401

“I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts. There they are a standing in a ….” We all have it happen, I’m thinkin’. Time to time, a song gets stuck in your head? Especially a song that’s out of the repertoire of songs you’re liable to sing: for my part, Bob Dylan or cowboy songs get wedged in the crevices. At least I have a better shot at recalling the lyrics, the way I hear it anyway. So I give way to the coconut image that’s crowding my inner songbook. I give way and sing what I hear. Out loud. Out loud is good for the main reason that I might get to the bottom of why the song is stuck in the first place, and besides, alone within the four doors of my notso- soundproof vehicle, I say what the hell, eh? Bring it on. Oh, and one more besides. Anyone driving on the 401 at night needs to sign up for the first distraction one can get, especially knowing that stopping at the circus of the franchised rest stop ain’t goin’ to do it. While there are other sorts of reliefs to be had, relief of boredom is not one of them.

The glow from the lights of the dashboard, the rumble in your ears as an 18-wheeler wants to pass no matter how friggin’ fast you’re going: Maybe the truck driver can hear me sing and it’s not helping his boredom and only wants to be outta here, away from the hand-waving guy in the red truck whose singing performance is more like a morningshower concert that may not be quite as spectacular as he imagines. I’ll stick to my side of those impressions anyway. Just think: I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts, sung by the four tenors and there I am on stage at Carnegie Hall as one of them. I crank up the tonsil volume to accommodate the acoustics of the highway: “Big ones, small ones, some the size of your head.”

Lili Marlene; Bluebirds and the white cliffs of Dover; pack up your troubles in your ol’kit bag …: Songs of wartime pouring from the big dipper overhead, bright as neon in the northern sky. Returning home to my place along Slab Creek; returning from the Nation’s Capital after a few days of helping my dad adjust to a life transition. Now at 101 years, mindsharp as ever, especially when it comes to issuing directions, which I learned long ago to mostly ignore and not take personally while allowing them to filter through the cosmos. Selective hearing, someone called it.

So dad has been fortunate under present conditions to have arrived in a private room overlooking a garden where I have installed bird feeders and his favourite outdoor thermometer in front of his window in the Veterans’ wing of the Perley Rideau Centre in Ottawa. It’s a short walk or bike ride for me from his house where I camp out. My folks watched the building and evolution of Perley while taking in evening strolls by the duck pond over the five decades they enjoyed their bungalow.

The duck pond, now co-inhabited by porpoise- sized goldfish, is a popular place. Perley- Rideau is home to a population of 450 residents, the workplace of 450 and receives on average 200-300 visitors a day. The senior’s village, as some call it, has a busy gate-arm to the parking lot.

The Veterans’ wing has about a hundred rooms; each resident a story on their own. Earlier this year, before dad entered Perley, I coincidently began reading the three volume work of William Manchester, The Last Lion. It’s the story of Winston Churchill and the work relives in detail the years leading up to and during the Second War. Now, daily during my trips to Ottawa, I walk the halls of a landing place for many whose lives are described within the pages of the books. There is an uncanny relationship here, a vicarious yet new understanding of how our current generation lives in the shadow and aftermath of world conflict as we continue to care today for those who, as young adults and many in their teens, flew the bombers, the Spitfires, drove the tanks and who lived in dank, lice infested trenches watching their kin die horrific deaths in order to help in the rescue of civilization from a close encounter with global oppression. There in the dining room, in the memory boxes—display cabinets outside of every resident’s door that hold personal memorabilia—and in the singsongs and a host of other re-creation events does it hit to the core of what the late Ralph Margetson wanted us to remember in his letters to the editor of this newspaper. What he wanted us never to forget. Come for a visit to the Perley with me sometime and I’m sure you’ll find it a soul-felt comprehension, as I have, of the sacrifice of many so that we and our children may know peace.

Finally, I’ve hit exit 588 and am off the 401. The bridge at Tyendinaga, turning right onto the darkened highway toward Northport is all I need to know that I am back on the island and nearly home. Say, if you know the words to Lili Marlene, why not sing it with me? There are only the stars in the coal-black night to know.