I’ve found you.
Not that I’ve been looking, the antivirus was running on my computer, it's taking forever, but I’ve googled you and others that I’ve known over the years. Not just girlfriends, old friends from the U of A, Louis St. Laurent in Edmonton, Vanier and St. Agnes in Moose Jaw. Curious as to what’s become of the people I’ve known in my life. I would google more if my memory was better, but then maybe I remember only what I am meant to. Or, more likely, I remember what was important.
It’s surprising how few people you find, even now in the information age.
I googled you, late at night waiting for the antivirus to finish it’s thing. I googled you, couldn’t find you, it’s always been like this and I’ve wondered where you are, what you’re up to, and why I couldn't find you on google, yahoo, seemed you should be somewhere, and so I googled you again, different keywords, I don’t have your married name but I’d heard you were divorced, that was a long time ago – 7, maybe 8 years. The funny thing is that the harder you are to find, the harder I try, the more curious I become. And so I gave it a couple of more tries, there were other people to google, and on the last try (always the last try – it only makes sense) I found you.
And as I sat in my chair, looking at what I had found, 10, 000 memories came flooding back to me. People, names, events, places long forgotten.
A veritable fountain of memories, this googling of you, not so much the googling, not so much you even but the finding of you. Things I’ve long since forgotten about, buried memories and the chance virus that leads me to google you, the "do-nothing-cpu-intensive" while I wait for my computer and so while the time away on google.
Remembering you and it hits me like a blow to the stomach. God how I loved you.
It was a lifetime ago – 25 years? More than a lifetime, more time passed since then than before. SO much younger, our bodies lithe and fit, white teeth, soft skin, fresh breath. Your smell, Chanel #5, still when I smell it I'm transported.
You can smell age, I didn’t know it then, have slowly learned, there's a different smell, older, not-youth, not the same.
How old were we then? 18 19 20...So much has happened. It's been 25 years. There’s so much to tell you.
I’ll remind you how we met. It was the first year, The University of Alberta, Drama, Gina _____’s class on Gina, the caricature of the self important, self obsessed “Woman of the Theatre”. I remember 2 of her lines that she would say to the class – “I have more degrees than I can count” and “I go to the Opera in Blue jeans all the time”. A bit narcissistic. Like a few of the drama courses I took it was less a course in Drama then in tenured professor appreciation.
It was a small class, not even 20 people. There was of course Gina, the two cowgirls from somewhere north of Edmonton, one a cute but somewhat hefty little heifer, the other just a heifer, “bucklebunnies” they called themselves, they lived not far from me in these blue-top highrises at the south end of Edmonton, I went over there for drinks a couple of times. I recognize the buildings every time I drive into Calgary, but this is the first time I’ve remembered them. And one of them - I just remembered her name - Debbie.
They were always on their way to a country bar, looking out for some hot cowboy wearing Wranglers. Going to the faculty of agriculture, the Drama class was their arts requirement.
Then there was Mitch (?)- sensitive, good looking, very pale freckled skin with curly black hair, all the girls liked him. He read with a nervous tremor in his voice that was somehow endearing, made him appear even more sensitive than he was…. This was where we met Scott Day, Steven Lynch, whom I knew from high school, Ollie, the cute petite blonde, well dressed, bobbed hair and tortoiseshell glasses, bright, did her final speech on the “Importance of listening”, it was a great speech. We worked together too on a little chapter of a play by Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard’ I think, my speech and that line where I stamp my foot and exclaim “Oh, what a rage I’m in!”; my foot in my then so fashionable grey suede elf boots.
But Ollie liked it. I laugh when I remember it now, how gay was I?
Tracey, the pear shaped girl who seemed to think you two were best friends, [I recall you avoiding her], a heavy blonde American girl who argued against hunting as cruel, didn’t understand that the meat from the supermarket was from animals as well, I recall Steve trying to explain to her, I think she dropped out. Paul, the Swiss Canadian who was abducted on vacation and forced to do his national service.
There were others but time has erased them. I can with effort bring up some dim and fading faces but the names have long gone.
It was the end of the year class party, somewhere in Sherwood Park. Not everyone was there. You were there hoping to meet Mitch, you’d had a crush on him all year, all the girls in the class did, Gina included. And I found out later there was a secret agenda, I was supposed to hook up with Ollie, the petite blond in the class, somehow we were considered a good match. But Mitchl didn’t show, and Ollie was waylaid by a handsome rugby player, you were drunk and I ended up escorting you to your car.
We had nothing in common. I doubt we had spoken even a few sentences the entire year, Scott had told me he was in love with you, I thought you were stuck up, a princess, you, as you told me later, thought I was “a peacock.” We were never supposed to be together, fluke, chance, circumstance, we were an unlikely couple.
We saw each other again after the weekend, you had a full dance card then.
And we saw each other all summer. After work, the summer job, bussing tables at Earls, selling BBQ’s at the warehouse by day, driving out to Spruce Grove every night. Your dog barking, that spoiled little terrier loudly alerting your parents as I snuck in through the French doors. And they, always so discreet, turning over and sleeping through it. Meeting your parents. Your father, Derek, quiet, English, very civilized. Your mother less so. The tension in the house palpable, never do I recall seeing them speak. And I got on her bad side immediately, I’ve a talent for this, if you remember she was showing me her Hummel collection, and I let something drop, I forget what exactly, but the words “Tacky” and “Kitsch” for some reason stick in my mind.
It had to be said. I’d say it again.
Your adage, you quoted your mother, something to the effect of marrying for status and wealth as love never lasted, she had married for love and what had it got her? She had ingrained this into you. Your philosophy.
They were not happy. Your parents, the house, I can't recall once having dinner there, a family meal, in 3 years.
It made me wonder when I heard you were married. When I read about how happy, how in love you were.
Your bedroom was downstairs, a dug-out basement with French doors, pink curtains. Cheap brass bed. Queen Anne chairs. Your red-haired freckled friend telling us how as a kid you would stand on the chair and lecture your friends on how old the chairs were, how expensive they were, how they better be careful...
And it was so you.
Memory is fickle. Over half my life again has been lived since then. It juxtaposes people, puts others in places they were never in, in classes they were never in, at parties, events they never attended. The outline is true. The details may fail, but not the important ones, only trivial ones. Not that you will ever read this, but if you did, I would want you to note I’ve only erred on trifles.
I've attempted to put this in order, there are notebooks from so long ago dedicated to nothing but this.
But there is no chronology for this, I’ve tried, it doesn’t work, you can string it together that way if you want, dates, places, people, but it doesn’t work that way.
Still I’ll try again.
The first summer was the get-to-know you. We were together all second year in University, still finding time to drive out to your house after work, after classes.
And from there the summers blur. I have many pictures of us then, I’ve dug through the old ones, color photos of us with Rick (Richard, your brother) at the Ice Cave, Cadomin Cave, down in Crowsnest Pass with Darcy Pleckham, who left after University to move to Weyburn, (and I’ve googled him since, now lives in NY, still figure skating). He was a great guy. There were lots of great people. Great moments. The pictures bring them back, they show you, in colors that are slowly fading, in bad snapshot poses, smiling, hamming for the camera.
A set I took in our apartment, you in a black cocktail dress, posing, it was near the end I think, these were your memories for me. And bad photos of me, taken in front of the legislature, for you.
The second summer, much as the first, different jobs, you ran with Rick your brother the Ice Cream Stand in Spruce Grove, your own little business, “Jellybeans” you called it because you’d stick a jellybean in every ice cream cone, I’d pick you up, you’d give me an ice cream. I think it rained all summer, the business was a flop. I still have the newspaper clipping.
My old ford Granada and then the new car we bought together, the Grand Am, you taking the plates from it when we fought so I couldn't follow you out to your parents, you needed to get away.
There were so many of those. Perfect moments too, driving back from Banff late at night and a fiery green meteor falling high up, behind the clouds over Edmonton, we saw it, just us, and it seemed for a moment that we were favored by the gods.
And I remember returning from your place at 5 AM, the air brisk, fresh, flaming rose clouds burning away with the first rays of sunshine, the sky turning blue as I watched, I had just crawled out of bed with you, fallen into my car, driven home, getting out and stretching, the world was perfect, it couldn’t get better than this, I owned it, We owned it.
We were the odd couple. You, very uptight, conservative, your voice always an semitone above what seemed natural, the pitch too high. It became strident quickly, when you were annoyed or angry. We disagreed on almost everything. We were doomed.
Camping in Kananaskis, the campsite by Bragg Creek, a stray cat in the campground wanted in out of the rain, you arguing. Me leaving in the middle of the night, hitchhiking back through Calgary to Edmonton.
We split up then. It was me, you. Everything.
Still we got back together.
You will remember that trip we took to search for the Chungo Cave by Nordegg? A ten mile hike, we didn’t find the cave, only the base of a mountain, the sun was setting, we hadn’t any food or gear and so turned around to walk out, 10 miles, and after perhaps a hundred yards in the dark the trail disappeared, we were utterly lost, a miracle that somehow after tramping around the forest for umpteen hours we found the car.
And the campsite, a small perch filled lake, no one at the campsite, I can feel it now, it was perfect to be there with you but something was wrong. My first memory of things being wrong, first intuition, not the hitchiking back from Bragg Creek, but the forlorn, empty campsite…
And I wondered how can something be perfect and wrong all at once, yet it was, I felt it, can feel it still now when I think of it, it haunts me.
Perhaps it was a presentiment of the end. I think by then you had already made plans to leave.
And when we returned from that trip, our parents had called the rangers, they were out looking for us, they didn’t know we had planned to be gone the weekend….
And you moved away. England. We’d fought enough, lived together, fought some more, lived more, and eventually I saw you off to the airport, watched you fly away, you’d write, return after 6 months, 6 months seemed forever but I’d wait, there were my debts. And my heart sank like a stone as I watched your plane leave, and I realized everything in a sudden. It tore me apart.
The letters, at first the “Missing you”, then fewer, then silence, and I was stricken, realizing, now, for the first time the poverty of material things.
The things that bind you, with payments, luggage, storage. Needful things, our things.
I didn’t realize it.
And I loved you like anything, and woke up one morning and had to reach you – had to see you, and realized I couldn’t, so I gave it all away – the wardrobe and dresser to your parents, sold the car, packed up, worked 2, 3 jobs in restaurants, tree planted for the summer and flew to London to find you.
It wasn’t that quick, it wasn’t that easy, but there isn’t room enough here for it all. Or time, or relevance.
The first time I found you – Calling you at Goldman Sachs, not a week into London, I had to see you. And you, angry I'd tracked you down, finally to appease me, granting me a short audience in that pub in Blackfriars, reminding me of how successful you were now, then, living the life, the better life without me. The trips to “The Contintent” in the friends MG, (top down), telling me this with your scotch clutched tightly between white fingers. You talked, I listened....
And then a cold and naked silence fell between us.
That was it. We finished our drinks and left, perhaps 20 minutes in total.
Still I thought of you, I lived in London for almost a year that time, living in squats, never legally able to work, becoming too well adapted to poverty and squalor. A pattern for my life. And I dated and got on with life, we must you know, it was over. But it wasn’t over somehow and I moved to Canada, then back to London, where I found you again for a second time.
Probably I was 25, 26 now. SO 3 years, maybe 4 since that meeting in the Pub. Still I missed you. Nobody understood why, even I couldn’t understand why, we were, after all, entirely wrong for each other, somehow I knew.
And there had been others. Many, if I'd only seen it, were far better for me than you. But everyone I dated suffered unjust comparisons with you. They knew if, even if it was never stated, knew that there was somewhere an invisible bar they were being held up and measured against. Chanel #5, your perfume, I would follow the scent wherever I smelled it, only to find it was on somebody else. Not you. And the girlfriends fell into a pattern - I was looking for a BA with a Poly-Sci /or a History Major, 34 B Cup, preferably a Scorpio, big noses only need apply…
And I would find bits of you, here and there, in the right light, the morning or evening, she might resemble you, surprising how many big nosed Poly Sci/History majors are out there if you look. And surprising how you all resemble one another in small ways, insignificant things, but I understand that better now.
Still you haunted me, restless nights walking the streets of London, to the center of Clapham Common where I could look at the stars and remember you and wonder if you ever so fondly remembered me.
And I found you again. There was the miracle. A chance encounter with Brenda in Trafalger Square. There was always something between you two, she never liked you, bore you the grudge the plump girl always has for the popular one. Schaeddenfroida. So we are shocked to meet, entirely by chance, here, halfway around the world, and she tells me that of course I’m aware you’ve gotten married.
I wasn’t aware, I knew nothing but that I had been restless, that I had lost a thousand nights sleep over you, that this was not a chance encounter, she was sent to me. And so I played along, she gave me the basics, she had no more than that.
Inside I raged. Again I had to see you. And I plotted and conspired, found a friend to call you and pose as a friend of yours, get your phone number. And another miracle. Typically you were in Germany, your husband in the RAF on assignment in Iraq, but you had come to London for a few weeks to stay with friends. And on Stockwell Park Road, I think. A 15 minute walk from my place. This was another miracle. Somehow miracles were more common then. Since then they've disappeared. I had your number, your roommate tried to screen me, brush me off, but somehow I got to through to you, persuaded you to meet me.
And so finally we met again, 1991, Regents Park
I had a thousand things to say, meant to say, but it was enough to see you. All I wanted, needed in the end was to see you, to finally put some closure on it, and you sat there, floral dress, legs folded under you at an angle. It was a beautiful day, spring or summer, I had a thousand things to say and now none of it mattered. The bright sun dappled your dress as you lectured me, you called me irresponsible, other names, brought up old grudges, told me you were married, told me about lovers I suspected, lovers I could never have known about, maybe you were trying to hurt me, to drive me away, but then …..
You were talking again, I listened, could have listened forever. Your voice still slightly affected, getting higher as you enumerate my faults, lecturing me on responsibility....
It didn’t matter. I was so glad to see you.
You looked for all the world like a Renoir, the contrast of light and shadows on your face, your brown hair, large brown eyes.
And you stopped. And looked into space for a moment, forever, poignant, tears welled in your eyes, and I understood and was grateful you met me.
I wanted to hug and to hold you, not like that, not with any hopes of winning you back, I understood, but to make you understand as well.
We finished, I found my way to the Marylebone Road, back on my way, you on yours, and that was the last time we met.
Time passes.
I’ve never thought of seeing you seeing you since Regents Park. There have been distant rumors of you, few and far between.
From Anna, another girlfriend in the early 90’s, she told me after we split up that you had been seen by my family at the Opera in Edmonton. My sister, I think. And somehow, why I don’t know, they told her, and she, thinking I had a candle burning for you still, never told me until we had split up, fearful I would pursue you once again.
She didn’t understand.
After Anna and I split I found your number in Edmonton – if it was yours, the name was right, the address was wrong, not that I knew where you lived, but it didn’t seem like your sort of neighborhood so I called, listened to the message. I couldn’t tell if it was you. I didn’t recognize the voice, it could have been, I didn’t leave a message, there was nothing to say. I was curious.
And a few years later there was Lance – you remember Lance, Lance Yuen, now semi-pro poker player. (You see, I’ve googled him as well). We meet every few years in Calgary after Christmas, go for breakfast, me and his brothers, Mitch, Chris, sometimes Todd, the old Nelly’s on 17th. We catch up, he tells me news of the old crowd. Mike Nichols, the SU president, formerly a Edmonton City Councilman, now out of the limelite. (I remember drinking a bottle of scotch in his office, at first declining, but he told me about how you went to the Queen’s reception with another guy, baited me until I got drunk and called your mom, demanding an explanation. I was an ass, it didn’t matter, she never liked me, would never have liked me anyways.) Scott Day I ran into on Whyte Avenue a few years ago, living in shared University style house south of Whyte Avenue, still Scott, bright, articulate, broke and working at the Grant McEwan Bookstore. Long curly dark pirate hair, you probably can’t imagine, it looks good on him. Brenda eventually got married to Laurence Abbott, who not so secretly always thought you were too good for me. Steven Lynch came out of the closet, visiting Calgary he called, still wants to wrestle (and I can see you laughing), he’s never understood the elf boots were just bad fashion I guess. We met on the condition of no wrestling. He as well looked good, thin, I never would have recognized him on the street. And Lance is well, we talk about the old crowd, old times, and I ask him about a certain girl he knew in Pepperdine, I believe she was his true love, he denies it, there are plenty of women for him, but I think he knows I know she was the one.
And I ask if there’s news of you, discreetly, he’s vague, I don’t know if he has any news, but he’s uncomfortable discussing it, he’d had word, yeah, and I let it drop, didn’t want them to think I wasn’t over you.
I wondered sometimes, our friends back then, they knew it was ill fated, our frequent fights, and some wanted to date you for themselves, but after we split up, they were not your friends, how did they get word of you? And why wouldn't they share it with me? Were they protecting you or me?
It’s been years since I’ve thought of you. Thought of us, life gets in the way, children, debts, new girlfriends and fresh heartbreaks. The challenges of approaching middle age. Life moves on. Time passes. And the other night, googling you to while the time away while the antivirus runs and mystified by your constant, perpetual absence, googling you again and again, changing keywords, locations, quotes, until finally I find you.
So you had a child, Breony, Guess she’d be around 9 now, that’s good. I never pictured you as a mother. I’ve 2 children now, never pictured myself as a father. And your father died, somehow that I expected, I knew, he always seemed much older than he was. And you’re close by. An hour away on a warm spring afternoon, odd I’ve driven through there and never thought to check for you, why would I, it’s a small town and I never pictured you settling in a small town. I remember you taking me there once, showing me the cabin in the woods that had been your families homestead, calling on your Grandfather in the town.
I’ve dug through old suitcases, found your old photos, smelled the old perfume. The letters have gone. After Blackfriars there was another, she read through my journals, our letters, insanely jealous and so I destroyed them, they were nothing but pain anyways, the warm beginnings slowly fading, hope and patience turning into despair, the postmarks stretching through time, the kind words falling off the pages, they were destroyed.
Like Bluebeards bride she too in the end was destroyed, discovered like others the invisible yardstick she was being measured against and could not survive the expectation that she would ever be close to you.
Excerpt from a journal you gave me. With dedication, February 14, 1987:
Darling:
I hope the passages in this book are as beautiful and enlightening as the moments in our relationship. Thanks for all the moments we’ve shared – both the god and the bad for I feel I am a better person for it and I hope you are too.
I love you Rod.
Happy Valentines Day.
Love forever,
Lisa
Even in that short 2 lines you can see the foreshadowing of doom for us.
I’ve never written in it. I should. Life runs out, memories will not last forever.
I've had dreams of you, rare but they happen. That we were somehow going to Spruce Grove, but we weren't in Edmonton, it was more a composite of Edmonton and Calgary, the Bow Trail overlaid the Yellowhead, Rick was in it, I was searching for you and I'd found you, was going to see you, strange, disjointed dreams, they put me out of sorts, there was sex, but not sex, if you can understand. It was filled with the same atmosphere as the perch lake near Nordegg, something wasn't right.
The photos I've kept, the colors have begun to run from most of them, I had no talent then for photography, they are the snapshots of another era, us on our various excursions to the mountains, a younger us, Rick (*Richard) your brother, Darcy on another, some strangers and people I don’t recognize. Your grad photo is the best, it’s how I remember you, looking somehow sadly into the future, but there are others, you laughing, joking with the camera, posing. They don’t do you justice. I look at them, I recognize you, but it’s not you. Not the you of my memory.
But there is the postcard, Matisse - “White Plumes”, of his mistress Antoinette, I found it some years after you had left for London, was struck by the resemblance, others did not see it, but I saw it, timeless, it was you looking forever into the artist, somehow sad, immortal.
I look at it now and I still see you.
And I've found you for a third time, finally.
I found you, and once again you are not so far away that I can’t surprise you one spring afternoon with some flowers and a bottle of wine. And we’ll sit together like old times, on the newly mown grass, spring fresh in my nostrils, dickering, talking, arguing, reminiscing until the sun fades between the trees and the shadows worm among the headstones. Much has happened. I'll talk, you can listen.
I googled you, finally found you, only one article. All the searches in the world and only one paragraph. Commonplace and trite, oft repeated stock phrases. Which I have reprinted here:
Lisa (Dodds) Watson Remembered
Our dear friend, brown-eyed, vivacious Lisa moved to England after completing her Arts Degree at the University of Alberta in 1987. She worked at Alberta House in London. It was during her time there that she met, fell in love and married Nick Watson in December 1990 in England. She also had another small vow renewal in her parent's backyard in Spruce Grove in the summer of 1991 for friends and family.
Nick and Lisa moved around and lived on several air force bases in England while Nick served his country in the Royal Air Force.
In the late 1990's Lisa was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy. She bounced back and against all odds and despite what the doctors had told her, had a beautiful baby girl Breony, born in 2000. Lisa was able to enjoy her new baby for about two years, when the cancer came back with a vengeance. She lost her courageous battle and passed away in the late spring of 2003. She rests in peace next to her father and grandparents at their ancestral home of High River, Alberta.
Credit to Spruce Grove Composite High School Website
***
August 16- 2010.
Elusive as always, a cooling summers evening in the Highwood Cemetery, searching for you.
There is no order there, or some, slight order, newer areas for the more newly deceased, you wouldn't be buried here (or so I thought to myself) and so I wandered amongst the older graves looking for your family name, the obituary above made me think you were in a shared plot with them.
New shoes, they pinch, and so I step amongst the graves barefoot, shoes in hand, looking for you.
And, again, I found you. It took a while, too long, but there's no rush. I don't know why I came, I had promised I would and so I did, needed to talk, wanted to see you, no one is here, the cemetery's empty, the shadows grow amongst the headstones and I sit on the grave and share a cigarette, pull at the grass.
I don't know why. We said our goodbyes a long time ago, long before this, and I wondered, made notes, where are your family? Your grave is alone, the people around you are strangers, I expected to find you with your father and grandparents but I didn't find their grave (it's a big cemetery for such a small town...). And it's cold this death, this forgetting, has your daughter been back to visit you? Your Mother? Husband? Life moves on, is for the living, and so we shun the dead, so many graves untended.
I'm here to thank you. That's it. If you can hear me, if there's a purpose to it all and I wonder sometimes, often, then it's this: that the love we create survives us, spreads outwards like a wave, that while we decay this will be carried on, anonymous, but I know you, where my love began and haven't forgotten and wanted to thank you.
(In the Highwood Cemetery, High River AB: Headstone reads: Lisa Joanne Watson (Nee Dodds) Nov. 6 - 1965 - Apr. 28, 2003 The Journey Is Over, Welcome Home)