Often I have lately remarked that my life seems uncommonly busy for one who is retired from the practice of law.  It has however dawned on me that there is a complicating factor in addition to straddling the international boundary between Canada and America every six months or so.  That factor is my mother.  As she incrementally declines in every respect so too my duties escalate commensurately.  It is fair to say that I handle her residential care, her finances and her professional health issues. Add to that the distance of approximately 100 kms between her and me (and the fact that I visit her almost every day howsoever briefly) it is small wonder that so much of my time is consumed in occupation of one sort or another.  Not to mention that our personal grocery shopping has been delegated to me as a trade-off for evening food preparation though I still insist upon preparing my own breakfast as any gentleman would of course do.  If we occasionally have lunch it is normally at the Golf Club in Appleton, the Ivy Lea Cub in Gananoque or Atomica in Kingston. The rigidity of our schedule speaks to our conformity to patterns generally, both here in the summer and on Hilton Head Island in the winter (though naturally the conventions differ noticeably given my abeyance from my mother).

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Human beings are social animals and the tenor of our social life is one of the most important influences on our mental health. Without positive, durable relationships, both our minds and our bodies fall apart.

Our survival as a species similarly hinges on our capacity for social living. Most of human history was spent in small groups in which each was dependent on the others for survival, and evidence suggests this is the condition to which we are best adapted.

Psychology Today © 1991-2016 Sussex Publishers, LLC

It has come to this: the thrust of my social life springs from the agency of a bicycle ride.

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What bliss! A refreshing shower after a morning bike ride! Followed by the judicious application of various hair compounds spanning the breadth of gloss and goo, paste and mud. Earlier we delayed our constitutional bike ride long enough to compose a sustaining breakfast of sliced green apple, a veggie omelet and a “round” of Nan bread. And lots and lots of coffee, the dark roast espresso model. This morning I commenced my physiotherapy exercises which, while surprisingly humble, nonetheless portend improvement of my condition. I am charged to repeat the exercises twice daily.  I have also begun using small weights in an equally unpretentious routine.

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Unfinished business. It sounds so clandestine. It’s almost something you’d expect to hear from a Mafioso. There is an unmistakeable element of revenge.  But to my mind it’s just getting things behind me, out of the way, done. I abhor loose ends, trails of tangled threads. Like any other business when it comes to unfinished business there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.  One can’t abruptly end what one was doing.  No, no, it requires application and thought, the standard way of concluding a matter. It has to be brought to fruition not merely shut down or abandoned.

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Dresden pressed the doorbell and waited. He felt good about himself as he stood in the porch way before the wide door with the bevelled glass, trying to catch a glimpse of himself in the reflection.  His dark blue suit was tailor-made of Samuelson wool from the Montreal garment district. The Oxford shoes were a bit tight but he knew the discomfort would vanish once he had had his first two whiskeys. There was assured to be a good supply of whiskey, even if only Dewars.  Jeffrey – the steward – routinely betrayed his thankful lack of training by filling the crystal tumbler with booze before adding the ice.

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At 2:30 a.m. this morning I abruptly awoke. I won’t say that I was sparky but my mind was churning. I knew I had to be up by 7:00 a.m. to make my 9:30 a.m. coffee engagement at Equator Coffee on Ottawa Street at the northeast end of Town. There was nothing to disturb me about the meeting.  On the contrary the gathering was an invitation from a man whom I respect and have known for over forty years  I have always taken pleasure in getting caught up with him whether as a casual rally or for a more deliberate purpose. There was a calculated aspect about today’s rendezvous. First, the invitation had come out of the blue; second, my friend hinted that he wanted to seek my counsel. This naturally heightened my interest and sharpened my wit. I had an inkling that the core of the enquiry was one which had lately been before Town Council and widely reported in the Millstone News (our local e-newspaper).  It turns out that my surmise was correct. It was upon these speculations that I ruminated while lying in bed for the next two hours before finally relenting and throwing off the blanket and covers to put feet to the floorboards.

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A great deal has been said lately in the media and in private about the decorum expected of our public officials. Their behaviour has been the subject of close scrutiny and a source of endless commentary. The conduct of public officials is a very palatable diet and one which is greedily consumed by voters. The most obvious impetus for this current conversation has been the ascendency of Mr. Donald J. Trump in the Republican Party primaries of the United States of America in the lead-up to the Presidential election in November, 2016. On a more personal level our local politicians have garnered significant attention for their own conduct since the municipal election last Fall, 2015. The conclusion appears to be that as in all matters of politics there is a variety of opinion.  Some (those generally aligned with a more conservative view) prefer our public officials to be characterized by traits of traditional presence and conduct; while others (perhaps more liberal or even radical) happily withstand anything bordering upon or embracing what is commonly called vulgarity. There may even be a middle-road adopted by those whose philosophic view wanders indiscriminately between strict social convention and trendy realism.

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Grant me, if you will, that we all have our weaknesses.  Mine is jewellery, an unquestionable frailty and a scornful affectation. Whether as an attempt to excuse my extravagance or to palliate my grudging self-reproach (the incongruity does after all prompt a raised eyebrow), I retail my gusto for jewelry as a fondness for metal. However both the excuse and the palliative are a deceit. I am at heart an unapologetic swaggerer, a shallow materialist intent upon brazen adornment and exhibition. In defence – and to quell supercilious opposition – I hasten to add that unlike many others my absorption in jewelry is not for the gems, rather it is only for the metal (platinum, gold, silver and even bronze). I nonetheless compound my imperfection by shamelessly conceding that the heavier the metal, the better. I have for example an instinctive disdain for hollow pieces (unless they compensate in size for the loss of weight). A bracelet I had made weighed almost a pound:

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It requires mile upon mile to bring a rolling freight train to a complete halt. There is similarly a remarkable inertia acquired over 40 years of zealous and uninterrupted employment. It is a seasoned condition, an unrelenting propulsion, a perpetual and seemingly unstoppable ambition. It does however in time subside. One’s ship eventually comes in and docks for good. I am at last cultivating a habit of a new order: unmitigated leisure, my own brand of purposelessness. Instead of the ringing of the telephone or the knocking at the door I content myself to listen to the soothing chorus of the wind in a stand of poplar trees, the unmistakeable desktop music for nowhere to go, nothing to do.

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For the fourth morning in a row this week we were up early and on the road. This morning for example we were traveling no later than 7:20 a.m. to get to a meeting in Stittsville at 8:05 a.m. Each of the meetings has involved important medical, dental, orthodontic, legal or estate planning matters. Because each of the meetings involved advisory professionals we were naturally inclined to be prompt or even overly punctual. For people like us who are unaccustomed to time tables and pressing exigencies, these meetings weighed heavily upon us.  As a result we responded to the pressure in dynamic ways and of course we are at last pleased to have accomplished all that we set out to do.

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