My other task at last night’s Celebration of Life for Catherine Hennessey was to assemble photos of her into a slideshow for projection on the in the Carriage House at Beaconsfield.
I used this sketch of her house at 222 Sydney Street to get things configured.
Kudos to staff at the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation, by the way, for very clear instructions for how to project video from a laptop. Much appreciated.
Lisa wondered the other day if the people who read my blog can intuit my mood from how much or little I write, her thesis being that if I post a lot, I must be in need of diversion, which must signal something. Whether or not this can be intuited by the readership beyond Lisa, she’s not altogether wrong: writing here serves many roles. It’s a place to stick my head when I need a break from the tizzy of everyday life, it’s a place to go when I simply need space to be alone with my thoughts, it’s a way to exercise control when other things seem beyond my control.
I clearly needed some distracting this week, as evidenced by the maintenance work I’ve done here on the blog over the last couple of days. Which variant of disappearance into the cave this was, I’m not completely sure: part of it was being left to my own devices for a few days, here by the shore, and being unable to settle into complete summertime idyll; part of me needed some respite from writing weighty words; and there’s a longer-standing part of me that takes comfort from, well, optimization.
It’s optimization that I was focused on this week, and I made a few small repairs in that regard, under the hood, which I’m listing here as much to remind myself as anything else:
The result of all these changes was that I increased my Core Web Vitals score from 57 to 92, and reduced my Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) from 7.5 seconds to 2.9 seconds.
All of these things are standard issue Drupal and Apache optimizations, the kind of thing that I spent more than a quarter century steeped in when I was maintaining Drupal for Almanac.com.
Which prompts me to consider another reason that I escape into this sort of work from time to time: I miss it. I derived a good part of my identity from being a professional optimizer: that was the work that lay at the heart of my career. Giving that up, at the end of 2023, has left me to reinvent myself. Like a pilot who hangs up their wings, sometimes I just need to remember what it’s like to fly.
(Credit to Shawn Colvin for the post title. Her A Few Small Repairs is a masterwork.)
Last night was a Celebration of Life for my late friend Catherine Hennessey. It was a lovely event, held on the lawn at Beaconsfield on a perfect summer night.
I was asked to be one of the speakers, to reflect on my relationship with Catherine. I ruminated a lot about how to express the essence of how important Catherine was to me, and I went through many drafts. As I wrote, I excised out the “and then this happened, and then this happened,” the way my writing can often tilt absent a compass.
I tried to heed the words of Mathew Dicks—”So a story is about change over time. Usually, it’s sort of a realization.” And the advice of Lisa, who’s forever encouraging me to write with a deeper connection to my feelings than to the chronology.
I think I ended up with something honest, and I got the sense, watching the audience as I spoke, that more than a few people saw themselves in my story.
Here’s what I said.
–––
We sat around the kitchen table, my late partner and I, in the kitchen of Catherine Hennessey’s house on Pidwell Lane.
It was Christmas dinner, 1994, cold and snowy outside, with a roaring fire in the wood stove.
Around the table with us were David Weale, Reg Porter, and Darren Peters, between them a veritable braintrust of Islanderness, but each, as well, with a not insubstantial need for a kind of mothering that Catherine was uniquely capable of offering.
Mothering is not a word one usually hears spoken about Catherine.
She was a lively host, a harsh critic, an inveterate gossip, a collector, a flirt, a lover, a politician. She was self-involved, fiercely independent, a determined iconoclast, a passionate advocate for “her causes.”
But motherly?
Yet I can think of no better word to describe our relationship.
When I landed here in Charlottetown from Ontario, 33 years ago, I was 26 years old, full of piss and vinegar, arriving in a place I knew very little about, a place where I knew nobody.
In short order, Catherine had taken me under her wing, fashioning herself, by times, as a guide to this complicated place, a protector, a supporter, a critic, and a co-conspirator in her various misadventures.
She generously invited me into her world, a world that, by all rights, I had no place entering.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, there is a test called “Are you a connector?” that measures the size of your social network: from a list of 220 surnames, drawn at random from the Manhattan phone book, you score one point for every person you know with that last name.
The mean score was 40. Gladwell had never heard of anyone scoring more than 130.
I gave the test to Catherine and she scored 180.
Which is to say: she knew a lot of people. And she introduced me to many of them: academics, musicians, artists, writers, politicians, architects, entrepreneurs, all part of her impossibly large and diverse network of friends and familiars.
I met these people around Catherine’s supper table, or at parties she regularly hosted at 222 Sydney Street and Cranberry Wharf, parties where she was forever exhorting me to get out of my shell, get up off my perch at the back of the room and “mingle, Peter, mingle.” Mothering.
Now I happen to have a perfectly wonderful mother, the one who bore and raised me. She would be the first to admit that, as a determined introvert, she never quite understood Catherine’s extreme extroversion, nor my attraction to it. My mother taught me many things; how to be a social animal wasn’t one of them.
And so there’s the thing: the mothering I got from Catherine was the mothering I needed to fill in exactly the cracks and holes that I arrived here with.
I needed to learn how to meet people.
I needed help cultivating my curiosity.
I needed a nudge or a kick from time to time, to loosen up my shyness and help me get over myself.
I needed someone to explain to me this peculiar city, on this peculiar Island, to school me in the deft mix of humility and bravado that allowed me to both remain true to myself, and to make my way here.
And, far from home as I was, I needed someone who would serve me a cup of tea—milk, no sugar, as she struggled to remember over three decades—and provide me with a safe, warm place to land.
Over the years, Catherine boosted my car battery when it died, fed me more macaroni and cheese than one should ever eat, made me a Chocolate Chip Chiffon Cake for my birthday, took me on a tour of her old haunts in Boston, loaned me a bed when I got storm-stayed, and shared a gin and tonic over her balcony rail during COVID.
The peak of her motherliness, though, came on October 1, 2000, the day my daughter Olivia was born.
It was and remains the most agonizingly stressful day of my life: an emergency C-section, an APGAR of 0, a rush to the NICU, huddles of concerned doctors gathered around Olivia’s cot.
By the time I left the hospital around 9 p.m. things had stabilized, and I headed home, alone. I stopped in at Catherine’s on the way there, and found her entertaining friends from Cape Breton. She welcomed me in, fed me a late supper, let me calm my frazzled nerves, and sent me off into the night with poached pears in chocolate in a Ziploc bag. It was exactly what I needed. I am forever grateful.
This is not to suggest that being mothered by Catherine was without its challenges. Chief among them was her habit of casting people out when offended.
My time came in 2003 when, writing on my blog about her 70th birthday party at 222, I made a private event too public for her taste, and she didn’t talk to me for months.
Eventually, all was forgiven: it was hard to be in Catherine Hennessey Siberia, but I survived and life went back to normal.
Many years later, I visited Catherine at Harbourside, after the worst of COVID had passed. I brought my new girlfriend Lisa to meet her for the first time. She put a pot of tea on, and I got to introduce my new gal to my de facto Island mother. It was a big day.
As things were winding down, Catherine stood up from her chair to show us out, and, suddenly, right before our eyes, fell straight over onto the floor, like a tree.
She was okay, somehow, if a bit shocked. We helped her up, made sure she was truly okay, and said our goodbyes.
While Catherine might have been okay, I’m still recovering from the sight of a stalwart pillar of my life, the very measure of vitality, becoming suddenly and inarguably frail before me.
I never went back to Harbourside, and soon thereafter Catherine moved to longterm care; I didn’t visit her there for the longest time either, although she was often on my mind. Something held me back. Was it fear, grief, shame at having waited so long, or some other deeper emotion? I don’t know; whatever it was, it roiled me deeply, as Lisa can attest.
Eventually, I simply plucked up my courage and went for a visit.
I need not have been afraid: Catherine was, dare I say, content in her now-much-smaller life. She was diminished, yes, but by no means dimmed.
We had a lovely chat, about all manner of things, as we had many times before. It was, I didn’t realize then, goodbye.
When Catherine died, a year later, I felt myself unable to write about her. Blogging has always been such a conduit for explaining myself to the world; I found it suddenly unavailable to me.
Being among others who loved her, at the June sale of the objects she’d collected over the years, was what unlocked me, and I could start to write about her.
For a time, Catherine was a blogger too.
Back in 2000, at the very dawn of the medium, I convinced Catherine to try her hand at writing in public, and I agreed to be her guide, her editor, her troubleshooter.
She dove in with both feet. Her writing there, over 3 years, is as concentrated an essence of Catherine as you will find.
On Mother’s Day, 2002, she wrote this:
I am thinking of all the Mothers I know and all the Mothers I knew and all the people who have mothered me over the years.
In that spirit, I will finish with thanks to Catherine for all the mothering she mothered my way over the years.
I miss you dearly, and feel so blessed to have known you.
Last summer, on a lark, I made some postcards for Black & White in St. Peters Bay. They were decidedly simply, and I wasn’t sure whether anyone would purchase them. They did! And now the last one is on the shelf waiting for someone to pick it up.
From On Library Holds by Parker Adey:
Holds appear on a special shelf in the library with their spines turned away. Each book wears a printed band showing who it is being held for. Elastic bands hold the printed slips on the books. When you put pick up your hold, you put the elsatic band in a little recycling bin so it can be reused for other holds. The whole setup is daintily anonymous.
My holds are labelled 8466 GL. There is another patron whose label is 8466 HU. Our books rub shoulders all the time but we have never met, as far as I know. I have no idea what they read. Despite this, I feel like we are colleagues, or even friends, in some secretive way.
How nice to find someone else who appreciates library holds as much as I do.
When I set out to print this Milton Acorn passage that I typeset yesterday, something felt off, and I realized that although it wasn’t a poem, it was kind of a poem, and deserved to be set such that the words found their rhythm, so I pulled apart the forme and rearranged the lines. I love it so much more.
Here’s the context for the passage (emphasis mine)
In this book, JACKPINE SONNETS, will appear a strange word — realisant. Don’t look for it in the dictionary because it’s not there. It’s a word coined in one of those discussions with Purdy. It means romantic in the real old sense… that of the original Romantic poets… not of those in the trough of the wave who fatally changed the meaning of the word ‘romantic’ as applied to poetry. Think of it as meaning ‘realistic’ but not fanatic about it — ‘flexible’. It is a combination of the Anglo-French word ‘real’ and a diminutive from some other language whose identity my friends dispute.
The Jackpine is realisant. It has a basic form, yes, but grows to any shape that suits the light, suits the winds, suits itself.
Again to those apostates’ lyingly naming their stuff ‘free verse’. Your cowardice will get you, not as you hope, nowhere; but somewhere bad. In battle it is the brave man pressing forward who is most likely to survive. It’s those who fiddle around pre-occupied with fear who most often fall. They’re thinking only of themselves — not paying attention. So, when the Yankee torturemen come, your mute betrayal of poetry won’t save you. Meanwhile it’s just possible I shall be in ambush at some secret spot dealing fearful blows.
Thus the Jackpine Sonnet came out of its cover.
Milton Acorn
May Day 1977
Craig Mod writes about hearing Matthew Dicks speak about storytelling:
The other takeaway from Matthew’s talk was people tend to “report” stories rather than tell them. So they report what happened and what was said, but they leave out what they a) thought, and b) felt. Add those two in and you’re doing better than most.
If there’s single thing I think I could do to improve my own writing it would be that.
Listen to this interview on The Knowledge Project to hear more about Dicks’ approach to story.
It was a year ago yesterday that I had my right radial head replaced with a titanium upgrade, the result of an unfortunate fall off a box in the gym.
All things considered, my recovery over the last 366 days has gone well: three weeks post-op I started physiotherapy, just over a month post-op I went back to the gym, and, slow and steady, I’ve regained strength and range of motion. Not all of either, but most of both, to the point where many days I’ve reached full “hey, I didn’t think about my arm at all today” status.
Until a week ago last Friday.
After a month of driving all over Nova Scotia, and a day of bumpy cycling from Wolfville to Horton Landing and back, something tweaked: I felt pain in the end of my elbow when I leaned on it, my extension range of motion decreased by about 10%, I noticed numbness and “pins and needles” in a few of my fingers, and my arm went back into “I think about it all the time” mode (accompanied by grumpiness over a plight I thought I’d out-plighted).
On return to the Island a few days later things improved somewhat, but things continued to feel off, so I emailed my orthopaedic surgeon’s office to see if I could get in to see him. The reply, alas, was:
Unfortunately you will need a new referral with updated X-rays in order to be seen again.
On Thursday, after a few days of trying, I got through to my family doctor’s office, and was able to book a consult for yesterday to see about getting the needed referral. The locum who saw me gave me a brief once-over, reviewed my history, and agreed that a consult with the surgeon was in order; on the way out the door she handed me a requisition for an X-ray. When I got home I went online to book an appointment, only to find… no appointments available at all at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I phoned the diagnostic imaging booking line at the hospital, and got through to a voicemail that said the same thing, encouraging me to look to other hospitals farther afield.
This is how I ended up at Souris Hospital this morning at 9:45 a.m. for an X-ray of my elbow.
I love Souris Hospital!
In contrast to the melée that often greets one at morning admitting at the QEH in Charlottetown, in Souris you just walk right in and the person at the front desk does it all, immediately. After checking in, I walked 30 paces to the left to the X-ray department, the very friendly X-ray technologist took my requisition form, and five minutes later I was at the table contorting my arm into all manner of challenging positions. I was out in the lobby 10 minutes before my appointment time.
That was easy.
I also love Souris Hospital for this warning sign near the entrance, which could be described as a “Warning: Fundamental Design Flaw” sign:
I also love this sign in the front vestibule, because I can imagine the “we’ve had a dramatic uptake in visitors holding us responsible for removed clothing and footwear” report at a meeting, with this sign seen by the assembled group to be the appropriate response:
Lisa generously accompanied me to Souris, and rather than rushing back home we decided to make a morning of things.
Our first stop: Evergreen Café on Main Street for morning coffee. They were slammed, and so it took us the better part of an hour to get a table, get menus, place our order, and receive a black coffee, an iced latte, and a cinnamon roll. All were tasty, though, and we bided our time by writing a letter to young L., off at summer camp and behind a no-SIM, no-wifi iron curtain, and thus reachable only by the post.
While enjoying our coffee and pastry, we made happenstance plans to join our friends Valerie and Lars for lunch at Tipsy Farmers across the street.
While waiting for them to arrive in town we headed across the street to the Souris Post Office, where we bought a stamp, and an SASE to let L. write back, from the friendly postmistress.
With still more time to kill, we walked around the block and found, to our surprise, that the front door to Souris Show Hall was open.
I hadn’t been inside the building for 33 years, since the days it was still Souris Cinema and Catherine and I drove up to see Made in America, starring Whoopie Goldberg and Ted Danson, in 1993, for the sheer novelty of it.
In the years since, the building has been heavily renovated and has become a vital part of the community, hosting movies, music, and theatre. We got a quick tour from the friendly summer student at the helm.
We continued down Church Avenue to the curious St. Albans Anglican Church around the corner. Its front door was open too, and so we gave ourselves a self-guided tour. With just 5 rows of pews, it’s essentially “minimum viable church,” but it has all the things you need: a baptismal font, a pulpit, an organ, a furnace, and a beautifully typeset copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
After our church tour we joined Lars and Valerie at Tipsy Farmers: solid burger, excellent salad, bustling atmosphere, lively conversation. They also sell a full range of to-go products, so if you are ever in Souris in need of a jug of butternut squash soup, head there.
Before we left town, we stopped in at MacPhee’s, née IGA, the biggest grocery store in town, a store I knew heretofore only as “where my improv friend Doris works when she’s not working her other jobs.” What a delight! This is no small-town grocery store with limited tinned-peas-and-the-like selection: it’s the equal or better of any big city grocery store, with anything and everything you’d ever want, from pickled asparagus to stuffed Dumbo-the-Elephant toys.
We stocked up the pantry, and headed back to the shore. I was happy for the opportunity to dive deeper into a town I thought I knew, grateful to have a partner willing to parlay an X-ray mission into a day of curious exploration.
From Phyllis Bottome by William Denton:
This all got me to checking Phyllis Bottome in Wikipedia, and I was amazed. She and her husband (apparently a spy) studied under and took analysis from Alfred Adler (whose biography she wrote, at his request), they started a school in Austria that had Ian Fleming and Cyril Connolly among its students, and she wrote dozens of books, among which is the 1937 anti-Nazi novel The Mortal Storm. What a life!
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, see things I’ve favourited elsewhere, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way).
I have been writing here since May 1999: you can explore the 25+ years of blog posts in the archive.
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