Damn, it's hot here.

I am still de-briefing from the trip. I have been laying low, mostly staying in and around the house. I don't know yet how it feels to be back. It's different here. I feel dissonant. It is as if I have been deep sea diving and need to re-emerge gradually in a series of pressurized chambers.

To pick up where I left off, our time in Shallow Bay would later be referred to as our "three-hour tour," as we meant to stay over Wednesday night only, and didn't make it back to Corner Brook until Saturday afternoon.

When we awoke that Thursday morning to news of more bombs in London, all the wispy, vaporous anxieties that had been hanging around the back of my mind for weeks now suddenly accumulated enough density to form one coherent thought: perhaps it is time for us to get out of America. It hung heavy over my head like that all morning. The London attacks were reminders that my country of residence is also a target, and that it is only a matter of time before we are hit again. And again. Why not pick up and come back to Canada--better yet, Newfoundland--where nobody is pissed off at us badly enough to want to kill me and my children.

 

Certain of my friends and family had already raised the question as to when we might make a run for it--not from Al Qaida, but from the Republicans. I'd so far been saying, "look, it's not that bad...America always appears scarier from the outside looking in. And anyway, nearly half of the electorate voted against Bush--don't write us all off." It's weird to hear myself on the defensive when it comes to the U.S., but it isn't the monolithic evil empire it appears to be. Okay, well, maybe the administration is, but most of the actual Americans I know are good, compassionate and intelligent people. And I'll even allow that some of the folks working in the White House are bound to be, too, although it will get me in trouble with my husband for saying so.

"When they come onstage the Daily Show and drag Jon Stewart away, I'll leave," I told my friend Bob. "As long as Jon Stewart is winning Emmy awards, there's hope."

If my fellow Canadians have an irritating national flaw, it is their complete obsession with the U.S. In an insecure, prissy kind of way, like Miss goody-two shoes living next door to with the neighbourhood bad girl. The comparisons are endless and neurotic to the extreme. Pick up any newspaper or turn on the tv, and we are trying to define our nascent national identity in negative. The expats in Mexico used to have a joke: how do you tell a Canadian apart from an American? Answer: just call her an American and look out.

I laugh now, remembering how terrified I was, my first night across the border. We were in a motel in Laredo, and I wouldn't let Patrick go out and buy cigarettes because I was dead certain he would be shot. I mean, that was the idea of America I had growing up. People just running around armed to teeth and shooting each other over--I don't know--foreign manufactured vehicles or something. And yes, there is a real element of violence here, I won't deny it. But there's also so much more than that. I mean, it's a damn big country, full of all kinds of people. It's more complicated than that. I've kind of adopted a Leonard Cohen quote as my standard response to anti-americanism: "It's the home of the best, and the worst."

But on that Thursday morning in Shallow Bay I truly wondered if the best was enough to outweigh the worst.

Fortunately, an afternoon spent frolicking on the beach with kids has a way of putting one squarely back in the present moment, and the gears of worry stopped turning for the remainder of the day. By the time we got back to the campsite it was too late to think about driving back to town, so we booked another night in our cabin.

The next morning as Patrick and I walked the beach and talked things over, I had the realization that rather than finding refuge in Newfoundland from my anxieties for the safety of my children, I had simply brought them along with me. Was it realistic to think I could escape them by moving here permanently? Maybe this wasn't just about America, or the Republicans or even terrorism. Maybe the fear was in me, regardless of what was happening externally. There is always another bogeyman in the wings, should the spectres of Bin Laden and Dub-ya lose their oogie-boogieness for me. Was this urge to get us to higher ground instinctual or just plain neurotic? I decided to file the question under "wait and see", and trust that more information would come to me as I needed it.

Come Friday morning it was still difficult to tear ourselves away, mainly because we were having such a great time hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law. Scott suggested we move the holiday to his family's lakehouse an hour or so down the road at Big Bonne Bay Pond. While they broke camp, we took off for Broom Point, where we heard the tidal pools were great.

It was a playground. Alden and Patrick took off for the furthest, slipperyest, rockiest rocks way out on the point, while Jonah and Carey and I clambered around closer to shore. Jonah took up his customary posture of crouching intently over some small creature...baby shrimp, in this case. The baby was so excited by the proximity of all the
rocks and water, I had to go ahead and strip him off, although the wind was chilly and the sun was intense. He was delighted, and spent a long time pouring gravel on his penis, to see how they went together.

I watched him sitting so joyfully naked on that rock, goosebumps all over his fair skin, and thought how crazy vunerable human children are. They come into this world without one single defense. They have to be clothed, carried, nourished and protected for a ridiculous, impractical length of time. There is so much that can go so badly wrong: disease, war, kidnapping, hunger, all manner of disasters natural and unnatural, and so many of them utterly beyond a parent's power to control. I was sitting there in the sun and the wind, with my heart in my throat, when Patrick came ambling by with grin and a nod towards his naked baby boy and said, "Well, that's just about worth the price of admission, isn't it?"

It is, I allowed. Just about.

Observation #1: being married--at least, at short-range-- is apparently not conducive to blogging.

Observation #2: it takes a journey of a month's duration to really change you...two weeks won't do it, not even three. But a whole month away really takes you somewhere new.

More on both points over the next few days as I settle back in.

Just two days left before we head back across the island for the final leg of our trip. Patrick got in on Sunday night--after an unscheduled overnight in the Newark Hilton--and after he had a few days to recover, we took off for what was supposed to be a one-night excursion to Shallow Bay, where my sister and her family were camping.

The main draw in Shallow Bay is the spectacular 5-km powder-grade beach. It is located at the northern tip of the national park, so the drive featured ocean on one side of the road and the Long Range mountains on the other. One hardly knew where to look. Certainly not to the road ahead.

We stayed at an efficiency unit at the Shallow Bay motel, just a five minute drive from the beach. The motel restaurant was decent enough. Typical Newfoundland outport restaurant fare: soups & chowder, hot roast turkey or beef sandwiches with gravy, french fries, assorted deep-fried seafood (mainly frozen), yummy homemade bread and molasses, which #1 son especially relished. Culinary observation: in general, Newfoundlanders don't do chowder well. It is much better in the Maritimes & New England. The fishcakes I had with breakfast, however, were scruptious--finely flaked salt cod, no bones, just enough potato and minced onion, fried just right. I had them two mornings running, as the weather was gorgeous and we decided to hang around an extra day and play at being tourists.

more soon...

 Waiting for Patrick to arrive. He is supposed to be in Newark, where he has a long layover before the St. John's flight departs. He was thinking about taking a train into the city to visit Ground Zero. I am anxious and distracted and wish it were already tomorrow morning and he was here.

Took a drive to Gros Morne National Park (http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/nl/grosmorne/index_e.asp) the day before yesterday. Had a lunch of steamed mussels at the  restaurant on the beach at Trout River, the Seaside or Seashore or Seaview. Inside the entrance there is a Department of Fisheries poster illustrating the forty or so species of edible fish found in the local waters. Four year old son looked at it with a grimace, and said, "Is that the menu?"

Although I can't keep the name straight (and don't need to, since it is the only place to eat in Trout River), I make a point of dropping in anytime I am home. The fish is fresh and simply prepared, usually pan-fried. A lifetime of eating out in rural Newfoundland has taught me to generally avoid the salads (iceberg lettuce or soggy caesars) and wine offerings (screwtop or box, unless you plan to get a bottle, in which case you can sometimes luck out). I opted instead for a huge platter of steamed mussels and an 1892 beer.  The proprietors have installed windows in recent years, a concession to tourists and their odd ways--insisting they had rather take in the 180 degree view of the Gulf of St. Lawrence than the panoramic wall mural from the Sears catalogue that used to serve as visual backdrop. Go figure.

As I have said before, Newfoundlanders know this is a special place. They are neither ignorant nor unworldly, not in any greater proportion than any other slice of humankind. But I suppose anything abundant, even such extravagant and boundless beauty, can be taken for granted. My mother's street runs along a promontory overlooking the Bay of Islands.  At any daylit hour, it's the kind of view that can't be had in the United States anymore unless you can pay for it. Yet the residents of this mostly blue-collar neighbourhood will have their lawn furniture set up out front, facing the street, seemingly oblivious to the masterwork of sea, mountain, and sky behind them. 

Surely the larger share of this is attributable to familiarity. Afterall, if everyone walked around in a perpetual state of awe at their surroundings, we would probably let the mundane aspects of life--like eating and sleeping--fall by the wayside. But I suspect some of it has to do with the way Newfoundlanders were treated during and after confederation with Canada--constantly told that they and their way of life was inferior, backwards, outmoded. Join the modern world, my grandparents and their contemporaries were urged. Burn your boats. Move out of the bays. Take the Sears catalogue as your guide in what is right, desirable, and beautiful. Buy now, pay later.

And don't look out your window.