Borders and Crossings

For twenty five years or more we hadn’t crossed the border between Canada and the United States.  But last week, with my daughter and two grandsons, we decided to head over to Hemmingford in Quebec for a visit to Parc Safari, one of those wild animal places with added amusement park features.  We were all prepared.  My dear wife and I had our fresh new “enhanced” Delaware drivers’ licenses.  My daughter and the boys had passports.  Remembering back to the days when we would go to Canada a few times a year, for a few hours or for a pleasant weekend, I anticipated a friendly welcome from the border control guys on both sides of that boundary.  Times have changed folks, times have changed.

 

Going into Canada we pulled up at one of the many rural crossings in northern New York at about eleven in the morning.  The young man in his dark blue uniform filled out by body armor had a rather stern expression on his face.  I figured he might be having a bad day so I was just as pleasant as I know how to be.  We opened the van doors so he could see inside the vehicle and I handed over our documents.  He looked inside the van saw a twelve year old boy, a seven year old boy, a forty something young lady, my dear wife who looks much younger than her years and me, a silver haired smiling older gentleman.  He asked “What brings you to Canada today?”  I said “We’re going to Parc Safari.”  He was quiet for a short time flipping through the passports and drivers’ licenses.  Then he said “What’s your story?”  I replied “What do you mean, what’s my story?  We’re taking the kids to the attraction that attracts kids to your country.”

 

He said “You surely didn’t drive all the way from Delaware just to go to Parc Safari?”

 

I replied “Is it that bad an attraction?  But no, we only drove from our place in Franklin County on the Deer River.”

 

He gave me another stern glance and then started comparing our faces to our documents.  I once again willed myself into a pleasant attitude hoping this little ordeal would end quickly.

 

Finally the young man asked if we were bringing anything into his country; things like alcohol, firearms, agricultural products or children to be sold into slavery.  He really didn’t ask about that last item, I made that one up.  After determining that we weren’t terrorists, smugglers or agitators for the Quebec separatist movement he told us to enjoy our visit and sent us on our way.

 

So we went on our way.  We had a great time.  Parc Safari is a much better attraction than the Border Patrol guy seemed to insinuate.  We drove through their wild animal safari section and interacted with (that means fed, smelled and were accosted by) all kinds of critters.  We saw different kinds of antelopes, buffalo, camels, zebras, deer, hippos and other creatures too numerous to mention.  Then we parked our van and walked up to a large platform where we were able to view giraffes and some other animals.  Next we hiked on over to an area that had a little shopping center with restaurants and gift shops.  We had a very nice (really) lunch in a café which was only mildly overpriced.  After lunch the kids got a couple of souvenirs at a neat store.  Then we walked to an area that had lions and tigers which we viewed from glass tunnel like structures.  The animals walked right over us as they moved from one part of their large enclosures to another.  I was really impressed with that feature.   There were other areas to see and we walked a couple miles seeing them all.  Throughout the walking areas a water park attraction winds its way with slides, pools, tube ride chutes and fake beaches covering a lot of the ground.  And I must say that the French Canadian ladies sure do know how to wear teeny-tiny bathing suits.  That water park was a whole extra attraction as far as I was concerned.

 

The visit to Parc Safari ended about six-thirty and we loaded up and headed back to the USA.  I decided to re-enter the country at a different crossing just to see if the experience would be better.  I figured the American border security guys would be pleasant and glad to welcome us back to our homeland.  Well, maybe not.

 

The young fellow on our side of the border was also decked out in a sharp looking uniform with body armor under the shirt which gave him the appearance of an extreme body builder.  He was pleasant enough as he collected our documents and asked a few questions.  He obviously knew from his little computer screen that we had been to Parc Safari and that we had entered Canada at about eleven in the morning.  Data sharing like that reassures us all that US – Canada relations are healthy.  But then the fellow said “Do you and your wife have a birth certificate or passport with you?”  I said “No we don’t, we have the new enhanced Delaware driver’s license which you have right there in your hand.”  And he replied “Well I don’t think this is an enhanced license and I don’t think Delaware actually has that program yet.  Of course I personally haven’t met anyone from Delaware at this crossing before.”  So, mustering up more pleasantness I said “Well you have a computer right there in front of you, right, so why don’t you Google the Delaware DMV site and check on the license program.  I know I had to bring all kinds of documentation to get this license and pay extra for the thing so it would seem that the border authorities, such as yourself, would be aware of the program.”

 

My voice may have risen a decibel or two as I made that last little speech because the fellow seemed to get a little sterner as our conversation went on.  He asked if we were bringing anything back from Canada, such as firearms, alcohol or agricultural products.  I told him that we might have some elephant poop on our shoes but that was about it.  He didn’t seem to appreciate my little joke.  But he didn’t make us get out of the car for a search or any further interrogation.  He did closely match up our faces to our documents to be sure we hadn’t changed identities in the seven or so hours we were in Canada.  Then he said he was going to research the Delaware license issue and suggested that we do the same so that the next time we came through a border crossing there wouldn’t be any problem.  I asked him if he was going to send out a memo to all of the border crossing places when he discovered that I was right.  He said that he’d have to notify his superiors and that memo would come from much higher up.  Right then I knew I wasn’t going back to Canada anytime soon.  In fact I might even be on a “No-Fly” list at all the airports in the world by now.

 

Now friends, I understand the need for security on the borders.  But I also understand that the rules and procedures used to harass honest, law abiding citizens should be tempered by common sense.  Any person that has gone through border patrol training and passed all those tests should have the ability to recognize that the level of threat that a set of grandparents, a mother and two kids coming back from an amusement park present is pretty small.  And that person should have the authority to scale back on the interrogation and let that van full of citizens back into their home country.  Having been through airport security and having endured the insulting procedures at those places I really don’t have much hope that common sense will ever enter into air travel or border crossing again.

 

Next time I want to go out of the country for a little holiday I’m heading south to Texas or New Mexico or Arizona.  I’ll just drive on some back roads near the border, spot some Mexican citizens heading into our country without benefit of border security and cross over into their country.  I think it’d be a lot less hassle doing it that way.

 

Now have a fine day.

 

New Relatives

It was very tempting today to write about certain current events.  There were many things in the internet news reports that were irritating and that almost drove me to angry tirades of virulent prose.  If my grandkids hadn’t been around most of this weekend then you might be reading a far different bit of opinionated observation.  But the kids were here and they sent me on a different path.

 

As I watched those youngsters mess about with imagination and unbelievable energy I began considering all the new relatives that have entered my large and varied family over the years.  Not long ago I wrote about dead relatives and what they can teach all of us.  It seems appropriate to offer equal consideration to new relatives.

 

Let’s get the most obvious new additions out of the way first.  Babies.  My grandparents had babies which led to my parents; my parents had my generation of misfits and we continued the process by getting involved with our various wives and husbands until a new group of babies came along.  Then that bunch, our sons and daughters, grew up and using all the means available brought new children into the family.  And some of those youngsters are all grown up and repeating the process so that one of my brothers and some of my cousins are actually great-grandparents.  It’s amazing.

 

The thing about all of these babies is how widely they are spread across the spectrum of ethnic and racial heritage.  Not only that but a couple of these little ones were created using the most modern medical technology, methods that weren’t even dreamed about sixty or seventy years ago.  People of my generation broke some ground by marrying people of different religious or cultural backgrounds.  My parent’s generation were quite reluctant to break any of those barriers.  In their day folks largely stayed within their faith and nationality when they made marriages.  In fact they very often stayed within the same economic or social class.  My generation started to stretch things and our kids took giant steps further as they gained partners.

 

Racial barriers have developed some big cracks.  I know that racial issues have been a big part of the news-day diet of late.  There may be some grounds for that but I suspect that a whole lot of the problem is the amount of politicking and media posing that attends even the hint of an incident where race may play a factor.  And the furor over some cases seems to me, after a great deal of reading and studying, to be far out of proportion to the real situation.  But I’m not writing about that today.  I’m writing about what I see, what I hear, what I experience as I watch my large extended family grow.

 

I saw a term the other day that caught my eye and I rather like it:  blended families.  Isn’t that a neat pair of words?  The older way of describing families made up of different racial or ethnic backgrounds was usually naming them as “bi-racial”.   The government was the biggest perpetrator of the crime of labeling people in as many ways as it could.  All those forms that follow us throughout our lives, where the government wants to categorize and define segments of the population have had a part in this labeling;  birth certificates, wedding license forms, driver’s license applications, census forms, employment records and on and on.  This purportedly is done to help the government identify and protect minorities.  But I think nowadays it is more of a habit that helps government agencies to keep their people busy on the one hand and various population groups pitted against each other on the other hand.

 

In my family I’ve witnessed several unions between people of different races.  Beautiful new relatives were gained in those unions and even more beautiful new relatives were made when those unions produced children.  And some of my relatives adopted children who were of ethnic and racial backgrounds that were new to our family.  More beautiful new relatives resulted.  Our family is getting so blended we could be a product endorser for Cuisinart. 

 

But here’s the most interesting thing I’ve learned as this blending process goes on.  Older folks in the family, the folks that always seemed a little bit entrenched in their adherence to the idea of marrying within one’s faith, race, cultural background or even economic status level have become less stiff, less rigid, well let’s say it outright, less prejudiced than they ever were.  Some of them who were not cautious with their hateful language are very mindful of it now.  Some who would once write off whole population groups for all kinds of imagined defects are much more inclined to evaluate others as individuals.  And it’s truly amazing how powerful a new baby can be in helping these folks who were so hard-assed in the past.

 

When I started writing this little article I took a few minutes to try to inventory my relatives, especially the new ones, to see how blended our family has become.  Bear with me while I spit out a few statistics.   In my generation I count forty four first cousins and four siblings.  We all started out as white Catholics of French descent.  We’re all still white and of French descent but some of our husbands and wives were Protestants of several denominations, Jewish, Mormon and atheist.  Some of the places that my cousins found their partners were Germany, Canada and China.  So far the changes weren’t too drastic.  But the children of this generation have a wider mix of ingredients.  In this group, which numbers about ninety five, we have gained new relatives from Asian, Hispanic, African, African-American, European and Middle Eastern backgrounds.  I can’t even count the religious affiliations but I know they cover everything from Muslims to Christian Fundamentalists.  There are children from adoption and from other medical methods.  I’ve often wished that we could gather all these people in one place for a big photograph.  That picture would truly reflect a diverse group.

 

I know that most folks don’t have as large a family as mine.  But I’ve walked around my neighborhood, I keep my eyes open in stores and other public places and I’ve seen differences in the make-up of neighborhoods in our city and in small towns I’ve visited.  We hear so much about inequality that when some equality stares us in the face we fail to see it.  The truck driver that lives across the street from me is a black man, the hospital worker next door to him is Hispanic, the lady next door to me is African-American, and the neighbors on the other side are white folks.  Over where my brother lives, a much more upscale area, I’ve seen Asian, African-American and white people all taking their bills out of their mailboxes.  By the same token I’ve driven through a couple of low income trailer parks nearby where there are equally diverse populations cooking hamburgers and hotdogs on their grills on a Sunday afternoon.

 

So now you might understand why I’m thankful for all the new relatives I’ve gained over the years.  By gaining all of these family members I’ve learned to appreciate the blending that is possible.  And I do believe that this kind of blending can be a big part of a hopeful future.  My liberal friends often chastise me for my political views.  This article is not about politics and I wish that some of the politicians would back off from their constant use of divisive rhetoric and take a good look at the areas they represent.  They might find that the picture they’re presenting doesn’t square entirely with the reality of their districts.  And if they look at their own families they might even find they have some new relatives that they need to be thankful for.

 

So go on and have a fine day.

 

Modesty; the Other Kind

Yesterday as I waited in line at the convenience store for my low-budget sub sandwich I couldn’t help but notice a couple of young women and their several children, five I think but it was hard to count as the kids kept running around wildly.  It must have been five because they got seven sandwiches.  Anyway, the thing I noticed besides the kids and the sandwiches and the fact that they bought the stuff with food stamps was the blatant sexuality of the too small clothing they wore and the large amount of body art which decorated their exposed fleshy parts.  I’m talking about the women here, not the kids.

 

Before you all start thinking about what an old fuddy-duddy I’ve become you should know how much progress I’ve made in shedding my fuddy-duddyism.  So get ready for a history lesson.  When I was a kid (I can hear you groaning, so stop it) the standards of decorum in fashion were based on something called modesty.  It wasn’t the kind of modesty that prevented the hero who pulled the kitty-cat out of the burning building from bragging about his heroic deed.  And it wasn’t the kind of modesty that the straight “A” student practiced when he kept his mouth shut around the dullards in his class.  No it was the kind of modesty that prevented a young woman from exposing her ample charms in a bold, attention getting way.  It was the kind of modesty that encouraged grown men to avoid Speedos at the community pool.  Why even the boys who spent summer days at a secluded swimming hole up the creek near the second orchard would wear swimming suits.  We would wear them unless we happened to be coming down the creek and the siren call of the swimming hole became too strong and there was no time to go home and then come back properly attired.  But those were the exceptions.  And we would never wear a Speedo, probably because they weren’t invented yet.

 

So, modesty was a standard of dress.  At the Catholic boys school where I lived for a couple years the level of modesty was so high that the dorm shower rooms had privacy curtains, walls between urinals and locking doors on toilet stalls.  Boys were required to wear bathrobes and not just a simple towel wrapped around the waist as they went from the shower to the dorm room.  And in the room the bathrobe became a dressing gown, modestly draping one’s body as underwear and trousers were put on.  Only then could the robe be hung up neatly in the closet.  Yes it was a repressive society in that school.  And that “training” sure didn’t help me out when I got to military basic training.  Of course, I recognize now that so much repression bred more than a little strangeness.  Thankfully I avoided the strangeness and got rid of most of those imposed inhibitions.

 

But I digress, as usual.  Modesty existed.  Girls wore clothing that covered quite a lot of their bodies.  Girls who exposed too much were considered “loose” or “trampy”.  We loved those girls.  But even the bad girls back then didn’t come close to the average young woman of today.  And that brings me back to the convenience store.  At the risk of being risqué I’m going to describe what I saw standing in line at the counter.  The first young woman that I noticed was blonde and quite pretty.  She wore some make-up but not enough to put her in the class of a “painted lady”.  She was dressed in the conventional costume of tube top, shorts and flip-flops.  The only problem with her costume was that it was made for someone at least four sizes smaller.  The shorts adhered to her body almost as tightly as her numerous tattoos.  And the tiny top she was wearing was struggling mightily to keep her womanly parts harnessed and not breaking free like a pair of horses running away from a broken down buggy.  A tattoo on her lower back crept down into those tight shorts and probably didn’t stop any too soon.  In fact the bulk of her backside was in the fresh air and seemingly enjoying the feeling.  The other young woman was similarly attired but she had even more body art.  One rather engrossing picture on her back showed a nude man and woman in a rather passionate pose.  The lady pictured resembled Sophia Loren in her younger days.  I didn’t recognize the man.

 

I’m sure you, dear reader, are chastising me for making such a thorough study of those girls.  But I made these observations innocently and without a lascivious thought in my senile old brain.  It was all in the interests of learning more about the world around me.

 

We all understand that standards of dress are much different than they were forty years ago.  When the hippies of the sixties and early seventies started to let it all hang out there was no wrapping it back up.  A significant segment of our population has expanded upon that notion and there sure aren’t many limits of modesty around these days.  It’s always amusing to me when I’m shopping at a supermarket or at Walmart and I see in line a couple of girls like my convenience store friends with their unruly kids standing next to a couple of Amish or Mennonite women and their well-behaved children.  A simplistic view would correlate the modesty of dress with the orderliness of lifestyle.  And one also might note that the Amish folks never use food stamps.  But that’s a different issue, isn’t it?

 

So what’s my point here?  I guess it’s just an observation on change and how change isn’t always for the best.  Or maybe I’m just an old fuddy-duddy after all, full of complaints and no suggestions for improving things other than to say…

 

Have a fine day and dress modestly.

 

Dead Relatives

If a person lives long enough he or she will accumulate some dead relatives.  That is especially true if a large family exists as a storehouse of potential dead folks. I have both the age factor and the large family factor going for me.  So in my sixty-six years I’ve racked up quite a scorecard.  I have a dead father, a brother, four grandparents, ten uncles, eight aunts, a couple of cousins, some cousins’ spouses, a mother and father-in-law, a brother-in-law and several other folks related by marriage.  Since the focus here is on relatives I won’t even begin to count dead friends and acquaintances.
 

Some might think I’m being callous in this matter-of-fact accounting.  But I’m not.  Each of these dead relatives is a source of really fond memories and countless stories.  They were all good people, some were even great in their way, and each made a big impact on my life. When they died I felt great loss and mourned each of them in my own way.
 

However, mourning must end and the usefulness of dead relatives must be acknowledged.  Besides the occasional humorous story and nostalgic memory dead relatives serve a vital function, if we pay attention.  By observing how our relatives passed (now there is an ambiguous way of describing death) we learn the ways death operates, how transient life is and how some folks seem to die well and nobly.  Those are some powerful lessons and I’m just now coming to understand their importance.
 

Writers of every kind have written about death in every type of literature.  From comic books to rose colored sonnets we can read about the process of dying, what happens after death, how death affects those that survive, taking the life of another human and on and on.  There’s even a sub-genre of writing about folks who claim to die and then come back to life.  Most people are interested in death and dying although some avoid the subject completely.  I can understand those avoiders.  Why should they worry about the inevitable?  Reading about dying can be useful but the passage of time will probably give us the information we need, even if we never open a book.
 

Religious folks die convinced of an afterlife.  Atheists feel that the end of life is the end.  There are other kinds of believers who have some sort of hope in a continuation of their existence in one form or another, perhaps in a reincarnation cycle or some cosmological “oneness”.  And there are people who have a wait and see attitude.  But back to dead relatives.
 

The first dead relative that I can recall was my grandmother, my mother’s mother.  I was seven years old when she died after several years of severe illness.  My memories of her alive give me a picture as a stern but steady presence, often in a quiet room being attended to by an aunt or two.  But my strongest memory of her is seeing her lying in the front parlor of my grandparent’s home in a heavy, dark wooden coffin with a rosary wrapped around her unmoving fingers.  It was then that I learned about the absolute stillness of death.  In those days the funeral director would take the dead person to his place of business, do the embalming and so forth, then bring the boxed-up body back to the family home for the wake.  From there it was on to the church for a funeral and then to a cemetery for burial if the ground wasn’t too frozen.  And so it was I learned about the rituals of death.  I can only remember a couple other relatives after my grandmother who were “laid out” at home.  The move to funeral parlor viewing was well underway as I entered my teenage years.
 

It seemed like quite a few years went by before more dead relatives came along.  One of my uncles, I think, was the next.  And then another grandparent, another uncle, a cousin until it seems like there was a steady procession.  Not too many years passed by without a relative passing on.
 

My father died in 1987.  He was sixty-five years old.  That was when I learned something about the ability of some people to die well and nobly.  And I also became aware of the potential of powerful medicines to make the dying a little easier.  Those are both important lessons.
 

My brother died shortly after surgery to remove one of his legs.  The surgery didn’t kill him but a heart attack quickly and effectively did the job.  His death was probably a blessing in many ways.  It took me a long time to realize that, sometimes, death can be a blessing.  That is a hard lesson to accept.
 

I’ve been with a few relatives just before they died, hours before in fact.  It was always a great comfort knowing I saw those folks alive instead of only at their viewing.  They taught me the importance of visiting sick relatives and sharing a few moments remembering better days before taking leave of life.  And visiting sick relatives, as tough a job as that can be, is an invaluable task.
 

So there you have a few examples of the usefulness of dead relatives.  I expect to learn more as time moves along.  I wish I didn’t have to learn all these lessons with so much pain and sorrow.  But death doesn’t offer any easier options.
 

So have a fine day.  You’re alive after all.