Answering the Knock at the Cabin

I wanted to sit with my feelings about M. Night Shyamalan's Knock at the Cabin (2023) for a bit before rendering some thoughts

First off, I loved the film in the way that you can afford to love a film when your memories of the superb novel upon which it as based, in this case, Paul Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the World, are locked away in your mind. 

Mr. Shyamalan did, in fact, take several liberties with the story, which has understandably disappointed some folks, though they bothered me less than I expected they would.

I found the essence of the story—the devastation of a very 21st century family under unimaginable emotional assault—to be intact. That was the most important thing to me, along with sterling performances by Jonathan Groff as Eric, and Ben Aldridge as Andrew. There was a surprisingly solid one from Dave Bautista, and Kristen Cui was wonderful as Andrew and Eric's daughter, Wen.

Would I have preferred that the film hew to Tremblay's novel more closely? Of course I would. The novel is, frankly, perfect, and, in the film, I missed the nearly-intolerable tension and mounting dread that undergirded it. 

But to be completely fair, Shyamalan still made an excellent film that packs an emotional wallop nonetheless, one that stands on its own merits and didn't dishonour the source material.

I think people should absolutely see Knock at the Cabin, but I feel strongly that they should also read The Cabin at the End of the World as well—preferably first. 

As for me, my copy of that glorious novel is right where its supposed to be—on my bookshelf and in my heart. No film, however skilfully rendered, can touch the experience of having read it.

After the March blizzard

"Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,

The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;

The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed

Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade

That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,

Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,

March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite."

—from "March: An Ode" by Algernon Charles Swinburne 

 

The good place

 

I'm saddened tonight by the news that Nordstrom is shuttering all its Canadian stores. 

I didn't shop there—I was not their target market—but the restaurant at the top, Bar Verde, was one of my favourite spots in Toronto for seven years. 

Centuries ago, there was a wonderfully unpretentious restaurant on Church St. called Café California. The owners were friends of mine, and it was where I could usually be found, either dining alone, working on my journal, or entertaining friends. 

The staff likewise became friends over time, and the owners' daughter, Angie, became like a beloved niece. I watched her grow from a precocious little girl into a lovely, intelligent young woman. I wrote about her in Other Men's Sons in an essay called "Eloise on Church Street."

When the restaurant closed, I was bereft. The last place I ever expected to find its replacement was on the top floor of a American department store anchoring the Eaton Centre.

I must have been visiting Bar Verde since at least 2017, if not earlier. I can count the tenure of at least four managers, off the top of my head, and many more wait staff, all of whom I was on a mutual first-name basis with. A handful, I count today as actual friends. 

Every December, I loved to watch the Christmas lights in the mall from the restaurant's vast floor-to-ceiling windows towering above it, and it was always my first sense of the Christmas season. 

I have a particular memory of stopping by the restaurant for a later dinner on the evening of the launch of Best Canadian Essays  2016, which contained one of mine, and being brought a glass of champagne from the manager, to celebrate. 

Every January and February, when the restaurant was quietest, I re-read Peter Straub's Ghost Story while the snow fell outside in sheets. In the summer, it was a cool refuge from the heat and humidity. 

But Christmas always came again, and the coloured lights of the mall shimmering below my table had a bit of an Irving Berlin quality in the weeks before we left for Palm Springs, and our Christmas with the California family.

The staff always made space for me to read and edit manuscripts over carafes of Diet Coke and coffee. During COVID-19, I always felt safe dining there because of how luxuriously spaced the tables were. A dear friend of mine and I had dinner once a week, for years, and helped each other through some challenging times. 

Sunday has been a throwaway day for me since my boarding school years, and the perfect rainy Sunday late-afternoon was spent at the farthest booth in the back, adjacent to the bar, with only my own company and a great book 

When I got my cancer diagnosis last spring, my first get-well card was a massive one, signed by every member of the restaurant staff—with personal messages of love and support, not just generic signatures, and it was accompanied by two massive jars of their signature tomato basil soup, which they knew I loved. 

That summer and fall, I stopped by after each doctor's appointment and procedure (the hospital was ten minutes away) and did so after every "chemo Monday," when Flo 2 was unhooked, and I most needed to lose myself in a crowd of people, and just feel normal. Even thinking of it now, I'm in awe of each small but resonant acts of kindness along that route. A middle booth eventually became colloquially know as "Michael's booth," and it always seemed to be free for me, no mater what the weather, internal or external. 

I was dining there tonight with Jenny when the staff got an impersonal bulk email from head office, announcing the closure. Moments later, it hit the national news. 

The emotional disconnect between the cold, antiseptic language of the press coverage and the shell-shocked faces of the about-to-be-unemployed staff was heartbreaking. 

The CBC reported tonight that roughly 2,330 people will lose their jobs. 

I guess that sounds like a small, anonymous number—unless of course, you can put names and faces you love to that number; and especially unless you vividly remember some of them embracing you and shedding tears upon hearing the news that you were cancer-free, and all the genuine tenderness, softness, and affection during the dark months that you weren't.

We all make the places of our hearts that are not our homes—restaurants, bars, bookshops, galleries, and more—which are occupied by people who are not family, or even, necessarily, "friends" in the accepted sense of the word, but who are both receptacles and sources of kindness and goodness—places that we leave happier than when we arrived, and where we always feel welcome: the archetypical "good place."

To people who don't know me well, the only thing more bewildering than the fact that this latest iteration of my "good place" is a restaurant at the top of a department store is how genuinely sad I am that it's coming to an end. And I'm bad at endings.

When you're open-hearted, and open to people, and open to their lives and stories, they trust you with those stories. And, as any writer can attest, the sharing of a life story, or of life stories, is one of the most bonding of human experiences, and the listener and the teller become part of each other in some small way forever. 

That's colder consolation than I'd like tonight, but I'll still take it.

Goodbye, Kirk

We lost our friend Kirk Rogers last night.

Kirk was the ultimate refutation of the notion that Facebook "friends" aren't real friends. He was that, and more.

He was a glorious contradiction in so many terms—he was a burly leather-clad biker who was also a brilliant ornithological photojournalist, whose bird photography was the work of a true artist. He was a self-described "conservative" with one of the kindest, keenest, most open minds I've ever encountered, with a largesse d'esprit that was one for the books.

Most importantly for me, personally, he was the first of my male Facebook friends with cancer who stepped forward when I received my diagnosis last May.

As a true New Englander, he did it in private, with no ostentation or flourish.

He was there for me constantly throughout the past year of treatment. I derived enormous comfort and inspiration from the fact that he'd made a full-on trip to Europe in between treatments, and I decided that, if Kirk could do it, then our trip to Europe in the fall of 2023 was going to happen, no matter what.

When my pathology report, post-surgery, was full of good and hopeful news, Kirk was euphoric. It occurred to me many times, in those weeks, that he couldn't have been entirely human if he hadn't also wished that he'd had the same good news about his own cancer journey. It can't have been completely easy, but his heart and his decency were so epic that there was nothing in him for me but joy.

I'm grateful for the intense exchange of emails we had towards the end. Kirk sounded very strong, and even a bit protective of my healing, with was a striking grace note in a man who knew he was dying, and who had, in fact, been given no more than a few days to live. I'm honoured beyond words that he spent even a short bit of the time he had left reassuring me that I was going to be OK.

I will always regret that we didn't get around to having that beer, that conversation as two artists, that bonding time in which we might have gloried in how two men of such different backgrounds, and lives, could have had so much in common, and what that said about the overall possibilities, for human beings, of coming together in friendship.

The phrase "a good man" is overused to the point of caricature, but that's exactly what Kirk was, and that made him pure gold.

If you're a friend of mine, but didn't know Kirk—and if you've read this far— please don't say that you're "sorry for [my] loss." It's not my loss—it's his family's loss, it's our great mutual friend Cam Lag's loss, and it's his fellow riders' loss. I don't want to insert myself in their grief. I'm just a blade of grass that shook slightly when a 747 passed overhead. The 747 was Kirk Rogers, and all the abundant love and goodness with which he was so generous. Share your sympathy wth them instead, or just say "Rest In Peace," and mean it. I sure do.

Sleep well after your hard-fought battle, Kirk. And thanks for showing me how it's properly done—with dignity, strength, and great, great style.

Snow day

 

Where history goes to die

 

On September 4th, 1967, with blistering dignity, 15-year old Elizabeth Eckford, the first Black student to integrate a Southern high school, overrode what must have been terror, braving a gauntlet of hate-filled, taunting, screaming white Arkansans as she attempted to enter Little Rock's Central High School. She was prevented from doing to by National Guard soldiers, acting on orders from Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. As she fled, the mob threatened to lynch her. This photograph by Will Counts became one of the iconic images of the Civil Rights era. On January 10th, 2023, her very first day in office, Arkansas' newly-elected governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, introduced an Executive Order banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Ironically, the history behind this classic image of the desegregation battle could technically fall under her banned material guidelines—proving yet again that institutionalized bigotry in the hands of the powerful is where history goes to die.

From the current issue of Winterplay magazine, a Christmas memory or two

 

Bring Christmas on

 

The Hero M.D.  and I received the very best early Christmas present yesterday.

The post-op pathology report from my surgery in November was off-the-charts good. My margins are clear: of the 25 lymph nodes examined, none of them had a trace of cancer. There was no metastasis and no perforation. The tumour was entirely removed. The operation was an unequivocal success. I am, for all intents and purposes, currently cancer-free.

Or, in the words of my brilliant and kind oncological surgeon, Dr. Chadi, I am "macroscopically free of disease," meaning that if any cancer remains, it is undetectable to the naked eye.

No one is going to say "cured" for another four or five years, but I am as close to that now as it's humanly possible to be. In January, I will have one final operation that will allow me to fully return to unfettered public life.

It is only hitting me now, in small degrees, that the shadow on my life since Friday the 13th of May, 2022, has lifted. I am also coming to realize the degree to which I had restricted myself from thinking about any kind of assured future. That's the nature of this cancer beast.

The next four years are going to involve medical vigilance in case the cancer returns, but I'm OK with that, because I'll be living the entire time, and not taking any of it for granted.

Bring Christmas on. I'm ready for a joyous one. May yours be similarly joyous.

I'm home from the hospital (again)

Someone missed me, clearly. Not just tonight, but during this whole process, which has often separated, for hours, a senior Labrador who can't manage stairs very well anymore, and his dog-parent, who's spent increasing amounts of time upstairs, lying down, when the chemo-related fatigue kicked in. This evening after getting home from the hospital, what I really, really wanted was a shower. But what I really needed was to spend two hours with him downstairs, stroking Beckett's fur, touching his face, talking to him using my special "Beckett voice" while we waited for the Hero M.D. to come home. Eventually he ambled over to his bed, whacked his tail on the floor a couple of times, then fell asleep. It was good communion.

The last words of Elijah McClain

This afternoon in Aurora, CO, the amended autopsy report on the death of Elijah McClain was released. The 23-year old Black man was injected with ketamine by paramedics following his restraint by police. McClain was stopped after purchasing a bottle of iced tea at a corner store.

Someone had called the authorities, reporting a Black man wearing a ski mask and waving his arms. According to his family, McClain wore a ski mask due to a blood condition that often left him feeling cold. Police put him in chokehold, applying pressure to his carotid artery and injected with the powerful drug against his will.

Seven minutes later, he went into cardiac arrest. Less than a week later, he was taken off life support and declared dead.

I ask forgiveness in advance of my Black friends and readers, and indeed any African American person reading this, who may experience pain at reading yet another example of this ghastly assault on the humanity of POC, particularly the young men.

This is not intended for you. It's intended for people like me, people who might otherwise have sighed and said, "What a tragedy!" then move on to the next news item.

Every time I leave the house, particularly at night, I'm aware of the privilege of my invisibility—in spite of my queerness, my age, or anything other component part of my most visible identity. I can buy iced tea, or Skittles, anytime I want, at any hour.

I could wear a ski mask if I want to, and if I was stopped by the police, I could clarify my position, perhaps even take the upper hand with a slight change of tone, or a different voice, or a veiled comment about lawyers, or that I have connections in the media. Truth be told, I might not even have to. All I'd have to do is take my ski mask off and let the police see my skin colour.

For now, I'm haunted by this transcript of Mr. McClain's final words, the vulnerability of him in face of the all-powerful authority figures who ultimately doomed him.

His words break my heart, and, ironically, even the fact that I have the luxury of having my heart broken by the terrible humanity and fragility of those words is, itself, a form of privilege. I can afford to be horrified and appalled instead of feeling what can only be a ghastly, 400-year old unhealed wound, barely bandaged by an awful sort of familiarity—a familiarity I can only imagine, but never claim to truly know.

No community should have to absorb tragedy after tragedy in the hopes that it effects change. And the job of the change shouldn't be on them— it should be on us.

September morning, over coffee

 

I woke up this morning inexplicably missing my parents. I don't dwell in the past, as a rule, but this journey upon which I've been forced to embark has many detours and side-roads that usually come at night, in dreams. For some reason, I've lately found myself immersed in memories of my mother, and how she loved Christmas, and how, when I was very young, before I started to become an actual "person" who could objectively be liked, or disliked, or argued with, or found "difficult" or "complicated," we had this perfect communion, she and I. All of the early lessons I learned about morality, or kindness, or always putting others first (a tricky lesson—very good for a child, a less useful baseline for an adult) came from her. She had cancer in 2001, but she died from a heart attack, effectively beating cancer at its own game. She was an intrepid woman, and she would have had some wisdom to share right about now. My occasionally very difficult relationship with my late father notwithstanding, there have been so many times in the past four months when I have imagined how great it would have been to be able to pick up the phone and call him, and discuss what I'm feeling, and what I'm going through. None of this is that sentimental business about wishing you'd told people how much you loved them, or "saying the things you needed to say." We did all that, for better or for worse. Articulating feelings, thoughts, impressions, or opinions was never lacking in the Rowe family. But among the great gifts of being sixty is the vast gulf of time between the pain of the past, and the reality of the present, a reality in which you know who you are, and you can (finally) see, and embrace, the fragility and humanity of people who, at one time, held so much power. And this morning, what I wouldn't give for the feel of my father's old Viyella shirt against my face, or to catch a whiff of my mother's Je Reviens perfume, a final touch of magic dabbed on before she left the house with my father to look impossibly glamorous for other people. Or for the scent of her Christmas cookies in the oven, the ones with the almond frosting, that always heralded a time of light in the darkness, of beauty, of colours, and of a brief moment in time when everything was, literally, perfect. Nothing is ever perfect, and yet, sometimes, it just was.

Chemo Round #7

Chemo session #7 (aka "the one officially past the halfway mark when it's done") got underway a half-hour ago, about three hours later than expected, but the nurses were slammed and I know that if anyone wishes thing were running on time, it's them.

The Hero M.D.™ did some food shopping for me at Daniel et Daniel this afternoon, because I mentioned to him that the (very excellent) food shop and Princess Margaret would probably be closed by the time I get out of here this evening.

My incredibly cool nurse Michelle is a horror fan, and we spent some time chatting about books and movies. I think I got her to give Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass another try—like many discerning viewers, she was initially a bit put off by everyone telling her she HAD to see it. That said, I think I was able to stir those embers a bit, and, like I said, she has great taste so it's a natural fit.

I'm in a ridiculously good mood this afternoon—in the time I've been here today, no fewer than four "end of chemo" gongs were rung, and everyone within hearing distance clapped, all over the hospital. A truly joyful sound, and one I look forward to proving in December when I'm finished with Round #12. I'm already planning my colours for that session. How to evoke Christmas, I wonder? (I don't really wonder—watch me.)

Speaking of colours, I ought to try wearing pink and purple together sometime. I've always wondered what it would look like if a strawberry-frosted birthday cake was hosed down grape Kool-Aid. #fuckcancer #hardtokill

Chemo Round #6

"Pink is the navy blue of India," as Diana Vreeland famously pronounced in 1956 to the legendary fashion photographer Norman Parkinson upon his return from Mahabalipuram, shooting for VOGUE. My cheerful chemo cap has attracted the best sort of attention from the staff and my fellow patients here at PMH this afternoon. This is chemo session #6. It may be the last one, or there may be one more, depending upon forthcoming test results. My conscientious team considerately scheduled a seventh session for just after the CT scan in a few weeks. If we're where we want to be then, we'll cancel it; if not, I have another cozy pod waiting for me. Everyone is in a remarkably good mood today, probably in anticipation of the Labour Day weekend. For me, it brackets the entire summer—a summer of self-care, introspection, gratitude, the love and care of friends, and, of course, the loss of approximately half my hair. I may not have gone anywhere on holiday this summer, but at least I've "been to me," to quote the famously insipid 1970s ballad made famous by Mary MacGregor (and Priscilla, of course.) For now, I'm snuggled up in room 4 of the Purple Ward in full sunlight, feeling groovy and listening to New Country as the machines pump life-saving chemicals into my body for the next hour and a half. If I squint, it feels like I'm in a good hotel under a warm blanket as the afternoon sun pours over me like gold, or at a spa. I did have a chuckle earlier when my day nurse, Ahmed, noted that I'd put on weight. "We have excellent dieticians here," he said delicately. "If you need some help."

Chemo Round #5

 

Chemo session #5. Listening to Sinéad O'Connor with my headphones. Feeling strong in this beautiful place full of such good, good people. Surrounded by love at home, and in life. In the home stretch. Onward and upward. Also, #fuckcancer

Chemo Round #4

 

Chemo round #4 was a bit slow getting started today, due to a backlog from the long weekend, apparently. It didn't matter, I got in, and here I am getting my treatment.

A dear friend asked me recently if it (the cancer) felt "more real" when I was a the hospital for tests and procedures, and dealing with doctor and nurses. I had to think for a moment, and then I told her, no, it doesn't seem "more real" here. It's "real" all the time, 24/7.

What being at Princess Margaret feels like is that I'm doing the work to get better: every jab, prod, inopportune question; every use of any word that would normally make me flinch, but which sound merely matter-of-fact coming from the medical professionals, just feels like climbing that hill in the service of reaching that blessed, dreamed-of summit.

I've been in business class airport lounges that have a higher stress level that the "chemo daycare" waiting room at the hospital, surrounded by people who are ostensibly fighting for their lives. I may be projecting, but 25 years of journalism has made me a pretty good observer, if I may say so myself, and what I've observed is...calm. Resigned calm, I'm sure, in some cases, but calm nonetheless.

We're all just getting on with it.

To the right of me this morning, a husband asked his wife what she wanted him to bring her from Tim Hortons. "Do you want a double-double?" he asked her, clearly something she'd had before and enjoyed. She made a moue with her mouth and said, "Heavens no, not this morning. Too sweet." Off he went to bring his love her bounty, to make the morning sweeter, even if the coffee shouldn't be.

To the left of me, a father and son, who reminded me of salt shakers made by the same company 30 years apart, discussed an upcoming fishing trip in broad, blue-collar Canadian accents—the kind of near-melodious yawing that is often imitated by television actors and comedians, but which they never entirely nail. The son tells his father about a relative who has stocked her private fish pond so densely that you see the fish before you see the water. Maybe we should fish there this fall when you're better, the son joked. "She's crazy as hell," the old man wryly says of his relative with the overstocked pond. "And that wouldn't be fishing as we know it."

There are others who orbit the waiting room. A young man pushes a wheelchair in which is seated a woman whom I at first take for his mother, but a closer look reveals a young woman, her smooth scalp a testament to the ravages of chemo, her body as delicate as a hummingbird swaddled in a lilac fleece hoodie and leggings.

If you merely look, you see a man pushing wheelchair; if you look with your heart as well as your eyes, you see love in every gesture—a gentleness in the way he pushes slowly not to jar her; and for her part, she leans up against the rails of the chair, every gesture calm, knowing he's there to protect her, and whatever the bogeyman of cancer is doing to her, he'll stand between her and everything else.

When we think cancer, we often just think pain and illness. When you're in it, and you're looking, you see so much more: a universal vulnerability, infinite tenderness abounding, kindness and a degree of resignation that never loses its hopefulness.

Unlike many of the people here, I have always preferred to travel to the hospital alone. My loved ones (not the least of which my husband) have been solicitous and caring beyond measure. I have had countless offers to travel to and from chemo sessions and appointments, but I've always demurred. I learned early in my life, and the hard way, that I prefer to face ordeals on my own terms. I like arriving and leaving in an Uber with my own thoughts and my own impressions in my mind until I have to reconnect with other people. It's the ultimate "alone time."

All of that said, I've lately come to realize that my "independence" around this stuff has been bought and paid for by the people I love, the ones who allow me to the luxury of feeling "alone," because I absolutely know I am not, because they're there.

I don't know what it would be like to go through this truly alone, and I don't want to, and I suspect that's something I share with the other units-of-two huddled together in the waiting room, all of us waiting for our pagers to go off because it's time to sit in the chair and be hooked up to the machines so we can keep climbing that hill.