I am afraid of flying. I spent the duration of the flight carefully studying the movements of the flight attendants. I try to reassure myself prior to take-off that this flight is all in a day’s work for them, just another day at the office. The casual gestures, the Christmas banter of the pilot over the intercom, and the lack of a seat belt sign, eventually convince me that I may actually land in Newfoundland in one piece. Or perhaps I owed my new found sense of well-being to the ativan I washed down with a glass of wine.
Winter landings in St. John’s are never pleasant when you turn around at Signal Hill. The plane shakes and rolls, the turbulence diminishing my appreciation of the beauty of St. John’s Harbour and the city lights. I gaze out the tiny window, squinting to recognize the familiar landmark.
When I was a little girl, my Poppy would take us up the winding hill on Sunday afternoons. Cotton Candy ice creams in hand, we would walk the trails barely registering the history lessons Poppy tried to impress on us. “This is the site of the first wireless transmission over the transatlantic, received by Marconi...” "Cool, but how far do you think I can throw this rock, and when can we go to the stadium. “ We were more interested in quizzing him about the ghosts we had heard of who had slipped through the ice on the nearby ponds and been sucked into the bottomless pit of the Atlantic Ocean. Staring out at the frigid Atlantic below, I tried to will any fragment of memory to my consciousness. Nothing but flurries in the sky and more than a few regrets.
“Abby, look out the window. That’s Signal Hill. I used to go there with Poppy all the time”, I whisper to my 9 year old daughter. I don’t tell her that when I outgrew these childhood visits, her father and I would go there to park as teenagers. It was where he gave me the first diamonds I ever owned. Sparkly diamond earrings that I hid from my mother for months because I knew she would disapprove as my father couldn’t have afforded them, and a boy doesn’t give you diamonds for nothing. Absently, I finger the princess cut solitaire on my left hand wondering whatever happened to them.
“Abby, look out the window. That’s Signal Hill. I used to go there with Poppy all the time”, I whisper to my 9 year old daughter. I don’t tell her that when I outgrew these childhood visits, her father and I would go there to park as teenagers. It was where he gave me the first diamonds I ever owned. Sparkly diamond earrings that I hid from my mother for months because I knew she would disapprove as my father couldn’t have afforded them, and a boy doesn’t give you diamonds for nothing. Absently, I finger the princess cut solitaire on my left hand wondering whatever happened to them.
Poppy had approved of my future husband right from the start. They shared the bond of diabetes although they handled the burden of the disease quite differently. Poppy only ever admitted to having a touch of the diabetes and staunchly refused to take any steps to counteract the side effects, whereas my husband went on to become a diabetes educator. Nanny was forever scolding Pop that alcohol would drive up his blood sugars. Jimmy would test Pop’s sugars for him, and give him a top-up of insulin so that Pop could enjoy a nip of drambuie or beer and clamato juice if it was before 5. From these normal blood sugars and a nagging wife disproved, a beautiful friendship was born.
When I was seventeen, my grandfather invited Jimmy to visit their home in Chapel Arm with me for the weekend for the first time. The fact that he would allow Jimmy to stay there when we weren’t married was a testament to how much he thought of my then- boyfriend. “He’s a good catch, Jan. I hope you don’t screw it up.” Poppy spent the weekend fixated on how to feed his diabetic visitor to our great amusement.” What can you have for breakfast?” he demanded in his gruff Newfoundland dialect. “I can eat everything”, Jimmy had responded, “ French toast, bacon, eggs, cereal, pancakes, oatmeal, fruit. Anything is fine.” The next morning we awoke to a feast of all the aforementioned foods and then some. We ate until our sides ached. As we were clearing the dishes, I overheard Pop telling my grandmother,” Jesus Mauri, now I know how that boy caught the diabetes. He don’t eat enough.”
Four years later, it was Nan and Pop visiting us in Nova Scotia to celebrate our wedding. We could hear Nanny moving downstairs, her footsteps restless and persistent. I listen to the hushed argument taking place in the room below me with growing trepidation. Crawling out of bed, I call to my Dad to check on Nan and Pop. We discover her on the bathroom floor, my grandfather standing over her, looking lost. Mauri can’t get up, he states the obvious. Nan tells us that she has stomach pain and that her arms hurt. Dad and Poppy guide her back to bed, telling her that a rest will do her good. Jimmy insists on checking her pulse which is thready and weak. “ We’re calling an ambulance”, he announces with an air of authority I didn’t know he possessed. The next moments flash before me in a blur. Dad and Poppy insisting that she has an upset stomach and there is no need to call an ambulance. Jimmy ,dialling 911 anyway, his voice steady and calm as he tells the operator that my grandmother is in cardiac arrest.
What? Surreal silence surrounds me and it is a relief when it is broken by the blare of the sirens racing toward us. The attendants take over the role of squabbling children, arguing over whether there is time to get to Halifax or should they go to the Dartmouth General which is closer. “This is touch and go”, the younger one tells me. “Tell all the family to meet us at the Dartmouth General.”
In stunned disbelief, we endure the longest 30 minutes in history huddled together in the hospital room. I can’t meet my grandfather’s eyes because I know if I see his pain, it will spread to me like an infectious disease. If I start to cry, I remember thinking, I may never stop so I tune out my grandfathers tears and try not to listen to him say that he can’t imagine a life without his Mauri. I stare at the ER doors and l sense, even before I see them, sliding apart. The doctor meets our expectant eyes. He is smiling so I exhale.
Three days later, she is crediting my husband with saving her life. “The rest of them would have put me back to bed and left me to die” she tells the nurses for what must be the 137th time. Nanny enjoyed seven years of excellent health and travel after that scare until cancer intruded her body like a slow-moving thief, stealing away her dignity and then her life. “Put on your seat belt, Mommy,” Abby breaks my quiet reverie, “We’re about to land. I hope it’s really bumpy.” Bracing myself for what lies ahead, I tighten and buckle the belt.
I busied myself with adjusting Abby’s seatbelt, trying to suppress my bubbling annoyance that her father had sent Abby in his place.
Poppy and Nanny would have expected him to come, and I was tired of fielding questions about why he wouldn’t be at Pop’s funeral. When did he become so over-worked and indispensible that he didn’t have time to attend the funeral of our family patriarch? Poppy passing so close on the heels of Nanny six months earlier had deflated all of us as surely as helium balloons that had been bought too early for a birthday party. Maybe it was just too much to absorb, too depressing to go through the rituals again so soon after Nan. Too soon. Poppy would have expected her to steal his thunder in such a way, I thought to myself as the plane thumped to a stop on the runway. Just as I resented his absence, I acknowledged a stab of jealousy that my husband could opt out of this the same way one might decide to skip Christmas and go on a cruise. He just knows I can handle it, I tell myself again, If I told him I needed him here, he would have come. But I didn’t.
Poppy and Nanny would have expected him to come, and I was tired of fielding questions about why he wouldn’t be at Pop’s funeral. When did he become so over-worked and indispensible that he didn’t have time to attend the funeral of our family patriarch? Poppy passing so close on the heels of Nanny six months earlier had deflated all of us as surely as helium balloons that had been bought too early for a birthday party. Maybe it was just too much to absorb, too depressing to go through the rituals again so soon after Nan. Too soon. Poppy would have expected her to steal his thunder in such a way, I thought to myself as the plane thumped to a stop on the runway. Just as I resented his absence, I acknowledged a stab of jealousy that my husband could opt out of this the same way one might decide to skip Christmas and go on a cruise. He just knows I can handle it, I tell myself again, If I told him I needed him here, he would have come. But I didn’t.
As we taxied toward the terminal, I wondered if my husband remembered his first visit to Pop’s home in Chapel Arm. The old-fashioned bungalow, perched like a bird’s nest upon a rugged cliff overlooking the Atlantic, was where I passed my happiest childhood days. Through stinging tears, I lead my daughter down the narrow aisle of the plane, on our way to pay a last visit to the place dearest to my heart.
