My Aunt Dorothy

My Aunt Akiko Dorothy Nakamachi passed away a few weeks ago. She wasn’t really my aunt, but 40 years ago my best friend Koji generously shared his aunt with me.

Over the years I grew to love and admire this woman. She was intelligent, witty and in the words of my younger brother, “really cool”. Paolo considered her cool because as a single woman she had travelled all over the world, twice going to Africa. That alone made her cool in Paolo’s eyes.

Aunt Dorothy’s life was one worthy of an epic novel. Born and raised in Vancouver, she fought Japanese racism to graduate as a registered nurse from St. Paul’s Hospital, after the Bishop interceded to get her admitted. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbour, she was interned in the B.C. interior at Greenwood internment camp, where she was the only nurse treating over 4,000 Japanese detainees. Many of the detainees had contracted T.B. and eventually so did Aunt Dorothy. She was transferred to a hospital and had a lung removed.

After the war the Japanese were not allowed to return to B.C. so she moved to Toronto. She entered the University of Toronto, where she earned an additional nursing degree and then worked as a Public Health nurse until her retirement.

Years later when the conservative government formally apologized to the Japanese who were interned, each of them was awarded $21,000 as a redress settlement. My Aunt Dorothy took that money and promptly bought herself a full length mink coat and hat.

Aunt Dorothy never married but I learned that she remained ever the romantic. I discovered that she and I shared a love for Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It gave me joy to be able to gift her with BBC videos of both, which I know she treasured.

In her last year she sent me a gift via Koji. It was a lovely damascene brooch she bought on one of her many trips to Japan. The brooch, made of iron or steel with interlacings of silver and gold, depicts a pagoda and the ever present Mount Fuji. I wore it over my heart at her funeral.

Since her passing, Koji has been going through Aunt Dorothy’s things and distributing them to family members. He gave me 16 English bone china tea cups and saucers that speak to me of my Aunt Dorothy’s grace and elegance, and of course of her love of tea. He also asked if I would like a statue of the Virgin Mary that St Paul’s hospital gave her at her graduation in 1940. I told him I would be honoured to receive it and to find a suitable place for it in my home office.

My Aunt Dorothy passed away in her sleep, just short of her 92nd birthday. I hope when I grow up that I’ll be just like her; intelligent, witty, strong, romantic and of course “really cool”.

Do we ever get too old to need our mothers?

I was doubled over the toilet recently being sick for the third time in twenty minutes, when I realized something … I wanted my mother. It wasn’t like I’d never been sick before, but something felt just a little scary this time. So what if I was 54 years old, does the statute of limitations run out on being mothered?

My parents live with me, which makes it easier for me to take care of them as they have multiple health issues. Over time, it seems, I have become the parent in this relationship. I take them to medical appointments, I control medication, and I worry about changes in their condition.

But now it was about me. As I recovered from my third visit to the toilet bowl, I grabbed my trusty Blackberry and dialled the home line downstairs. My mother picked up the phone and I suddenly started to cry and blurted out “I’m being sick, come upstairs please”. I didn’t even hear her hang up the phone and she was upstairs beside me. She got a cold wet facecloth and pressed it against my fevered forehead and immediately took charge. She asked pointed questions trying to determine the onset of my illness and possible cause.

Over the next two hours I made multiple trips to the toilet bowl and by the end I was as weak as a kitten and could hardly make it back to my bed. As I lay spent and sore, she tried to entice me with Ginger Ale and Camomile tea, having success with neither. I tried to sleep but was unable to. She lay down next to me on my bed and began regaling me with an account of the baseball game she had been watching when I phoned her. As she spoke, I remembered back to November 2002 when I had surgery and she helped me get in the shower one day. When I thanked her for being there to help, she prophetically said “Maybe someday I will be sick and you will have to take care of me”. Less than two months later she was diagnosed with cancer. Our roles reversed that day and I cared for her through radiation, chemotherapy, surgery and a blood clot. My once invincible mother had become mortal.

Seven years later, she still has more energy than anyone else in our family. Despite ongoing medical issues with an ulcer that simply will not heal there is no stopping her. In her spare time she knits and crochets beautiful baby items which she sells to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society and come June 11 she will be the centre of our Relay team when we participate in our sixth Relay for Life.

I’m a grown woman, financially independent, mature, confident, but when I’m doubled over a toilet bowl being sick, I am still my mother’s little girl and I’m not afraid to need her touch.

                                                    Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Hug me like you mean it ...

I always wanted to meet Dr Leo Buscaglia but he died before I could. It wasn’t just his extraordinary lectures that I wanted to experience firsthand; I wanted to line up after the lecture with thousands of others to experience a Buscaglia hug. He was a master and an advocate of the hug. He had this to say about hugging:

“Nine times out of ten, when you extend your arms to someone, they will step in, because basically they need precisely what you need.”

I don’t know if it grew out of his doctorial studies or the fact that he was Italian but he surely elevated the hug to an art form.

I love being hugged. Not the air hugs from those who lean in to hug you without actually touching you. No, I’m talking about the hugs that leave you breathless and just a little bit sore. Those are the hugs that cry out “Hey I want you to know that I’m here”. My nieces and nephew hug that way. Their hugs are exuberant and uninhibited and usually accompanied by a kiss and an “I love you Zia Nadia”. My gay friends hug that way. Their hugs say “Thank you for your acceptance and your love”. My relatives in Italy hug that way. Their hugs say “Why do have to live so far away… Oh my God you look just like your aunt Flora… why didn’t you phone, I would have made gnocchi… I didn’t think I’d live to see you come back and visit again”. There are Italian co-workers at the office that will stop me in the hall to give a hug when they haven’t seen me in a few months. Italians certainly don’t have the market on hugging. I recently discovered in our Costa Rican Service Centre that Costa Ricans will hug anybody and everybody. I felt right at home there.

The hugs give me comfort, they sustain me and they feel so good. Hugs don’t cost a cent and they are healing. Dr Harold Voth, psychiatrist has said: “Hugging can lift depression – enabling the body’s immune system to become tuned up. Hugging breathes fresh life into a tired body and makes you feel younger and more vibrant.”

HOW TO HUG

Hugging may sound like the simplest thing on earth, but it will help to keep a few things in mind. Non-hugs are no good. In his book Caring, Feeling, Touching, Dr Sidney Simon describes five non-hugs:

I. The A-frame hug, in which nothing but the huggers' heads touch.

2. The half-hug, where the huggers' upper bodies touch—while the other half twists away.

3. The chest-to-chest burp, in which the huggers pat each other on the back, defusing the physical contact by treating each other like infants being burped.

4. The wallet-rub, in which two people stand side-by-side and touch hips.

5. The jock-twirl, in which the hugger, who is stronger or bigger, lifts the other person off the ground and twirls him.

The real thing, the full body hug, touches all the bases. Dr Simon describes it like this: "The two people coming together take time to really look at each other. There is no evasion or ignoring that they are about to hug... You try as hard as you can to personalize and customize each hug you give... With a full body hug there is a sense of complete giving and fearless communication, one uncomplicated by words.”

So if you should meet me some day and open your arms, know that I will step right in for a hug. Dr Buscaglia and Dr Simon would approve.

Our Bedroom

I awake on Christmas morning and look up at the branches of our Christmas tree. It is my 6th birthday and I feel like a Christmas present as the tinsel catches the sunlight coming through the chintz curtains of our bedroom. My whole family sleeps in this room. It is one of only two rooms which we rent in this house, the other room being our kitchen. It is 1961 in Toronto’s Little Italy and the semi detached two story house is on a street where English is rarely spoken.

Our bedroom is at the front of the house on the second floor. It is a square room crammed with all of our worldly possessions. Entering the room there is a dresser on your right and then my single bed against the wall. Beside my bed and directly in front of the window is my Mama’s Singer pedal sewing machine. My Mama sews magic with that machine, transforming used clothes into dresses for me. At Christmas time we always buy a small real tree and place it on top of the sewing machine which is how I always end up sleeping under the branches and picking out pine needles from my bed.

On the other side of the room is my parent’s double bed. Hanging over their headboard is a plaster relief of the Holy Family which they brought from Italy in the steamer trunk as a memento of their wedding. Beside their bed is another dresser and then on the far wall, the crib where my sister Anna sleeps.

The room smells of a strangely comforting mixture of mothballs, camphor oil and Mama’s perfume “Evening in Paris”. Every evening my Papa winds up his alarm clock and sets the alarm. The ticking sound measures the night time, along with Papa’s snoring. The 5:00am alarm heralds the start of another work day for Papa. Mama will get up and make him breakfast, pack his lunch pail and he will head out on foot, to be picked up by the construction company truck.

On top of the dresser is a framed picture of a beautiful blond boy holding a ball. This is my older brother Renato, who died early the year I was born. This room knew sorrow again; when three years after I was born, Mama lost twin boys she had carried full term. After that loss she was bedridden for months, overcome with grief and rheumatic fever. I would play at the foot of her bed all day with my doll, oblivious to her grief, until Papa would return from work to make us supper.

The house is rarely quiet. The owner drinks heavily and often beats his wife and children. As a child I remember feeling like our small family was living under constant siege and that bedroom certainly felt like a refuge. Yet I have such fond memories of that room, that house and that time in my life.

Repatriation

Housebound and sick with the flu, I find myself sitting in front of the TV watching the most recent repatriation ceremony. I had previously seen short sound bites on the evening news but had never watched the entire ceremony. It’s not that I was indifferent to their sacrifice, but I struggled with a military force that had switched from historical peacekeeping to active fighting.

I’m a pacifist by nature. I’ve heard the Second World War stories my entire life. My parents, who endured life in occupied Italy, were quick to remind us children about making do without. I’ve heard the stories of the bombings, the near run ins with Nazi patrols, the partisan underground night time sabotage campaigns.

I’m thinking of all of this as the Canadian Forces plane gives up its heart breaking cargo of five coffins, each draped in a flag of the country these young people had given their lives for. It is unbearably cold at the airfield in Trenton, the snow is blowing and family members are huddled under tents.

You and I have debated the military mission many times. We don’t agree on the combat role. You were a full time soldier for two years before you entered the seminary. Even then you remained a reservist until they sent you to Rome to study Canon Law. You were a Captain in the Canadian Airborne Regiment of the Queen’s Own Rifles. Years after you left the military, the regiment was disbanded, after a difficult time in Somalia. In disgust, you packed your uniform and medals and mailed them to Ottawa. I listened to your account of the Somalia mission and I realized that the reporting we heard back home was not balanced.

Now as Parliament debates the torture issue, you’ve opened my eyes to the sad reality of war. Now as I watch the repatriation, in my fevered state, I am transported to that frigid tarmac and I am standing holding a blood red rose. The hearse stands before me and I am walking towards the coffin to place my flower. I turn to those beside me and I see your mother and your father. Your small boys take my hand and I realize it is your body in that coffin and I want to continue the debate.

Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori (..."It is sweet and honourable to die for one's country.")

Christmas Eve

It’s the anticipation of the first snowfall that will blanket the city and dress it up for the holiday season.

It’s the anticipation of the gifts under the tree, each one full of possibilities until it’s opened.

It’s the anticipation of a phone call from the man who makes my heart sing. The man who can talk about hockey until the cows come home, but can’t bring himself to tell you what’s in his heart.

It’s the anticipation of the birthday that Christmas Day will bring. Another year, another shock of grey hair, another crop of wrinkles.

It’s the anticipation of the traditional food of Christmas; roasted chestnuts, panettone and torrone.

It’s the anticipation of a day of Peace for the world, a respite from the fighting and the dying, at least for this one day.

It’s the anticipation in the cold night, of a young mother-to-be huddled in a cave, waiting to give birth to the Saviour of the world.

It’s the anticipation of another Christmas Eve……

The Christmas tree

I have a thing about Christmas trees, I simply love them. Perhaps it’s a by product of being born on Christmas Day. Santa must have sprinkled some Christmas dust on me that day.

My favourite trees are real ones, the ones that come with built in pine scent and sometimes an abandoned nest or two. As a child my dad would buy a small tree at the corner lot. We lived in two rooms of a house and the Christmas tree was placed on top of Mama’s sewing machine in our bedroom. The head of my bed was next to the sewing machine, which meant I literally slept below the boughs of the tree. In the evening I would sneak away to lie there looking up at the lit tree and dreaming of Christmas.

As a teenager we used to drive out to the country and cut down a tree. This was years before we settled for an artificial tree after picking pine needles out of the furniture for six months after Christmas. The cutting part took less than five minutes but the choosing of a perfectly symmetrical tree took hours. We’d walk deeper and deeper into the tree farm forgetting that the further we got from the car, the farther we’d have to drag that tree back. At the entrance to the tree farm, the owner would place our tree in the binding machine to close up the tree like an umbrella and off we’d go.

One Christmas stands out as the year the Christmas tree and I bonded. My Dad didn’t believe in the store bought metal tree stands, he used a combination of an old bucket, some carefully wedged brick pieces and sand. That year the Christmas tree was placed in the corner of the living room as usual. One night as I sat in the living room, my dad came in to put water in the bucket. He left the room to go to the kitchen and I sat watching the television. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the movement of the tree as it began to fall over. In that split second, I had a vision of the glass ornaments my mother so gingerly brought from Italy in a steamer trunk, making contact with the hardwood floor and I leapt up and grabbed the tree in a hug. I started to scream and my family came from various parts of the house to stand and stare at the sight. Then they started laughing and I must admit I was probably quite a sight. That’s when Dad declared, “I must have forgotten to put the brick pieces in the bucket”. When they pried the tree from my arms I looked down and saw that some of the pine needles had become imbedded in my arms and I was now bleeding. That’s the closest a Christmas tree and I have ever been.

A few years ago, in mid December, I was watching the television and channel surfing as is my habit when I came across a news segment on a Christmas tree. This was no ordinary tree; it was tall and appeared to be indoors, carefully lit to showcase the most amazing decorations I had ever seen. The tree was decorated from top to bottom with porcelain angels and cherubs beautifully hand crafted in 18th century Naples and culminated with a stunning “presepio” at the base of the tree. Where was this tree? I strained to listen to the commentator and hoped he’d tell me where this tree was, but the segment ended without the information and the vision of that tree was soon relegated to memory.

The day after Christmas that year, I headed to New York City with Koji and Brian for my first visit to the Big Apple, the Mecca of theatre aficionados. With theatre tickets, city maps and subway card in hand we descended on Manhattan. Every Yellow cab and New York accent made us feel like we were in a movie. It seemed almost ordinary the night we passed Mira Sorvino and Quentin Tarantino out for a stroll in the upper West side.

The week flew by with theatre productions, gallery visits and trips to numerous museums. On our next to last day we hiked to the Upper East Side to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum is so large that we decided to split up and meet later at the gift shop. The galleries in the museum, especially the replica Frank Lloyd Wright designed cottage and the Tiffany glass, were absolutely breathtaking. I got to the gift store before the others and started to wander around the gifts and books. All of a sudden I came across a book that stopped me cold. A book titled “The Angel Tree” lay before me. When I turned over the book with trembling hands there was the tree. I quickly opened the book in hopes of discovering where the tree was. Imagine my shock when I read “The annual installation of the Christmas tree at The Metropolitan Museum of art, New York, is an event cherished by visitors and scholars alike” The tree was here! But where? I ran to the nearest store clerk and asked about the tree. She pulled out a museum floor plan guide and highlighted a gallery in a far corner of the museum. I paced the floor waiting for Koji and Brian to arrive and they found me breathless with excitement. We headed off in our quest to view the tree. Finally we found the gallery and in the centre of the room, the tree standing majestically, the beautiful pieces of art on it lit by spotlights.

A small group of people circled the tree gazing in wonder and I joined them. After a week of New York City cacophony this silent moment in the gallery with that tree, felt like a solemn benediction. This was my Christmas miracle. Not gifts, or carols or parades, but the baby child nestled in the pine branches of what had now become, my Christmas tree.