Joaquin blinks and covers his face from the wind with his little arm. He´s bundled up in a sweater over a fluffy blue body suit. The stroller I can´t remember where we bought it as I push it into the brisk wind coming off the sea. As I push the stroller along the boardwalk I try to lean forward to get a better a look at him. Those sweet long dark lashes so like his mother´s ... Another gust of wind batters us and I look down again anxiously. He´s placidly staring out to sea. Isadora´s father and grandfather were in the merchant navy and my father was in the navy and grandpa was a first mate in the English merchant navy. Something to hold onto. The stroller slips from my grasp and another gust of wind slaps my face as the sun slides out from behind a gray bank of clouds and nearly blinds me. I can´t find the stroller and I panic flailing my arms about.
I´ve slipped sideways off the remains of a trunk that I had fallen asleep against. To my right the remains of lunch in a plastic bag and over there the chainsaw and axe. And the sun is now shining right in my eyes. A late November sun, slanting through the bare trees - although some oaks retain their leaves. When Father collapsed on the driveway late last winter and died a few hours later I had wanted to move us all to Renfrew but Isa had objected. Jans and his company ( Cruz Phospates ) had recompensed us well and it seemed the moment to return for a while at least. Isa, however, wanted her Argentine son to grow up Argentino. With Diego back and Ori finally out of high school and now working as a pastry chef at L´Hermitage ( Sargento Vanni had helped her get the job and his company - SeguriSur - provides ´logistics´ to Cruz Phosphates ) Isa felt supported and liberated and wanted to stay where she felt at home.
The crows cackle loudly like Harpies and I want to throw something at them. They´ve been here for years in this woodlot; not a forest not marked by any path - as in the words of Dante in Canto XIII - but rather sliced into sections by some well trod footpaths down which I stumble with logs on my shoulders for our furnace. Mother keeps up with her aerobics but she´s slowing down more and more and she failed her test twice and has decided to let me do all the driving. We spend early May to mid September in Mar del Plata with Joaquin and Isa Diego and Oriana. Then we return here to cut the wood and they spend the holidays with us and return in mid February when Mardel is reclaimed by it´s citizens from the summer tourists. I finish cutting the wood and doing our taxes in March and April and we head to the airport the first week in May and start the cycle again. So it means a little over five months of each year without Joaquin. I sit up and then stand up slowly and trod over to the chainsaw. More wood to cut before they come in under two weeks.
Most of the work on Nonepileptic seizures seems fairly recent. Physiologic nonepileptic seizures arise from metabolic disturbances disrupting brain function. Hypoglycemia can produce this and I am definitely hypoglycemic. There are also Physcogenic nonepileptic seizures and these are the result of physcological conflict and the stress it produces, or arise from emotional trauma. They start slowly and build and involve screams or cries in the middle or near the end. There may be unusual posturing but the recovery is much quicker than in the case of an epileptic seizure.
Dr. Salas seemed very confident that this was what afflicted me. What do you think? If you live and die by Luke and the Gospels then I was a possesed soul who fought the devil´s embrace and won - at the cost of a step towards suicide: tending to my mother as she spins out her last years in this faded wooden cottage rather than living the whole year in Mar del Plata. The forest of suicides in Canto XIII. But think of it as a post modern slip towards the safety and silence of death. Nothing as absolute as taking one´s life, as robbing your soul of its own flesh. If you believe in the certainty of medical science, however, then the answer is more straightforward and my choice to tend to my mother is making the best of conflicting demands on me. The crows flap into the air and head towards highway 132 cackling agressively. I think I spot a hawk circling above them in the pale low sky. For some reason it makes me think of Kabede and I wonder if that package I recieved from Tel Aviv was him. It was a gold krugerand ( how did it make it through customs? ) and a brief note - regards from Toby it said. I had fingered the metal disk and had felt my world slip slightly ... we all know Toby never really existed ... don´t we? I´m sure it was exactly what Kabede had wanted. But his elegant little revenge hadn´t lasted: when you´re past fifty you´ve either learned how to let things go or you hate the world. And I don´t hate the world. The crows disappear over the Lepine´s large california-style home and their cackles fade into the woods.
When they head down the escalator towards the baggage claim in Ottawa in two weeks, I´ll observe how much Joaquin has changed in the nearly three months since I´ve seen him. I´ll see who carries him - Isadora or Diego. It´s a long flight from Ezeiza to Pearson and then the shuttle to Ottawa, so he´ll be dead tired and cranky and I doubt he´ll feel like walking much. As I take him in my arms maybe he´ll be asleep, his hazel green eyes resting under those lovely lashes. His reddish chestnut hair tousled from the flight. His body warm and heavier every time. He´s going to be larger than me and I hope he´ll learn to love earlier than me. So I´ll leave you standing here in our woodlot, gentle and otherwise reader, as I walk towards the swamp and some dead poplars that need cutting. You can watch me as I head up over that little rise and disappear around the bend between the fir trees.
I´ve slipped sideways off the remains of a trunk that I had fallen asleep against. To my right the remains of lunch in a plastic bag and over there the chainsaw and axe. And the sun is now shining right in my eyes. A late November sun, slanting through the bare trees - although some oaks retain their leaves. When Father collapsed on the driveway late last winter and died a few hours later I had wanted to move us all to Renfrew but Isa had objected. Jans and his company ( Cruz Phospates ) had recompensed us well and it seemed the moment to return for a while at least. Isa, however, wanted her Argentine son to grow up Argentino. With Diego back and Ori finally out of high school and now working as a pastry chef at L´Hermitage ( Sargento Vanni had helped her get the job and his company - SeguriSur - provides ´logistics´ to Cruz Phosphates ) Isa felt supported and liberated and wanted to stay where she felt at home.
The crows cackle loudly like Harpies and I want to throw something at them. They´ve been here for years in this woodlot; not a forest not marked by any path - as in the words of Dante in Canto XIII - but rather sliced into sections by some well trod footpaths down which I stumble with logs on my shoulders for our furnace. Mother keeps up with her aerobics but she´s slowing down more and more and she failed her test twice and has decided to let me do all the driving. We spend early May to mid September in Mar del Plata with Joaquin and Isa Diego and Oriana. Then we return here to cut the wood and they spend the holidays with us and return in mid February when Mardel is reclaimed by it´s citizens from the summer tourists. I finish cutting the wood and doing our taxes in March and April and we head to the airport the first week in May and start the cycle again. So it means a little over five months of each year without Joaquin. I sit up and then stand up slowly and trod over to the chainsaw. More wood to cut before they come in under two weeks.
Most of the work on Nonepileptic seizures seems fairly recent. Physiologic nonepileptic seizures arise from metabolic disturbances disrupting brain function. Hypoglycemia can produce this and I am definitely hypoglycemic. There are also Physcogenic nonepileptic seizures and these are the result of physcological conflict and the stress it produces, or arise from emotional trauma. They start slowly and build and involve screams or cries in the middle or near the end. There may be unusual posturing but the recovery is much quicker than in the case of an epileptic seizure.
Dr. Salas seemed very confident that this was what afflicted me. What do you think? If you live and die by Luke and the Gospels then I was a possesed soul who fought the devil´s embrace and won - at the cost of a step towards suicide: tending to my mother as she spins out her last years in this faded wooden cottage rather than living the whole year in Mar del Plata. The forest of suicides in Canto XIII. But think of it as a post modern slip towards the safety and silence of death. Nothing as absolute as taking one´s life, as robbing your soul of its own flesh. If you believe in the certainty of medical science, however, then the answer is more straightforward and my choice to tend to my mother is making the best of conflicting demands on me. The crows flap into the air and head towards highway 132 cackling agressively. I think I spot a hawk circling above them in the pale low sky. For some reason it makes me think of Kabede and I wonder if that package I recieved from Tel Aviv was him. It was a gold krugerand ( how did it make it through customs? ) and a brief note - regards from Toby it said. I had fingered the metal disk and had felt my world slip slightly ... we all know Toby never really existed ... don´t we? I´m sure it was exactly what Kabede had wanted. But his elegant little revenge hadn´t lasted: when you´re past fifty you´ve either learned how to let things go or you hate the world. And I don´t hate the world. The crows disappear over the Lepine´s large california-style home and their cackles fade into the woods.
When they head down the escalator towards the baggage claim in Ottawa in two weeks, I´ll observe how much Joaquin has changed in the nearly three months since I´ve seen him. I´ll see who carries him - Isadora or Diego. It´s a long flight from Ezeiza to Pearson and then the shuttle to Ottawa, so he´ll be dead tired and cranky and I doubt he´ll feel like walking much. As I take him in my arms maybe he´ll be asleep, his hazel green eyes resting under those lovely lashes. His reddish chestnut hair tousled from the flight. His body warm and heavier every time. He´s going to be larger than me and I hope he´ll learn to love earlier than me. So I´ll leave you standing here in our woodlot, gentle and otherwise reader, as I walk towards the swamp and some dead poplars that need cutting. You can watch me as I head up over that little rise and disappear around the bend between the fir trees.
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