Collisions

   I totalled my car once, making a left-hand turn in front of oncoming traffic. I thought that I had clearly looked to see if I had enough time to make the turn safely but, in the middle of  it, there was suddenly a car bearing down on me that had  come out of nowhere. I can remember hearing the sound of screeching tires and thinking to myself, "They're not going to be able to stop in time" and then the impact.

Could really have used THIS...

   The force of the collision activated the passenger side airbags and drove the passenger door into the dashboard. Apart from that there was not a lot of damage to the rest of the car. After a lengthy time to consider, my insurance company finally decided that it was not worth repairing and therefore was a total write-off. There was much less damage to the other car and none of its occupants were hurt.
   Well, not physically hurt anyway. Nor was I physically hurt or suffered any real financial damage but that was not where everything ended.

...to avoid what looked like THIS!

   The collision is now inside of me and I think of it almost every single time I need to make a similar left-hand turn. I still hear the sound of it and remember the feeling of being knocked almost parallel to the seats. I can remember the sound of the female driver of the other car crying and her husband yelling. Me being unable to explain my actions to them. It is a haunting kind of thing and I can't even begin to think of how things would be for me now if anyone had been seriously hurt or, worse yet, killed.
   A collision opens up new possibilities. It is one of those things that is so foreign to almost any other of your life experiences that, when it happens, you are forever altered. Prior, it was a bad thing that happened to someone on T.V., or in the paper. You are not naive enough to think it could never happen to you but you manage to tuck it away in a corner dark enough to never have to consider it as a possibility. Post-collision and it is something that now defines you, almost indelibly. You are a person with blue eyes and an accident. Grey-haired with a hint of shattered glass.
   I drove past an accident scene the other day. There was a young lady in one of the cars, her bumper was almost on the road, and she was crying. She did not appear to be hurt and the accident appeared to be less serious than even the one I had been in. But she had obviously been overwhelmed by it all. I have noticed this from time to time, that if someone is distraught at the scene of an accident it is generally a woman. I've never really thought about it too much until the other day. What occurred to me that day was that, for the most part, collisions of any magnitude are not something that women have as a life experience to relate back to. As much as my accident was an awful experience, it was at least tempered by every other collision I've easily lived through. Primarily, I'm thinking of sports-related collisions, I guess. All the times I was running full speed in one direction and intersected someone running full-speed in the opposite direction. Collisions I knew were coming and ones that completely blindsided me. Head-over-heels stuff, the occasional broken bone. Every single one of those prepares you for the one when you're driving. My feeling after my accident was similar to other times--"Holy crap, that was hard!" and then, a few seconds later, "But I'm still standing!"
   The difference, though, was what could have been. I could have had a passenger that night. And if I had, he or she would have been seriously hurt. It could have been my wife, a son, someone I work with. This is how it got into my head.

Of course, it's best of all to avoid THIS!

   Since my accident, I have had to make that left-hand turn on a weekly basis. If I can, I avoid it. I take a whole different route so, that when I get to that intersection, I am travelling straight through it and not having to turn. But this does not rule out every other turn a driver needs to make against two lanes of oncoming traffic. When I find myself in that situation, having to carefully gauge traffic speed, I invariably think of that collision. There are the occasional close calls and everything is re-inforced all over again in a very intimate sort of way. Things happen for a reason, though, and I do believe this. I believe that a better understanding of the possibilities involved have kept future passengers (not to mention myself) just that much safer.

Poem 3

   Quite a few years ago, I watched a documentary on t.v. about bullfighting. In it, they showed film clips from several actual fights. In one of them, things go terribly wrong for the bullfighter, there is some kind of a miscue and he is horribly mauled. In the midst of being treated like a ragdoll by the bull, however, for the briefest of moments the bullfighter ends up standing there, straight up and down. How could this be, until I looked a little closer and realized that he was actually suspended on one of the bulls horns, which had pierced his back and come out through his stomach. For me, this was a hard image to shake and eventually became the following published poem.




Dreaming of Madrid


He was a Pedro
or a Juan or a

The Death of the Bullfighter--Clave Antoni

Manuel who stood straight up
suddenly, en la corrida,
impaled on his final
mistake.
In the middle of
the spectacle turned
mayhem, a bullfighter
is tossed toward the sun
then trampled, but then
stands straight up
for a moment, like he
has changed his mind,
has chosen a profession far removed
from this, is waiting for
the bus in Madrid, goes to
work each day and knows
he will return home again.
Perhaps this is the dream he has
as the suit of lights
turns off, he looks down
sees the hard tip of the bull
sprouting from between his
own muscle and bone, knowing
it has ended this way and that
this is the last time it will
end this way


and the bull, looking up through the heart
of the man, knowing no other way
it could have ended.

Cheam

   In the late 50's and early 60's, I spent parts of my summer vacations visiting my grandparents in the little town of Gibson's Landing, on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, not too far north of Vancouver. From the mid-thirties on, they had owned a small cottage on a good-sized parcel of land overlooking the ocean. Getting there required a ferry trip from Vancouver and, in the times I spent there it was a very sleepy little place that I adored.
   As was common custom, they named their little cottage, calling it "Cheam", (pronounced Chee-am). They had pulled this name from a little bit of family history; my grandmother was, in turn, the grand-daughter of Lewis Nunn Agassiz, a settler who'd originally travelled from London, Ontario to B.C. in search of gold back in the 1850's and then, being unsuccessful, had settled in the Fraser Valley. The area he settled became the town of Agassiz and it was nestled at the foot of Mount Cheam. This, then, was where they pulled the name from.
   Gibson's, in the seventies, became the town they filmed "The Beachcombers" in and, with the accompanying publicity, quickly became anything but "sleepy"! During the time I visited there, though, it was a small boys dream.
   A big part of the dream was the ocean being there. At the time, I was living in Edmonton and there was no ocean or even large bodies of water in the vicinity. To get to Gibson's required a two or three day trip through the mountains and this only served to whet a prairie boy's appetite. The mountains were a place of wonder for my brother Bob and I with its jaw-dropping scenery, bears and deer showing up on the side of the highway, the picnic lunches, the souvenir shops, the glaciers, etc. Vancouver was always a marvel when we got there, Stanley Park, Lions Gate bridge, totem poles, the aquarium. Then it was on to Horseshoe Bay and we were riding on a ship! We'd land and then it was a 3 km. trip to Gibson's during which I could barely sit still. Quick trip in to the house to see Granny and Grandad and then down to the beach.

The bottom of the steps leading to Gran's beach

   The beach was a place of wonder. It seemed as though we lived on the beach, we ate there, swam there, and Bob and I always headed there whenever there was nothing going on up top. To get down to the beach you had to follow a winding set of stairs, which, in different spots, were constructed out of either stone or wood. They spilled out onto the beach at the bottom, at high tide you would almost be stepping into water. It was a fairly long beach with almost no sand but a lot of pebbles. Huge logs had rolled in on the tides and planted themselves there. There was a high bluff at one end of the beach that my brother and I were warned not to climb but, generally, we disregarded this (I have been back as an adult with kids and now understand the warnings!) At the other end, near the stairs, was a pool carved out of the rocks. This always had some kind of marine life in it and it was easy to spend an hour or two at a time, on your belly, gazing in to it and trying to corral the little creatures you saw. At low tide, it was amazing the things you discovered, simply by turning over the wet rocks, thousands of crabs and crawly things, barnacles and mussels. The rocks at this end of the beach led around to the next beach and we'd often make the trip there but it wasn't nearly the fun of "Granny's Beach".

Gibson's Landing marina, great place for a kid!

   A twenty-five minute walk from Gran's (early on in one of our visits grandad actually passed away, everything then became "Gran's") took you into the business area of Gibson's and, more importantly, the marina. I would walk there on my own, with a life jacket and a small fishing line, lie down on the end of one of the docks and spend hours catching "shiners", or ocean perch. Gran would let me take a mason jar with me and every shiner I caught went into the mason jar. I would then bring this back, show everyone and then bury them in Gran's rose garden (she had beautiful roses). Of course, the next day, due to my curiosity, I would dig them up again! They did always get re-buried though...
   There was the occasional early-morning fishing trip, generally with either my Dad or my Uncle Keith. Of course, we were always after salmon, and it became a mission of mine to catch one. Finally, the day before we moved to London, I caught one! One excited boy! I have such strong memories of salmon being wrapped in newspaper, all lined up on Gran's kitchen counter, before they were carried down to the beach to be cleaned. They would be scaled and gutted and soon there would be a whole flock of seagulls hovering over us, waiting for the bits that needed to be cast off.
   It is actually very difficult to describe the magic of the place. I can safely say it was my favourite place to be as a kid. I can still smell the smells, see all the sights and remember the excitement. I have gone back a handful of times as a grown-up and much of the magic is gone, though it now appeals in a different way. It is a much more commercial place, as a town. Cheam itself doesn't exist the way it did when we went there, has been added to and upgraded. These days, I'm sure it is worth a small fortune! If I ever win the lottery...