What many wonders life will bring
On a cloudy winter afternoon, I take a solitary walk along the deserted beach at Spanish Banks. I have done this many times before, but today something is different. Time folds back upon itself, vouchsafing me a glimpse of the world through the eyes of my younger self. That girl rises in memory, walking along this same beach. It is late November of 1967.
Today, more than five decades after that other walk on this same beach, I sense how she is my foundation and I am her future version. The same soul inhabits us both.
Glancing across the bay at the cloud-blurred outline of the North Shore mountains, I look back upon many wonders she could not dream she’d see.
For that seventeen-year-old, the move to the city has provided a plenitude of joy and adventure. This lovely ocean beach to walk on. The distant city skyline, dominated by a solitary glass tower, the BC Hydro building. She has seen it on Burrard Street, from the bus window.
The lush campus where she studies — Arts I, French, Creative Writing — is a playground beyond her wildest imaginings. Miraculously, she even lives on campus, in the midst of a paradise of flowering shrubs she’d have expected to see only in tropical places like Hawaii.
What is she thinking about as she turns her back on the city view and walks back along the sand? (Today’s wide beach path had yet to be built.) She thinks of impending exams, a bit afraid as university exams will be new for her. She feels a twinge of guilt too. Although she has not completed the assigned reading for various classes, she has managed to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the past week, when she ought to have been studying.
Her mind shucks guilt, seeks out more pleasant thoughts. The second-hand flamenco guitar she saw in the window of the Mediterranean Guitar Shop on Tenth. Made in Mallorca, with a hand-inked label written by the instrument maker. This beautiful instrument has come all the way from Spain, a country she hopes one day to see. She must buy it before someone else does.
But where will she find eighty-five dollars? Who might she dare ask for a loan? Immediately, she thinks of a former schoolmate who, unlike her on her shoestring scholarship budget, is more flush with cash. This girl, very outdoorsy, is always trying to recruit her for hikes and such. She had offered to lend money for cross-country skis but Carol demurred. Remembering this now, she makes a bold decision. She will ask the girl for a loan to buy the guitar. She can pay it back from what she earns at her part-time job, loading and unloading the dishwasher in the residence kitchen.
That solved, a further worry intrudes. How will she get through the French course? The thought of having to write the essay exam terrifies her. Still, she tells herself, it might be all right. Her writing and grammar are not so bad. It’s the spoken language she’s weak in. The French teacher in her high school was not a native speaker. What a shock it was to hear the university instructor speak so rapidly and fluently, expecting the class to understand and respond. The first few sessions, she could barely make out what Mademoiselle was saying, much less come up with a sensible reply. For fear of disappointing herself by failing the course, she has diligently studied Le Chanson de Roland and the other assigned readings.
Veering away from fears over French, she thinks about the upcoming Christmas dance at the residence. The plain white dress she will wear drapes beautifully, like the garments on ancient Greek and Roman statues. Will she have a corsage? A pink carnation from Mayhew-Sherwood would go well with the dress. Who will ask her to dance? The clever curly-haired boy who did so well on Reach for the Top? He’s friendly enough. Or perhaps the strangely formal blonde one, with his horn-rimmed spectacles and his quaint, old-fashioned manners. “May I have this dance?” She laughs as she imagines him saying that.
Her mind returns to the miracle of being here, at this university in this city, and she recalls a recent moment shared with her bosom friend Pat. Meeting in Totem Park, they clicked at once. Now they’re practically inseparable. The other day, they were walking by the Chemistry building. Once more she was admiring its austere stone symmetry, counterpoint to the red and blue glass panes in the overhead walkway between wings.
“Look at the sky,” said her friend, and she turned. The layers of clouds had split in the west. The sun remained hidden, but the clouds sheared apart, shooting a spray of brilliant sunbeams like arrows above the roof of the bookstore. “It looks as if God might come,” said Pat - a fellow English major - and Carol’s heart chimed exactly. She recognized the feeling when she heard those words.
They exchanged a look of understanding, then continued walking back to Totem Park. What would dinner be tonight, she wondered. She loves returning to the surprise of whatever hot food the cooks have prepared. She finds it a bit surprising that these meals are not universally appreciated. The girl she will ask for a loan likes to request “the vegetarian option” instead of the meat dish. Shameless, the kitchen supplies her with the same thing each time: two slices of rubbery processed cheese.
This young Carol has no notion of acid rain or PCBs or the Gulf War or Nine Eleven. True, she lived through the terrifying days of the Cuban missile crisis, but amid life’s many wonderful adventures, that memory has long since faded into the background.
This girl has not yet climbed the cliffs or dived into the icy waters off Point Atkinson, visible across the bay from here. Nor has she taken part in the Polar Bear swim. Looking at the freighters arriving empty, or leaving low in the water, laden with grain or who knows what else, she does not imagine that one day the freighters in English Bay will all carry stacks and stacks of containers. She would be thrilled to know that she and her husband will sail out on a cruise ship one sunny summer evening, and pass beneath the Lion’s Gate bridge.
She has no idea that her travels will take her to different continents, that she will learn a new language (not French), meet and work with people from all over the world. She has no notion that she will one day see the Great Barrier Reef, the shores of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, the northernmost point of the African continent. Will see Mount Fujiyama at sunset, and ride the bullet train, will find herself on a rolling ferry boat off Hong Kong when the red warning flag is raised to nine, watches the small boats running to get inside the typhoon fence.
She does not dream that one day she will marry a man from nearly halfway round the world and they will have a daughter. Not in her wildest dreams could she foresee this day when, long retired from work she loved, she leaves a doctor’s appointment and takes advantage of a rare visit to the city to walk on Spanish Banks again. Meanwhile in the suburbs, her husband, just returned home from work, is eating more of the paella she prepared for them yesterday. She still has not managed to visit Spain, but who knows? If COVID ebbs sufficiently, she may still go there with her choir on the twice-deferred trip they’d planned, and sing in Spanish cities.
She thinks about her daughter, now settled with her family near the place she herself was born. One province away. Not close, but thankfully, not terribly far. Recently, this daughter shared the thrilling news of a grandson on the way.
Carol reflects how the world she inhabited is fading, fading; this new grandson will not know it at all. He and his contemporaries will find their way in a much-altered world. Life goes on, in all its change, uncertainty, mystery.
And like this beach, earth abides.