We’ll Meet Again: A pandemic story in three acts

Act I - The Before Times

March 16th, 2020 was the last day of the Before Times for me. It was the last day I thought I was going to have an ordinary day working in NOAA’s offices before going home to my beloved Greenwood neighborhood. We got the word late in the day to pack up and take our laptops home and prepare to work remotely for at least two weeks. I hated this idea. I didn’t want to lose the enjoyment of working across from my best friend all day, or going out to lunch, or having casual hallway conversations. I didn’t like the idea of being alone all the time.

I’ll complain and moan for a while when work compels me to do something I don’t want to, but ultimately I know which side of the bread the butter is on, so I soldier up and do what needs to be done. I, my bestie, and his housemate at the time packed up our laptops at the usual time and made our standard goodbye stroll to the parking lot. They walked slow to smoke cigarettes before starting their brutal hour + commute northward. I just enjoyed the chat.

They finished their smokes and it was time to part. Some place of deep knowing inside me opened up and I would have said then that I feared, but really I knew that it was going to be much longer than two weeks before I saw them again.

I started singing. It didn’t feel voluntary.

We’ll meet again. Don’t know where; don’t know when

but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.

Keep smiling through just like you always do

‘til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

Memories of our mom flooded me. She was a WWII veteran born and raised in England. She often told us that one of the things that got her through the war was Very Lynn’s recording of We’ll Meet Again written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles. Mom and I would sing it together when I was a teenager while we danced in the living room. She showed me then the power that music has to reach us when nothing else can.

My best friend and his housemate stared at me as I came back from wherever I had gone and started crying.

“Y’ OK?”

“Yeah. Mom used to sing that. It’s from the War.”

I drove home and as I passed through the little business district I think of as ‘downtown Greenwood’ past the restaurants and bars where I spend some of the happiest hours. As I did, the song came out of me again and I felt certain that there would be a shutdown and these places would be dark and silent for an unknown amount of time. It felt like the end of the world.

You can listen to a wonderful rendition of this song by a choral group from England called the D-Day Darlings here:

The second thing that Mom said got her through the war was knowing that then Princess Elizabeth was serving in the military just like she was.

On April 5th, 2020, Queen Elizabeth II made an unprecedented speech about the pandemic. The whole video is worth watching, especially if you are an American who doesn’t understand the value that Her Majesty brings to her people. If you are short on time, though, you can jump ahead to minute four. She makes reference to We’ll Meet Again in encouraging everyone listening to remember that better days are ahead and that we will overcome this problem.

It felt like she was speaking directly to me; or that someone was.

Act II - Sunset Harping and Fae Wiedenhoeft

Inspired by viral videos of musicians in Rome under severe lockdown orders singing and playing instruments from their balconies (sometimes collaboratively with other balconies!) I decided that one small thing I could do was play harp from my own balcony. No one would hear, of course, because it overlooks noisy Greenwood Avenue. My favourite time of day to be here at my condo is sunset. I have a pretty good view of the Olympic mountains to the west and there are times when the sky is breathtaking. I decided that would be the time of day I would play music. It would give me an anchor, and by following the sunset later and later in the day I would keep myself oriented toward the world beyond my four walls.

I had the idea of doing a Facebook live broadcast of these sunset shows, so on March 21st, 2020 the first episode of Sunset Harping happened. I continued to produce half-hour episodes about four times a week and gathered a surprisingly large and loyal following. The show did what I intended. It gave me a relief from feeling alone and it gave all of us an anchor in each day to stop, breathe, and assess.

By early July, there were some temporary reductions in Covid restrictions, which allowed me to invite guests to be on the show with me. One of them was my friend Fae Weidenhoeft. She is a fabulous singer songwriter who I met when she started taking Gaelic classes in the Zero to Gaelic program and singing in the choir. Fae is a blazing talent and a fabulous human and I was delighted to have her with me on the balcony. Over dinner we discussed what we would do on the show and she brought up We’ll Meet Again. It was one of the songs she wanted to perform on the show and she knew it was special to me, but not why, so I told her.

We started the show off with that number with her on ukulele and singing lead. I had worked out a harmony for some parts, but the song has far too many sudden changes of sharps and flats for a lever harp, so I didn’t play. It was an absolutely magical moment. You can see it here:

Act III - A new instrument and a neglected set of skills

My music career has been thoroughly and happily devoted to the music of the Gaelic-speaking people of Scotland, Ireland, and Nova Scotia. My original education, however, was in classical music at Cornish College of the Arts. It took a while before I really found my feet and started to excel, but I managed it. By the time I graduated, I put together a program for my senior recital that included a very respectable collection of mainstream, challenging pedal harp pieces.

Traditional music by and large, doesn’t call for huge range and full chromatic capability of a classical harp, but is better served by the smaller, portable, more resonant, and less expensive lever harp. I have two artist quality lever harps. One was made for me in Scotland, and the other right here in Seattle. They are wonderful, fulfilling instruments that are perfectly suited for what I have done with them. No complaints there.

Although I had completed my degree in classical music, I never owned my own classical harp. I rented a small one from my teacher and regretfully returned it shortly after finishing my degree. I was soon off and running into the world of traditional music, and my investments belonged in instruments that would serve me there.

In 2011, the World Harp Congress was held in Vancouver BC, and my friend Alys Howe with whom I preformed in a harp duo, got us booked to do a concert of music from Scotland and Cape Breton. It was great fun. While I was there, I also spent a bit of time in the vendors hall looking at all the instruments including the classical harps. A spark of interest grew in me.

It took a decade for that spark to grow into action, but in February of 2021, when I was due to receive my inheritance from my parents, I placed an order for a new Lyon and Healy pedal harp. It arrived near the end of June and it was time for me to dust off a stack of music I hadn’t played in 30 years or more. Although my hands could play all the right strings, on a classical harp you have to move seven pedals at the base of the instrument, each of which has three positions, to get all the sharps and flats. That skill was a bit rusty. Like really rusty.

I had the idea to use We’ll Meet Again as a kind of study piece. I pulled out the sheet music that Fae had given me a copy of and spent an evening working out what all the pedal changes would be to get all the right sharps and flats at the right times. It turns out there were quite a lot, so it has been a great exercise.

It has also given me a way to take ownership of the importance of the song in my life. Mom taught me how to find hope in dark times through her love of that song. Queen Elizabeth told me that things would get better again, and I believed her because she touched the place that song holds in my heart. Fae wanted to know why that song mattered to me, because I mattered to her.

Now I can play We’ll Meet Again whenever I need to remember those things.

Why It Took So Long

The love of my life is Doug Barr. He was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, and I in the Seattle area. We met on 7 April 2001 at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver BC, where a very famous Scottish Gaelic singer, Cathy-Ann MacPhee, was performing. We had our first date in Seattle the next weekend and on it went.

October 2001, Whistler. See the bunny ears?

One thing that you have to know about Doug is that the literal meanings of words are very important to him. We have never been ‘boyfriends’ because we are definitely not boys anymore. I adopted the alternative title for myself of Potential Pre-Husband.

When I met Doug, he was working for the Royal Bank of Canada. He held several positions there, and the last was the worst. It involved early morning shifts on the weekends, which were the only times we had together. One particular Sunday morning - and I mean morning - I helped with us getting up an dressed and drove him to work. We both smoked at the time, (we’ve quit - SHUSH!) and so were having a cigarette in the parking lot before he went inside.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said softly “Thank you for getting me here this morning.”

I said “That’s what Potential Pre-Husbands are for!”

“That’s a really long title.” he said.

“You’re the one who doesn’t like ‘boyfriend’.” I quipped.

“I think of you as my fiancé.” he said.

“I WILL!” I answered.

And we were theoretically engaged. We didn’t speak of it again for years. After all, legal marriage wasn’t available to us and neither of us have any interest in empty gestures.

Then, on July 20th, 2005, Canada legalised same-sex marriage nation-wide. Our close friends Geoff and Joe who are American decided to have a wedding ceremony in Vancouver, though it wouldn’t have any force back in the States. They arranged a lovely ceremony on the upper deck of a harbour cruise boat, and afterward, we headed out into English Bay to enjoy the annual fireworks competition overhead and pretend it was for our friends.

Enjoying the views and each other we strolled the decks. The muzak was light jazz, which neither of us like and Doug turned to me and said “Tell me at our reception we’re not going to have...” I didn’t let him finish “No. No light jazz.” And that was the second time we talked about our wedding.

In the intervening ten years before the United States got around to recognizing our fundamental right to marry, many things happened. Doug decided to give post-secondary education a try for the first time. As someone with ADHD which remained undiagnosed until his mid-30s, it had never seemed a realistic goal before. I released my first solo CD which is a mountain of hard work.

Then, in 2013, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. Doug got me through the initial shock, lifestyle changes, and self-education. When things were calm again, on a certain Sunday before I drove home to Seattle, we had dinner out and I broached the subject.

“Honey, I’m OK, we’re OK, and we’ve got this now. But, if true disaster befell me, you wouldn’t be able to take me in because of that border. In the eyes of the law, we’re just friends.” I said.

“We should start fighting about the guest list.” he answered and went back to enjoying his hot pot. It was getting cold, and the man is nothing if not practical.

I was one of the founding Board members of Slighe nan Gaidheal, Washington’s Scottish Gaelic Language and Cultural Society and had served continuously since its beginning in 1997. Our terms were three years long, and so when I was up for reelection in 2012, I had announced that it would be the last term I sought. I had all these things I wanted to do in my life that weren’t making any progress and part of the reason was the 10+ hours of volunteer work for the society every week.

Right on cue, I retired from the Board of Slighe nan Gaidheal and marriage became legal for us in the United States in 2015. I supposed that’s really where the journey to our handfasting, and on to our wedding began.

Forming a cross-border family is trickier than you might imagine. Deciding where each part of the process will happen is fraught with politics. It’s even more complicated when the marrying parties are of different religions, with one of them having been raised by evangelical atheists.

Rev. Judith Laxer ties the knot

But we managed it in the end. We were handfasted (formal betrothal in my religion) in Seattle on 2 October 2019, and cast the spell together which said “let all things be put in motion so we are ready to marry on 3 October 2020.”

Of course, we naively thought it would happen as planned at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver BC where we first met. But no.

The “all things put in motion” apparently included providing extensive material assistance to a parent transitioning into care, an extremely dramatic real estate deal to close my mother’s estate after 20 damn years, a global pandemic, a closed border, and re-planning the wedding four times as rules changed.

I guess the moral of this story is that people in love can endure incredible trials to finally make to their Happily Ever After day. (we know, it won’t all be happy - SHUSH!) Believe in Love, and in each other, and anything is possible.

June 1, 2020 Peace Arch Park

Miso Soup

I made myself some miso soup today for Lockdown Lunch, and realised that I hadn’t done so for an awfully long time. It reminded me how much better it is when you make it at home and can be more generous with the ingredients than is usually found out in restaurants. It’s a very simple dish, which is one of the things that delights me about it both from an aesthetic and dining perspective.

Boil the dashino-moto

Miso Soup

1 packet dashi powder

4-5 cups water

1 scallion

2 tablespoons awase (mixed red and white) miso paste

1/2 cup firm tofu

6-8 dried seaweed pieces

Mix up your miso paste with hot broth

Begin by combining the water and dashi powder. I prefer Shimaya brand, but alternatively it is very easy to make your own. I should write about that. There are vegetarian options for stock, of course, or you can just use plain water and add a couple pinches of monosodium glutamate (which is completely safe - the anti-MSG thing is just anti-Asian racist propaganda)

Bring your soup base to a boil while you slice your scallion. When the base is boiling, remove it from heat and drop the scallions in to blanche. Ladle some of your hot broth into a small bowl with your miso paste and mix. Add the miso paste to the pan.

For the seaweed pieces, I like to use dehydrated wakame which you can get from Amazon or your local Japanese market.

Lastly, the firm tofu. Cut it up into 1/2 to 1/4 inch cubes are drop in. Let the ingredients get to know each other for a few minutes, then serve.

I like to add some soy sauce to my soup bowl, but that’s pure taste.

Add the scallions

Add the rest of the ingredients

My favourite dashi

Tasty snacks also

Red Spread

 

This was a very lucky strike for me. So, here I am following the guidelines to remain at home during the coronavirus outbreak, which leaves me way too much time to get goofy ideas and give them a try.

I had a couple of tomatoes on the vine that were about to die of old age, and somehow in the last few months and especially in the last few days I have gotten the never-waste-food thing on steroids. I thought I might puree them, but then they would just sit in my fridge and go bad as tomato goo because I only use that in one recipe.

Then I had my brainwave. I added some stuff to the puree and cooked it down to a paste. I just used it as the “T” in my BLT and it is spectacular! Here’s how to do it:

Red Spread

2 medium ripe (very) vine-ripened tomatoes
1 red chili pepper
1 teaspoon garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Put tomatoes, chili pepper, garlic, salt, and olive oil into a food processor and puree. If you want it a little less spicy (he gasped, grasping his pearls) you can de-seed the pepper.

Put the puree into a small pan and cook over medium low heat until all visible liquid has evaporated. Remove from heat and allow to cool for five minutes or so. Add the lemon juice.

Spread it on something and praise my name!

Yes, that’s a White Claw with lunch. Pedestrian judgements have never concerned me.