, Thomas clarifies. “Did she forgive you?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say anything Friday night. I didn’t really expect her to. She saw me come home Saturday evening and Sunday morning. She didn’t say anything.

When the marriage breaks up, Amber can’t help worrying she was part of the cause.  Would her father have stayed if she accepted his apology? Would he have stayed if she hadn’t said she hated him?

She stews. I allowed emotion to rule. I was hurt. I lost Hoss. I was angry. Dad didn’t give me a chance to say good-bye to Hoss. I didn’t mean to split the family.

 haiku capsule:

angry words spoken

hurt feelings, connections severed

misgivings too late

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ALERT<––>CITY PLANNERS

MOM

Mom

When you were a child living at home, were you aware of any parent who was really tuned into you? What memories stand out?

For me it was Mom. Dad was easy going and friendly enough, but my mother was a stay-at-home-mom. She had much more time to watch me.  

When I enrolled in the Faculty of Education, she smiled. “I always thought you would be a teacher. Before you started school, the neighbors’ kids came over to play. You would sit them in small rows and pretend to be their teacher.”

I ended up teaching for thirty-one years.

Mom and I were one when it came to food. I loved to eat: she loved to cook. Perfect! Every now and then she would add or reduce an ingredient. I’d guess what she did. Lucky for me, Dad wasn’t big on eating so Mom cooked to please me. Since Dad was at work when Mom did her baking, I had no competition to see who would clean the bowl, lick the spoon.

Even though she died more than twenty-five years ago, she still stands beside me when I make borscht, kapusta, potato/dumpling soup, potato pie, corn meal, cabbage rolls or perogies. “It’s not only what you put in but how you make it, that counts,” she said.

I learned the how in making perogies. To make the dough, water had to drip in to the flour while you were mixing. Wait until the dough starts clumping into balls and there’s little sign of dry flour in the bowl. Then sprinkle a little olive oil. Dough can’t be too dry or too sticky. “To properly seal each perogy, squeeze the edges tight and slightly slide your finger and thumb together. Then when they’re boiling, the perogies they won’t open and lose their potatoes.”

If she were here now, I would ask her how she made her cinnamon buns, the ones with the dried fruit. We didn’t practice making them enough.

In my novel, Baggage burdens. I describe a similar attachment between Jill and her mother. Dads can be seen as special too. Many events show how Daniel and his father develop a very strong attachment. Both parents may have a very close relationship with their child, as is the case with Amber. She senses her father’s unspoken pain. She speaks more frankly to her mother than any family member or family friend can.

Jill’s mother stands back from her hairstyling creation. “You look absolutely beautiful.”

Jill melts into her heavenly memory, feeling safe, loved, treasured. She soaks up the event as if absorbing a hot summer day’s sun with the hope it will never end.

Jill opens the second album, a new chapter in Daniel’s life. She’s documenting an ever-growing closer relationship between Joseph and Daniel. Pictures feature Joseph running beside Daniel for his first bicycle ride and Daniel sitting on Joseph’s knees steering the lawn tractor. The photo of Daniel sitting on top of a pile of pruned lilac branches to weigh them down as Joseph drove the tractor supports the caption, Dad’s helper. The following picture shows father and son working together in the garden. Joseph scribed the caption, My helper. Jill recalls Daniel beaming when he read it.

 haiku capsule:

Mom baking cupcakes

me, licking the icing spoon

lifelong bonding times

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Shouldn’t Have Said That