Regardless. Giant is my new favorite novel. Giant is a love story. Giant is old-fashioned and staggeringly beautiful in scope. I love it because of the strong and fragile female protagonist and the way she's right even when she's wrong, the same way her male counterpart is as wrong as he is right. But when you come down to the bare bones of the story, it's really a book about place (in this case the great and of Texas) and about how the way Jordan Benedict loves Texas is entirely different from the way his Eastern wife Leslie loves Texas, and incredibly different from the way you or I would love it, if we would love it at all.
As reading is my favorite thing in the world to do, and place my favorite theme to read about (very Canadian Lit of me I know), Giant is entirely suited to my tastes. Oh, how doth Place fascinate me! (If only I could find a more romantic, less generic word.) Now, Natalie and I didn't read a lot on our trip, through Natalie brought along a hastily chosen yet very appropriate classic (No Great Mischief, and I hear you, oh I hear you sigh OF COURSE Rachel can't write a single blog post without mentioning That Book even though she just said Giant was her new favorite) and along the way I picked up Harris: In History and In Legend for my father but really for me. We never gave more than a sham performance at skimming through the respective pages - we were too deep into our very own very real very personal experience of place. More than stimulating enough. Still, there were pleasant moments snatched with words, with lists of words, with pages and pages of words, if they did not have quite the fulfilling, thrilling quality of reading a novel from start to finish.
In London, Natalie and I stumbled into a brand new hamburger joint off Covent Garden, dying for a plate of take-outy greasy goodness, blessed familiarity in a land of pubs offering veal and dumplings and other delights. "Good grief, give me grease!" I cried. "All I want is a good old hot dog." We scanned the menu, lots of words but none spelled h-o-t-d-o-g. So I inquired breathlessly of the young waiter, confident in the fact that in Canada, every restaurant serves that great food group on the children's menu. The waiter crinkled his forehead. "What is a hot dog?" The three of us stood in a suddenly bemused triangle on the step. What is a hot dog? (And really, who wants to know?) I could not bring myself to say wiener. Natalie tried to hold back a squeal of laughter. We re-read the menu and ended up with a steaming plate of french fries, english chips that were too thin, too soggy, and of a poor complexion, while black and white photos of British musicians presided above us in neat rows on the lime green wall. Bono and Lily Allen. This is one of them new-fangled hamburger joints. Dear children, Bono and Lily remarked incredulously. You're in London. Why are you asking for a common American Hot Dog? 'Excuse us,' we said politely. 'But we're Canadian.'
In Arisaig. A sticky leather sofa, with an odd-nosed dog at my feet, snoozing by the fire, a fire on the warmest of days, a fire with the odd-nosed dog besides, snoring on a warm maroon patterned carpet. A fat old navy-bound book in my hands. But my gaze isn't on the dusty inky creamy coloured pages, but on the darkly fading sun through the glass patio doors, and the silhouettes of the couple in front of those doors, scrounging through papers with glasses on top of their grey heads and sure, fumbling hands, edged in light. Where did you say you were born? I think Natalie is from this MacDonald family, Allan... Natalie, who is it in this picture? Oh, never mind me, do you girls want tea? 'Yes, please.'
Elizabeth lights up her eighth cigarette since we've arrived scarcely an hour ago, since Allan met us trundling our suitcases down the road, introduced us to Flora, the odd-nosed dog, showed us our twin-bedded bedroom and brought us down to the parlour to talk history and family and place and genealogy. She put out her first quickly in politeness, but politeness gives way to excitement. Smoke wavers through the dusty sunlit firelit air. My fingers cover the pages of A History of Inverness County, Nova Scotia, half reading, half listening to Natalie telepathing thoughts of I don't know anything about this help my dad is the one who knows this family stuff across the room to me, three books filled with sticky notes on her lap, eyes wide at the information Allen and Elizabeth MacDonald present her with unceasingly. They are giving with both hands.
With both hands, these humble retired bed and breakfast folk, with giant libraries both in their home and in their mind's eye, and with huge knowledge about Arisaig and its families. They accept Natalie as easily as if she were their own granddaughter and as if this was her own place. Oh, Allan and Elizabeth known better than we do that Arisaig is Natalie's own place, and accept just as easily that she will come back again and again, because they have seen this kind of thing before. Others have been led almost supernaturally to their door (as, I believe, we were) on a whim to seek knowledge of their ancestry (hoping for exciting skeletons under the rug?), and have been drawn back again, again, and again. Maybe you do have the self-control to eat only one potato chip in Scotland (especially if the flavour is Prawn Cocktail, or Builder's Breakfast, or Pickled Onion), but you cannot visit your ancestral place - oh, where is that more romantic, less generic word! - in Scotland just once. Unless you have not one sentimental bone in your body, and I think you do.
Elizabeth sits on the floor with her knees tucked beneath her, cigarette waving around in her right hand, wise as an owl. She pierces me with a look over the top of her round glasses. She's strong and fragile, a true Highland Scot who, among other things, believes in second sight, the Loch Ness monster, and race memories. At that moment, I do too. She is right in her wrongness; I am wrong in my rightness.
In my own place, on Harris, in Tarbert, in the Hotel Hebrides, lounging with my own legs tucked beneath me, I look up from the pages of Harris: In History and In Legend, and dream a little bit. If I crank the window as far open as it would go, then manoeuvre my upper body completely out of said window, I can see the beautiful and deserted harbour. Saturday night through Tuesday morning, we never saw a soul on or near the boats, neither for fishing nor for recreation. Now, however, my weary, too-traveled mind, confused on dates and times and things, can swirl through centuries of Harris history, and imagine any number of invaders creeping into the harbour, and residents of Harris, stubborn Morrisons and strong MacLeods, appearing among the sheep on the moonscape mountains, grim and silent. This is our place, our own place. It's gigantic, their insane belonging.
I come back to 2009. Natalie and I dress for dinner after a warm bus ride from Northton, and quietly go downstairs to the pub. We order the most delectable Angus beef burgers I've ever had, for the second night in a row. I have been putting forward my very best self, the most ladylike self, dressing for dinner and thinking of how well-traveled I am, when I suddenly realize I am very tired and would just like to be Canadian, please. And though being Canadian still means being very polite and ladylike, it also means I can put my elbows on the table and hold that burger up to my anxious mouth and close my eyes to better taste the delicious Cajun flavour. No matter how worldly I act, no matter how softly I lower my voice to hide my accent, any dirty working man in the room could pinpoint the Canadian in a flash. I will always be the girl old British men come up to saying, "I noticed you in the pub last night," to my dismay. Because I do not belong there the way they do, I am unusual to the people and to the place, and though I am accepted as a friend and a nice girl by the Allans and Elizabeths and Pauls and Marlenes, I was not born in Scotland, and will only ever vacation there. I, am, Canadian, in all senses of the phrase.
Natalie and I walk out of the hotel toward the harbour on our evening stroll, and she walks ahead, as always a little faster, with a cautious eye on Rachel coming up slowly behind. She is edged in light, in the darkly fading sun light. I wrap my sweater a little closer around myself and know myself to be, besides Canadian, a sentimental fool who listens to old owl-y ladies with piercing visions and sweetly singing tales of second sight and belonging in a strange land, in a strange way. Who reads numerous Scottish history books and sees invaders and defenders in the present, where there are none.
But they are there, they are there, and they are defending their own place for me, as it is my place, my own place. I remember it to be so. If my race memories did not arrive with invasive tears, as has happened with others, they arrived with a calm acceptance that I will come back again, and again, and again. Do I remember because I desperately want to, or think that I should, or simply because yes, I do remember this place, and it is my place, and I know it in a strange way and I love it in a different way than anyone else? How can I explain... In Harris, I never wanted a hot dog.
"She does have the island look," Marlene said to Paul at Ceol na Mara.
"Maybe," I could have replied skeptically. "Maybe that's because I've always lived on islands."
But instead I beamed, every sentimental bone in my body absolutely aching with delight.
PS. This is Arisaig on a beautiful June evening
This is Harris on a beautiful June afternoon
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