Tag: USA

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I’d like to say all my bags are packed and I’m ready to go. I’m not. That is what I will do today.

I used to love travel. I remember the excitement in getting ready for a big trip. And there were some very big trips in my life.

From my home base in Canada, I flew to Sri Lanka for a three month walking trek and sojourn through India and Nepal. On another occasion, I flew to Seoul Korea to connect with my family on tiny and dazzling beautiful black sand Jeju Island off South Korea’s coast.

Then there was the southern sojourn to Argentina to take a ten day horse trek across the Andes. And I once flew due North and landed in Iqaluit, Nunavut for several frost filled days to attend the Arctic Winter Games.

Many writers laud the benefits of travel. I do. It changes you. It broadens your perspective on so many things. It can shatter the illusion of cultural superiority that some secretly harbor if they have not travelled very far from their home base.

One look at a carved monument in almost any country should knock that out of your system pretty quickly. Not always, of course. But often.

Travel is a kind of education that you cannot replicate by reading books. Books stimulate the imagination. Travel stimulates the senses. Nothing could replace the overwhelming sights and sounds of a spice market in New Delhi, India.

Celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, is one of the most unique occasions I’ve ever taken part in. In under an hour, me and my traveling companions were physically drenched in a dozen colors from handfuls of special chalk thrown at us. Deliberately!

As you wander the streets of New Delhi (or anywhere in India on that unique, special holiday), everyone is equally streaked with multiple colors of dust.

Indians generally have a great sense of occasion. Nothing can match the style and splendor of an Indian wedding drenched in rich fabrics, brilliant colors and enticing smells.

When most of my college buddies were working at traditional summer jobs after the term was over, I spent every summer traveling on some pretense or another. Europe. First as a waitress in a massive tourist hotel and the following summer as a student. Then Egypt as a student after my third year.

After graduation, I spent several months traipsing through Asia. So many indelible memories. So much experience and learning – mostly good.

I am leaving my country again. This time, on a more permanent basis. We cannot predict the future with flawless accuracy but we can make some educated guesses.

For me that means the next few years will be spent among my continent mates directly to our South. Living in the USA at this juncture in history is an ongoing daily education. I won’t make a qualitative call on what I’m learning there.

Travel brings you home with new eyes. You see everything that was familiar and there before but differently somehow.

It is easy for me to appreciate the old song, “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Pa-ree?” Travel was like an addiction where the more I did it, the more I craved. I deemed it a healthy addiction and only now see the cravings diminishing somewhat.

Hours from now, I’ll be winging my way South to rejoin my husband and put this country in the rearview mirror for awhile.

When the jet place departs, I fully expect my bags to be packed and ready to go.

As ready as I’ll ever be at any rate.

Wells From Which We Spring, Pt. 1

Grace Smith came from a small Canadian town near the border between Canada and the US. The Canadian province of New Brunswick and the American state of Maine, to be clear. Grace was born in 1900. Her life and Canada’s were at the same starting gate of sweeping social change brought on by the industrial age.

As did most young girls of her era, young Grace anticipated entering a marriage and having a family of her own when she grew up. Several hours away in Nashwaak Bridge, NB, Scott McPherson was born somewhere in the middle of a passel of Scottish immigrant descendant kids – eight in total. He had older brothers and sisters. Younger ones, too.

The original McPherson clan were retired Scottish military who were given land grants along the Nashwaak River in the late 1700s as a pension for their service. By the early 1900s, most of the McPherson military cachet had worn off. The family mostly made its way through farming and supplemental seasonal work.

It was clear from early on in his life that young Scott would follow in the family logging tradition to earn his keep and make his way. When and where he met young Grace Smith is unclear. But it is pretty safe to assume it was at a church-related function.

For girls and boys in rural New Brunswick just after the turn of the twentieth century, opportunities for social intercourse were strictly contained and chaperoned. Young Grace and Scott probably met up at a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon social.

The girls would have brought baskets full of homemade baked goods as their offerings to the refreshments table. Each food offering was clearly marked so all and sundry would know who had prepared what and how well. The boys had likely washed their hands and hair and even put on a clean shirt for the occasion.

Whatever young Grace Smith was offering, young Scott McPherson took a liking to. Their courtship was focussed and brief. A wedding and casting off into married life ensued pretty quickly.

All and sundry waited patiently – as was the tradition – for news of a blessed event that would herald the start of this new branch of the McPherson family tree. For an unseemly number of years, everyone waited in vain.

Grace and Scott lived through the Great Depression in the early days of their marriage. Scott worked seasonally and with little enthusiasm. Country people generally fared better than city folk in those dark ten years. At least on a farm, there were cows for milk and meat, and chickens for eggs. The bread was homemade and a yeast cake cost four cents. Sweet baked goods were part of the daily fare.

It turned out the delay and eventual abandonment of hoping for that “blessed event” were based on a medical condition. The condition was not that Grace was barren.

Scott’s shiftlessness did not apply to what they called “the pretty ladies” where he was reportedly quite industrious. He was a great flirt and quick with a story and a laugh. Good-looking and well-built, he apparently had a stable of young farm wives and ladies of lesser social standing who were happy to share their baked and other homely goods.

The ultimate outcome, however, neither he nor Grace wanted nor could have they easily foreseen. Scott contracted a venereal disease. He passed it to Grace. Scott’s dalliances and the disease he had caught passed to Grace and rendered her sterile. It is hard to imagine that it was all hearts and flowers in the McPherson marriage.

It is hard to impossible in our modern era to imagine the obstacles young Grace was up against as a young married woman in a rural conservative community. First, she would only have had access to rudimentary medicine. Her life and Scott’s were spared by whatever treatment methods were available at the time. Their potential future progeny were not.

TO BE CONTINUED …