Notes from Everland

It is another idyllic day on Saturna Island. I have just come inside after a relaxing session seated out on the front deck overlooking Lyall Harbor. Chaya prepared a delicious tomato and black bean soup for lunch and so I was well nourished beforehand. Chaya spent most of the day preparing 2 lasagnas for Bettianne's 85th birthday party tomorrow. She turned 85 yesterday and looked after Dylan and his friend Charlotte all day.  They all went out to East Point with her and her grandson Stanley. The party will be held a Priscilla's Haggis Farm, just a piece down the road from us. Gord the fiddler who played at my birthday will be there and our friends Dick and Annie Wolenta will also be there. They have just returned from Hawaii where they visited their families and friends. Dick [who is in his 80s but going strong] reminds me strongly of a young hippie that I met on the train to Winnipeg on my way to attend my father's funeral in 1973. I noticed them get on the train aro...

Yesterday was a rest day for me after the busy activities earlier in the week. I found that the night before last and the one before that my dream state had returned. But last night before sleep I got up around 4 times and paced as my brain was cartwheeling. Yesterday for my daughter Chaya was a whirlwind of activity as she cleaned house in preparation for Dylan's return from time spent with his dad in Vancouver. She can do several things at once, multitasking without losing focus. Earlier in the day she had vacuumed all the rooms in the house and scoured the bathroom including shower, sink and tub. This week her partner Rick had brought home a load of plums from the trees in his yard, so Chaya decided to make pectin free plum jam. She was bent over the steaming pot when I first saw what she was up to...inhaling the fragrance. She turned to me with a frown and said, I made a mistake following the recipe. I should have put the sugar in after the fruit had boiled . But that sta...

It is 3:24 a.m. and this mid-night I am connecting to J-Pod. These magnificent orcas are struggling to survive and my daughter Chaya sent me a video via her iPhone of this pack of wild undersea horses pounding through the pass of the Georgia Strait. I have been hoping to catch a glimpse of them but so far have not been in the right place at the right time, but it is clear to me tonight I have been getting close. And I have been getting reminders, clues, pushes from my dear ones that I am on the right track, like this little room I have been granted overlooking Lyall Harbour on Saturna...with its stain glass mural of the mother Orca and her calf. My youngest sister Dianne who lives in Calgary reminded me too that she hoped I would listen for the singing of the whales. Dianne's message came to life again tonight in the wee hours when I remembered that I used to work for Greenpeace in Vancouver and our mission was to bring a Save the Whales program into the public schools. I w...

It is 17 degrees and sunny with a light haze over the island. I am still in recovery mode after my rocking Saturna Island 72nd birthday party hosted by my angel baby girl Chaya and her partner Rick. She invited a local baker named Gord who commutes to the island from Victoria and sometimes works near Priscilla at the island bakery and he arrived with a fiddle under his arm. He played a combination of jigs and popular songs with precision and a real feel for the music. His smile and charming manner were infectious. I felt the spirit of my dad in the music he played and he seemed to sense that. Bettianne baked and brought a “thunder and lightning” pair of sponge white and rich chocolate cakes with the numbers 72 spelled out in the candle placement. I got cheers for acing the blowout of them. Priscilla greeted me with a kiss on the lips and told me her daughter Jesse [who is working in Victoria] sent her love. Joel and Emily Bettianne's two young charges also came and who knew...

Bettianne is a friend of mine. She tells me she loves me with a Zen Master's sense of straight shooting. She is 85 this year and much more active than I am. She is one of the few coming to my birthday dinner which will be hosted by Chaya this Friday. She is one of the island's elders and has lived on a property built by she and her late husband Gord for many years. One of her very successful sons is on site finishing the job at present. They are adding a wing with many bedrooms to host family and friends. She was instrumental in bringing me to the island and when Chaya came to tell me her plans, Bettianne called her cell phone only a block from my apartment and told her " don't forget to bring your father home ." At a children's birthday party one day she enlisted her grandson Stanley to take my used plate to the trash. He is a young man in his mid twenties, and he surveyed me closely up and down before doing what she ordered. I think I told him "...