A Chance Fable
It does happen. You meet someone by chance. Begin a conversation. Discover things about people, not because you've enquired particularly, but because so often people need someone with whom to speak, someone to share with. They're alone and lonely. Can someone whose wont it is to speak interminably be capable of listening to another, without interruption? Permitting that person to unburden himself, to inform someone, a stranger, about his life?
My husband was in a Canadian Tire store, with him our two little dogs, both accustomed to being carried about in shoulder carriers when we enter stores. I was elsewhere, shopping in a food supermarket where we cannot take our dog companions. To while away the time and just incidentally stock up on some needed hardware items, my husband was there alone, with our two dogs, until sufficient time had elapsed that I would have completed the food shopping and he would pick me up.
A tall, well-built older man approached my husband, interested in the two dogs, as so many people tend to be. People are drawn to the presence of the two quiet little animals, they remark over their presence recumbent in their bags, their quiet behaviour. Wanting to pet them, to talk invariably about their own pets, past or present. And so it was with this man, who informed my husband of the series of dogs he had himself owned.
He had got fed up with investing so much love in these animals, none of whose lifetimes had expanded much beyond a decade, but for one, a small Shi Tzu dog, which one of his children had bought for him as a gift, and at a time when he had declared himself to be henceforth out of commission as a dog owner, after the death of the latest pet. But, he laughed, he had succumbed, and that last dog had died at 15 years of age.
It always depresses my husband when people speak to him about the deaths of their beloved dogs, and the emotional toll it cost them. It's part of the future we don't look forward to with any kind of anticipation. Then the conversation took a more interesting, intriguing turn. His new and temporary companion felt no urge to part, seemed eager to settle into a prolonged conversation. How old was he? Why 78, much to my husband's astonishment. The man was in excellent physical shape.
Might have something to do with the fact he'd had a long career with the RCMP. He'd been single until he was almost fifty, his career was his main interest in life. He'd had a two-year posting in Tokyo, Japan, and that's where the convergence in interests came in, as they now both talked animatedly about their personal impressions of living in Japan. This older man had married finally, a Japanese woman considerably younger than him.
They returned to Canada, and had four children. He spoke of his children with great pride. They were all over-achievers, one a banker in London who owned a million-dollar house. Another in high-tech, living in Vancouver, and he owned no fewer than three condominiums. His wife? She left him eleven years ago, for a younger man. A younger man who died two years ago, at age 51.
Yes, he was lonely, he most certainly was, but life goes on, you make the best of things. He lived for many years in Blackburn Hamlet - as had we. And then he moved to a large house, all on his own, in another part of Ottawa, which is where we too now live. He showed my husband a wallet-size photo of a beautiful young Japanese woman, obviously proud of her appearance.
That's when my husband became his usual verbose self, calling on his memory of some of his former colleagues who had succumbed to the allure of Japanese women, married them, brought them home to Canada. Then spent years complaining about the ambitions of their wives, who continually harrangued them with the need to finer-tune their careers, to become more elevated on the ladder of achievement, to earn larger salaries. Invariably, the marriages failed.
They discussed the differences in the cultures, the gender differences. The Japanese are success-driven, competing from a very young age, compelled to understand by their anxious parents that their success in grade school would lead to valued places in well recognized universities which would in turn lead to career opportunities and wealth and prestige. From our own experience in Japan, it became readily apparent that young Japanese women were far less interested in marrying a Japanese than they were the possibility of marrying a foreigner. It was the Western lifestyle and the freedom of women there.
He was, the older man said, of Polish origin, born in Poland. Ah, my husband offered; his parents had come from Poland also; Polish Jews. Really? The man avowed that he felt there was a Jewish inheritance in his own genes. They exchanged old business cards, kept warm and snug in their wallets, long past retirement.
He'd call, the fellow said, they'd go out for coffee.
It does happen. You meet someone by chance. Begin a conversation. Discover things about people, not because you've enquired particularly, but because so often people need someone with whom to speak, someone to share with. They're alone and lonely. Can someone whose wont it is to speak interminably be capable of listening to another, without interruption? Permitting that person to unburden himself, to inform someone, a stranger, about his life?
My husband was in a Canadian Tire store, with him our two little dogs, both accustomed to being carried about in shoulder carriers when we enter stores. I was elsewhere, shopping in a food supermarket where we cannot take our dog companions. To while away the time and just incidentally stock up on some needed hardware items, my husband was there alone, with our two dogs, until sufficient time had elapsed that I would have completed the food shopping and he would pick me up.
A tall, well-built older man approached my husband, interested in the two dogs, as so many people tend to be. People are drawn to the presence of the two quiet little animals, they remark over their presence recumbent in their bags, their quiet behaviour. Wanting to pet them, to talk invariably about their own pets, past or present. And so it was with this man, who informed my husband of the series of dogs he had himself owned.
He had got fed up with investing so much love in these animals, none of whose lifetimes had expanded much beyond a decade, but for one, a small Shi Tzu dog, which one of his children had bought for him as a gift, and at a time when he had declared himself to be henceforth out of commission as a dog owner, after the death of the latest pet. But, he laughed, he had succumbed, and that last dog had died at 15 years of age.
It always depresses my husband when people speak to him about the deaths of their beloved dogs, and the emotional toll it cost them. It's part of the future we don't look forward to with any kind of anticipation. Then the conversation took a more interesting, intriguing turn. His new and temporary companion felt no urge to part, seemed eager to settle into a prolonged conversation. How old was he? Why 78, much to my husband's astonishment. The man was in excellent physical shape.
Might have something to do with the fact he'd had a long career with the RCMP. He'd been single until he was almost fifty, his career was his main interest in life. He'd had a two-year posting in Tokyo, Japan, and that's where the convergence in interests came in, as they now both talked animatedly about their personal impressions of living in Japan. This older man had married finally, a Japanese woman considerably younger than him.
They returned to Canada, and had four children. He spoke of his children with great pride. They were all over-achievers, one a banker in London who owned a million-dollar house. Another in high-tech, living in Vancouver, and he owned no fewer than three condominiums. His wife? She left him eleven years ago, for a younger man. A younger man who died two years ago, at age 51.
Yes, he was lonely, he most certainly was, but life goes on, you make the best of things. He lived for many years in Blackburn Hamlet - as had we. And then he moved to a large house, all on his own, in another part of Ottawa, which is where we too now live. He showed my husband a wallet-size photo of a beautiful young Japanese woman, obviously proud of her appearance.
That's when my husband became his usual verbose self, calling on his memory of some of his former colleagues who had succumbed to the allure of Japanese women, married them, brought them home to Canada. Then spent years complaining about the ambitions of their wives, who continually harrangued them with the need to finer-tune their careers, to become more elevated on the ladder of achievement, to earn larger salaries. Invariably, the marriages failed.
They discussed the differences in the cultures, the gender differences. The Japanese are success-driven, competing from a very young age, compelled to understand by their anxious parents that their success in grade school would lead to valued places in well recognized universities which would in turn lead to career opportunities and wealth and prestige. From our own experience in Japan, it became readily apparent that young Japanese women were far less interested in marrying a Japanese than they were the possibility of marrying a foreigner. It was the Western lifestyle and the freedom of women there.
He was, the older man said, of Polish origin, born in Poland. Ah, my husband offered; his parents had come from Poland also; Polish Jews. Really? The man avowed that he felt there was a Jewish inheritance in his own genes. They exchanged old business cards, kept warm and snug in their wallets, long past retirement.
He'd call, the fellow said, they'd go out for coffee.
Labels: Realities
posted by Pieface @ 12:45 PM
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