Lois and Allan, 1946

Lois and Allan, 1946, originally uploaded by The River Thief.

A year ago today my life as a daughter officially ended with my mother's death. My father and good friend died on Valentine's Day in 1991. On this first anniversary I have just concluded my final duty to my parents, arranging the grave marker for their cremation plot at the North Vancouver cemetery. It was installed yesterday and I have just come back from mailing the cheque to Gerry Brewer, who made this final and amazingly painful duty so much easier. Perhaps it's sad that we have never actually met, but I appreciated not having to make an appointment, being able to select a grave marker online and work with emailed proofs, especially since the interment process was a little fraught for me. I also mailed copies of my parents' wedding film to the three cousins to whom I'm closest. One is featured in the film, as she was my mother's junior bridesmaid, her father shot the film (but still manages to be in it, so I'm not quite sure who else was involved in the filming, perhaps her mother as well), and - well - so many of our relatives are in it that I thought they should have copies.

Over the last few days I've been going through photos, editing, scanning, cropping, adjusting, and posting on flickr in a family photos set I've created.

This morning I found a photo I must have seen several times before but had never really looked at. There are several similar photos of my father during his army years, horsing around with one or another of his sisters, flirting with a local waitress before he 'shipped out' to WWII, striding into his future with a grin on his devilishly handsome face. I hadn't even realized it was my mother in this photo until I looked at it closely this morning. But on the back is written, in my mother's hand: "Aug. 16/46. Lois & Allan. AND THE HAT."

In looking at the photo and reading the date, I suddenly realized this was the first photo ever taken of my parents together, and that it was taken very shortly - probably no more than two weeks - after they had met.

It definitively answers the question that some of my cousins have had the courage to ask, 'What did he see in her?'

My father is not only movie-star handsome in this photo, he is in his prime. Snappily turned out in his newly acquired civvie finery, recently demobbed, he looks proud and determined here. There is no doubt in my mind that he was thinking, as he glanced at the photographer, 'this is the one.' Probably, since it was 1946, it was phrased, 'This is the woman I'm going to marry.'

But it is the look on my mother's face that amazes. The softness, the glow, the yielding tenderness. It's obvious she's captivated.

I wish I had known that woman a little better, the one who, for a brief while anyway, believed that life was full of infinite possibilities and the world was her oyster.

Tuesday's Child

British North America Bank, Kingsmere, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007.

Monday’s Child

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

-- Mother Goose

I’ve always loved this rhyme, partly because I was born on a Tuesday. Being fair of face would be nice, and if I had to rank the days on which I could have been born, I’d say that after Tuesday, being loving and giving (Friday’s child), or a fair-of-face Monday’s child would be the next best things. I don’t aspire to be a Sunday’s child, although obviously they have it all. Sometimes I’ve wondered if they made a mistake and I was actually born on a Thursday or a Saturday, along with all those others for whom life seems to be semi-constant struggle.

The swimming metaphor for life has always worked for me. Technically I’m a fire sign, but there’s a LOT of water in my chart. (This is not an astrology-free zone.) For some parts of your life you’re floating, drifting in the water currents and letting them take you where they will. You’re strong and confident, and in this phase of existence you feel extremely safe and relaxed. Who doesn’t love this phase?

When things are going badly in my life, I feel like I’m treading water. Anyone who’s been broke for an extended period of time and has had to effect economies knows this. I’ve always relied on my sense of humour to get me through the rough patches, and so far it’s working. Over the course of the past year I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the expression, Don’t borrow trouble. I’ve made a conscious effort to stop worrying about whether things are going to work out or not. A former friend is right: it will all work out.

And then there are the times when you’re trying to get somewhere and the only way to do that is to swim purposefully and vigorously towards your destination. I seem to have had fewer periods of this phase in my life than the other two. I’m not sure why that is, and I wonder if other people feel the same way, or if there is just a fairly wide variance amongst people in terms of precisely how purposeful they are. I’ve often been described as ‘driven’ – but I make quite a few left turns along the way. I like to navigate by the sun and reflect by the moon.

I agree that the death of one’s parents means one has reached the final phase of separation and individuation (although some choose not to separate and individuate – I’m not quite sure why). My mother’s death has given me something I am not sure she ever truly wanted me to have, although it’s something she often said she wanted for me: a sense of infinite possibilities. Ordinarily I am a decisive person. As I get older, however, I have learned to temper my spontaneity with a little reflection. Now for a lake, some sunshine, and a flat-bottomed rowboat in which to sit and reflect.