::alio!::

R.S.F.

off the top:

Lemme get this straight: if Lang gets traded to Detroit, does that make Washington an official non-contender? Ever?

the score:

So anyone who expected a typical boring, low-scoring Buffalo/Ottawa game tonight was sorely disappointed. They were the only ones . . .

Buffalo scored first, which is annoying, but other than that, Patty was sharp throughout. On the whole game, he only faced fifteen shots. Not bad. Tells me the D is standing up for their goalie. Patty even played defence for a bit, coming wayyyyyy out of his net to play the puck. It made me nervous, but he made it, so all is good. Who the fuck is Mika Noronen, by the way? The score aside, he was pretty damned sharp tonight. Not sharp enough to catch Alfie, however, who scored from Schaefer and Fisher to tie up the first.

Nice offensive rushes from Hossa and Schaefer, and some blatant hooking on the part of Buffalo to both Hossa and Smolinski, which was never called. Damned REFS! They did, however, call Van Allen for hooking TWICE in the period. Interesting . . . Phillips had an awesome first period. I love him. He's so damned consistent.

I guess the Sens didn't want to look like they were running up the score, but they really couldn't help it. Many an occasion saw a Senator like Fisher wide open in front of the net, but always they opted to pass, rather than shoot. You know, if you have the opportunity, I say go for it. If the other team can't stop you, that's not your problem.

A lot of tackling of star players like Bondra and Hossa tonight, again, with no calls, but that didn't really put a damper on much. The second period scoring went as follows: first Redden scored from Spezza and Hossa, the Smolinski from Redden, then Chara from Smolinski and Alfredsson. It was like a goddamned cycle of scoring. Neat. Ottawa fans also saw the first appearance of the Rayzor in the second. He looked like he was having a great time, especially against his old team.

In the third, it was like Buffalo just stopped trying. Goals by Bonzai from Smoke and Zed, Hoss from the Flying Fish and Bonzai, and Neiler from the Spetz. Shit, I don't even think the Ottawa boys were trying at this point. But they couldn't just waste ten minutes of play. That would have made for a boring game. They had to do something, so they hung around the Buffalo net, just to make things tense. The goal by Neil was a complete accident, honest. He was just passing, and it happened to go in. Not his fault. What was unfortunate is that Payer had a nice open net and just failed to get his first goal. It would have been shorthanded on a breakaway, even . . . *sigh* Ray rounded out the period with a nice fight with Peters, which he won, hands down. He was grinning like an idiot the whole time. Boys are funny.

off the ice:

He may be cute, but he sure is DUMB. *sigh* Boys are stupid.

Except this one. Good boy.

in other news:

It gets me every time. Whenever I'm thinking about the future, I start to think about the past. And when I think of the past, I think of R.S. Ferguson, my grandfather.

He had a big nose that he'd broken more times than he could remember, and huge hornrimmed spectacles to perch on top of it. He had bushy eyebrows and silver hair. He couldn't tell the difference between right and left, but if you were speaking in nautical terms, it was all good. He was an architect and an artist, and he wrote the Canada Building Code for many years. He went to war, too, and was sunk not once, but twice, before he was able to come home. Wherever he was, he drew pictures, whether they were of squirrels, the family cottage, a warship under fire, or the Parliament Buildings in a state of renovation. Most people called him Stirling, and I always thought it had to do with the colour of his hair, not realizing that it was, in fact, his middle name. He never liked Robert, his given name. But I called him Granddad, and he was the greatest man who ever lived.

He started most of his historical anecdotes with, "when I was a little girl," which made me laugh and my brothers concerned that they could spontaneously undergo some form of sexual transformation. He had heart problems, but, no matter how big I got, or how ill he was feeling, when I saw him, he would always swing me high up into the air. It was just how we always greeted each other when we visited. I remember the last time he did it. He was standing on the cliff in front of my house, and I remember being lifted and looking at the ocean and thinking that maybe, just maybe, I was getting too big for him to keep doing this.

When I was very small and we were living in England, he and my grandmother came to visit. Granddad and my mother (his daughter) went shopping, and they passed a toy store. Granddad was captivated by this stuffed polar bear in the window, hanging from a parachute. He would not rest, according to my mother, until he had purchased it. I still have it. His name is Grampa. When I first got him, he was so big and I so small that I could ride him like a horse, holding on to his ears.

My mother told me once that I was his favourite grandchild. I don't know if that's true. There are only five of us to choose from. Whatever his feelings on the matter, though, he always made me feel like I was somebody special. It's like he knew how I felt about being the baby and the only girl in the family. I always got left out of the fun stuff that my brothers got to do. When Granddad took them places, he always took them together. But when we were together, it was just us two. He taught me how to sail a laser and how to row a dinghy, and even let me help him build the special sail he invented, which he never got around to patenting. I could never ask a stupid question, and every query was always met with the same amount of serious consideration. One day, in his workshop, I discovered a spilled puddle of some epoxy. It looked like it was still wet, but it wasn't. I pointed this out to Granddad and we were so intrigued, we set up a little experiment. We poured puddles of the epoxy on waxed paper and let them dry, and then spent much of the rest of the afternoon planting them places where people would think someone had spilled something.

Our across-the-street neighbour, Janet Lee, was pregnant with her daughter, Claire, when I was young. She had the worst morning sickness, and, although I don't remember doing this, I drew her a picture in the hopes that she would feel better. It is a depiction of her throwing up all over her shoes. On the other side of the portrait is a crayon-scrawled dedication: "I hop you hav a hapy day." Granddad liked it so much, he made a deal with Janet: my drawing in exchange for one of his. Granny still has the picture, to this day. It hangs in the bathroom of her condo.

On reflection, I think it was him who first got me thinking about other cultures and places and times. He was fascinated by sociology and anthropology, and he tried to bring the social sciences into the workplace when he was at NRC. One of his protegees from back in the day happens now to be the esteemed chair of my department, Dr. Charles Gordon. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that nifty link. I have inherited all the social science books he collected over the years. They make a pretty impressive library.

I didn't get to see him very much growing up, but I tried my hardest to make each visit, whether it was at Lavergne Bay in Arnprior, or Halifax, or Victoria, last as long as I could. I can't describe it exactly, but there was just something about him that attracted people too him. He was just interested in everything and everybody, and nothing was too mundane a topic for discussion. When I meet people today who knew him, they all get the same faraway look in their eyes when they talk about the stories he told, and the conversations they used to have.

His heart, gregarious though it was, wasn't cut out for what he wanted it to do, and he needed surgery. A double bypass. Unfortunately, the Ontario Health Care system being what it was (and still is), the list for surgery was too long, and so his application was turned down. A week later, he had a heart attack in the shower and died in the car on the way to the hospital. That was July of 1993. I was living in Victoria at the time. It was the only time I've ever seen my father cry.

The night he died, I had this dream. It was long and complicated, and I don't remember most of it, but I know he was in it, and we were having a long and complicated discussion about various aspects of life. We were walking around my hometown of Dartmouth, and we came to my old house on Tulip Street. We went inside, still talking, and started up the old stairs. The conversation at that point had shifted to the fact that he was going away, and that his visit with me would be cut short. I asked him when I would see him again, and he said he didn't know. But then he told me not to worry, because his spirit was going to go into the body of my polar bear. As he said this, he turned into a wisp of smoke and morphed into Grampa, my bear. Then my mother woke me up to tell me the news.

For the longest time afterward, I was terrified of Grampa. Then I got over it, and we were once again the best of friends. Being the toy of a child, and being a white stuffed bear, Grampa got very dingy after a while. When I was smaller, my mother would cut him open at the seams, take out the stuffing, and wash him. We didn't do this after Granddad died. So Grampa just got grayer and grayer.

About two years ago, I decided to do something about it. I carefully picked out the seams, repaired some damage here and there, and put Grampa in the wash with some bleach. When he came out, he was so white and beautiful that I cried, hanging over the washing machine. I picked the tangles out of his fur, and am now on a quest for a replacement eye that Andrew broke many, many years ago. Then he will be as beautiful as I remember him.

I have only ever dreamed of Granddad once since. It was a few years ago, and I was going through a period where nothing made any sense, I didn't know what to do with my life, and I was incredibly depressed. I cried myself to sleep, and dreamed that he was sitting on my bed, telling me that everything was going to be okay.

I don't know. I don't know if he's still around, or what. I visited his grave a number of years ago, and he definitely wasn't there, which is why I haven't been back. But it's a comforting thought, to think that he's looking out for me in some capacity. From all appearances, he wasn't perfect. Nobody is. I think my grandmother is only recently getting over being angry with him for various things. But I never saw that. He was my superhero, and, either I was too young to see the imperfections, or he never showed them in my presence -- either way, he was invincible in my eyes. He was the most important person in my life, and nobody can ever top him. Nobody.

I do worry, though. I wonder what expectations he had for me. I wonder if he saw me doing what I'm doing now. I know he probably would have been ecstatic about it. That's just the way he is. But I'm selfish, and I want to hear that affirmation from him in person. I never got to have those deep philosophical discussions with him. I never got to participate in the world in which he revelled, the one I hear about from other people. I never got to talk with him as an adult, because he never got to see me grow up. Charles wants to get together and swap stories sometime, but I don't think I could ever do that. Part of it is because I still can't think of Granddad without tearing up, but that's not the only reason. For the most part, it's because I'm jealous of all the experiences he's had with RSF that I missed out on. Shit, he got about twenty years of talks with him. I got less than eleven.

I want, more than anything else, to talk to him, to tell him my ideas, and for us to discuss things -- important things, more important than the chemical properties of puddles of goo. I want him to have a wider range of experience of my work than a scribble on looseleaf of a woman vomiting. He was the only one in my family who had even a smattering of understanding of what it is I do these days, and I missed my chance to talk to him about it. My mother says he would be proud of me, to see what I've accomplished, but it's not the same. I would give anything -- an arm, a kidney, my dying breath -- to have him in front of me right now. He always made me feel important, and I always knew that he was the only one who truly understood.

It's been eleven years, but it still feels like yesterday, and it still hurts more than I care to discuss. I don't think that will ever change. I miss you, Granddad. Tell me another story.

Posted by Ally at February 28, 2004 12:00 AM