FAREWELLS & ARRIVALS

FROM SHAN NOODLES & JOK TO BAGELS & YEMENI STEW

I’m later than I wanted to be, posting this week. Somehow the long flight from Chiang Mai to Vancouver, via a seven hour layover in Taipei airport, knocked the stuffing out of me, as did the transition from soft warmth to damp chill. That said, at least here in Vancouver the grass is green, there are snowdrops and crocus everywhere, as well as the more subtle blooms of hellebore.

Toronto is still covered in snow my friends tell me. I’m due to land there this Tuesday, February 17. On that date the new moon rises, and with it come momentous endings and beginnings.

It’s a lunar calendar trifecta: the start of two fasting seasons, Ramadan and Lent, and the end of the painful year of the snake. I’m hoping, aren’t we all? that the year of the horse brings us better news.

Valentine’s Day, yesterday, was the three-month anniversary of Tashi’s death, already one quarter of a year in the past and still so present and immediate. It feels very recent and yet far away too…days of numbness and hurt and flattened energy.

I had a phone call yesterday with my dear friend (and Immersethrough partner) Tamar, who lives in Tbilisi (the luxury of WhatsApp!). She told me that in Georgia the Saturday before the start of Lent - yesterday - is the day for mourning and remembering the dead. It was evening in Tbilisi when we spoke. Her family had already laid the table and lit candles for their departed. And so, after our call, she and her son added another candle, for Tashi, and lit it. Light in the darkness is a gift, a reminder to keep our eyes and hearts open

first tender life in Vancouver

I flew into Vancouver last Monday evening, in rain and drizzle, the ground sodden. And because I’d been softened by four weeks in Chiang Mai, the damp penetrated my bones, despite my wool coat and several merino underlayers. But the chill here is nothing compared to the deep cold and snow of Toronto.

Last year in Toronto at this time every weekday morning we’d climb into the car and drive the short distance to the hospital, in cold and snow, for Tashi’s radiation treatments. The appointments began in late January and continued until early March, six weeks that left him exhausted, truly wrecked, and then led to serious blood clots in his lungs and a brutal week in hospital. This year the Toronto winter brought even more snow and more cold. I could picture the scenes that must have been happening daily at the entrance to the cancer hospital as patients and their families struggled to get to their appointments

That’s the thing about tough experiences. There’s an intimacy with suffering that can later give us an empathy with others. Does it help anyone who is struggling that I am imagining their situation and feeling for them? They can’t know. Perhaps the person who is helped is me: my experience has pushed me into thinking of others, has taken me out of my narrow personal preoccupations and into the larger world.

I don’t want to sound religious here. I remember listening to a sermon at my cousin Andrew’s funeral. The minister tried to persuade us that, as Job’s suffering had been necessary, so also it was somehow good for Andrew that he suffered (appallingly) as he died of bone cancer. I found the point of view outrageous and couldn’t wait to flee.

In my last week in Chiang Mai I pedalled out west of the old city to Free Bird Café one morning for breakfast. The café runs as a social enterprise hub, with clothing donations for refugees and others fleeing Burma, and fund-raising of various kinds, and serves a vegetarian menu of largely Shan and Burmese dishes, plus a few western items.

Free Bird Cafe Shan noodles, stirred, with fried Shan tofu triangles

The young guy working at the counter that morning had come across the border about two years earlier. He was Intha and had grown up on Inle Lake in one of the villages that “float” in the lake. Here he was, a young person displaced by the military coup and ensuing civil war in Burma, putting in his day’s work with grace and competence.

So many people in Chiang Mai and in Toronto are from somewhere else, and often they did not choose to be displaced. How many of them have the freedom to return home, or to choose to live elsewhere?

On my last morning in Chiang Mai, I felt so easy and light, packed and ready, that I went for an early walk around the neighbourhood, noticing small things, loving the light. There were soft dreamy clouds slowly billowing and swirling in the tender pink of the dawn. The monks were still out on their rounds

noticing small things: cat on motorcycle at the local wat

I stopped in for a last bowl of jok, velvet-smooth, with tiny meatballs and the sharp hit of fine threads of ginger, and said my farewells.

jok stirred up; a great start to a very long day

HERE & THERE IN VANCOUVER

I’m hanging out with dear ones in Vancouver, but that also involves lots of walking and talking, as well as eats here and there. I made a pilgrimage trip to Tommy’s Whole Grain on Powell. It was an easy bus ride from where I’m staying, and a warmer day than my last visit, in January two years ago, when temperatures were in the sub-basement (minus 20C!). It was great to see Tommy again and to eat his food (a small quiche and a veg hand pie). The tender aromatic whole wheat pan loaf I took home has already vanished down various throats.

Tommy’s breads…

A few days ago, after a meet-up at Siegel’s Bagels for Montreal smoked meat in a bagel (it really hit the spot), we went for a walk westward along the waterfront, with pale water and giant houses, plus wheeling seagulls, for décor. Supper that night was at Saba, a Yemeni restaurant on Granville. I had a delectable slow-cooked dish of okra, potato, and lamb with a fresh lime drink to wash it down. The restaurant seems to be thriving (it was packed) despite serving no alcohol.

bagel awaits; Saba’s lamb and okra stew with flatbreads beyond, and lime juice

I’ve spent a few mornings reading and working in Ele Café, on Broadway at Laurel, an airy calm space with a fabulous list of teas, some enticing not-very-sweet pastries, and good coffee. And on several long walks we dropped by tiny Fife Bakery on 3^rd west of Main for coffee and a sausage roll. I enjoyed the surprise of the heated toilet seat in their washroom!

early camellia in Vancouver