Fresh Air

This year we have used our rather spacious balcony more than we have in all previous summers combined. We can thank the kindly weather for this. Spring arrived early and was much warmer and drier than usual, and summer, which began officially today, the longest day of the year but has actually been with us for several weeks, has been tolerable so far. We have had many calm, warm but not hot sunny days, so we have sat out on the balcony day after day, with only the traffic from the cross-town expressway a dull murmur half a kilometer away, as background to our conversation. It has been very pleasant outside in the fresh air. Our balcony faces north so at midsummer with the sun setting almost due north of us well after 9 pm, we have the setting sun in our eyes, but we are indoors by then: Wendy tires quickly after our evening meal and usually wants to go to bed by about 9 pm. Helen Scott, our friend and neighbour several floors below us, skillfully planted our balcony pots with a variety of flowers, including pansies of several unusual colours. Almost every morning when I go out on the balcony to water the plants there is a fresh crop of ripe pansies for me to pick and put in a miniature vase beside Wendy's place at the breakfast table to help cheer up her start for another day. (I don't think "ripe" is quite the right word to describe flowers that are ready to pick, but it will serve).

Fresh Air is the title of a Sunday morning radio program as well as what we've experienced on our balcony lately. This past Sunday the host of the program, a Japanese-Canadian woman called Mary Ito, invited her listeners to send tributes to fathers that she could read on air, to help celebrate the Sunday designated as Father's Day. David sent her a short piece he wrote about my formative influence on him, that she said she would read,but although David and others, including I, listened to as much of her program as we could, none of us heard it. I will copy and paste it into this post:

While I was growing up, my father’s formative influence was through carefully chosen books. The many hours he spent reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to my sister and me left me with a vivid image of small ordinary people saving the world with dogged determination, more important than kings and warriors. Looking back, and ahead, I think his example is more important than the books. He was committed to his work as a public health teacher in a way that has sustained him and served the public good. Last year my mother, fit and hardy into her eighties, was diagnosed with ALS and has declined rapidly. Watching my aging father take care of his lifetime companion is touching and inspiring. For the first time, I can imagine getting old myself, and hope that I can approach it with the same dignity and determination as my parents. That’s the thing about fathers—always there ahead of you, and as important at the end as the beginning.