30 - Sunday, June 2, 1991 - North Shore News

Sometimes it takes a lifetime to
master that fie art of living

I WAKENED early, as I often do, to give myself time to
think about you. But there was time as well to think about
presumption. How had I persuaded myself that [ was the
one to interpret the vintage years for you?

When I think about the blanks
in my background I’m pink with
embarrassment. I've never ever
been in a submarine, for instance,
I've never experienced a forest
fire. I’ve never been flooded out
of my home, or shot. It wasn’t
even close the day my stepfather
let off his keepsake Luger and hit
his mattress.

Just testing.

I’ve never set foot in India, in
Africa, Australia, any part of
South America. I have visited
Japan repeatedly witt pleasure,
but my cne journey to the Soviet
Union was aborted after only 1¢
days in Leningrad and Moscow.

Once only can I claim to have
landed on Greenlaad’s icy
whatever, in the days when flying
to England included such a
detour.

} have canoed, close to shore,
and contributed slightly to the
manpower on one of the long
shallow freightboats on the
Crooked River. | have been pas-
senger briefly in a sailboat and
revelled in a first-class Atlantic
storm mauting the Mihail Ler-
montov, the Soviet version of a
cruise ship. I sang Abide With Me
while a captain’s body was con-
signed to the deeps off the coast
of Alaska.

My game skills are old and
shabby. I’ve never learned to play
bridge, can still handle cribbage if

- not hustled, and adore a game of

Scrabble. Never learned even the

rudiments of Hopscotch — our

playgrounds were gravelled.

The fact that tennis courts in

my youth were either unknown or

covered with snow made no bones

Eleanor
Godley —

THE VINTAGE YEARS

to me, having a heart unequal to
the task.

In Jater life, I tried and aban-
doned golf. My efforts were
threatening my marriage to one
who loved the game.

That's another thing — I’ve
never fost either a husband or a
child. My home has never burned
down. | have no experience with
famine; some with minor glut-
tony.

Dancing | do feel I achieved
some excellence at, cutting up a
keen fox-trot at our local dance-
halls in the late ’30s. I did tend to
a certain dignity, I guess you’d
call it.

Authority loomed large
throughout the years... When
roughly 10, I was witness to an
act of raw frontier justice. We us-
ed to go to swim, then, at the

mouth of the Hudson's Bay
slough where it opened into the
Fraser, creating a backwater
which was protected by a large
sandbar. One day two men dealt
summarily with a young white
male who had interfered with their
sister.

He was thrown to the ground,
lashed by the ankle to one end of
the rope wrapped around the
waist of the man on the horse,
and dragged at full gallop up and
over and around.

Chance has played such an
engaging, improbably fortuitous
role in my life that I am convii:c-
ed it is a force, not a whim of the
gods. Quite accidental encounters
have introduced people and influ-
ences and projects that have col-
ored all my days.

The puppet-master of my life is
both a romantic and a humorist,
and wholly unpredictable, which
preserves my soul.

fam an unreconstructed print-
junkie, having spent a lot of
childhood and later years confined
to bed. There were hours and
hours decorated only with books,
magazines and newspapers, which
1 read indiscriminately.

The confinements taught me to
enjoy my own company, and
home circumstances demanded
one practice obedience and con-
form to the rules. Harmony was
brought by burying selfish inter-
ests and desires. Such imposed
control finally acts to diguise the
personality and make it hard to
encourage friendships.

It’s been one of the biggest
pleasures of my accumulating
years, the business of finally
learning to be easy with others,
learning to offer, to go towards
without constraint.

What a lot of practice living
takes! You’d think it was some-

thing you just did, naturally, and
I'm sure for some lucky people it
is. But for a lot of us it’s a sort of
skill we are slow to master, we
seem to spend all our days going
towards something and never
quite catching on.

Tell you what, though: |
wouldn't have missed trying it for
the world.

~ QUEEN CHARLOTTES
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Everyone’ s invited to drop by. Test drive
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Enjoy refreshments anc meet Dan Russell.

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Listen to NW/98 Sunday 11:00 - 5:00

RECYCLE

PHONE BC

YOUR

)OKS!

This year the North Shcre Recycling Prograrn is making it easy for you — in the parking lot of
each location listed below you'll find a large recycling bin for depositing your old telephone books.
Drop them off anytime between now and July 31! That’s all there is to it!

LOOK FOR THE TELEPHONE BOOK RECYCLING BINS IN THE PARKING LOTS
OF THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS

North Vancouver:

e Safeway - Westview Shopping Centre
® Safeway - Lynn Vailey Centre
e Safeway - 13th & Lonsdale Ave.

Riverside Recycling Depot

West Vancouver:

* Someplace Special -

Caulfeild Village

Shopping Mall (Upper Levels Hwy. - Exit No. 4)
* Woodward's Vvorld of Food - N. Park Royal

- Riverside & Spicer Rd.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT.

NORTH SHORE RECYCLING PROGRAM

984-9730

PORTED BY:
nada

SUP

Safeway