My sister-in-law Karen died this year. She had had a rare form of cancer. She fought it valiantly for some time, but her body just got tired.
She was married, with three adult children – two with special needs. She had a supportive husband. She worked as a neonatal nurse.
We weren’t close but we did have some pivotal moments. When Marg and I first dated, we went out for a year and then broke up. When I showed up to see Marg again, a year later, Karen was understandably protective of her older sister. She was suspicious of my intentions, and she watched me carefully, for a long time.
But I won her over, and Karen was a bridesmaid at our wedding. In my toast to the bridesmaids I said, “In Marg’s house, it was not her father who carried the shotgun.” Karen stood up and shouted, “I did not!”
But she did carry the shotgun. She looked out for people.
When Marg was pregnant with our first child, Robert, I got sick: I had to have thyroid surgery. On the day before my surgery I was already in hospital when Marg went into premature labour and was admitted to another hospital. Nobody told me at first: they wanted me to rest before my surgery. The next morning – the day of my operation – they told me.
I called Karen.
When I woke up after my surgery, I saw Karen sitting at the foot of my bed. “Marg’s okay,” she said. Then she went back to Marg’s hospital, and told her that I was okay.
I have mentioned the shower at home that I have been working on. Marg charitably told me recently that she is sure that I have only been working on it for a year or so. But when I go through my records I see that it was “in progress” as far back as March 2022. How long does it take a normal person to renovate a bathroom?
In my defence, I have a number of handicaps. One is that I am a perfectionist. Another is that I have difficulty asking for help. A third is that I think I have all the time in the world.
Karen helped me with that third handicap. When she got sick on what was to be the last time, her normally reticent husband called us to ask for help. We went down to see them immediately. We stayed.
She was well enough to talk to. I reminded her of our wedding. She started crying, and apologized for being so difficult. I praised her for taking care of her family. I thanked her for taking care of me.
She passed peacefully on June 8th.
I went home and started working on my bathroom. I finished it yesterday.
Category: The Herd
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Finishing Things
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The Furnace
This is from last year but as fall approaches I think of this again and I smile: my knee is much better. The bathroom is still not finished but it’s really close. And the furnace tech has forgiven me…
I live in a rural area and winter is coming. There are a number of preparations. Crawl spaces under the house have to be sealed. Hoses have to be drained. The furnace and snowblower need to be serviced. It’s a lot of physical activity. I’m in decent shape but as I age I am becoming more prone to random injury.
So there was a random injury.
I have been renovating my bathroom. Took out the tub. Put in a shower pan. A very heavy shower pan. My son helped me get the pan into the bathroom. We left it leaning vertically against the wall while I measured to cut the hole for the drain. And then I had to lower the pan myself.
No problem. I have a chain hoist. I made a tripod out of 2-by-4’s and slowly lowered the pan into position.
I was pleased that it fit. And then I hooked up the plumbing. I crawled under the house and cut and fit new PVC pipe to connect the shower pan’s drain to the septic. And then I turned on the water to check my work: such a flood has not been seen since the time of Noah.
Twice.
Eventually and just in time for winter I got the plumbing fixed so that it doesn’t leak (I hope).
And now I have a sore knee. I can walk on it, except when I have to go to the bathroom at night, which I do a lot, because I’m old and drink too much coffee…
Notice that at any given time in your life, there are some things you can change, and some things you must accept. I could drink less coffee…
But I was going to tell you about the furnace. We have a little propane forced air furnace that heats half the house. We had it serviced, all ready for winter, all checked out. On Thursday it stopped working.
It’s a fancy furnace that flashes lights at you to tell you what’s wrong. Six flashes, break, one flash, break. I looked it up and it meant “soft lockout”, whatever that means.
Wanting to sound knowledgeable I called up the furnace technician on Friday and said, “I have a soft lockout.”
And he said, “What the hell is that?”
And I said, “I don’t know, actually.”
And he said – and he really said this – “Have you tried turning it off and on?”
We were having this conversation while I was in town so I said, “No but I will tonight and let you know.” At the time it made sense, sort of. Maybe a “soft lockout” is something that happens when a furnace’s circuits get scrambled. I mean, even the tech hasn’t heard of a soft lockout, but who knows?
(Narrator: That is not what a soft lockout is. And turning it off and on did not solve Carl’s problem.)
Late Friday night, I turned the emergency switch to the furnace off, waited five minutes, and turned it on again. Turning the power off to the furnace worked to clear its circuits. Turning the power on, the furnace says, “Wow! A brand new day! Oh, a signal from the thermostat. Well, I must build a fire…” Whereupon the furnace gamely attempted to light. It does not have a pilot light. It has some kind of electronic ignition. For several minutes I heard the furnace trying to light.
And meanwhile it’s flashing me, six flashes, repeat. Six flashes, repeat. So I looked that up. It means, “I can’t start the fire.”
I know how it feels.
And after several minutes the furnace became – much quieter. And flashing six and one. Soft lockout. Which now I realize means, “I tried to start the fire, it didn’t work, and I have given up.”
Man, I know what you mean.
I’m not in any danger of freezing. It’s not that cold. And I also have electric heat. And a fireplace.
But I’m tired and cranky and my knee hurts and I tried “turning it off and on” and now I have an image of a curly-haired, bespectacled kid in IT not doing his job while I slowly freeze to death.
I started to get mad. I know that I can reach the furnace tech’s boss by Facebook Messenger. I wrote the boss, “You serviced my furnace last month. It’s not working. And the tech told me to try turning it off and on.”
Now I’m one of those Karens. I’ve gone to the manager to complain. And while I am partly justified, perhaps, the context of my complaint includes my sore knee due to activities that I unwisely undertook on my own that have nothing to do with the furnace.
This will harm the relationship that I have with the furnace tech.
But it felt good to email the boss on Friday night to complain that my life is not fair and it’s all his technician’s fault.
I’m sorry. -
Legacy
I am eight years old and leaving my parents for the first time. Leaving the country even. My grandparents are taking me on a road trip to visit my Great Uncle Carl.
This is us, Carl the younger and Carl the older, at my grandparents’ home in Burlington, Ontario.
You will notice in the picture that I am younger than 8. Uncle Carl came to my grandfather’s house to visit when I was two. And at 8, I went to see him, in Vermont.
My grandfather Kenneth Sr. came from Vermont. He married the daughter of a southern plantation owner. They met at university in New York. She played the violin and had a dramatic flair, the middle of two equally entertaining sisters. He was a middle child, too. His brother Carl was the oldest in a family of all boys. As am I.
Kenneth Sr. worked for the Beechnut Cough Drop company. In fact they sent him to Burlington to introduce Beechnut Cough Drops to Canada. Some time after he arrived, the company was restructured, and Kenneth lost his job. The man who fired him, Banker Bates, also lived in Burlington, and became his best friend. I met Mr. Bates. Such amazing magic tricks.
So my grandfather, unemployed in a foreign country, with a wife and family, picked himself up and started again. In life insurance. Eventually he founded his own company. He did well. And he remained in Burlington and raised three children: two girls, and late in life, a boy. My father, Ken Jr.
Not only was my father named after his father but he followed him into business: went to the Wharton School in Philadelphia, then returned home to work in his father’s company. For his entire adult life, except for two years when he lost his job and worked as a night security guard to feed his family, my father remained in insurance until he died. As his father had.
I was given permission to be somebody different. I wasn’t named after my grandfather. I was named after his talented, wacky, older brother.
I remember this trip still, the long drive to Vermont. Motels and candy racks. Nanna asking me if I wanted any candy. “No thank you, Nanna, but I would like some chocolate.” Chocolate is in a class all by itself.
Aunt Eva provided an endless supply of pink lemonade. They had an outdoor shower hooked up to a garden hose. I stood under it all day.
At night, I shared a bed with my Nanna – once. She never slept with me again. Apparently I kick in my sleep (although I learned this at 8, I didn’t warn my wife before we got married. Some things you don’t tell…).
My cousin Margaret took me out to buy chocolate and dinky cars. She taught me you could be safe in a thunderstorm by sitting in a car.
The best part of the whole trip was watching my Uncle Carl play. He played the piano, the harmonica, and the bass drum – at the same time. I remember him sitting on the piano bench, hands on the keyboard, a metal frame holding the harmonica to his mouth, legs twisted sideways so that he could reach the drum pedal.
I was told later that he was being careful not to show off in front of me. Usually, they said, he plays four instruments at the same time, and four different songs.
He also made things. For years I wore a belt that he had made, and had given me on this trip. And I have a chair that he made.
The purpose of the trip was to connect me. Later my father gave me a copy of the family tree, going back to the late 1700’s. “We belong to the MacMillan clan,” he said. “Mary Queen of Scots kicked us out of Scotland. We came to America. Your great grandfather saved the life of the president of the United States, by jumping in his carriage and stopping his horses from bolting over a cliff.”
It was a little scary, belonging to this family of talented people. What would be expected of me?
A few years after that road trip, my grandfather had a stroke. A year after that, he passed away. And then my grandmother moved to Toronto – closer to her children – and I lost that mythical connection with my ancestors that seemed to flow through Burlington.
Small wonder that I felt a strong pull to return to the area as an adult. To be different. To be my own person. And yet to be connected.