The past week has taken wings and is disappearing into a beautiful warm memory. And I haven’t even called home once for voicemail. This is all too quick a visit. I leave for chilly Nova Scotia in two days, but I will be back before Christmas. Last night I was so tired from all the excursions and activities, I couldn’t even write a word here; I didn’t think I had a word to say.
The warmest part of being here in LA is not the sun, the weather, but the people I am with and meeting. Slowly, slowly Damian and I are getting to know each other. Yes, I am the grandmother, that gives me status. But I can freeze when someone isn’t immediately forthcoming and Damian is not always available. We are both glad that I will be back again soon.
Yesterday I went to the Getty Center with my friend Karen, who moved here from Halifax last January to take care of her mother who was ill. Her mom has now recovered and her illness has been a blessing for both of them. Karen has blossomed here, getting ready (in her mid-fifties) to run the LA marathon in March, renewed old friendships, and looking radiant. Driving through the LA streets she gave me a commentary on life as a teenager in LA. Then we toured the Getty from a Karen’s point of view: the stainless steel bathrooms with beautiful toilets, the flowers, cactus gardens, waterfalls, architecture, trams, the view.
The day before, on Wednesday, Tamar and I met Tiny Coconut for lunch. I immediately liked her as much as I had expected from reading her blog. (She beat me to writing about meeting people from on-line experiences but I will put my twist onto it here.) Growing up before these technologies were around, even before TV, my generation is only slowly learning to use the internet. (I have a friend who just started using email!) I was, and still am, an avid radio person. Although there are really good interactive radio programs on CBC, I haven’t called in…….yet. But I do hear people I know talking on the radio, asking questions. In NS, I know only one other person who keeps a blog. I’ve stopped telling friends. Most of them think it’s weird.
Tamar has close friends she has met on-line. I have, off and on, tried the on-line dating thingie but nothing ever materialized beyond some interesting (and strange) communications. One man was ready to pack up his van and move in with me, coming all the way from Calgary after only a few letters and a couple of phone calls, without even a first sniff. I’ve had marriage proposals from young African men (looking for a way out of their country) that I have never said “boo” to. Mostly because I look so much younger than my years, if I put a photo up, I am contacted by far too much younger men. And sometimes I just feel too vulnerable. So I stop--this is not for me. But I have learned a lot about discriminating awareness and response from it. Yet I have friends who have happily coupled with men they have met on-line. When I first started looking into on-line dating services just a few years ago, I was severely warned that it was not safe, not a good idea. Now I hardly know a single woman who has not tried it, some very successfully. It no longer is a taboo. In this rapid transit world, where else does one go………But it is not just about meeting men. Friends are very important. And the community of blogs, which have a real-time component, an everyday glimpse into someone’s world (not just a one-time “profile”) is a very real way of extending my sphere. As an artist, most of the time I live inside a very active but singular world.
Before this visit my connections in LA were only Tamar, Dan & Damian and a couple of step-siblings that I enjoy visiting. Now that I have some friends here it will be even harder to go home. It was 90 to 100 degrees here last Saturday but cooling off now. And there was frost on my car windows the morning I left NS! It will be a shock, in every way, to return, no doubt. I’ve been telling Tamar that she needs to renovate her house, put in a real second bathroom for me, that I’m not going home. Wishful thinking. But not an unpleasant thought. Although it would be very hard to leave my beautiful home, weird weather and all, and the slow transit life I have there.