46. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PANDEMIC - ALMOST

  

Two weeks since my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine: the pandemic is not over but I feel safer. Like many locals and tourists wandering about in the streets of Victoria, I’ve looked back at what was prohibited during the more stringent times and am now looking forward.

   What’s next? What can we do now that restrictions are eased? What has been lost? What cannot be recovered?

    Last July – a year ago – I had planned to bring my nine-year old granddaughter to Niagara Falls. We’d fly from Victoria to Toronto, bus or rent a car, and drive around Niagara for a few days. Yes, the usual tourist attractions and activities (see the Falls, ride the Hornblower cruise, walk Clifton Hill, hike the Glen, climb Brock’s Monument, cruise the parkway – perhaps to Niagara-on-the-Lake for ice cream) formed the bulk of the itinerary and there were the lesser attractions – remnants from my past.

    This is where Chinatown use to be.

    This gingko tree has been here since I was a child.

    This is the site of where I grew up on Park Street.

Even though there is no building there, my granddaughter would recognize that this was not the kind of residential neighbourhood that she is so familiar with.

We’d go out to what use to be called Stamford – past the building that once housed my parents’ restaurant. She’d know that this was not one of those popular, shiny BC chain restaurants that she likes going to.

    Running a restaurant was not easy work. My parents did not earn very much for all their long hours.

We’d finish off my memories tour with a visit to Fairview Cemetery. We’d tidy around the gravestones of my family, plant a few flowers and water them.

    I’d explain to my granddaughter the ritual that my mother would perform when we’d visit: plucking errant blades of grass and weeds, planting a small pot of reddish mums, placing a plate of oranges at the foot of the headstone, sticking three joss sticks into the ground, lighting them, and bowing three times.

Both my brother and I had to do a good job of bowing or my mother would scold us – being adults did not deter her.

    As my son grew older, Mother would direct me (in Chinese) to tell him (in English) to bow more deeply when we attended during our annual summer visits to Niagara. She’d snap her words at me and smile at him.

We’d remain at the grave site until the joss sticks had burned out; however, as Mother aged, standing there in the summer heat became harder. She’d have us extinguish the joss sticks before they had finished and gather up the offerings. After all, the oranges were symbolic. In her later years, she trusted us to go on our own.

    My stories would have made my granddaughter smile – a child’s wonderment and curiosity.

Because of the pandemic, there was no trip to Niagara Falls last July. There had been no Ching Ming Festival in the month previous, or this year for that matter. No volunteers were organized to plant geraniums at the Chinese graves including those of my parents and brother.

Now, I await word from gardeners if they are for hire to do this filial act for me. Instead of a donation to the Ching Ming Festival each year, will I engage a gardener annually?

Will Ching Ming resume in 2022? Who will remember, and care, enough to bring it forward?