An act of Care

My father came into the bedroom of my brothers and me every night before he went to bed and pulled the covers up on us and tucked us in. We would have been mostly asleep but we always had the vague sense that a hand was present and a vigil performed. This act was probably never necessary, as our rooms were warm, though our covers were often kicked off because young boys are restless sleepers; at least we were; fidgeting night and day! Where did that routine of his come from? Probably an automatic act from the need to show us protection through the darkness of the night and its terrors! A form of gathering us in! I don't think, I confess, ever doing that with my children! It's only now that I think about that act as one of care, a visible sign of an invisible impulse of love. We do little things to signify love! Different things unique to us. Different ways of expression! My dad's was his unique act! They only signify what they mean to us and what they meant for them, at times as we reflect on them. Hey! That was an act that I never really recognized the significance of at that time. It was just accepted that that was what he did. The small and seemingly inconsequential visible signs of parental love so often are under the radar until your soft wear revisits a reawakened state! When Robert Munsch published his fabulous children's book "Love You Forever", it made me wish I had tucked in the covers more often for my mother and father before they died!

Masterly Inactivity

Hippocrates, in an aphorism once wrote, "The wise physician amuses his patient while nature affects the cure." We used to have a phrase for that willingness to stay the hand. Masterly Inactivity! A small, but distinct segment of patients fit the need for this category of care. This active pursuit of inactivity has nothing to do with interest or disinterest of the patient by the physician. It simply means that when there is nothing to do, do nothing stupid; or "Do nothing, stupid!" Patients are frequently unhappy with this approach, even those sufficiently sophisticated who have been counselled that diagnosis and continuing observation is all that is required for their condition! After some time taken at explanation, the response will be, "For heavens sake, you have to do something rather than nothing!" The simple fact is many conditions are self limiting and many other conditions inevitably worsen! Hippocrates aphorism applied for this is, "Cure occasionally, comfort always!" Reputations for success are achieved often by the institution of an active treatment for a self-limiting condition just before its denouement! Credit where none is due thereby, is still useful, at least for the aura of the practitioner! Useless treatments applied to conditions where deterioration is inevitable can always be excused with, "They tried everything and they worked so hard to help!" There is some comfort that there was never neglect for the trying! Setting science aside, the Art of Medicine does not include taking credit for Mother Nature, and burdensome treatments for untreatable conditions. The line between Hope, Comfort, and Reality needs a careful tread! Somehow the ideas of a Greek Corpus, 2500 years ago, are still relevant today.

Black Bamboo

In 1971 I planted several clumps of Black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) along a faked dry river bed of Saturnalite that gave a pleasing appearance, even if contrived. I wanted it to remain clumped and it did since it was surrounded by poor soil and the aggregate of Saturnalite. My understanding at the time was that it was a naturally clumping bamboo and would not spread. Since there had been an embargo on bamboo at around that time and particularly Black bamboo I was pleased to have it, and I might have imagined I was in China as I sat, musing on my dry river bed. We moved from Lotus City to Lotus Island, both in the Pacific Northwest, and I took some rooted portions of the clumps with me. They are still in my garden here today, protected from wind by windbreak plantings, and having weathered a particularly cold winter in 2010 with some top foliage loss. In the garden here they are in three big clumps, but this year they have started to move! They have, for the first time in 40 years, begun to develop spreading rhizomes in spades! The clumps are monstrous after this length of time and have probably responded to exhausted soil by seeking fertile land, sending probing rhizomes and new plants abroad. In addition, probably seeking for a location warmer than their present spot. Lotus Island is in zone 5, Black bamboo's top cold tolerance threshold. Like populations of anything, the plant does what it has to do to survive and thrive. It goes to show that the classification of clumping or spreading, in plant and animal, fails to account for the contingent capacity to change and move with whatever means is necessary to survive! Climate and food trump stick in the mud, in the plant and animal world!

Winter Ducks

The Lotus Island Harbour is teeming with American Widgeons and Bufflehead Ducks today! Vegetarians and carnivorians! Dabbling ducks and diving ducks. They will be here all winter in our little spot in the harbour to our great delight. The Eagles have not returned yet to begin their connubial activity so the ducks have a short reprieve. The Widgeons crowd serenely together and float along, seemingly unhurried, occasionally dabbling down when close to shore for plant food. They don't need to hurry because the plants wait for them! Their pace is unruffled! Why wouldn't it be? They are the gatherer society. The little Buffleheads skitter along, wings flapping repeatedly, posturing and diving and darting hither and yon! You can always identify them by the wake they leave; they move so fast with both feet and wings going a mile a minute; in or on the water chasing flesh! No wonder they are in a hurry. Their prey waits for no Bufflehead, and they are the hunter society! The seagulls pester them, hoping they will drop the prey but the Buffleheads have an answer to that hunter society. They swallow their prey under water where no seagull will go. They spend much of their time swimming around and through the Widgeon flock: they look like Hares among the Tortoises. Curiously the only ducks we usually see now are these two species. In days of yore there were many winter species that visited but the varieties seem to have dried up. I don't know why. The harbour provides an abundant source of both plant and animal foodstuffs and the species don't compete because of the nature of their diet. Aside from the Eagles their winter sojourn is untroubled! For the pianist and me, familiarity never breeds contempt!

Eg Latin

For years our family has spoken Eg Latin, a superior subset of Pig Latin that has much greater cypher advantage and is not generally known! It was used only in fun but was completely confounding to the uninitiated. In the standard Pig Latin the post fix, AY, is placed at the end of the word behind the transposed first consonant or consonant cluster. Hence Rhinocerous would be hinocerousRay or perhaps inocerousRhay! Not too difficult to intercept. In Eg Latin, each syllable is treated by EG following the consonant or its cluster, so Rhinocerous is transposed as Rheginegocegeregous! If there is no consonant, but a vowel leading the syllable, the Eg precedes, such as in "over", egoveger! You may think this is hard to become fluent in, but it is not! Small children will take to it like a duck to water! Start with simple stuff like Legategin! Like Pegig! It is much harder to write it than to verbalize! I was taught this foolishness by my father and have transferred it to the succeeding generations successfully. I remember flying with our family somewhere years ago and talking EG Latin quietly to a kid that was misbehaving, when the family behind us joined the conversation much to our delight. I am completely illiterate in any language except English, (I hope), so I scrape the bottom of the barrel as my only claim to linguistic pluralism, derived from the country of EG.

The Advertiser

In the 1960's, advertising for patients in a medical practice was forbidden by the College of Physicians and Surgeons! They were tough regulators! Making claims of any sort were also subject to sanctions by the College! A new specialist in town was to simply hang a modest shingle and a tiny and dignified announcement of arrival in the paper (three times I think), and then wait until their colleagues saw fit to refer a surgical case. The growth of the surgical practice occurred ostensibly through practicing the three A's, Available,Affable and Able. That does not include Advertising! Remember of course that this was before Medicare and paying patients were jealously guarded by their General Practitioners. When the pianist and I moved to Lotus City with our little family in 1965 to start a surgical practice, I took a job at the Veterans Hospital to keep the wolf from the door while the slow process of developing a consulting practice began. A tough old veteran had been having serious trouble with an old gunshot wound to the lower leg, incurred during the Second World War. He needed a below knee amputation and the Veteran's Hospital Prosthetics Department was keen to try a new prosthetic technique with the immediate application of the artificial limb in the operating room. After the team surgery, I was astounded to read a front page article in the Lotus City Paper the following day relating an interview with my tough old patient who was walking around in the veteran's canteen, fully weight bearing on the limb, extolling my surgical virtues! He was so elated he had phoned the paper! It wasn't very long before I was called to the mat by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for unfairly advertising! Several of my surgical confreres had complained and the Registrar warned me that I was on thin ice. I pled innocence! However---it was a good start!

Identity, Our Tool is Us

Today I cranked up my Bearcat Shredder and munched and ground my pile of pruned twigs and branches to pulp. I am old and feeble and have Rheumatoid Arthritis but with my tool as an extension of me, I am mighty! I am Marlboro Man at work, employing a machine in a rugged activity that my forefathers, at my age, could have only dreamt about. I eventually ran out of gas at the same time as the Bearcat, so both of us called it a day! We all have tools that can be an extension of our arm or leg or brain or senses that make us explorers, visionaries, artists and rugged adventurers! Whoever said,"It's not important what you do, but who you are" was not telling the whole story. We are creatures of our tools. In the olden days my father would watch my mother cut slices from the bread loaf in which she pressure forced the knife down onto the loaf, rather than deftly sawing with light downward force. Her bread slices ended up about an inch high. He would look at us and say, "Let the tool do the work." Good advice! When the first primate, or the first crow, used the first tool to do a job that they had originally used a arm or beak to do, they began the process of advancing to a new identity that separated one from another. The artistry displayed by the operator of the excavator is astounding, who, with foot and hand can practically pick up his cigarette packet with his bucket, or lift a one ton rock. The machine has become part of the body. With time and skill the tool incorporates into the organism so there is no space in between the two. There is an area on the gyrus for the tool! Whether the golf club, the hockey stick, the brush, the egg whisk, the ivory keys, the strings, the cup or the scalpel; when you have arrived at that golden moment where you are one with your tool, you will no longer see yourself apart from it!

The Story's Butt

It was often my habit when I was working, to go fishing at daybreak off the waters by Lotus City! I would start at 5 am and finish at 8 am, change on the boat and go to work. I fished alone at that time of day and there was nothing more pleasant than to troll along the Discovery Islands in Strongtide Bay on ebb-tide, with the wire lines humming and the trolling bells on the rods rhythmically ringing with the gentle swell. Because it was early morning, nature usually called sometime shortly after the setup, and in the cabin on the throne I would rest a bit, watching and listening to the bells through the open cabin door, in repose, with an air of contemplation and expectation. The joy I felt on the briny deep in pursuit of the salmon was enhanced by the embrace of Mother Nature, who was mine alone at that time in the morning. The world was still asleep! My lines were fishing deep, the depth maintained by planers, that, when tripped by a strike, prompted the rods to ring the bell urgently. The planers rose to the surface quickly with the fish, causing line slack. The fisherman always needed to act with alacrity to get to the rod and tighten the slack to avoid the fish throwing the hook! In the midst of my meditations the bell rang stridently on the starboard rod and with great speed I hopped off the throne, pants dangling at the ankle and retrieved my rod from the rod holder and began to reel in the slack to start to play the fish! I suddenly heard great cheering and looked up to see high fives from a quartet on the guide boat fishing long-side me, starboard. My boat had little freeboard so I wasn't entirely sure that they were cheering my catch or my crotch! To be perfectly clear, neither were impressive! I wasn't fishing for compliments but so much for ego!

The Familiar

"Look", I said to the pianist this morning, "There are a flock of American Widgeons that have returned. They weren't here yesterday." They are the first returnees of our winter ducks and you can practically set your calendar by them! What is it about the familiar that is so comfortable? Expectations met! The orb is turning as it ought! November is such a black month but the dark,wind, and cold is familiar. The Widgeons tell us it is good to be here! They say, "This is where we choose; this harbour and you, are familiar. You can rely on us and the Buffleheads and the others that return for the winter to sooth your familiars." The older one becomes, the more familiars one has that are available to the mind and the more they become of value. Breaking new ground, on the other hand, is crucial for the young: creating familiars for themselves, though they may not know it at the time. Years ago I had a white cable-knit sweater that I really loved. I wore it a lot, and particularly on my boat with my captain's hat and a scarf: it became my joie de vivre! It was my statement! As it was in frequent use, it became frayed, baggy, elbow thinned, a bit stained, and after multiple washings the pianist chucked it in the bin to discard. I retrieved it and continued to wear it, adverse comments notwithstanding! It was a familiar and I still felt a certain jauntiness it imparted despite its disagreeable appearance. After all, I was the author of its decrepitude and I owed it. My efforts to prolong the life of my cable-knit came to an end when the pianist had finally had it with washing it, trashing it and having it repeatedly retrieved. One day she washed the algae and mold off the greenhouse floor with my treasure. It was a dirty grey-green! It was like the day my aunt took away my blanket when I was three. Another familiar bit the dust and I needed to break new ground again!

Fibrotic Creep

The boiling fowl is tough because of fibrotic creep. Someone might say of an elderly eclectic gentleman, "He is a tough old bird!" That person is literally, righter than they think. We are all subject to this phenomenon of creep as we become analogous to our boiling cousin! Muscle fibres, which have little capacity to regenerate, are crept into by fibrous strings of collagen, replacing over a life time both voluntary, involuntary and cardiac muscle fibres. Healthy fat cells providing energy storage, heat and insulation are emptied of their contents by Father Time and move to fibrous tissue and the losses that are gradually entailed. Bone, becomes both thinner and less dense, with loss of mineral and change in the fibrous and cartilaginous structure. The fibrous replacement for young collagen does not have the same capacity to mineralize! Toughened fibrous tissue surrounds the joints and loss of resilience limits the range of motion. Gravity flattens the feet which become longer and wider and the fibres around the joints stretch and are painful! If you take a Petri dish and a batch of primitive mesenchymal cells and subject them to varying oxygen tension and varying motion applications, they have the capacity to become fibroblasts, chondroblasts, or osteoblasts, consistent with the milieu you have created for them! This elegant system, when operating at prime of life, has the capacity to restructure and regenerate on demand, fibrous tissue, cartilage or bone. So those primitive cells are the basis of the framework for our body, that houses the vital cells of life. There is a hourglass at work that spells the demise of the magnificent primitive mesenchyme, but not before its last gasp at the vital organs. It is gradual, but as fibrotic creep invades the space of the vital cells, the timbers of the house are joined by the fibrosis of the essential organs within!

Dirty Fingernails

Years ago when I started doing surgery in Winnipeg I remember sitting across at lunch from a very prominent internist,a stellar academic from a noted Winnipeg family. He was consulting that day and I was taken aback at his dirty fingernails! As I think back now, I can't really remember much about him, but the first image that always comes to mind is his fingernails. What an unworthy thought! If one toils in the soil to any extent the fingernails will always be dirty; there will be scabs and sores around your hands and calluses in palmar areas. If one is pinching, stopping or fine weeding one will have stains as well. Certainly pruning vegetables will leave stains that challenge the scrub brush. Nails will be cracked and uneven! It has always been a challenge to metamorphize from grub to social butterfly in a single day. Don't tell me to wear gloves. No fine garden or potting work can be done with gloves. They are a refuge for the dilettante! I had a physician that scrubbed with me every fortnight for some time. He and I enjoyed gardening conversations when we scrubbed. He said to me how much he enjoyed working with me every second week. I was flattered that he appeared to compliment my skill which I erroneously thought he enjoyed. "Yes", he said, " The work allows me to get my fingernails really clean every fortnight." Ha! Trumped by the scrub sink. When I was working at surgery it took me half an hour scraping and bristling before a scrub to get my fingernails clean. Now that I'm retired there is no letup because in addition to "cleanliness is next to Godliness", there is the job of serving communion as a lay congregant to 100 odd communicants in full view of my fingernails. There is no respite!

Gunnera Attacked

It's fall and the Black Tailed deer bucks on Lotus Island, a subspecies of Mule deer, are in rut! Whether they are getting rid of their antler velvet to get into fighting trim, or practicing their moves against the Gunnera stems, is moot. Either way the young are preparing for the coming conflict. Once the testosterone rises in deer or man, some projection may take place. Whatever harm did the Gunnera do to them? And yet, it is a convenient foil! The stems are coarse with rough spinous projections, sufficiently sharp to remove velvet! After that little favour, it's not much of a step to give the stem a good whacking with the newly hardened antlers. The warrior class is simply doing what is necessary to perpetuate the species. Lucky for us they are benign warriors throughout the growing year until fall so the Gunnera enjoys a pristine existence 'til now. The plus for all this is they leave the bark alone on the smaller ornamental trees that would otherwise be victimized. I hate the idea of surrounding all the little trees with wire cages. If you are not going to restrain the warrior class by fencing them out of your property, you must respect their need to train, but hope that they will restrain themselves by doing only what is necessary! That said, one doesn't want the young and fearless males to be equivalent to a walking Gonad controlled by a Betz cell! Wreaking havoc! The species would be indeed be in jeopardy!

The Power of One

Some time ago a woman in her mid-seventies was trapped by the doors of an elevator in a parkade. The doors shut after she tripped on entering and both legs and one arm were outside the elevator as it ran up four floors and then down again to ground level. She was transferred to the hospital in extremis! The limbs were mutilated. I was working in the OR at the time just finishing a fractured hip. The general surgeon phoned up from Emergency and asked if I would look after her as I had a space and could bump my next case. We examined her in the OR and her limbs were shredded. Nothing was salvageable and an ill informed attempt would be certain death with old kidneys. She had immediate amputation of all three limbs and was transferred to ICU. She never turned a hair and was out of ICU in three days and on the ward. Shortly after that she was transferred to the Rehabilitation Hospital. Her husband and children were incredibly supportive. After her transfer to rehab I lost track of her. About a year or so later I was visiting my mother-in-law in a personal care facility with the pianist and we were having lunch in the dining room. A beautiful woman in an electric wheel chair came over to me with her husband and thanked me for looking after her. She was vibrant and her eyes sparkled. She was all there! Her life had resumed! Where does the power come from? Where is the Well that we can draw the strength from to continue to live a real life that is not just, existing? We didn't talk about faith that day but I saw serenity. The Well that we draw from may be beyond definition for some, or defined by the curious faithful, but whatever it is,it is real!

Self publishing

My experience in self publishing has been stimulating and exciting, but a financial failure. On the other hand my book has only been available for 6 weeks and it takes that long for some to read it. I would do it again in an instant for the self gratification it brings and the heartening responses from my family and friends! The book I wrote, "An Elderly Eclectic Gentleman", was taken from this blog over the three year period and edited for publication by myself. The self publishing company was very helpful throughout and the cost was not exorbitant. I have some weaknesses, not the least of which is, I love my own writing much more than most books that I read. I am sure the weakness also includes more pride than sense, but I did not wish to go hat in hand to a commercial publisher at my age! I still have the perennial optimism that I will be discovered eventually. My book is 294 short topics on the real and mystical world around us that I have encountered. If I went to a commercial publisher I figured they would delete a third of my work for market reasons and I didn't want my muse assaulted. Therefore I am poised, willingly, on the horns of my own dilemma. So be it! In the meanwhile I continue to write because I can't help not writing from time to time as something weird, quixotic, or quirky, occurs. My thematic is the ordinary is almost always extraordinary in some settings and life is a mystery. God is a mystery to me but there always seems an Immensity in much of life that is both ever present and evanescent. Maybe that's it! This is much of what I touch on, but I only know what I feel. Jesus is more tangible for me and the Holy Spirit more recognizable for me, but God, I can't quite grip since for me he exists objectively only by hearsay. I hope he doesn't mind me saying so. Writing is therapy when sex,violence and cynicism are replaced with wonder! It's just that it may not be commercial.

Boiling Fowl

When the Rooster looks like he is going to permanently roost, and all the elderly egg laying maidens of yesteryear have begun to flag, the chicken farmer from the days of yore, considered them all to be boiling fowl and there was a good market for them. A dish from the past from these geriatric fowl was chicken fricassee with baking powder biscuits, an old time favorite. The pianist bought a boiling fowl from the store yesterday; 80 cents a pound and few takers since hardly anyone these days has any idea how to cook this product, since they are so seasoned to eat pediatric or adolescent chickens of 10 or 20 weeks. The flesh of the unsung boiling fowl is red,red,red! The bones are hard, hard, hard! The cartilage of youth is non-existent. The joints do not disarticulate with ease! The flesh of the 8 pound fowl we dealt with today is firm, but needs boiling for several hours to be tender! The gravy it makes, if first thoroughly browned, is abundant! The boiling fowl is a different meat from the penned adolescent of the Colonel's! This fowl has run for years and its muscles show it. Bulgy and tough! The throwaway culture of today fails to take account of the rewards that being hard up in the olden days actually introduced! One might consider, even today, that recycling your old chickens rather than relegating them to the dump, could be useful! Certainly frugal! Unlike the bland flavour of young chicken flesh per se, the older flesh of the fricasseed provides it's own unique and delicious flavour, cooked to tenderness in its own juices! The bold taste of red meat should be served with a red wine.

Ruminants

Yesterday I said to the pianist," Look, there is a doe and a yearling lying on our footpath chewing their cud!" Their front legs were crossed in complete repose; a posture not adapted to rapid takeoff They stayed there for a good part of the afternoon. It's safe here! I guess in another place and time, they and all the Ruminantia were surrounded by predators. Mother Nature demanded rapid food gathering in sites of danger,always ready to flee, with the capacity later to regurgitate and break down the snatched food in found safety and sanctuary! I ask myself from time to time, why I write about such trivial matters when the world is going through such monumental events, war, revolution, economic fears, shaken faith, individuals on the cusp of disaster? And here I am, ruminating along with my deer. Chewing the cud of information and ideas long gathered in a hurry and not fully digested! Much of that information was gathered during the momentum of a hurried life where one was feeding quickly. I guess, to answer my own question ," I am writing for myself!" I call it "reflection" since the psychiatrists have tainted "rumination". In a sea of troubles we have to reach for a plank to stop drowning. It has to float! I guess my plank in life is to celebrate the ordinary stuff of existence that may have some buoyancy. Age gives one time to ruminate/reflect on the information gathered in a hurry! Now I can repose with my legs crossed and let go!

The Whole Truth

Quite a few years ago in Lotus city I was on call for Orthopedics at the Jubilee Hospital. They called about a newly arrived patient with a fracture that needed to be seen. It was a case that needed seeing that evening but not a real emergency. There was an upcoming program on TV I was anxious to see and I looked at my watch and knew if I hustled down, then I could be back in time for my program. On the drive to the hospital I heard a siren behind me and pulled over. The policeman came to my window and said "Do you know how fast you were going in a 50k zone"? "No', I said. "Sir", he said, "You were doing 75k. What's the emergency?" I said, "I'm a doctor and I was going to the Jubilee Emergency department. "Can I see your licence"? he asked. After examining it he took out his phone and called his dispatcher. "Find out if Dr. J Warren is expected at Jubilee Emergency", he asked. The dispatcher confirmed that was the case. "Follow me doc", he said, and put his lights and siren on and we wheeled off to the hospital! When I parked he waved and left! When I went in to the "emerg", I felt sheepish! Worse, I took advantage of someone! The staff knew and I knew! I didn't lie to the policeman. I told the truth and I told nothing but the truth, but I didn't tell the whole truth. I could have told him, " I was hurrying to see a patient that needs seeing, but not urgently". I can't tell why I remember little things like this, but it is a form of a lie when we leave out the bits that round out the truth and fail to tell it like it really is!

On call Surgeon

Possibly the last time my younger colleagues in Orthopedics allowed me to take weekend calls was in the early 90's! That possibly was also the last time the pianist allowed me to cook for myself! I thought of this today when I looked at all the vitiligo on my right thumb. It was a beautiful weekend in the 90's and the colleagues were all away. The pianist was at Lotus Island potting and I was in Lotus city,meeting the osseous needs of the populace! It was quiet that Friday evening at 8 o'clock or so and I thought I would make some popcorn while watching TV. As I began by heating my oil in a saucepan on the electric range, the phone rang from the emergency with a problem. As I discussed the matter with the ERP there was a flash from the kitchen and my oil was on fire and shooting up to the ceiling. I raced in and grabbed the saucepan with the flaming oil and burned my thumb, so laid the saucepan in haste on the linoleum of the kitchen, which proceeded to burn as well as my thumb. The thumb developed a monster blister on the palmar aspect, and the linoleum, a large black melted welt in the center of the kitchen. I did the weekend call that time, but kept a glove on regularly to contain the swelling of the thumb. The hospital staff were impressed at how tough I was and also how stupid. I got through several surgical cases, and my landlord at the apartment was gracious, and said, "It is time we redid that kitchen anyway!" Serendipity struck: I got out of taking weekend calls any further, obtained a kitchen renovation, reaffirmed that I needed feeding, and provided general hospital merriment! How can they say I wasn't useful?

Punching in

When I was between 3rd and 4th year Medicine, I was living in Olympic City on the North Shore with my parents to save money with my summer job. I was working at the Canadian Fishing Company in the frozen fish warehouse as a piler. I had done this job in Prince Rupert the two previous summers. This was 1955 and the first ferry across Burrard Inlet left the foot of Lonsdale at 6:30 AM and docked at the foot of Gore street at 7:00 AM. I ran one block to the Canfisco Freezer and punched in at 7:04 AM every day, four minutes late for work! The last cheque I got at the end of the summer, was docked two hours for my unavoidable late punch in. For years I always felt a twinge of irritation at the company for being so cheap. I was the only student working there and they had only hired me for the halibut rush as I had worked in Rupert before, so was experienced. During the summer the union had threatened a strike and when we voted I was the only one who voted against a strike. I needed to work. I know the union was irritated! Then, years later, I had a patient who was a manager of the fishing company branch. I told him my story, thinking he would be embarrassed. He said, "I know about that! It wasn't the company! It was the union. They told us if you were allowed four minutes of grace every day, they insisted each member receive the same or be compensated two hours. It was easier for us to dock you the two hours. Besides that, he said, "You took home at least two hours worth of fish in your lunch bucket that summer." Hand in the cookie jar! He turned the tables on me . Don't start what you can't finish! I now extol the virtues of the management at Canfisco!

The hay ride

When I was 14 we lived for one winter in Conquest, a small town in Saskatchewan. I played hockey with the senior team which went to Milden and Dinsmore and Outlook in a league of sorts. The team was composed of big children and adults, of whom a few were a bit skillful. Those of us without transport; the young; accompanied by a few girls, traveled in a truck with a covered box filled with hay and entered by the grain chute at the back. It was cosy and warm and dark with the packed bodies and the smells. There was sensuality to it all that at 14 we could not identify, but knew it was there. There was no rolling in the hay in those days but there was an ill defined excitement for me from the presence of Lily-Mae, a pretty, lanky, snub nosed, freckled,longhaired fan that had come to cheer. Just dream on! We were away from the restraints of school and parents and at close quarters. I was too rapt up in myself at that time to have the energy to foster a relationship. My experience of hay rides was finished that spring until I was 21 and met the pianist for the first time on a hay ride in Winnipeg. This was a party organized by the student nurses. This time the rack was horse drawn and cold so you bundled up and huddled together to keep warm and hear one another through the din. This leads to a "close for comfort" that casts off the restraint and awkwardness that formality or contrivance brings. The excitement this time was less ill defined for me. She was beautiful and fun and I was ready to put some energy into someone other than myself. I don't know what it is about hay,or dark, or cold, or simple pleasures, but I know that the closer you need to be, the closer you will become. There may be something primordial and concupiscent about the influence of hay! It is the stuff of legends!