Somewhere – I can’t recall where exactly – I read that the seasoned traveler, if he or she expects to maximize the adventure, must adjust to changing circumstances.  The implication of course is that if one is to get a kick out of discovery one must embrace what comes along – good or bad – and not be defeated by it.  The prescription might well apply to life in general though it is admittedly appropriate to travel in particular as the agenda is so often charted in advance and ripples and delays are especially pronounced or at the very least unwelcome.  The adage about adaptation also heightens the significance of a higher goal than merely fulfilling a travel writer’s scripted performance.  Let’s face it there is nothing more dreary than a travel account that hasn’t any of the annoying fragmentation of real life.  That would be like Cinderella without the wicked sisters.  I’m not saying that we should welcome undesirable events but we should at least cultivate a sanguine attitude to apparent obstruction.

As you might imagine, all this philosophic drivel is but a preamble to our own bit of kerfuffle.  Yesterday while waiting on the dock for the arrival of our tour boat in Ivy Lea Village, His Lordship suddenly sputtered “Oh! Oh!” and I turned my head from absorption of the dazzling sunshine to see him greedily devouring an email on his iPhone.  He informed me that our estate agent on Hilton Head Island had written to advise that construction of a new house had just begun behind the place we had agreed to rent for five months this coming winter. Instantly I telephoned the estate agent to acknowledge receipt of her advice and to confirm our ready willingness to alter our course accordingly.  The facts were clear; the required action was beyond dispute.  It was time to bail!

Since encountering that hurdle we have ruminated at length upon the many alternatives which suddenly materialized.  We did for example consider switching destinations from Hilton Head Island, SC to Tybee Island, GA though our over-arching reluctance was that we had never visited Tybee Island (as we plan to do late this Fall).  As much as parachuting into a place site unseen has its high-spirited element we thought it wiser on the balance to check it out first.  Plus if we cancel our arrangements with the estate agent we suffer the penalty of an administrative fee (not to mention that our estate agent warranted our continued favour for her selfless disclosure). We have therefore resolved to carry on with the same agency but change our accommodations to something less grand.  The estate agent established at the outset that getting a place similar to what we had arranged months ago for the same period and for the same price would be difficult.  In fact she said there is currently only one such property available.  As a result we have down-graded our expectations from a large house to a 2-bedroom condominium apartment.

1849 Beachside Tennis, Hilton Head Island, SC

This is in fact a modification which fits well with us both as we have to admit that having a 5-bedroom house didn’t make a lot of sense.  As it turns out, one of the condominiums which is available for the full five months is in the same building where we parked ourselves quite comfortably last year for two weeks before our house became available.  It is also located in South Beach on Sea Pines Plantation where we regularly bicycled.  The South Beach Marina is located nearby and the area is very quiet (being located just steps from Lands End at the southernmost tip of the Island). It is undeniable that we will save a significant amount of money by making this switch. Lately our enthusiasm for expenditure has inversely dwindled proportionately with the extension of our journeys.  In plain terms the buzz of an escapade becomes less impressive with time; reasonableness ultimately trumps excess.

This particular detour isn’t likely to engender sympathy from anyone.  Nor should it.  For our part we’re quite willing to rise to the occasion.  We are canny enough to acknowledge that, once the initial thrill of a place has passed, it’s back to bicycling and daily routine on a barrier Island on the Atlantic Ocean.  I think we’ll manage to adjust.  But wouldn’t you know…

The time is approaching six o’clock in the evening, the quixotic cocktail hour. We have maintained the preprandial ceremony in spite of a 50% abstinence rate; indeed we nurture it. Invariably we each have a plate of healthful hors d’oeuvres which include crudités, Kalamata olives and liberal slices of Parmigiano-Reggiano (an undeniable favourite of mine and ample compensation for the lack of liquor).

The sky is overcast. It looks like rain.  We have turned off the air conditioner and opened the sliding patio door in the bedroom and the crank-windows on the front and side of the apartment.  I relish the summer air if it isn’t too horribly humid.  When the temperature moderates as it has done today the air conditioner freezes my feet and I am obliged to wear a sweater which always seems bizarre.

The fiction called retirement persists to astonish me. I more than most am entitled to label retirement imaginary since there is little doubt in my mind that I could not have careered it on my own, at least not as well nor as soon. The serendipity is yet another stroke of fortune in my very gratifying life. In the context of our partnership I do of course prefer to think of the blessing as reciprocal though more often than not I imagine the balance is weighted against me.  Never mind.  I have inchoate rights which may yet prove me wrong on that score or at least redeem me.

I began my day much as usual this morning – such sacrifice! – first a strong, black coffee followed by a hearty breakfast of 2 fried eggs, ham slices, baked Naan bread, avocado pear, Havarti cheese and grape tomatoes. I take no credit whatever for this matutinal production, yet another leverage on the scale to my everlasting prejudice.  Admittedly I am hopelessly spoiled and I am only to willing to own it!

Promptly at nine o’clock this morning – maybe I can take some glory for the relentless prosecution – we trekked to the storage locker to withdraw our Electra bicycles for the routine 11.3 kilometre jaunt along Country Street, Rae Road, Concession VIII Ramsay and the Old Perth Road.

Afterwards showers and fresh clothing.  And for me, jewelry.

Almost without thinking we then directed the nose of the Lincoln to my mother’s house which we are obliged to check daily in accordance with the peculiarly stringent terms of the insurance company’s Vacancy Permit.

We have a well established pattern of investigation: open the automatic garage door, in through the kitchen, run the taps in the kitchen and the main-floor powder room, one of us goes into the dreary basement and scopes the barren cement walls and floor, the other up the stairs to the bedrooms and study on the second floor where the toilets in the main bathroom and powder room are ritually flushed.  The panoramic views of the living and dining room entail a gander at the back yard; and then we’re out the front door.  Though we’re never in any particular hurry to accomplish our duties I’d wager we’re in and out within no more than fifteen minutes at the outside, maybe even slightly less depending on whether we stop to void our respective bladders for example.  In the fifty years that my parents owned the house I never lived in it.  The closest I came to doing so was to spend the occasional Christmas holiday there and several weeks one summer only while I attended undergraduate university in Toronto.  Now that the place is completely vacant there is nothing whatever to commend it to me. I don’t say that with any element of regret as I cannot think of any home (other than the apartment in which we now reside) which to be perfectly frank has ever stimulated me to distraction.  Apart from convenience, a home only distinguishes itself for me by the nature of its occupants.  If I am absorbed in the repartee with the people then the bricks and mortar are all but negligible.  Certainly I’ve visited some comfortable homes but if the camaraderie is nonexistent then the utility is otherwise lost on me.  Nonetheless I reiterate that our current rental apartment is for me an exceedingly cheerful environment, “dense” for lack of a better word.

After returning a plastic container to my sister (at whose home we lunched yesterday), we made our way to my mother’s retirement residence.

We discovered mother at lunch with her crony though they were both just finishing.  After my mother’s dining partner left the table, I invited mother to go for a drive which at first she resisted but she subsequently capitulated when I suggested we include some minor shopping for an eyebrow pencil sharpener.

Our aimless drive took us to the Village of Manotick where we stopped on Mill Street at a bakery/café for a Cappuccino.  After draining our coffee cups we ambled across the street to a florist shop which my mother recalls having housed specialty Christmas ornaments.  The clerk assured us the stock would arrive closer to November.

These nondescript outings with my mother perhaps go some way to pacifying her sense of isolation in the retirement residence and my misgiving at having enforced the transition (though we both know it was the proper thing to do).  I was however reminded the next day when I spoke with mother that the depth of her sorrow includes the loss of my father and her escalating fear of mortality which is no doubt punctuated by a general feeling of being tired of living.  As always in these sensitive matters I was only able to observe that nature teaches us how to die, an adage which while blunt is in my opinion nonetheless meaningful and moderately helpful without being trite.  If nothing else the maudlin character of our conversation brought us yet closer to one another and I assured mother that she had done everything possible for my late father in spite of her qualms (she blames herself for having cooperated in my father’s removal to the Perley Hospital for the last four months of his life when he was clearly incapable of taking care of himself).

All told, it was just another day.

“Across the harbor, a small sailing skiff, becalmed near some reeds, caught the breeze again.” (Horace Freeland Judson).

I’ve hit a trough, the low point of the wave we’ve been riding.  Activity has slowed almost to a halt as we inch our way to the consummation of our plans. I have been so utterly distracted by  months of diligence that I am as a result almost at a loss what to do.  And yesterday things topped out with the bestowal of a rather significant gratuity.  It has left my head spinning with nowhere to go to exhaust the hoopla.  In a word I am becalmed.

I am of necessity reluctantly submitting to the momentary tranquillity.  I have set aside the exhilaration of routine daily battle.  Instead of pondering my next move I content myself to ruminate upon the past and the future. Nonetheless I crawl.

Other than bustle there are so few standards by which I meaningfully measure myself.  I have already insinuated various forms of gratification and reward in all that I do so the removal of the cause tends to diminish the value and importance of the recognition, rather like having food without the appetite. I am however determined to draw what strength I can from the experience of being at a standstill.  Perhaps I shall torque its gravity by pretending that nothing is more stimulating than doing nothing.  Idleness has historically such a bad name though embracing it at this advanced stage of life is less unappealing.  Even if one were not to inflate it with philosophical content, there is something approaching luxury just to watch the world go by.

I have lately done things which were strongly motivated.  At times I may have acted precipitously (though in my heart of hearts I know there were no other choices).  While the rapture may have cooled the hardened truth remains.  I am prepared to keep going in the direction I originally headed.  I seriously doubt that I shall reconsider.  Meanwhile I am putting more and more distance between myself and my past.  I am certainly not running from my past, trying to obliterate it; I am merely closing the door on going back to it, just moving on.  This present contemplative mood at least affords the opportunity to assess that decision.  There’s nothing wrong about pausing to look back momentarily.

In the end it is always easier to live with one’s preferences no matter how much they may apparently fly in the face of rationality.  Instinct is not for the faint of heart.

Today was not what I’d call a resounding success though I’m mindful that one mustn’t for even the most plausible reason dismiss a moment of life. The unglamorous agenda today was to have a replacement part installed on my vehicle.  That didn’t happen.  Even after having called the dealership about the part yesterday and having been told it had arrived; and after having appeared at the dealership as requested at precisely eight o’clock this morning; and after having taken the President’s vehicle while mine was in hawk, I received a telephone call mid-morning from the service department that they had ordered the wrong part.  They offered to pilfer a similar part from one of their used vehicles but I confirmed I preferred to await the arrival of the new part from the United States and re-attend next week to have it installed.  Not exactly a roaring start to the day.  Nonetheless it was a pleasant summer day and we mischievously determined to punctuate the delinquency of the dealership by bringing them five dozen fresh donuts from Healthy Food Technologies in Almonte.  Our Trojan Horse didn’t have quite the bang I had hoped but then again we didn’t stick around to witness all the repercussions.

Our next stop was the ritual visit with mother.  She was in a foul mood from the outset.  It is useless to attempt to ascribe any particular reason to her state of mind.  All that is apparent is that increasingly she is negative and paranoid, no doubt a reflection of her deteriorating mental state generally.  We left her in the wake of a minor storm. Our escape was however incomplete as later in the afternoon she telephoned me to reignite another useless controversy, this time some rubbish about a garage sale that she imagined my sister anticipated to dispose of my mother’s surplus belongings.  It is impossible to finesse these assaults as rationality is totally lost upon her.  She simply glues herself to an idea (invariably a preposterous notion) and refuses to retract for any reason.

We decided to profit by the breeziness of the summer afternoon by traveling to Cedar Cove for a bite to eat.  We sat outside on the deck overlooking White Lake.

The size of our hors d’oeuvres was substantial and we succeeded to exhaust our appetite without anything further.  I had my usual PEI mussels in a chili/lime cream sauce with buttered toast points.  The mussels were plump, the sauce exquisite and the bread superlative!  We lolled home on the scenic back roads, idly chatting about the day’s fortunes and misfortunes.  We reiterated as always our accomplishments over the past four months and touched cheerfully upon our upcoming hibernation plans.

Who could possibly have 361 friends!  What the!  Oh, I get it, it’s not friends, it’s “friends”.  As if!  Well I’m sorry, but I’ve had it with “friends” on Facebook. I have two friends in real life.  And they just happen to be the same two friends on Facebook.  They’re the people who care to ask me about my health and the weather, the sort of modest enquiry I regularly make of them as well. It doesn’t seem to matter that they live on the other side of the world in the South Pacific.  We still talk, Skype, FaceTime and email.

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I awoke at 4:35 a.m. this morning.  My revival was a capitulation to the previous hour’s restlessness. I had set the alarm on my iPhone for 5:00 a.m. but as usual I anticipated the event. The plan was to be at the car dealership by 7:15 a.m.  Just routine maintenance and a gander at a loose plate cover where the seat controls are located.  I hadn’t my usual enthusiasm for the undertaking because it’s likely to be the last time I’ll be fretting about this particular car.  We’ve ordered another which, according to the salesman, will be manufactured in the week of August 3rd and delivered in the first week of September.

Even though we’ve ordered a new car I still feel obliged to fulfill the routine maintenance of the current vehicle, including the repair of the loose seat plate cover. Only recently I paid to have a tiny scrape on the driver’s side mirror repainted.  The cost was insignificant (even including the rental vehicle) and the satisfaction great though the effort it required was quite out of line with the scuff mark itself.  Nonetheless…if it can be corrected, why not?  Perhaps there is also a measure of suspicion at play, that the new deal isn’t done until it’s done; and until then it makes sense to do what the situation demands rather than falling into the trap of predicting the future and risking disappointment.  Anyway it’s a kind gesture for the people who are taking the car as a trade.

It has been days since I felt relaxed.  I haven’t slept well during the interval. Once I got myself showered this morning and put on fresh clothes I felt better. I’ve nothing to complain of other than my customary anxiety about getting everything done now.  I’m grateful that mother’s house sold quickly. Nonetheless it has been a long haul over the past four months.  My mother’s mental decline is incremental and daily observable.  Lately her perturbations are characterized in particular by paranoia.  Her uneasiness is of course completely unfounded and trivial but it makes for extremely difficult and fractious communication.  Because she oddly maintains a degree of credibility in whatever she says it is even more difficult to refute her assertions without becoming argumentative.  I feel the matter will only be at last resolved when she descends into nonsense entirely.  Until then it’s an annoying battle of wits.

Recent diversions have included considerable attention to the evolving and material world about me.  The breaking up of my mother’s house enflamed the household passions of both my sister and me and to a lesser degree my niece. We all “inherited” certain valuable possessions, things which come with not only their material import but also their psychological significance, reminding me for example as my father was accustomed to say, “Things don’t disappear, they just change hands”.  Privately I have undertaken some tangible emendation as well, the anticipation of which lightens my spirit.  What a horror it would be to be deprived of any one of the five senses!  Even as I stare at the dining room wall before me, I delight in the configuration of the eight wall paintings clustered there.  My, how I’ve dedicated myself to the frippery of my burrow!

Although I have settled into my first year of retirement to the extent that I no longer view the condition with a start, I have preserved the rudimentary strain of exhilaration.  It has nonetheless taken time to relinquish the utility I once enjoyed as an advisor though occasionally someone calls upon me for direction and I lend a qualified hand.  There has unquestionably been a corresponding diminution of the strength of several former associations but the greatest challenge is my own acceptance of my ability to bear the deprivation.  The effort entails a re-examination of the meaning and importance of friendship and social relations in general.  I can’t say that I or anyone else I know has proven exceptional in this arena.  It is if nothing else a reminder that one shouldn’t put too much stock in any alliance other than for its present value.

As the settlement of my mother’s affairs nears completion and the days of summer deplete with sustained almost jarring regularity I focus more and more upon our upcoming hibernation which now includes an examination of next year’s proposed venue on Tybee Island, Georgia.  When we get there to take a look we may be in for a revelation (either good or bad).  We might for example discover that the place is too small to endure for five months; on the other hand its seclusion and obscurity may have enormous appeal. Whatever happens it is thrilling for us to undertake this modest adventure.

“I shall soon enter into the period which, as the most agreeable of my long life, was selected by the judgment and experience of the sage Fontenelle. His choice is approved by the eloquent historian of nature, who fixes our moral happiness to the mature season in which our passions are supposed to be calmed, our duties fulfilled, our ambition satisfied, our fame and fortune established on a solid basis (see Buffon). In private conversation, that great and amiable man added the weight of his own experience; and this autumnal felicity might be exemplified in the lives of Voltaire, Hume, and many other men of letters. I am far more inclined to embrace than to dispute this comfortable doctrine. I will not suppose any premature decay of the mind or body; but I must reluctantly observe that two causes, the abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life.”

Excerpt From: Edward Gibbon. “Memoirs of My Life and Writings.”

In what we can all hope to be the fulfillment of life’s intended cycle, it is an odd turn of nature that the child becomes the parent and the parent becomes the child.  Quite unexpectedly I have learned that this eventuality is no mere aphorism, rather a blunt truism to which one must actively adhere. The discovery is perhaps for me the more surprising because I have never before had the occasion to be a parent; and I cannot resist thinking that the opportunity is akin to the experience of anyone who becomes a father or mother late in life, often more by accident than design. Yet because of the very natural unfolding of the experience I find that, in spite of my prior lack of education in the matter, being a parent to my own mother for example is nonetheless a perfectly fluid transition though admittedly the initial recognition of the condition was mildly startling.

A further element of suspense in the evolution of this paradoxical relationship was that until recently I hardly knew my mother on any level much less that arising in the context of reversed roles of parent and child.  At the age of thirteen years I had removed myself to a boarding school in Aurora, Ontario and my parents lived four thousand miles away in Stockholm, Sweden.  Even after my parents returned to Ottawa, Canada I was continuing my estrangement by living in Toronto, Ontario for undergraduate studies and afterwards in Halifax, Nova Scotia for law school.  I have never returned home and my later associations with my parents were strictly social and frequently as contrived, distant and stilted.

Awakening to the care of my parents initially involved nothing more special than advising them to take the same estate planning precautions which I would have encouraged my legal clients to do, routine matters such as Wills and Powers of Attorney and the more esoteric precaution of a Family Trust.  It wasn’t however until after the death of my father (who continued almost until his death to be cared for by my mother) that my participation in the care of my mother accelerated. An examination of my father’s financial affairs during the administration of his estate disclosed certain inadequacies which, while having been excused by my mother as “what your father wanted”, were not otherwise tenable. Modification of these arrangements was my introduction to the inertia which so characterized everything I later attempted to do for my mother.  Her stock response to almost any suggestion – whether it be an investment decision or something as trivial as replacing a damaged lamp shade – was to put it off until some later date, whether after an upcoming holiday or some other arbitrary event.  The pragmatism of the plan mattered not, her entire goal appeared to maintain the status quo undisturbed.

Given my mother’s appearance of deliberation and conviction, it required months of repeated similar intersections before I realized that her mind in these matters was not governed by logic, purpose or rationality but merely by intransigence.  I have subsequently come to understand that her inability to embrace change of any degree is a reflection of the inordinate struggle which she must undergo to comprehend it. This of course made my resolution to lead by example and instruction – as one must do with a child – considerably more palatable for me and I no longer felt the pang of regret which at first attended my frustration and misgiving upon seemingly foisting my recommendations upon my mother.

The fruitful outcome of these frequently highly strained encounters between me and my mother was twofold:  first, I at last took the uninhibited liberty of telling her exactly what I thought of her (a behaviour on my part which was most certainly not a model of decorum); and, second, I unwittingly acquired an insight into her personality which I can tell you was a far stretch from the paradigm of motherhood which I had mistakenly ascribed to her previously. In the result, the two of us got to know one another through the sometimes painful exercise of raw sentiment unadulterated by camouflage of any description.  In the early stages of our acquaintance there was considerable anxiety mingled with our congresses; and it was not unusual for me to find myself muttering to myself as I sped away from her house in my car. Eventually however the acrimony dissipated as I acknowledged the cause and saw the need to act as guardian.