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The Mare Tails
By: Donna P.E. Gingras
How handsome he once must have been. I look across the restaurant table at his mature face. His hair is still thick and wavy but a little thinner then it once was. The grey has streaks of ash blond through it. His jaw is still square and strong but his skin has weathered with age. He brings out a magazine and says “This is what I used to look like.” I was amused, it was an Armani model.
Red spider veins cover his high cheekbones from too much liquid joy in his younger days. The dentures are hardly visible at all. His eyes are chameleon like, twinkling blue, green one minute, then full of emotion the next, red watering and rheumy with age. His thick glasses are resting on the table because the nose piece is broken. Of course, he couldn’t see with them off to fix them! This is a man that could do anything he could put his mind to. How grateful I am to be able to study his face knowing he can’t see me scrutinizing him. He sits resting back in his chair with eyes turned upward, deep in thought. He is wearing a blue plaid shirt and brown suspenders. He told me that wearing his belt irritated the numerous scars.
He described being overseas as a Canadian solider in WW2, part of the Toronto Scottish Regiment The Queen Mother’s Own. His expression changed, his eyes looked younger and his skin smoother. The experience had such an effect on his life. He spoke of his mother and slowly, the strong square chin quivered and his eyes were suddenly red and swollen with tears, yet trying to hold them back of course, always holding them back. Then came the look of distaste and anger talking of his father who he disliked intensely, remembering how nasty he could such as the time he left him in a car in the wintertime when he was a young boy, while for hours on end his father drowned his sorrows in a bar.
His crutch rested in the corner like Tiny Tim’s. He had one fused and shorter leg due to botched operations. The leg braced to his hip damaged him physically as well as hurting his pride. The runner he once was as boy is just a memory. “I use to love being a runner,” he exclaimed. Proud of his school accomplishments in track and field. “I was the best.”
Emotions and confusion with being elderly always seemed to overtake him. “I don’t want to leave this world yet. There is so much to see in it. I only feel about 20 inside.”
He had just driven two hours to visit me from up north, just as he has done for the past years, once a week, good weather permitting. He always amazes me. This time though, he is shaky, dizzy and generally unwell. “Just getting over the flu,” he said.
He talks of having to help bury his friend and to explain to his friend’s widow the significance of the hidden war medals that she had found after his death. His quivering chin returned as he told me what he told her. “They were metals of valour. Two of them. One for valour and one in solid gold making him the equivalent of a French knight.” He also spoke briefly of his own medals but very humbly. He tells me that he is a direct descendant of King Duncan of Scotland, Malcolm of Canmore, and the knight, Sir Richard DeTuiti as well as Saint Margaret herself. He is proud of his name Robert, a strong name.
He talks of the Canadians at D-Day and the slaughter. He sits up higher and straightens his shoulders and remembers the veterans who return to Holland each year and the time he saw them acknowledged by Queen Elizabeth the Second. Robert was amazed at how Prince Philip maintained his salute for an entire 20 minutes. The old soldiers were marching past like dry brittle tree branches on their crutches and in wheelchairs. His face changes as clouds do, from sorrow to strength. “I want to go back to Holland too,” he says like a young boy might have. He realizes that being as severely disabled as he is, he could never allow himself to be seen as a veteran in a wheelchair.
Robert is daydreaming but is it really a dream? He is always full of sentiment and surprises these days. What a proud, strong, brave man he is, especially with a lifetime of illnesses. A lung partially removed due to cancer, a colostomy from a burst colon and then the reversal which resulted in not being able to take food and water for sixty days. He suffered with Emphysema and Asthma.
Restaurant food must be the elixir that he needs because he continues to visit for Chinese buffet. In the restaurant you can hear a pin drop. The other patrons are listening. So much has happened to just one man yet he’s had the courage to continue loving to live.
Suddenly, out of the blue and without warning, he says, “I would like the Canadian flag to cover my coffin and my Scottish bonnet tucked in beside me.” And “Please don’t forget my sword, I want that on top too.” He is so patriotic, a true Canadian through and through. My throat constricts and I grit my teeth to fight back the tears. He requests “Flowers of the Forest” to be played on the bagpipes by his nephew who is in a pipe band. He tells me that this song is only played at the funeral of a warrior or soldier. As he is saying this, his eyes are wet and red darting back and forth, nervously trying to do the right thing, making plans that we have only practiced in our thoughts but have never had to voice them out loud. He puts his broken glasses back on and I look him in the eyes, feeling more emotion then I can bare, then I look out the window in front of me so I can compose myself. I answer, “Yes dad, whatever you would like.”
Walking outside he looks up at the clouds and states with words of wisdom, “Look, see, there are the mare tails. That means there will be rain in 24 – 48 hours, guaranteed!” This is what he tells me every time he sees them. I never doubt that the rain is coming because he has a lifetime of experience. Like a cloud himself he’s always drifting from old to young, changing from sorrow to joy and vice versa. He always says, “If you think you’re sentimental now, it will only get worse as you get older.” He didn’t like to display his feelings yet they would still tip-toe in when he least expected it. Then confusion covered his face, wheels turning as to what to make of everything. There are two words to describe these conditions…old age.
After the visit and he is on the long trek home I sit in front of my fireplace. There is a strange presence in the air; it arouses me to write what I have just witnessed. There was no option, I must write.
Across from me sits a boy of fourteen. He has a thick head of dark ash blond hair, blue green eyes and a very handsome face indeed. It is his grandfather’s face. I study it closely and realize that he is his grandfather’s image and has his personality. He is my son.
He had learned about the mucky trenches in WW1 at school today, and he is wondering if there will be a WW3 and what it would be all about. I pray he never has to find out.
Looking at the younger version of my father, I see one different trait and that is that the face is young and full of joy and wonder, not sorrow and sentiment as yet. I feel a pain in my heart for what he has to go through in his life. One day he too will be able to look up at the clouds with his grown children and tell them the story of the Mare Tails.
Donna P. E. Gingras has been married for 31 years. She has two sons and a daughter and has been recently blessed with a baby granddaughter. Donna has her diploma in dental nursing, but her passion lies within the arts, which include: sculpting, fine antique restoration, writing, paintings, playing her piano and especially playing her violin. For 30 years Donna and her husband Tony have lived in Newmarket,Ontario.