Nothing Happens…
And nothing happens, then everything happens. I thought the story this month was going to be about our fabulous new dining room table and chairs that we found at the Re-Store for $150, six chairs included and made out of solid maple. I did research online and it’s the work of a Dutch immigrant furniture designer, Jan Kuyper, who worked from 1951-1960 with a mandate to update the colonial designs at an Ontario furniture company.) Fascinating stuff! We went out to dinner and when we came back my husband said, “All night I kept thinking, I wish I were sitting at our new table and chairs.” In his defence, we had had our old set for THIRTY years.
Then, a couple of days later, our youngest daughter decided to elope in Vancouver. As you can imagine, the dining set was suddenly small potatoes indeed.
We had experienced all the highs (and lows) of a big wedding when our eldest daughter got married eleven years ago, so we didn’t feel we’d been snubbed or left out, really. We saw the lovely photos online. The whole thing had been thrown together in exactly three hours. They had googled, “how to get married in Vancouver,” and taken it from there.
The whole tone of the wedding was set by my grand-daughter. My girl and her fiancé had planned to marry in shorts and t-shirts and just sign the papers with the justice of the peace. (London Drugs sells a kit.) My young grand-daughter had made an entrance into the kitchen in one of her many ball gowns announcing, “This is what I shall be wearing to the wedding.”
A best man was rounded up. He brought a wonderful, classy black suit for the groom to wear. Akiko already had an engagement ring, so, that was a ring. The groom was handed a hand-carved wooden ring by a quickly enrolled bridesmaid. A smattering of friends dropped whatever they were doing on that Vancouver Wednesday night and dashed over in nice outfits, and at 8:30 the deed was done in the veggie garden, under an archway, appropriately.
My daughter wore a borrowed white, flapper-inspired dress from her older sister and some really cute, blue flat shoes for something blue. (When you wear a size 6 really all shoes are cute.)
They made a stunning pair on the photographs, handsome and pretty. All young people are of course beautiful, though they are oblivious to it. (Nora Ephron’s advice to any young woman that may have been reading her words was to “go put on a bikini and don’t take it off until you’re 35.”
Everyone lined up for the throwing of the bouquet. There was an engaged couple there, but my granddaughter caught the bouquet. She had been over the moon during the whole prep and ceremony. When she caught the flowers she bit her lower lip, gazed down at the flowers, then, overcome with emotion, raced to her mom and buried her face in her lap. “I never thought I would be next,” she said in a whisper.
The reason for the elopement was not that they despised their respective families, or at least that’s not their story to us. Border guards wouldn’t let the fiancé into The States because they weren’t married. But, it’s not like she just went out on a few dates with some dude and married him. They’ve been living together for 3 years and we love him dearly. Just to clear that up. They will be dining out on how they pulled off a fantastic wedding in just three hours for the rest of their lives.
So, to recap, what’s happened this past week, the old dining set was finally scrapped, my baby just got married and then, yesterday we had to have our old pony, Charlie put down at age forty-four.
“That’s it, then.” I said to my husband as we stood over his grave. “I’d say we’re done.”
With his death, instantly the feeling on this land changed. No longer would we be harassed as we sat on the deck, trying to eat or drink something, or just plain relax. There would be no more nickering and requests for carrots. No more warning the grandkids not to go close to him with bare feet. It was the end of looking out the windows and seeing him ambling down the trails on his daily round of activities, walking to the pond for a drink, sunbathing in the front meadow, eating windfall apples behind the log cabin, shimmying on his back, legs in the air, to scratch himself on a bed of pine cones, on and on.
We got Charlie from a lovely woman in Courtenay just after Christmas in 1987. We had been here for 6 months and getting a pony, although ostensibly for our 8 year old daughter, was actually the fulfillment of my childhood dream.
So, Charlie has been inseparable from our stay on this piece of land. Twenty-six years is a long, long time.
He was a beautiful chestnut colour in his youth, or early middle-age, which is when we got him. I never knew horses went grey. I’d say in the end he was 60 percent grey, all over. His mane and tail were thick and luxurious. We had to trim his tail periodically so he didn’t step on it. It made quite a crunch in the scissors.
Our daughter remembers riding him bareback at full gallop down Denman Rd. just after it had rained. (Much less traffic in those days.) He hated puddles so he was zig-zagging to avoid them as she clung on for dear life. She swam in the ocean on his back, together with her friend on her pony, Frosty. (Sounds dangerous to me. I had no idea, this was recent revelation.)
It’s not been like that for a long time. Last year, the youngest grandson sat on his back for a couple of minutes.
We’re lulled into complacency by the routine of life and how nothing seems to change, or at least not very quickly. This seems to be a time of great change. I have to remind myself that it is an inevitable fact of life, and that just to have life is a blessing.
