A garbage can and a box

The bus was empty, so she had no problem hoisting a large, grey and round, three-foot deep, 80-gallon garbage can to the back row of seats. In the garbage can was a box wrapped in a black garbage bag.

After she sat down – in the left-most of the five back-row seats – she removed the box, put it on the ground in front of her, then sat the garbage can on top of the box.

“You never know when you’ll need a garbage can,” she said to the shaggy man in the middle of the back row.

She had on a grey tank top and wore jean shorts. Her legs were filthy but her speech coherent and her general aura that of confidence and, if not joy, then at least satisfaction. She rode the bus for a dozen or so stops, from West Hastings, up past the community centre, onto Main Street and towards Broadway. There, she maneuvered her box and garbage can – seperately – through the now-crowded bus to the back doors.

A stroller

I have two computer screens at work and to write about them is to meta-bore myself to death so, despite the fact that they are staring me in the face, on to something else;

She has sandals that would not look out of place on a Pacific Island and a plain, slightly faded red shirt. Short and skinny, but of normal build for someone of Chinese descent, she is pushing a plain stroller with a happy looking two-year old plumped in its seat. The stroller kind of looks like a rollable version of the four-dollar camping chairs we bought recently at value village; chairs that are more like portable stumps, with three legs that spread outwards and a triangle seat that somehow is perfect for one’s derriere.

Which is to say the stroller is cheap looking, and she is plain-clothed, but they are clean and have life’s requirements. To say they are impoverished, then, would be drawing conclusions. But if you have money – if you have it laying around – you buy a fancy stroller that can be covered from the rain, hold a drink and perform other motherly duties like rocking your child to sleep.

She pushes the stroller back and forth gently. When the child begins to make noise, she taps him on the head and implores him to be quieter. Other mothers let their children scream like Freddy Krueger’s victims. This one is dissatisfied with above-a-whisper sound.

Rejoice, Christmas is over

Well, Santa or St. Nickolai, as they say here (and probably spell differently), has gone back into hibernation, taking with him all his Christmas carols, decorations and confusing traditions.

Woo hoo.

Of course, I say that every year, especially about the confusing traditions. In fact, in Poland at least, all the traditions seem to make at least a little bit of sense. This Christmas season, (because at this point Christmas has become more a season than a holiday or even a holiday season) was obviously different from most I experienced.

First, we spent this Christmas (and New Years’ Eve) in Poland’s Mazurian Forest, where Magda’s uncle is a forestry official. The forest is located in the Mazury region of Poland, in the country’s north-east and close to the Russian border (If you squint hard at a map you will notice that Russia owns a small block of land just east of the Baltic Sea and just north of Poland’s eastern quarter). Magda’s aunt and uncle live in a sometimes-guesthouse on a large tract of land a few kilometres outside of Czerwony Dvor. We stayed at the guesthouse for most of our stay.

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But there is a lot to write about so first things first, the forest.

This ‘ent your typical British Columbian third-growth forest. First, it’s relatively flat. While Mazury boasts more hills than Saskatchewan(!), they reach distinctly Saskatchewan-like heights. That means that if, say, you went hiking in the woods and got turned around, you can’t just look at your position in regards to the nearest large hill.

As for the trees, the forest is extremely managed. Part of this likely has to do with the fact that, by Canadian standards it is both small in terms of pure overall size and large in terms of the percentage of wood it contributes to Polish and European lumber needs. (I have no stats whatsoever to back myself up in this regard.) This translates into sections of forest that are very different. One section may contain almost exclusively spruce while another is populated by hardwoods. At ground level you can walk around easily because most underbrush has been cleared (I would guess, for firewood). In other words, a walk in the woods here doesn’t require a machete.

The forest, also, isn’t entirely a forest. There are farms, large clearings and small settlements all throughout it. If one were to make a video of a typical drive through the forest and then play it on fast forward, the general pattern would go as such:

Forest-forest-clearing-forest-long straight road-field-forest-forest-town-forest-long straight road-clearing-forest-forest.

Thus the setting of this Christmas. Later, photos and maybe even the Christmas itself.

Not THOSE All Saints

Yesterday was All Saints and Magda and I, along with her aunt, uncle and two cousins, visited the grave of her grandparents. I’ll keep my summation of All Saints experience brief, because I hope to write about it in the future and don’t want to spill all my notes.

All Saints day is a national holiday and has religious roots. But the main feature of the day are Poles flocking to cemeteries around the country to visit graves. Flowers and candles are placed. We visited a cemetery in Zgierz (a suburb of Lodz) during the day and another cemetery in Lodz in the evening. During the day there were almost as many people in the cemetery as graves, which easily number in the thousands. It is not necessarily a sombre occasion. As Magda explained it, it’s more of a celebration of the deceaseds’ lives.

During the night the candles light up the cemetery. It’s a beautiful sight and not at all spooky. It really brings home that each grave houses a real person, rather than just a name.

Of course, any holiday has its curious aspects and one that gets an observer, rather than a true participant thinking.

People have different strategies for decorating graves. Magda’s family carefully arranged a few lamps and a few bundles of flowers on the family grave. Most take a similar tact and many times the candles and the flowers on the grave are placed by successions of visitors, be they friends, acquaintances or admirers (certain graves or memorials to war heroes attract hundreds of candles). But other graves have quite obviously been purposely bombarded with as many flowers and candles as possible. Those people, it would seem, take the look-how-many-flowers-my-family-grave-has!!! approach.

Which, come to think about it, isn’t that dissimilar from the huge gothic family tomb of an obviously wealthy industrialist in the centre of the Lodz cemetery. It’s mighty impressive, and there were about 20-30 candles arranged at its base (it’s probably 30-feet-high and looks like a small gothic church). I hope that the candles were lit by family members and not people just impressed with the tomb. That, it would seem, would prove that money can buy prayers, if, like many, those who place a candle at the tomb also say a prayer.

And those annoyed about the commercialism of Christmas should take note that, in post-communist Poland, All Saints isn’t immune either. It’s clearly the make-or-break day for the flower and candle sellers that line the street outside the cemetery. I saw a guy selling blow up balloons in the shape of dalmations and other animals and priests take the opportunity to solicit money for their churches.

Still, all those minor gripes aside. It’s a mighty impressive day and its basic theme – remembering the deceased, seems as good an excuse for a public holiday as any.

Not that the holiday makes everybody happy. It seems it results in a good deal of carnage too.

“Police reported 334 serious road accidents with 32 dead and 421 injured in 48 hours, on what is the annual carnage on Poland’s accompanying one of the most widely observed Roman Catholic holidays, All Souls Day, otherwise known as the day of the Dead.” – Polskie Radio