His figure is as wiry as I remember but he is smaller, wizened. Sitting on the side of a shallow crate provides him a view of the front gravel drive, the horse’s yard and the autumn woods beyond. Both workers’ hands rest symmetrically on his knees.
These are the hands, those of my older cousin’s, which played guitar to me and my teenage friends. This was back in time, of course, back when summers were long and adults were scarce; when, what mattered were music and friendship and leisure. There was time to think of things, like what the world was about. There was time to wonder if we were important in the scheme of things, or not, really. Perhaps we were just a speck like the many specks of light in the night sky? And it was time to ponder the manic, hypocritical, unhappy sometimes malevolent nature of adults; not that we didn’t love them but they seemed to carry that heavy baggage with them.
Back then, Doug was an adult of 24 but he was taking a hiatus from the adult world. He was living for the time in his grandparent’s cottage at the lake, a 100 year old structure up the hill and away from the crowded beach. Appealing was the family connection I missed as a result of being the youngest child. The grandparents who raised Doug were too old to know me by the time I arrived. So Doug provided the connection. This was perhaps the sabbatical that separated Doug’s wild youth from his adult life. From here he moved on to a career in IT with the university and a major bank. He moved on to meet his partner, Maryanne and settle north of Toronto with their horses, dogs and cats.
On this autumn day, thirty five years later, Doug has his ears to the ground. He notices things, and is a bit distractible. On occasion he talks to either of the labs, acknowledging their keen senses or their service as watchdogs. Like an old dog, himself, he basks, on his crate, in the autumn sunshine. Behind his sunny perch is the open garage which is his workshop. Doug has taken up welding. He has collected a plethora of tools and materials for the trade. He tinkers and putzes about, not really accomplishing much now. Before his illness he built artistic pieces, an apparatus for hanging cooking pots, an attractive picnic table supported on each end with old metal wagon wheels. He is a passionate cyclist so there are interesting bicycles, ones with heightened frames, and gearless courier bikes. But, “Today”, he declares, “is a thinking day”. Doug is very weary from the cancer that has attacked his lungs and brain. He can’t muster the energy to fight gravity.
As we sit in the glorious sunshine I chat as one does when you haven’t seen someone for years but have come for a prolonged visit. In fact, I am babysitting; he and I know but don’t speak about this fact. I learn that as early as a week before he took part in a Critical Mass ride. He was not pleased that the cops had shut it down, shown their muscle to insure the Friday home commute was not inconvenienced by rebel cyclists. This fact led to his voicing disdain for the G20 police last summer. Doug never appreciated authority. After all, he was raised by our grandparents, the same people who had my father in medical school by the age of 18. They had high expectations. I doubt whether he was ever understood by anyone but his mother and sister. His schooling was long before the days of Differentiated Instruction and Multiple Intelligences; his required tortuous sitting for six hours a day. Keenly intelligent, perhaps he was somewhat learning disabled. My parents thought of him as a hopeless seeker of risk and fun but I sensed the inner anger. A very private rebel, that’s what he had become, this cousin of mine. Now he was too old to “mess up” by driving recklessly, or to require any adult to bail him out of trouble in a general sense. He learned to be a quiet insurgent. Not really against anyone in particular, although he keeps abreast of the news and it is clear he doesn’t like Stephen Harper‘s Conservative government.
Maybe this doesn’t matter anymore. Doug speaks very gently to me on this balmy autumn day. Looking around at his things, his tools and bikes and dogs, he sometimes utters a “yeah” quietly to assure himself that all is as it should be.
And when Maryanne arrives a few hours later, they have gentle kisses for each other in greeting. They aren’t wasting time getting that message across.
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