Doris Takes a Fall

Abundant personality, vitality and good nature have brought Doris many friends from one side of the country to the other but myriad charms do not comprise a fortress against the ravages of time. The Dear Old Thing fell last Sunday while doing chores, suffered a very painful fractured sacrum and was hauled off to hospital by ambulance. Six days later she is bedridden, still in hospital, and faces the prospect of weeks of rehab. Her weight is down to less than 95 lbs, her immediate future a mire of uncertainty. Doris’s friends and admirers would pine as much as I do at the sight of her marooned in a hospital bed. The good news is that from the neck up she is as sharp as ever, bright-eyed, still exuding positivity, still smiling.

Sensible folks prefer a big lottery win or a large, unexpected inheritance but my mother is odd: finding a postcard in her mailbox constitutes a major windfall. If you felt moved to drop a line your reward would be the knowledge certain that you’d make her day. Doris is in the Halifax Infirmary, 8.4 CHU, 1796 Summer Street, Halifax NS, B3H 3A6. If a phone call is your cup of tea dial 902-473-1510 and ask to be switched to her room.

Wish her well.

Commingling with Mother Earth

Go outside your comfort zone, I am sometimes urged. Late in June we did just that, joining The Twins for a wild herb walkabout. Our guru evoked the flower children of the late 1960s, draped in loose cottons, braless, gumbooted. Her twenty-five pupils were directed to gather in a circle, shut eyes, wiggle fingers in Mother Earth, rhapsodize in nature’s bounty. I squirmed, then distracted myself in the décolletage of the young women included among our ranks.

I’d expected to learn which herbs are best for wild summer salads but the focus was on the medicinal magic awaiting us in the Cape Breton woods: false lily-of-the-valley for headache, bunchberry for troubled kidneys, goldthread for alcoholism and constipation. All potentially useful in a Big Bras d’Or summer. We learned much, some best taken with a grain of salt, some intriguing. We will experiment further.

Bob Nagel returned to his summer Shangri-la a week ago, enhancing the sunshine and light. He has a mane of curly waves, looks ever more a lost brother of the Kennedys – Jack, Bobby and Ted – and still vaults tall trees in a single bound. He mustered his courage and allowed me to set fire to small mountains of accumulated brush. When everything went swimmingly, Bob morphed from shrinking violet to arsonist, demanding more.

Kathleen and Jon came for the long weekend. My sister abides restfulness only in small doses. We stalked wild orchids at Frenchvale, built bonfires, cut trails, searched for the ruins of Angus Livingstone’s homestead, he the first Scot settler in these parts, our ancestor.

Summer has landed, and with that our seasonal food-and-frivolity festivals are underway: we celebrate eggs and strawberries at Millville, mussels at Englishtown, lobsters at Big Bras d’Or, porkchops at Ross Ferry. How blessed we are to still have most of our senses intact and to know there is bound to be a wild-herb cure for dyspepsia right outside our door.

Alan