The Canada Day Chair

A few summers ago, we took a trip to Niagara Falls.  As we admired those magnificent waterfalls and had our fill of bustling amusement park rides, there was nonetheless a part of me that yearned petulantly for more faraway places – a remote jungle frontier or an ancient culture – the likes of which our circumstances did not permit.

We had been weaving our way through the bizarre corridors of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! when one of my kids tugged at my sleeve and pointed down a dimly lit hall over my shoulder.  At the end of that forsaken passageway, a face glowed in the dark, bobbing back and forth like a jack-in-the-box inside a fortune telling machine that resembled an occult jukebox.  The machine was adorned with ornate red letters that spelled, ZOLTAR.  “Please, can we do it, Mom?” my son begged.  “Can we get our fortune told?”

Zoltar looked overtly creepy but I decided to humour my son and we all descended somewhat skittishly into the abyss of that hallway towards the machine.  I stretched out my arm to deposit a coin.  Oh, boy, I was already thinking to myself, this is going to be good.

Out spat our fortune.  “You have been longing for travel,” it began.   Okay, Zoltar, that was eerily on point.  It went on:

You change your sky, not your mind, when you cross the sea or land … a good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are more vague than your own.

And right on cue, I found myself turning to stare at my boys, who were clamouring for me to read the fortune out loud.

I took Zoltar’s advice to heart, and from that point onward, became a tourist in my own land.  Every day, I made time to explore the trails around Millbrook or bundle the boys into the car for a quick jaunt to a nearby beach or fishing hole.  Suddenly I was exploring our own backyard with the same rapt attentiveness as a traveller arriving at a destination for the first time.

We brought a friend on one of our excursions who was an avid road cyclist and fisherman.  He rode shotgun in the car and directed me to secret places where we could watch the Port Hope salmon run apart from throngs of tourists.  On the way home he said, “If it’s alright, I’ll steer us back along some of my favourite cycling routes,” and I easily agreed.

We stopped at a remote intersection of two dirt roads.  “If you go left,” he said, “that will take you straight to the highway.  Go right.”  Next, at another abandoned crossroads, “That road will take you directly to Millbrook.  Let’s take this other one.”  We continued like that until we had completed a circuitous and spectacular scenic drive that could rival the most picturesque routes anywhere.  “This reminds me of Italy,” our tour guide reflected wistfully at one point. Some distance later, “This is a little piece of France.”

It occurred to me then that I was learning to approach life like a cyclist:  by taking a road precisely because I didn’t know where it would lead me, or what it would take to get there.

The next year was Canada’s 150th anniversary and to celebrate, the Millbrook Library was holding a fundraiser to raise money for new furniture.  They invited community members to each paint a Canadian image on an old wooden chair, which the Library would auction off at the Millbrook Farmers’ Market.  Being a big fan of the Library and anxious to share my affection for our little piece of Canada, I volunteered to participate.   I painted my chair lovingly with a natural scene from around the Village on each leg:  a field of wheat, a marsh, pine cones and maple leaves.  In the process, I escaped into each image and lost track of time entirely.

On Market day, I was filled with jitters.  I hadn’t painted since high school and never for public favour.  All through the Market, I kept an eye on the silent auction.  Two hours passed and there was not a single bid on my chair.  Finally, a friend of mine felt sorry for me and put down five or ten bucks:  a pity bid.  But after the Market, when I accompanied her to the Library to help collect the chair, we couldn’t find it.

“Excuse me,” I said to the librarian, “my friend won the chair with the scenes from nature on its legs.  Do you know where it’s gone?”

The librarian looked at my friend, “Oh, you didn’t win that chair,” she said.  “You were outbid at the last moment.”

My jaw dropped.  SHE WAS?  Not wanting to pry but eager to know more, I asked incredulously, “Are you able to tell us anything about the person who won it?”

“It was a little girl,” smiled the librarian.  “She had saved up her allowance to spend at the Library fundraiser.  She spent it all on your chair.  She’s going to keep it in her room and use it to do her homework.”

My heart soared.  “Way to stiff a kid out of her allowance,” my friend’s husband would chide us later, but even that couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.  I felt vindicated.  Somebody really got me.  Somebody could relate to my art:  a fellow traveller on the Millbrook path, a little girl.

As I’ve said to my kids since the onset of social distancing:  if we have to stay home, I’m so glad this is home.

BABBLE by Anita Odessa

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