Belle was born in Montreal, the daughter of Barbadian and Ghanian students, and we
adopted her when she was a bouncy, smiling, happy little girl of six months,
having been fortunate enough to have been extremely well cared for by her
foster parents before she came to live with us. Although this was her home, she
has seldom visited it during the two or more decades she has passed in the
south, her objection to the place being solely --- as far as I can gather ---
that it has a long winter. She so dislikes the cold weather that she seems
never to want to set foot again in her home country.
I can hardly blame her: I remember when I was 31 years of
age passing a winter holiday of six weeks in the Caribbean, travelling north
from Trinidad, island to island, the result of which was that, on stepping back
into Montreal, I said to myself, “This is berserk; why am I living here in this
frigging cold?” and determining to leave
at the first opportunity.
That particular resolution was fulfilled providentally when
my boss asked me to go to England to represent the newspaper (The Montreal Star). At the end of my
eight years in London, equipped with a new family of three small boys, I seemed
to have become so irrevocably attached to Canada that later in life I only once
left it again with the intention of residing elsewhere, and all that resulted
from that determination was a hurried trip back to the cold country, where I
have lived for the 37 years since.
Well, I can’t blame her, even though I do think it is a
rather shallow reason for deciding on one’s place of residence. Still, to each
his own, as the poet might have said, and the advantage from my point of view
is that visiting her has taken me three times to Samara, a delightful village
on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, where I have been able to work on my tan
until the time came that I realized how fruitless was that pursuit, since on my
return no one ever noticed it.
Since my last visit, this coast has suffered a rather
severe earthquake, which caused the bed of the harbour to rise by more than a
metre, meaning that when the tide goes out, a reef has been thrown up across
the face of the beach that, if there had been any inward traffic from the sea, would have put a stop
to it. An acquaintance I met down there told me she did swim out to the reef,
where she found herself surrounded by a school of rather large fish, and
something else (she didn’t specify) that began to nibble on her, and caused her
to beat a strategic retreat.
On my last visit I had
stayed in an excellent seaside hotel, kept by a German hotelier with a large,
black, and rather dangerous dog. That hotel appears to have been closed down at
least temporarily, reputedly because of taxation problems. So this time I
stayed in a beautiful place glorying in the name of the Barracuda Apartments,
on a hill just above the village. My daughter had chosen this place as the
venue for her wedding, and I found that in the room next to mine were staying
two of Belle’s childhood friends from Ottawa, who were already performing prodigies
of work in preparaion for the big day. I guess this is what is meant by
friendship, lifelong friendship, because although these two women were invited
as guests, they were pitching in on almost a 24-hour-a-day work schedule
without which I rather doubt if the event would ever have taken place.
When I was invited to say a few words at the reception
following the actual wedding I recalled that when we arrived in Ottawa in 1977,
we were still moving our furniture into our new house on Broadway avenue when
Belle --- eight years old at the time --- disappeared for a couple of hours,
only to return with the news that she had made friends all along the street, an
event I now put forward as proof of her outgoing, cheerful, gregarious
personality. One of the houses in which
she made those friends was the home of the two women who were now helping her
with the wedding arrangements, and astonishing me with the detail and
multiplicity of tasks they were undertaking. Similarly, I added, I had been
present when Belle first visited Samara a few years before, when once again she
disappeared, only to return after an hour or so with the news that she had
found this wonderful place on a hilll overlooking the village that would be ideal
for her to open a restaurant, another proof of her irrepressible curiosity and
friendly spirit. The establishment was still in the hands of he slightly eccentric
Czech lady who was its owner, but now she
had the place up and running. And it was a lovely place to stay.
I was doubly fortunate because the proximity of Belle’s two
old friends meant that, without asking for it, I was fed every day between dips
into the warm waters of the hotel’s pool.
Okay, I don’t have too much to add: it is only the second
wedding I have ever been to in my life, and it seemed to go on well enough,
although the official (named locally as the Officiator), did seem to keep on
talking for quite a while and delivering unnecessary homilies to set the young
couple on their way (but I seemed to be the only one of that opinion, everyone
else thinking it was all lovely). I declined the opportunity to give the bride
away, since I don’t consider her mine to give: she is my daughter, and will
always be my daughter, and I considered this particular ritual to be rather
old-fashioned and dare I say it, outmoded. But again I was in a minority of one
with that view.
It was a good event however, successfully achieved,
proving to me the efficacy and importance of friendships, and proving to the
married couple that the very event, facing them with the formalities of the
occasion, subtly changed their attitude to each other and to life in
significant ways.
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