The Thousand Islands

There are pictures to prove it, yet.  Photographs in black and white, and already starting to fade.  Little fragments of a summer holiday of no special significance, it would seem.  The pictures in themselves and in their large number ought to be proof of something, however.  Not exactly that they could  confirm what was said or felt at the time, but enough (knock on wood) maybe to keep this story going.  Photos of what?  See, that’s the way it always is with such people like you when I start to get ready to talk.  Maybe it’s like clearing your throat or when you make little signal noises to a person mostly deaf to let them know you are about to talk so they should focus on your face and stop with other things.  Maybe not.

            We were on a summer holiday north.  By north I mean we drove—or my father and mother took turns doing so—all the way to the top of New York State and crossed the border into Canada at Niagara Falls.  Come to think of it, it’s very important this memory, although it’s not what this story is about.  The story is about the trip, the holiday.  By the way, and mitten der innen it’s also about some ideas that could not be photographed.  Now, please don’t get nervous.  Calm yourself.  It will all work out.  Oy, you just have to be patient and let me tell my stories in my own way, please.

            First things first, right?  OK.  When you cross from the United States into Canada there is a big difference.  Anyway, back then.  On one side, you have Niagara Falls, New York, a dirty, grubby industrial town, not very nice.  On the other side, you have Niagara Falls, Ontario, a clean, neat tourist town, very nice.  That was in 1952 and maybe not so now.  Who cares?  The difference made an impression and I knew from that day on, though it was not necessarily thought about or ever discussed, that when I was old enough and could I would move to Canada.  Not politics, not economics, nothing, except it was clears you go from not so nice to very nice.  Also the pennies were different and they had a flag then that was bright red with a union jack in the corner.  So that’s clear.

            The other thing, what this story is about, is this: someone said that I took a picture of every one of the Thousand Islands.  What a thing to say!  The reality is that there are a lot more than a thousand islands, if you count all sorts of little rocky, but only a few hundred are large enough for there to be houses.  Some are Canadian and some are American, depending on which side of the imaginary line drawn through the St Lawrence River.  I took a lot of pictures but not a thousand, not even a hundred, so as the opening sentence lets you know, I have fourteen in a box, and maybe at most their were ten more, though they didn’t come out well enough to be developed.  All these would have been bits and pieces of my mind at the time.  A few survive.  You care?

            Obviously, whoever said I took a thousand was exaggerating.  But why?

            In 1952 I was twelve years old, and figures of speech, you should know, were not exactly my forte.  Jokes I could tell, though like my mother, where the punch line went and what kind of a lead in rhythm you need was difficult to get right.  Like my father, who confused jokes with what he called amusing anecdotes, I had a tendency to digressions of a rather pedantic sort, at least in a very childish mode.  So who knows, maybe the person that said I took a thousand pictures was (excuse me) me.  If it was my mother, it was because she was bored with the whole trip, and wished the boat ride would be over, so we could go to the motel, have a shower, and then get some dinner.  If it was my father, maybe it was because he hated to see me wasting film, or he wanted to snap a few proper photos himself, “proper” meaning well cantered and restricted to important places and objects.  If it was my little sister, who was also there—if you could see the pictures you would see her there with me in a few—she was just being mean and jealous and wanted to take pictures herself, and she wanted to have souvenirs of what was interesting to her, like the fish in the river and the lifebelts on the boat.  If it was a stranger we met, and my mother was also talking with people she didn’t know, and telling them embarrassing things about me, then he was laughing at my stupidity.

So maybe the whole memory covers up two things.  The first is that I made a decision which changed my whole life because about twelve years later I did move to Canada.  The second thing is the thousand islands represent all the strangers who came into our life, all the fragments of experience, and all the little dreams that my mother had which went unrealized—and yet were somehow passed on to me, not to fulfil, of course, to remain as points of frustration and occasionally even as rage against the world.  So please don’t get me started on that.