Precious Time with Kadir

It’s already February 22nd and I have only posted once this month.

I have been feeling very tired and not very creative, basically putting one foot after the other to get through the work weeks.

The one bright spot was last Wednesday when Kadir came over again and we walked down to Sport Mart to get him a gym strip.

Our visit started out with a mini-lecture from me as he was an hour late and didn’t seem to think an explanation was necessary. This kind of tardiness was congenital with all his siblings too and only when they got older did they get the message that punctuality was a definite asset.

I tried to explain that when he was that late I doubted he would come at all and was close to leaving to do something else. He lectured me back.

“Why are you upset? It was the first sunny day in a long time (not true but perhaps the first sunny day when he was actually at school) and I was playing hacky-sack with my friends.”

“Didn’t you think I might be worried? I countered.

“Well, occupy yourself!”

He one-lined me into submission and gave me a withering and pitying look to follow the words.

He'd already given me the best news I've heard in a while. He's back in school and he told me his counselor has worked out a strategy for him to get through grade 10 if he takes his Science separately in summer school. It looks do-able to him and that is a huge incentive.

At Sport Mart we were fortunate to come upon a bargain in the gym clothes and shoes and he was happy with his purchases. At one point a young girl with a name tag reading Natalia and a strong accent was looking for his size in shoes and he had wandered off to another isle.

She found his size and so I called him over by name. The look on her face was one of pure wonder. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“From here,” I replied.

“That is a Russian name,” she offered up with a face of pure innocence and delight.

I took him for a close up of the new Shangri-La high rise and we went to Urban Fare for a bite. He had suggested Wendy’s but for the same price I knew I could get him a chicken dinner c/w potatoes, rice, veggies and gravy.

While I was paying for it he disappeared, to get us a table I thought. When I arrived at the table, he was bent over the take-out box and savagely wolfing down his dinner…never mind waiting for dad. It looked like he hadn’t eaten in a month. I guess that's what a 15 year old appetite looks like!

By the time I started into my dinner, he was finished and politely asking if another piece of chicken would cost much. No problem…I just forked mine over, as I wasn’t really hungry and knew I could catch up later at home.

Afterwards we walked across the street to Tim Horton’s for a hot chocolate to sip on the way to the bus stop. We were so deep in talk that I missed Howe Street and we found ourselves at Richards and Georgia and so we looped back around to the courthouse where the bus stop is located.

We sat on a nearby planter ledge and talked some more while waiting for the Oak Street bus.

When the bus arrived I kissed him goodbye and told him I loved him and was proud of him. How I wish my dad had said those words to me as a teenager.

As he boarded the bus he was hooking up to his I-Pod and though I jockeyed to get a last wave and could see him clearly as the bus pulled away, he was looking straight ahead and already gone into another dimension…a big change from the days when we used to exchange numerous waves goodbye until out of sight of each other.

But the feeling of warmth and love I was bathed in on my walk home along the darkening streets was evidence of the worth of this precious time spent with my son.

A New and Brighter Day

This morning after only one day of the ground hog grumblings of 6 more weeks of winter the sun came out.

Even the normally taciturn post lady offered a greeting as I came up from the laundry room and astonished me by stating what a nice day it was.

After all there's hope!

I received a Twitter message from my friend Danny advising that as per its Superbowl announcement, Denny's Restaurants all across North America were offering free Grand Slam breakfasts to all comers until 2 p.m. I slid in just under the wire and our local Denny's at Thurlow and Davie looked like the Union Gospel Mission on Christmas Day.

The CNN news media twittered back:

Denny's slammed by breakfast giveaway http://tinyurl.com/att4bh

This sort of advertising campaign, a brilliant stroke of intuitive genius in a jaded corporate world would not have been thinkable before Barak Obama and the current economic crisis.

I had never seen the restaurant so busy, and despite the protests and complaints of the usual still-drunk-from-the-night-before rowdies, the staff and management with all hands on and perhaps triple its usual staff were a living breathing example of the meaning of customer service and generosity of spirit.

And what a note of optimism to sound in a year amid thunderings of doom and gloom!

After my hearty breakfast and over a month of snow, rain, sleet and freezing temperatures rarely seen on the West Coast I took my first seawall walk of the year to English Bay.

Down at the waterfront a grizzled veteran in Cowboy hat and rawhides who usually strums aimlessly at his guitar amid shouts and jokes to his drinking buddies on the nearby benches was in the middle of a full fledged rounding version of Marguaritaville, while an elderly lady sat by his side head inclined in rapt listening attention and with a look of admiration in her eyes as she gazed at him. He sounded pretty damn good, so good that his usual ranting buddies also shut up and watched him!

I made it all the way to English Bay and home in about an hour and a half after a stop or two along the way.

Thunderclouds on the horizon be damned, it is this kind of day that makes one want to shout Halleluliah!

And when I got home and checked email my thoughts and visualization of the night before were proved prophetic. I received a note from my son Ky who is now in Barcelona and walked down to the waterfront for his first ever glimpse of the splendid Mediterranean Sea.

For today anyway, its a new dawn and a new day!