Alexandra Elizabeth -Burnaby circa 1979

All my life I have attempted to be independent. Now at my age of 81 it is not all that easy.

Every year, sometime in early June, I participate in the open-garden week-end of the Vancouver Rose Society. What this means is that I am now dealing with my garden so that it will be as good as it can in June. 

The perils of opening a garden

In my deck there are some rotten planks. I used to fix those. But I no longer have a saw to cut the planks that I buy at my neighbourhood lumber yard. I was at a loss. I told my Lillooet daughter Alexandra. She went on Google and found a handyman called Edward. Edward called me a couple of hours later and today he visited and inspected my deck. He is a sweet Russian gentleman who was impressed by my Russian submarine clock on my officina door, and when I showed him my Russian Horizont swivel lens camera, he smiled. It seems I am in good hands and he will repair my rotten planks in one or two weeks.

In a long past blog I read what is below. I am quite obsessed with the idea of exploring my memories (which by definition have to be in the past).

In a NYTimes review of André Aciman’s Alibis–Essays on Elsewhere - reviewer Teju Cole writes:

We enjoy with him the satisfactions of coincidences, and of dreaming of pasts in which we dreamed of the future from which we are now dreaming of the past.

It immediately made me think and on my bed with my two cats on top of me, I glanced at the two portraits I took of Hilary and Alexandra sometime in 1979 when we lived in Burnaby. I took both photographs, in which I sandwiched a Patterson Screen with my colour negative in my enlarger, to a U-Frame-It store in New Westminster.  Both photographs have faded because they have been exposed to light all these years. When I scanned Ale’s photograph I was able to fix it. But I have noticed that the correct version seen here becomes overly yellow in both Facebook and Twitter. What is afoot with them?

I look at the sad look on her face. It seems that even then I was not keen on making my subjects smile. I love the sadness in her eyes which now somehow reflects the loss of her mother three years ago and her concern over her old father living alone with two cats.

Those little adults & their unsmiling faces

Between my Hilary calling me up every day and making sure we see a good film at a theatre together and Ale getting me a good handyman I can state, unequivocally, that it feels fine not to be completely independent.