Quiet desparation

When my grandmother dies, I won't come back here. It's odd to think that I won't come back here at all.

Prince Albert is filled with a quiet desparation. When I tell my mother that, she grew up here, she doesn't see it. She sees how much it's changed.

But I see it in the faces of the people who all seem trying to be happy. It's strange though how on the flip side, the people here are also very, very REAL.

There's a sense that there is a lot going on just under the surface. But it feels like a swamp: dark and boggy.

I have two reoccuring dreams. In one of them I find myself near a "dead lake" a lake with no incoming or outgoing water. But despite that, perhaps it is spring fed, the lake is clear. I can see down and there are trees, big trees under the water. There are snags, birch snags in the water but standing out of it. Like dead little Christmas trees. The sky is blue and it's very bright around. And I'm all alone.

It feels like somewhere I've been before and I wonder, looking at the birch trees outside my grandma's window, if it isn't something I've seen around here.

My grandma's room is in the wing of a nursing home that looks like every other wing. If you were trying to navigate by looks alone -- you'd never find your way back. Her room faces a little courtyard that has one skinny white birch tree. It's a bit unfair to people with dementia to make every common area look the same.

A few months after she moved into the nursing home, on a blustery fall day, a plastic bag got stuck in that tree.

It's too high to get out without a ladder. It drives me crazy. Who would have thought when they abandoned that bag, that for three years I'd stare at it and hate its very existence?

But last year some birds built a nest in the crook of that tree, right under the plastic bag. So my grandma stares at the nest all day and wonders if the birds will come back.

The bag, in her estimation, is good because when it rattles it tells the birds when someone is coming.

Other fun Prince Albert facts:

They don't call it Prince Albert, people in Saskatchewan call it PA.

One of the main streets is called Marquis Drive. Now being any sort of French speaker, you might be tempted to call it "Mar-key" like the old pervert of Sade. But none of that jiggery-pokery here -- the proper way to pronounce it is "Mark-kwis" -- with the double k.

They use so much sand and salt that all the lines have worn off the roads. It's fine for locals who can tell the four-lane roads from the two-lane roads but for me it's a bit intimidating to turn left. Whose lane am I in anyway.

It is the home of John Diefenbaker -- Dief the Chief. And I have his curtains in my closet at home in Vancouver. They are green and gold.