APPLES & BEETS

On Monday, January 16^th  at 11:30 am Ron and I were navigating the intricacies of “Spaghetti Junction” en route to Ron’s first engagement of  2017 with the Saanich Peninsula Stroke Recovery Association. Their meetings are held every Monday from 10:30am until 1:30pm in the Seventh Day Adventist Church which is located on the left side of Willingdon Road just before the roundabout leading to the Victoria Airport. The unique thing about roundabouts is that, if you miss your turn, you can keep going round about until you eventually return to the correct exit. This was particularly helpful to me as the driver on Monday morning.

Once inside the lovely church we were met by the Association’s Coordinator, Lyall Copeland, and some of the Association's many volunteers. This event was particularly special since it was the first time that Ron was speaking to an audience comprised solely of stroke survivors and their caregivers. One of the principal impetuses behind The Defiant Mind was “to write a book that provides a voice for victims,” to show that recovery is possible, and to advocate for engaging the hearts, minds and brains of stroke survivors and then utilizing their insights in their rehabilitation programs. After Ron’s reading and talk, one gentleman announced to the whole group, as he was on his way out the door to catch his ride home with a Handy Dart, “I endorse everything you’ve said here today. You’ve nailed it.”

Ron’s next rendezvous was at 2 pm at the Tim Horton’s in the Eagle Creek Centre across from the Victoria General Hospital. Dana Haydon, a speech therapist at VGH, had asked if Ron might be able to meet with one of her patients, Christina Willing. Christina had read Ron’s book and was very anxious to speak with him. Christina is a sprightly ninety year old, who had her stroke last February, (a stroke which left her unable to speak) and who, thanks to her therapists and her six children, (daughter Belle Belsky was the designated driver of the day) has been able to return to her farm house home and resume her independent life there.

Ron and I returned to our home in Nanoose Bay enriched by our encounters with new people, by a pint of home-canned beets we received from one of the volunteers in Saanich and by a bag of apples from one of Christina’s heritage apple trees, the latter gift inspired by the section on apples in The Defiant Mind on page 123:

“I imagined eating an apple, not whole, but as a warm sauce over ice cream or peeled and cut up and baked in a fine, fluffy pastry crust, served with a slice of cheddar. A yellow transparent apple picked just as it turned colour, from a deep lime green to the pale shade of the moon. Not what they used to call an eating apple but a cooking apple. Slightly tart, with a sting in its tail. Not an apple you would feed to a horse but an apple whose juices lingered like the summer sun on your tongue during a fall rain or winter snow storm. An apple that held the reach of a climb when you had scuffed a bare knee against rough bark. An apple with a short ripening season, testing your will to live another year.”