Week three

On Saturday, September 10th, two weeks and one day after surgery, Alex and I decided it was time to get back to the trail. We left early and went to Speyside, and spent the day hiking. I moved slowly — very slowly. But I had a chance to find some lovely mushrooms, and spend time in a part of the trail I truly love.

We hiked for about five hours, and covered only about six kilometres, a fraction of the distance we would normally hike in that time. By the end, I was somewhat sore, but the day had been worth it.

This emboldened me, and I felt ready for swimming. On Monday, we went to Angela Coughlan Pool in the evening. I was very apprehensive, although I would only use a pull buoy so I wouldn’t have to kick. It felt strange getting in the water (carefully), and it took about five minutes before I attempted my first length. It was tentative, and I could immediately feel the surgery area.

I did about five laps in total, resting after each length. When I left the pool, the area felt strange, like a pulled muscle, or a strain. I was a bit concerned, but it looked the same. I considered it a success.

I tried again on Tuesday at Centennial Pool, and it went just as well. On Friday, I was back at Centennial, and managed one or two more laps than previously, including a few one-hundred metre laps, and one without the pull buoy.

There was a definite straining sensation on one of the lengths, and I had to quit. Getting out of the pool was difficult. I felt as though I’d have to forgo swimming for the time being.

That evening, I noticed what looked like a slight hernial bulge in the area where the sac had been before surgery. Had the hernia recurred?

Week four

It was difficult to determine what was going on. On the one hand, I was fairly pain-free at the hernia site. However, I’d definitely felt strain at the site while swimming, and there was what appeared to be a sac that was invisible in the morning and appeared later in the day, only to reduce again — sometimes while I looked at it.

It was impossible to decide if I was seeing a natural part of my anatomy, or something anomalous, and the only solution was to see Dr. Chemparathy. I was asked by the surgeon to follow up with him at some point, so I decided to wait until four weeks had passed, after which I’d make an appointment.

On Sunday, September 18, we spent the day in the Niagara wine region. Everything seemed fairly normal, although I was slightly sore. On Tuesday, Alex’ father Serge came to stay with us for a few days. A hike through Bronte Creek Park was not as comfortable as I’d hoped it would be, or indeed, as it had been previously.

The bulge still seemed to come and go over the following few days, with no serious indication that the hernia had recurred. I made the follow-up appointment with my regular doctor for the following week.

I had progressed fairly well up to this point, with no severe pain issues, and perhaps some expected discomfort while engaging in more strenuous activity. The presence of what appeared to be a bulge was only slightly concerning, as recurrence so soon after surgery is very rare. It seemed that I had, indeed, recovered completely at week four’s conclusion. I was satisfied with the entire experience.

Until that weekend.

The day after

On the day immediately following surgery, a Saturday, I had quite a bit of discomfort on waking up. Getting out of bed from a half-prone position was probably the most difficult and time-consuming part of being active, but walking had its discomforts. Going downstairs was also fairly painful. I took ten milligrams of Ketorolac for pain and swelling.

I started eating normally right away, but changed my diet to one of mostly fibre, including fruit, vegetables and whole grain. I increased my water intake to at least ten glasses per day. This was essential to maintain bowel function, which, if interrupted, would be quite painful.

At 10:00AM, or about twenty-four hours after the surgery, I removed the dressing. The wound had bled somewhat throughout the preceding day, and the dressing was blotched on the outside. I understood that to be quite normal, and it had stopped bleeding entirely by the time I removed the dressing, so I wasn’t concerned.

My activity was seriously reduced on the day following surgery. The pain was more severe, perhaps a six out of ten. The local anesthetic had completely worn off, and I was not going to take the Percocet prescribed to me. I needed to keep moving, though, to ensure a quicker recovery time, and so I walked when I could, and moved around the backyard somewhat.

At some point, I needed to move my bowel. Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated that the manipulation of the bowel during surgery would lead to a disconcerting halt in peristaltic activity — not quite ileus¹, but something too close to it to be encouraging. Any kind of straining was perfectly out of the question, as the pain was excruciating. It wasn’t painful at the site, but in an area about five centimetres above the highest point of the incision. That seemed worrisome.

There were more than a few frustrating and fruitless visits to the bathroom, and the scenarios I was imagining for the future were not pleasant. Warnings in the literature I received from the hospital, together with the totality of despair brought on by some (ill-advised) online reading of patient experiences, conjured up images in my future of an intimate afternoon with the surgical equivalent of a corkscrew. I was not happy. As a safety measure, I started taking the Docusate Sodium tablets as prescribed, though potentially they would not activate for another three days.

Happily, all was resolved by day’s end, at least for the time being.

By the time I went to bed, I had needed all four doses of Ketrolac, for a total of forty milligrams for the day. The pain, once again, was not always excruciating, but it was bad enough to medicate.

The rest of Week One

I was feeling cooped up already by the third day, a Sunday, and Alex took me to Bronte Creek Park. I couldn’t walk very far. There was terrible cramping in the area five centimetres above the wound. I couldn’t walk upright, and couldn’t keep moving for more than a few minutes. Unhappy, and shuffling around like a ninety-year-old, I aborted the walk in the park, Alex’ face all drawn with worry.

What seemed to accompany pain in this area was an extreme feeling of bloat. I had never felt so completely bloated before. Although I also have IBS² and thus experience bloating, this was unlike anything I’d ever gone through. With what I could only deduce was pressure from bloating at the interior surgical wound, the pain was the worst I had experienced yet — at least a seven out of ten. Walking became harrowing. Three steps were all I could manage before having to stop, half hunched-over like an osteoporosis patient.

I decided that perhaps the Ketorolac was to blame for the bloating, and so my first ten milligram dose on Sunday was to be my last. I also refused to take Advil, or any other NSAID. In total, I took eighty milligrams of Ketorolac over three days before stopping all medication. I even stopped taking the Docusate Sodium.

The bloating continued nonetheless. Frustratingly and frighteningly, bowel function did not improve over the weekend. Finally, on Monday, it returned completely to normal with the help of psyllium cereal.³

We tried the park again on Monday, but the pain and bloating were unbearable. There was also severe pain near my left hip, far above the surgical site. It seemed distressingly unrelated to the wound or the hernia site, but was just as intense. At times, it was excruciating, and made walking very difficult.

As an avid hiker, one who can easily walk twenty or twenty-five kilometres without stopping, who loves the outdoors, who loves trekking the Bruce Trail, being debilitated in this way, even temporarily, was depressing. I decided to stay away from my beloved Bronte Creek Park until I was well enough to walk properly.

Each day brought minimal improvement. I could walk more quickly, and by Tuesday or Wednesday, I was walking the stairs normally, albeit slowly. In the evenings, I forced myself to walk around the block. It was uncomfortable, but it helped me to improve. Sometimes while walking, I found that if I held my hand gently but firmly against the part that hurt the most, I could walk more easily.⁴

However, progress seemed too slow. The bloating and cramping continued. It seemed to be minimally getting better, but at least it wasn’t getting any worse. When September 2nd came around, seven days after surgery, I wasn’t as far along as I’d hoped, although I had started driving again that day.

Week Two

We tried the park again on Sunday September 4th, but we didn’t get far due to rain. On Monday, I seemed to relapse somewhat. The bloating and cramping was really terrible, and I was feeling stranded at home. Out of frustration more than anything else, I decided to go to Bronte Creek Park in the evening, on my own. Alex was a little worried, but I decided I just had to start moving a little further.

It was a complete success. The bloating, cramping, and pain began as badly as ever, but I kept walking, making my way into the woods. As I searched for and found my beautiful mushrooms, I relaxed quite a bit. The pain eased. I got caught up in taking pictures, and enjoying the autumnal solitude of the woods, which I’d been haunting for thirty years. I felt home. The trees, the leaves, the mushrooms, what summer songbirds were left, the other animals, were all important in helping me forget the discomfort and get moving. It was activity that ultimately healed me of the cramping discomfort I was going through. I was out for more than an hour that evening, and I returned home rejuvenated. I repeated the trip and stayed out longer the next evening.

Follow-up with surgeon

On Tuesday September 6th, eleven days after surgery, I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Prodger to remove the staples. The pain and cramping were normal, he told me, and so long as it wasn’t getting worse, it would eventually dissipate. I asked about the site of pain a few centimetres above the wound. He said it too was normal, as was a hard lump I found under the skin in the area, where, it seemed, scar tissue was forming. The pain near my hip was probably a result of bruising where the local anesthetic needle was inserted in an artery after I was put under general anesthetic. He said that overall, the expected swelling in the whole area was far less than what is usual, and that I could return to all normal activities, including swimming.

Needless to say, it was very encouraging. I was sure I would start swimming again shortly, and I did, in week three.

But swimming that soon was probably a mistake.

1. A morbid obstruction of the bowel caused by a halt in the natural waves that pass food through the digestive tract.
2. Irritable Bowel Syndrome; a chronic, usually lifelong condition that causes some bloating and bowel dysfunction, and which is thought to be activated by mood and diet. The instance of IBS I have is mild to moderate.
3. I used Kellogg’s All-Bran Buds with Psyllium. I’d recommend anyone having this surgery to use it, and to start eating it a day or two before surgery. A third of a cup in milk once a day is sufficient. Drink a full glass of water during the meal, and finish the entire box over the course of two weeks. Surprisingly, it was one of the best things I did to help myself recuperate, aside from walking.
4. This is known as “splinting” the hernia site. It should also be done by hugging a pillow snugly against the area when coughing, sneezing, or vomiting — none of which, by everything in the universe that’s good, I had to do during all the time of my recovery.

I developed left inguinal hernia in late 2010, and did the usual online searching about the condition. I came across story after story of people whose lives were disrupted, sometimes in horrible ways, from their hernia repair surgery. But the chances of complication were generally reported to be very low. In addition, hernia cannot heal on its own. The only “cure” is surgery. It seemed I had no option, so despite the online warnings, I decided I would go ahead with surgery. This and subsequent articles detail my experience with hernia repair surgery, and how it compares with others.

Discovery and diagnosis

In December 2010, while showering, I discovered a medium-sized painless lump just above the left side of my groin. I thought at first it was a very enlarged lymph node, but soon decided it was a hernia, which was confirmed after a visit to my GP, Joseph Chemparathy. He scheduled an appointment with a general surgeon named Dwight Prodger.¹ “He’s the best,” my doctor said, “though you may have to wait longer for an appointment.”

I finally managed to see Dr. Prodger in May 2011, after my initial appointment in April was moved by his office. A quick and uncomfortable exam confirmed hernia. He warned of an approximate 2.5% chance of infection, and a greater than 3% chance of bleeding. He said recovery time would be four weeks. No other complications were hinted at. I decided to schedule the surgery.

I opted for a date of August 26, so that my planned summer of hiking toward the Bruce Penninsula would not be interrupted. If I had to do it again, I would opt for the soonest surgery date available. Over the course of nine months, the hernia got progressively worse, probably exacerbated by weekly seven hour, twenty-plus kilometre hikes along the Niagara Escarpment. I had almost continuous pain through August, and increasingly acute incidents while bending when I could feel a portion of the small bowel move in and out of the hernial sac, the visible protrusion of the hernia.

I also swam up to two kilometres a night three nights a week, but I actually think that helped the reducibility of the hernia. That is, the intestine and other tissue usually returned to the abdominal cavity from the hernial sac after swimming, probably due to the horizontal stretching action taking place.

Day of surgery

My procedure was open repair of left inguinal hernia, with a prosthetic plug-and-patch mesh installed. It required general anesthesia, which surprised me, since it seemed to me that most repairs were done with only local anesthetic. When I asked Dr. Chemparathy about this, he suggested that my mesh repair required “extensive dissection” which required general anesthesia.

Mesh was placed behind the abdominal wall at the site of the hernia, a mesh plug was inserted into the hernia, and mesh was placed over the abdominal wall at the site. The surgical wound was closed with seven staples. The procedure took about forty-five minutes.

Immediately after waking up in the post anesthetic recovery ward, I could definitely feel the surgical site. It wasn’t excruciating pain, but it wasn’t comfortable. It felt almost as though I had a severe cramp in the area.

The nurse asked if I felt pain, and I answered that I did. “Are you sure?” she asked. “You got quite a lot of anesthesia in surgery.”

“I feel pain, but it’s tolerable,” I answered. She offered morphine, which I accepted. I got the sense that her question about pain was routine, to ensure that I actually needed morphine. Understandable, but odd, because yes, I was sure I was feeling pain.

Immediately after morphine was administered via the IV drip, the pain subsided, but was still noticeable. I was in the ward for about forty-five minutes, and was administered another round of morphine before being sent to the general ward. It hurt much less after the second dose.

As mentioned, the pain was tolerable. I’d describe it as moderate, or perhaps a five on a scale of zero (no pain) to ten (worst pain I ever felt).

In the general ward, a nurse gave me a prescription for Ketorolac, Percocet, Docusate Sodium tablets, and Lactulose liquid. Ketorolac is an anti-inflammatory and pain medication; Percocet is a morphine-based opiate, which, I was warned, can cause severe constipation. Docusate Sodium is a stool softener. Lactulose is a no-kidding-around laxative.

Constipation is not something one wants to deal with immediately after abdominal surgery. In the many months leading up to my operation, I’d read virtually everything about the surgery. I knew about its potential complications both acute and chronic, the recovery period and what I might expect, and the average long-term outcome, but I hadn’t anticipated an interruption to bowel routine at all. It turned out that its prospect was probably the worst thing I had to endure.

I was discharged from hospital after another forty or fifty minutes. Alex helped me dress. It would have been impossible to do so alone. It was difficult to stand; the pain was more severe when standing or sitting. Getting into the car was difficult, but not as problematic as I thought it might be. Driving home over a less-than-perfect road was probably the worst part of the day, since each pothole sent me swerving side-to-side in my seat, putting pressure on the surgical site. Not pleasant.

I was in hospital a total of about four and a half hours, from being admitted at about 8:00AM, to surgery at about 10:00AM, and finally being discharged sometime after noon.

At home

I was able to walk around somewhat when I got home, though it wasn’t very comfortable to do so. I lay on the couch in an upright position for a long time. This was the only position that was possible. Sitting was out. Standing for too long was out. Walking was painful. Lying upright was most comfortable.

I had some food, and stood in the back yard for a short while, but eventually I had to make my way upstairs to my bedroom. Climbing fourteen steps was difficult — it had to be done one step at a time — but much easier than I’d anticipated. I laid in bed for another long while, then made my way downstairs in the evening, where I did some light chores — moving dishes around, that sort of thing. I’d read that walking was absolutely essential in the first few days, to keep the blood circulating, to prevent constipation, and to generally help the surgical site heal more quickly. It wasn’t very comfortable, but I was determined to stay as mobile as was possible.

First night of sleep

I was in bed by about 10:00PM that night, and had taken three 10 milligram doses of Ketorolac by then. I’d decided against the Percocet, since I thought the side effects were worse than the benefits. I didn’t take the Docusate Sodium or Lactulose, as I didn’t think I’d need either.

The only possible sleeping position was lying upright, with my back supported by the headboard. Lying flat was not possible, and lying on either side was absolutely out of the question. I was asleep fairly quickly.

I awoke about 4AM, and had to use the bathroom. By this time, the local anesthetic as well as the Ketorolac had largely worn off, so I was in some discomfort. Getting out of bed from my half-lying-down, half-seated position was very difficult, shuffling to the bathroom was unpleasant, and trying to sit down once arrived was excruciating. Only by supporting myself on an ideally-situated toilet paper roll holder and the edge of the bathtub did I manage to ease down enough to go.

I was happy to go — one of the complications I’d read about was swelling at the site that pressed against the bladder and resulted in urinary retention, requiring a trip to the emergency department for insertion of a catheter. I was actually very apprehensive about that, and so was glad to pee, painful as everything was. Getting back into bed was also difficult and uncomfortable, but I fell asleep fairly quickly until about seven-thirty.

There were some surprises in store for day two.

1. Dr. Dwight Prodger is Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital’s Vice President of Medical Affairs, and a member of the Ontario Hospital Association’s “Physician Provincial Leadership Council”. This council facilitates the relationship between doctors and hospitals. the PULSE, November 2010.

It happened so very quickly. From the instant I saw the animal until I realized we’d hit it, a second, or less, had passed, but in the strange chronology of the mind, it seemed to take much longer, and so very much happened. While Alex and I were chatting, his head down looking at the map, I suddenly saw a coyote at full gallop less than a metre away from the front end of the car, its path perfectly perpendicular to ours. I saw its yellow-brown fur, and the reticulated pattern on it, like a tiger’s, running down the length of its body. In a microsecond, I saw its eyes, intent on the safe side of the road ahead of it. I thought I could avoid it. My foot came off the gas and hovered for another tiny slice of the second above the break, and I jerked the car to the left, slightly. But there is no median on this high-speed road, and cars were coming toward us. It would do no good. I was going to strike this animal with the full force of my car, speeding at eighty kilometres an hour, and neither I nor the poor coyote would be able to stop it, and so I simply did the only thing possible, and continued along a straight path, and ran into the side of its beautiful, wild body.

I immediately slowed, looking in the rearview mirror. I could see a small piece of the car, but the coyote wasn’t there. I thought by some miracle I had only glanced it, and it had simply run off into the fields to the north. But I suddenly realized it was still under the car, and we were still moving, at maybe fifty kilometres per hour. Just at that instant, there was a loud thud, and, as I pulled onto the shoulder, there it was, about twenty metres behind.

I was stunned. Alex was overcome. A truck pulled off the road ahead of us, and a man got out, pulling on gloves. I rolled down the window, and glanced in the mirror. To my utter horror, the coyote’s head lifted off the road, wobbling. It was still alive. The man came to the window, and said he’d drag it off the road to avoid an accident. Perhaps he didn’t realize it wasn’t dead. For some reason, I said nothing, and got out of the car to see the poor thing lurch up, and hobble, in agony, onto the shoulder, limping as though one of its legs were crushed, or torn off. I felt sick, and Alex was leaning against the roof of the car, his face hidden.

Realizing that the animal was alive, the man told me to call the Humane Society. This I could do. I couldn’t help the coyote. I couldn’t even bring myself to approach it and look at the state it was in, and the immenseness of the suffering it was experiencing and which I caused. But I could call for help. I got back in the car and made the call.

Because of the proximity to Oakville, and the state of the various services in the two cities, it took three phone calls and an exasperating voicemail trap before I spoke to someone. When I hung up, I got out of the car, and watched from a distance while the man, and now two others, crowded around the wounded animal and did what they could.

“I can’t go over there,” Alex said.

“I know.” But I could go, and I had to. There was no helping it, but I should at least look at what had happened. And so I walked slowly toward it, expecting the worst. Nobody looked up as I approached. One of them had put a blanket over its body. It was curled up as though it was ready for a nap, but its head was up, and it was alert, looking at us with its yellow eyes. Its breathing was laboured; it was almost panting for breath. Blood spilled out of its mouth freely, and the foreleg that I could see, poking out from under the blanket, was soaked with it. There was a trail of bright red blood leading right up to where it lay, and I suddenly realized that I was standing in it.

A van appeared, and a woman in uniform got out. The first man was actually handling the coyote’s head, petting it, and she warned him not to touch it. It could, after all, be rabid. But it was not rabid. It was strong and healthy before the impact. The fur was thick at its ears, and its eyes, even now, were bright, alert, beautiful, and wild, even as it struggled to stay alive.

“It’s a good thing it’s winter,” the woman said. “No pups left alone.” So it was female. “Anyone know what happened?” An older man said that someone had hit it and driven off.

“No,” I said, “I’m the one who hit it.”

She got on the phone to the police, and described where we were. Someone wondered why the police were called. The older man suggested it needed to be shot.

For some reason, I thought this woman from the Humane Society would have everything she needed in her van, and would be able to euthanize it immediately. She explained that she would never touch a wild animal so severely injured, and neither would any veterinarian. The only alternative was to shoot it.

“You should all leave,” she said. “You don’t want to be around when it’s shot.”

I simply looked down at it for a second, panting blood, its injuries dramatic. If it wasn’t euthanized, it would simply die in an hour, or two, all the while in some kind of agony I don’t want to imagine. I suppose I looked distraught, because the older man took my arm warmly and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” he said, “there’s nothing you can do on these roads. And it won’t be much longer.”

And so, as they drifted away, I simply thanked the ones who had stopped, and I thanked the woman from the van, and I went back to the car.

Alex was still upset, his hands mostly covering his face. “Should I take us home?” I asked.

“No, we should go hiking.”

And so we did.

In Speyside, the trail is beautiful and tight, and crowded with fragrant cedars growing from fissures in the ancient rock of the escarpment, split from centuries of ice and rain. It snowed last night. The trail was undisturbed. Snow capped the rocks, and coated each needle on every evergreen. It was quiet, except for the occasional call of a crow, and the crack of wood in the distance.

Nobody had passed the trail here before us — the snow was pristine. The only tracks were those of coyotes, following the natural depression the trail made, moving ahead of us in what appeared to be a gallop; two animals, traveling side by side and marking the snow on our beloved Bruce Trail, hunting rabbits, or simply running freely through the forest. We followed for a while, and once, we missed the marked path and had to double back.

I loved the impression of those tracks. Here, they galloped, and here, they slowed, walking close together. They traveled along the path for what seemed like a long way. I could follow them all day. But soon, the tracks left the main trail and headed off into the trees, and disappeared from sight.

It’s an interesting story. On the one hand, it was heartening that someone had discovered happiness to come from something other than the superficial banalities of one’s life. On the other hand, it was sad that there are many people, perhaps most, who must actually learn this lesson.

A belief in fulfillment

And so I am not shocked that, like me, god believers are saddened by the hollowness of so many lives lived in emptiness, fulfilled by nothing and driven by the most amoral of motivations. I am not surprised at the satisfaction believers have in their lives, filled as they are with a pursuit that, no matter what unrecognizable form it may ultimately take, at the very least seeks meaning for themselves and everyone. I am not surprised by the confidence of their beliefs, by the resistance their faith has to that which disputes it.

Of course, I know they are terribly misguided for that faith, and the details of their belief are their ultimate undoing, and no reconciliation is possible between dogmatic positions and a truly happy existence. But I say that out of a need to clarify. It doesn’t really matter, this time.

It indicates that a life of true fulfillment comes from everything that seems not to define the majority of us. In the West, most have forgotten so simple a truth utterly. It may be cliché to bring up the fact that material pursuits have replaced our sense of satisfaction with ourselves and each other, but often truth is to be discovered anew in aphorisms like that.

It’s one reason for the divide and the ultimate conflict between those with faith and the secular world they inhabit. On a larger scale, it hints at more troubling issues: the conflict between Islam and the West, as an example, and the failure of either to find areas of common values and goals.

A flow of lives

But I must recede once again to the microcosm of a single life. Unlike James Randi, who is nearing the end of his journey, I can’t look back at a remarkable life to reminisce on scores of remarkable experiences. I’m far too ordinary.

There are issues to deal with, and things that seem like setbacks, but its very simplicity makes my life deeply fulfilling. Alex and I have a circadian beat to our lives that offers happiness I could scarcely imagine when I was in my twenties, clambouring for money and sex and superficial relationships and fun, and other trivialities. There is the expanse of Bronte Creek Park near my home, small though it might seem to some, that holds a portion of my consciousness in its fields and woods and paths. There are the hundreds of books in my library, holding hundreds of thousands of pages, that fill up the corners of my barely satiable curiosity. And there is the incidental interaction with people, acquaintances and strangers, offering the opportunity to imagine the details of another life, and, if I can, if only in the smallest of ways to make that other path slightly more navigable.

I like my work and I’m considered fairly successful, but it’s simply a lucky tool that allows me to live a life away from it. There are so many better things, more important things. The breathtaking breadth of human history in front of me at this very moment, for example, or living inside the cream-coloured pages of my library. I’m staggered when I think about the billions of lives that have shaped what humanity is right now; or the trillions upon trillions of beings that have directed the course of life on the planet.

Something in me goes very quiet when the sun sets beneath the purple clouds over the peaks of houses behind us. I feel as though I’m sharing the lives of the finches that wake me up each morning as they build a nest beneath the trough under my bedroom window, which they and their ancestors have done for as long as I’ve lived here. We’ve been here many years, but we’re still apart from virtually all the neighbours. Sometimes when we come home in the car, one of their kids waves at us, though we are silent strangers to them and their parents, and it makes me smile. Alex has a swimming friend that he picks up every Sunday morning. She usually bakes him cake on Saturday night, and he comes home full. Despite our shyness, and what must seem like stand-offishness, the neighbours directly beside us invite us for an hour or two of drink and conversation every Christmas and every summer, and have always been immeasurably kind to us.

There’s so much loveliness, so much fulfillment in life that I’m surprised when I hear stories of lessons learned, like Ms. Fitzpatrick’s. What deep pleasure there is to be found in the world’s accessible corners. What meaning there is in the most straightforward of relationships. How gorgeous things are. How important we all, each of us, are, to one another, to the flow of lives beginning in the incomprehensibly distant past and that builds our story for the sake of our existence alone. How completely beautiful, unknowable, and livable it all is.

And of course, I have no idea why I even have a need for this kind of disclosure.

Online communication is dangerously abstract. Everyone knows the pitfalls in taking people at face value through their words. The lack of any other kind of expression, through gestures or speech, is rife with the potential to cause offense even in the most innocuous of circumstances, particularly when people are bad writers, or bad readers.

But in fact, there’s another danger. There’s a danger of losing contact with what actually matters. And there’s a danger of losing the ability to even define what matters.

When interacting with others in this environment, words seem to be the perfect distillation of a person. There seems to be no better way of analyzing and correcting, or receiving and taking joy in someone, than through their unaltered, unfiltered words. Words become people. And in the end, the only thing that can possibly matter about the people you meet online, the only thing of any substance for most everyone you’ll ever interact with, is what they say.

But of course, people are much more than what they merely say.

I’m saddened by a kind of loss today, which I hope will turn out to be a personal incentive to move on to other things, to regain the measure of what’s important. To rework my words and the words of others. To remove a level of abstraction; to build with words, and to transmit my love for words through what I say, and not how it’s said.

I am not comfortable with change, less with change that’s forced, or, on the surface, unjust. But I truly welcome each experience with some measure of expectation and hope. I try to translate the things that happen, small things and larger things, into a sensible direction.

It works, occasionally. Something else starts, or Alex, in his kind and patient way, focuses things for me, and I take direction from him. Life’s good, mostly, despite annoyances and troubles, and failings and helpless starts and stops. I live near the lake. When I feel like this, I wander down there and look out across its choppy surface, to the side I can’t see, disappearing into the blue or grey or white of the furthest visible edge of the water. There is a lot to see in the unseeable. A lot to look forward to, even in the thin line at the far horizon, where there’s no telling what will come, or who will bring it.

My father drove me to Westbahnhof. I’d just concluded a two week tour of Italy and Austria with my family, and I was leaving for Canada the following day. I had been on my own in Munich for the first few days of this trip; I would end it by being alone there for the last two.

Americans and the world

I boarded a car that was not as modern, nor as spotless, as the train I’d taken en route to Austria. My reserved seat was unfortunately a single that was set back from a window frame, so the trip would be taken while sitting mostly beside a wall. Such are the vagaries of last minute reservations, I suppose. No matter. I would likely spend most of the time reading.

Unlike the car on the trip to Westbahnhof, this car was not compartmentalized. All the seats were aside a central aisle, with no sliding glass doors. Once on the train, I watched it slowly fill up. The passengers were mostly American tourists who spoke with that unusual flattening of the long vowels, which, when listening to a Canadian, causes them to hear the two words a boot instead of the single word about.

Accents are all relative, I suppose. Once one learns German, the difference in accents between provincial Austrian and urban German is remarkable. A speaker from either of these groups must invariably think the other is doing something terrible to the language.

American tourists have a reputation of being unworldly. Actually, the reputation borders on the sense of them being xenophobic, which makes one wonder what they’re doing travelling to all corners of the globe. Recently, we went on a wine tour of the Niagara region, and stopped at Niagara-on-the-Lake for a detour. We parked at a municipal lot and went to get a ticket. A middle-aged couple seemed to be having a lot of trouble with the machine, and looked quite forlorn. They were confounded by the fact that it wouldn’t accept their American coins. “What’s wrong with our money,” they asked, quite seriously, in an oppressive South Carolina drawl. One of our group wasn’t too patient, and made some cracks about their not having noticed the border crossing. But he was the first to smile, and he dropped in enough (Canadian) coins for them to have a couple of hours of parking.

There are three hundred million citizens of the United States. A few of them are bound to suffer culture shock when confronted with the unforgiving parking metres of Canada, for example. But the unworldliness of the American traveller is a myth.

During my many years as a waiter in downtown Toronto, I’d met literally thousands of people, a large percentage of them American, and many were well-heeled, savvy travellers with an impeccable sense of fine food and good wine. In Munich, I shared the floor of my hotel with a group of Americans that included a man who not only spoke perfect German (with a midwest accent), but carried the charming urbanity of the most demanding of European hotel patrons, contrasting sharply with the huffy gruffness of some of the Germans there. And on the corner of University Avenue and Dundas Street in Toronto, near my office, one is likely to be set upon at most times of the year by boorish German or British or Canadian tourists wrestling with an oversized map.

It isn’t the nationality of the traveller that impacts his behaviour, but rather, his familiarity with travel, and his openness to the newness of new places.

Citizen Incognito

A German businessman in his late forties took the single seat facing me, offering a clipped Guten Tag before unfolding his newspaper. There was an American family directly beside me across the aisle: Dad, Mom, two teenaged sons. Eventually, the train moved out of the station, and began winding through the Austrian countryside. I couldn’t see much of it. I concentrated on my book.

The family seemed restless, and switched seats with one another several times before even half an hour was up. They took advantage of the food service cart to fuel their impatience. What I will admit to being typical in the American tourist, as much as with the Germans, is a lack of auditory restraint. They were loud. The entire car knew of their various discomforts, and the nature of their small interpersonal relationships. The man in front of me seemed interested in all this, and paid much attention to them while reading his paper. He glanced at me and smiled.

“A little out of their element, maybe,” he said, or something like it. A year ago, my comprehension of German spoken by natives was not good. I usually had to piece together meaning from long sentences, only half of whose words I might understand, or I’d have to quickly refer to my mental translation dictionary if a rapid response was expected of me. This time, though, it would be good enough for me to smile and say, “Yes, so it seems.”

I admit to some measure of shallowness, and I was pleased that he took me for a German. My German teacher, also a native, had told me that my accent was good, and would not be noticeable as foreign to most Germans in quick casual conversation. My companion seemed satisfied with my response, smiling a little smugly, maybe, as he kept watch over our fellow passengers, so obviously foreign. And so I was happy to be mistaken for a native. I have always wanted to travel immersed, and flow with ease through the daily life of the city I’m currently in.

For an hour, my travelling companion read his paper, then folded it neatly and held it out to me, saying something so rapidly, and while chuckling, that I simply couldn’t get it. “No, thank you,” I said, holding up my hand. He rolled his eyes toward the American family, still fussing and vocal, and leaned toward me conspiratorially. His voice strained by withheld laughter, he delivered another rapid spate of idiom-laced German, and I instantly foundered. In the few seconds I had before my non-response would be uncomfortable, I tried my best to pick out parts of his sentence that were clear to me to gather meaning from the common, but it was no good. And, I had already forgone giving away my foreignness. I would feel foolish asking him to repeat himself, or to reply in English. Were I to suddenly admit to being a native English speaker, his embarrassment might be depthless at realizing he might have been speaking to the very kind of tourist at whose expense he was apparently having a few jibes.

I merely looked back at him, politely attempting to smile. I suppose he sensed my discomfort, but probably interpreted it differently, and he smiled and nodded, saying, “Well, there you have it, although it is interesting.”

“Yes, it certainly is,” I said, turning the meaning to suit my little problem. He closed his eyes and leaned back into his seat. I quickly put in my earplugs and turned up the music to close myself off from any further trouble.

The journey continued through Austria, and eventually into the mountainous southeast of Germany. I believe the family had departed in Salzburg. I dozed for a while, or I tried to glance out the corner of window glass that was accessible to me. When we pulled into Hauptbahnhof in Munich, I followed the businessman to the door. Before disembarking, he turned to me and politely said goodbye, smiling warmly.

I felt a little small at my behaviour. I hadn’t had the courage to admit to being non-German when the moment of crisis had arrived. And despite this, I was still proud, in a petty way, of being mistaken for a German.

Leaving the train, I made a straight line for the station’s interior, knowing exactly which exit to take. I pictured the corner I would wait at, with the crowd of pedestrians waiting for the light to change; before I reached it, I could see in my mind the long street, Paul-Heyse-Straße, stretching in the distance toward my hotel. Other names of streets in the neighbourhood went through my mind: Pettenkoferstraße, Goethestraße, Bavariaring. Those and two dozen more had been underfoot already. I walked to Uhlandstraße and my hotel. I would have the afternoon to continue into other parts of the city.

Communal eating

The evening before I left, I walked to the city centre. It was pleasant and mild, and the streets seemed crowded with Müncheners. I’d been looking for something. I can’t remember what, or if I’d found it, but on the way back, I needed to get something to eat. Seeing a brightly lit shop with food in the window, I went in.

It was a kind of deli, and there were no tourists inside. People were grocery shopping, or eating at a few long, high communal tables near the entrance. It was nice to get away from the tourists and their haunts, and the kitschy atmosphere of some of the shops, although these are refreshingly few in Munich if you know where to go.

I walked to the back of the store, and watched people pile food on plates from a serving table, to be taken and weighed by a cashier. There were take-out trays and dinner plates. Grabbing a tray, I went over the offerings, and invented a meal of various pastas and vegetables. I went to the tables at the front and enjoyed it while listening to a family of three, with a girl about ten or eleven, talking about the minutiae of their day. They seemed to be discussing the girl’s school, and things for her to do in the evening. She looked at me every once in a while from over her plate of sausage, probably wondering why I was eating inside from a take-out tray instead of a ceramic plate.

They soon finished and left, and others came and went, alone or in pairs, talking, or eating quickly and silently, and it was one of the most enjoyable meals and experiences I remember from my entire trip. You can eat a lot of beautiful goulash in Austria, or innumerable varieties of pasta or fish in Italy, but sharing a rough meal in common with the local population of a city you have a special fondness for makes for a lovely memory.

Professor of Annoyance

I was to meet up with my family in Vienna in two days, and I’d reserved a seat on the train for the next morning for the four hour trip from Munich. I boarded about mid-morning; I seemed to be the only one on the entire car. Seats were arranged in banks of threes facing each other, and contained in compartments with sliding doors. It was cozy and modern, and impeccably clean. I settled in my seat by the window and dozed, waiting for the train to depart.

After a bit, the door slid open, and in bustled a large man in his sixties. He looked at me over his glasses and rumbled an obligatory “Guten Tag,” then took quite some time to settle in. He was expansive, in his width and his movements. He pulled out a newspaper, a binder, and other items, and took up most of the tiny table under the window as a kind of desk, while we waited for the train to leave the station.

He was kind of amusing, kind of curt. His voice was deep and gravelly. He had a thick grey beard, and wore an old herringbone jacket (complete with patches on the elbows) over a tattered cable-knit sweater that looked particularly scratchy. His glasses were half-rims, so it was easy for him to glance over the top of them at whatever might have been annoying him at the moment. And he did seem to be in a state of perpetual annoyance.

I suddenly noticed an overturned paper coffee cup with a lid on it in the middle of the floor, very slowly leaking hot coffee into the carpet. Unless I’m half-blind, or stupid (or maybe a little of both), that cup was not on the floor when I entered the spotless compartment. I politely interrupted the gentleman to ask if he had dropped it, pointing to it as my voice trailed off in the face of his stony-eyed stare. “Not at all,” he said, “do you suppose it has been sitting there all this time?”

My German isn’t perfect, and my comprehension of spoken German — particularly German spoken by an irascible and perpetually annoyed man in his sixties who would probably be difficult to understand in the most cordial of circumstances — is even worse. But that was the unusual gist of what he said to me. “I – I’m not sure,” I said, a little confused by his disowning of this item. “Hum,” he puffed, “strange.” And he went back to his paper.

Okay. I stood, picked the cup up, being careful not to dump the remainder of its contents on the floor, and left the train to throw it out.

When we finally departed, it began to rain. It was very grey and misty out, and unfortunately the landscape was invisible. I looked at my companion. He was reading not a German newspaper, but perhaps a Czech one, or Slovak. After some time, he turned to his binder and began to make pencil notes in the margins of what appeared to be a typewritten Czech manuscript, before going back to the newspaper. A Slavic writer of some kind? I hadn’t noticed anything but a perfectly German accent. He certainly fit the description of a sixty-ish middle European novelist, elbow patches and brusqueness and all. I was reminded of Yuri Testikov, the growling Russian writer on a Seinfeld episode.

After an hour or so, two young Japanese girls, quite obviously tourists, came into our compartment and sat opposite one another, chatting quietly. This did not impress my companion, who used both his half-rims and the top of his paper from which to shoot darts at these young women. When they began to unpack a lunch of noodles and biscuits, it was barely tolerable for him. Since they didn’t have access to the table, their little picnic was spread out on the seats beside them; meaning beside myself as well as my companion.

I have never heard anyone actually snort. One may read this in fiction occasionally — “He snorted his contempt,” for example — but I think one very rarely has the luck to actually hear someone snort contemptuously in real life. When the odour of the noodles reached him after a few seconds, his paper snapped in rapid succession three or four times, and he huffed and snorted — yes, very contemptuously — making his deep displeasure known to us all. Except that for reasons unknown, perhaps cultural ones, this passed high over the heads of the young women, who happily chattered and ate, and drank from bottles of brightly coloured liquid while he stared at them sidelong, barely able, it seemed to me, to contain his revulsion.

It was difficult to feel sorry for anyone. Yuri was master of his own displeasure, and the girls had no idea they were unsettling him so grandiosely. He glanced at me once or twice, maybe looking for a comrade in disgust, but I did my best to ignore the whole situation. In fact, I had to make sure that I wasn’t smiling too much in order not to insult him.

Luckily, the girls left the train shortly afterward, and he could go back to his newspaper and manuscript. He also slept for a while, stretching his legs on the seat beside him, bohemian style. I read, listened to music, or watched the rain streaking along the window. The landscape was a misty rush beyond it.

Finally, hours later, we entered the Viennese environs. My companion gathered up his belongings and his luggage a few stops before Westbahnhof, which was my destination. As he left the compartment, he turned to me and offered a very polite and dignified goodbye. Entertaining though his demeanor might have been, he was still quite classically the gentleman, and I was glad to have made the trip in his company.

My stay in Vienna was short, and over the course of the next two weeks, I’d met my family, and we’d traveled throughout Austria and Italy before arriving back at Vienna. From there, I would take the reverse trip back to Munich.

Three days later, I was standing in front of the Führerbau in Munich, where, in the presence of Hitler and Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain had agreed to carve up Czechoslovakia to stave off a likely war.

It was an abrupt and surreal displacement for me. I stood on the sidewalk opposite the building, looking up at the spot where the Reichs Eagle Hoheitszeichen, the Nazi national symbol of a menacing eagle clutching a bewreathed swastika, was once pinned. The marks in the facade were still clearly evident. Some windows were open, and I could hear piano music drifting out to the street. The building is now a music school, and this turn of events seemed purposeful and fitting.

I’d arrived in Germany earlier that day. As the aircraft descended en route to Munich, I was struck by the prettiness of the German countryside, with its square fields of green and yellow, and the clutches of houses and other buildings all with bright terracotta roofs. The tangibility of history being something I’ve always striven for, I couldn’t help myself wondering what the scene was like down there in the spring of 1945, with the Allies advancing across this countryside, overtaking villages and cities as the conflict wound steadily down.

It was pouring rain in Munich the day I arrived. I’d taken the train from the airport to the Bahnhof, but mistakenly got off only two stops short. I’d been certain I was on the wrong track. It seemed to be taking too long, and the environs around Munich seemed too pastoral. But I managed to ask a couple of people in my uncertain German to confirm my way, and soon, I was waiting in a doorway in the train station for the rain to let up. I eventually got a cab and arrived at my hotel on Uhlandstraße by the Theresienwiese. It was a pretty street with a lot of unusual corners. The room wasn’t quite ready, so I had to go exploring.

The city is like most European cities, and the centre is a ring of criss-crossing streets. It is very easy to get lost, and so I did. I had to take a cab back to the hotel, but not before a somewhat alarming tour of the centre that included many repeated street crossings.

I have a love-hate relationship with travel. I long to see the sights I know from books, and I crave to touch history at every opportunity. But I suffer particularly acutely from jet lag. On that first day, indeed, throughout my entire trip, Alex’ voice at the other end of my cell phone was not just nice to hear; it was critical to arriving safely at the end of a day. I wish for every solitary traveller to have the kind and patient and ever understanding voice of a loved one at the opposite end of a phone.

The first day in Munich was soon over. Alex helped me through the night as well, when I awoke disoriented, exhausted, and still quite jet lagged. When dawn came, I was soon out the door and in the city centre again.