2022-06-01 Reader's Digest Canada

rd.ca 99

reader’s digest

THAT JANUARY, my dad went into the FOR A WHILE WE PRETENDED there was
hospital for a craniotomy, to remove an improvement, as though maybe the
dead tissue in his right temporal lobe, moths were just taking a while to slowly
which itself was a side effect of radiosur- die out. But soon it was impossible to
gery, a more focused form of radiation. deny that they were as bad as ever. I
Most of his treatments now were to cursed as I swatted indiscriminately,
address issues caused by earlier treat- leaving powdery brown smears on the
ments. None of them promised to cure walls. “It’s like a plague,” I said.
him, only to give him more time. He
wanted to meet the baby. In the Bible, it’s locusts that God
sends, not moths. I had to look it up, but
His new scar curved like a sickle, and moths are referenced repeatedly in both
he joked that it made his head look like the Old and New Testaments, almost
a baseball. While he rested in the living always to connote decay and destruc-
room, watching TV with the dog on his tion, either that of worldly goods or our
lap, my brother and I went on raids of own physical remains. “So man wastes
the house, still looking for moths. away like something rotten, like a gar-
ment eaten by moths,” Job laments.
We flung open unused cupboards, The symbolism felt a bit on the nose.
scoured drawers. “Clear!” Max yelled up
to me from the basement, like we were THE STEROIDS
hunting a fugitive. It felt good to do MY DAD TOOK MADE
something, even if it was just throwing HIS BELLY LOOK MORE
stuff out. I’d never realized that my par- AND MORE LIKE MY
ents were low-commitment hoarders,
their house big enough to defer decision- PREGNANT ONE.
making indefinitely. I found ice skates of
mine from the second grade, every piece As it happens, my father had also
of art I’d ever brought home, boxes of turned his mind to God and, one
eyeglasses from the ’80s, old Game Boys. morning over breakfast, announced
So many dead batteries and paint cans. to my mother and me that he’d been
thinking of getting baptized. We weren’t
When I came upon the ripped-open a religious family. Sometimes we went
bag of dog food in the laundry room, I to church as kids for Christmas (Game
was triumphant. “Found it!” I yelled Boys on mute), but my father’s family
upstairs. I didn’t see any moths, but was agnostic. I couldn’t tell if he was
that didn’t deter me. I threw out the serious; he was generally skeptical to
bag and replaced it with a large Rub-
bermaid container. “Make sure you
close it tightly,” I instructed my mother,
as if she were a child.

100 june 2022

an exasperating degree, quick to cat- mother had vetoed hiring an extermi-
egorize everything as either bunk or nator for the moths after he’d explained
hooey. It was hard to picture him that he’d have to blast the house with
being willingly dunked in a pool of chemicals, so moth traps littered every
magic water. available surface, their sticky interiors
studded with bodies. We pretended
“I can’t imagine any god I believe in that the situation was under control,
would care about something like that,” but I knew it was futile if we couldn’t
my mother said, a bit smug in her locate the source.
lapsed Catholicism. She’d been bap-
tized, confirmed, the whole thing. My dad’s belly looked more and more
like mine from the steroids; we took a
My father chewed thoughtfully and picture together that day of the two of
looked out the window behind her. us on the couch, matching basketballs
“Well, who knows?” he said. “Maybe I under our shirts. My back hurt from
should hedge my bets.” the long drive, and I wondered about
those microwaveable heat-compress
Conversations like these were as close bags that my mother used for her neck,
as we ever got to discussing death. It the ones full of oats.
was tacitly understood that we could
not talk to Dad directly about anything I got up from the couch. “Do we still
upsetting, but even among the three of have that Magic Bag?” I asked, already
us, we rarely acknowledged the reality on my way to the kitchen.
of his prognosis. As though Stage 4 was
not the final stage. As though “pallia- My mother was sitting at the dining
tive” meant only pain relief. table with her laptop open, a glass of
wine beside her as she scrolled through
Broaching death was only ever Facebook. “I think so,” she said, look-
allowed in stilted conversations that ing up. “Maybe over the coffee maker?”
my dad tried to have with us about
finances, or my mother’s relieved laugh- The bag was in the cupboard behind
ter as she recounted the oncologist tell- a box of Keurig pods. I grabbed it and
ing them that he could still “buy the willed some movement, a flutter, a
green bananas,” as though this were spill of oats through a telltale hole. But
incredibly encouraging. As if bananas there was nothing.
didn’t ripen in days.
MAX MOVED BACK from Japan perma-
SOMETIME THAT FEBRUARY, during a nently to help after Dad’s craniotomy.
weekend visit to Ottawa with my hus- “We’ve looked everywhere,” he said to
band, Marc, we sat watching a British me one night. His eyes were red, and
mystery with my father, who guarded when he roughly ran his hands through
the remote on the arm of his chair. My his hair, I noticed a few greys.

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reader’s digest

“Maybe they’re in the drywall,” I said. All my father wanted to do when he
“I saw that online.” I’d read about peo- wasn’t watching TV was make lists of
ple ripping their houses apart trying to things that needed fixing or buying or
locate the source, YouTube videos of organizing. He kept trying to do every-
half-mad people describing infesta- thing himself and had gotten angry at
tions that had begun in the kitchen me on the last visit for “fussing” after
only to spread throughout the entire he’d had a seizure while trying to light
house. I looked at the walls of the living an instant log in the fireplace.
room, which seemed to hum with a
malevolent energy. A female could get “You almost set yourself on fire,” I
into even the tiniest crack and lay up said, unable to keep the frustration out
to 300 microscopic eggs. They would of my voice.
be impossible to fully eradicate.
MOTHS STILL FLEW
As we mulled the possibility of stick- AROUND THE LIVING
ing a camera or a medical scope into a ROOM, WHICH WAS
hole in the drywall, I felt something EMPTY BUT FOR A TV
hard, an elbow or a foot, push against AND A HOSPITAL BED.
my abdomen and flip over. Earlier in
the week, I’d been for another ultra- “You and your mother,” he said. “So
sound, and after a long, almost hostile dramatic.” He brushed his charred
silence from the technician while she sleeve and went back to the TV.
took measurements, she turned the
screen toward me. On the monitor I By the end of the month, he was back
saw a face, eyes wide and unblinking, in the hospital with complications,
a tiny hand cupped around the side, including fluid buildup on his frontal
the way someone might peer inside the lobe. His disease and the treatments
window of a car. had made him too volatile to come
home; he’d had to be restrained after
IN MARCH, I GOT a call from my mother. being told he couldn’t leave.
After a couple weeks of saying every-
thing was fine, she admitted the situa- If no one was with him, he’d call
tion had gotten much worse. My father my mother non-stop, so we took turns
was recovering from another round going to visit him. When I got to his
of radiosurgery and couldn’t be alone room one day, I found him sitting in
because of the seizure risk, but he a chair with his breakfast tray. He
wouldn’t let my mother hire anyone to greeted me the way he always did:
help. She was burned out, and Max “Where’s Mum?”
was there but also working.

102 june 2022

I gave him the clementines I’d had scans every week because of an
brought from home and sat in the issue with the placenta, so I couldn’t
other chair. I told my father how we’d travel to Ottawa as much. I was helping
cleaned out the pantry in the kitchen my mother arrange full-time palliative
again the night before to try to get rid care at home while also trying to set up
of the moths before he came home. the nursery, but all I could think about
were the moths. My brother texted me
“Good,” he nodded. “When can I get that they were still flying around the
out of here?” living room, which had been emptied
of everything except the TV, an arm-
“I don’t know, Dad.” To distract him, chair, a rented hospital bed and a lift.
I asked him if he had any ideas for the
baby’s name. I scanned through all the articles I’d
already read until something jumped
He didn’t answer. After a second, out at me. “Check for unlikely food
he asked, “Are you looking forward to sources in non-kitchen locations, (e.g.,
your daughter being this age?” He was dog food and open bird-seed contain-
looking down, plucking lint on his ers.)” I thought of my dad in the living
hospital gown. room the previous spring, watching
the birds in the backyard at the feeders
I didn’t know what to say. I had the he filled diligently.
feeling again of being offered a small
chance, a window I had to figure out I texted my brother. “Where does dad
how to open. “Do you mean my age keep the bird seed?”
or yours?”
It took Max a while, but eventually he
He didn’t answer. Instead: “When’s looked in the toy closet. Tucked away
your train?” under the shelf that held the TV machin-
ery was a large tin, roughly the shape of
“Not for a few hours,” I said, deflated. a small garbage can, with an ill-fitting,
“Well,” he said, looking away from dented lid. I wasn’t there when my
me. “You don’t want to miss it.” brother opened it, but I can picture it
as though I was, the flapping of brown
BY LATE APRIL they were getting ready wings a deliverance, a benediction.
to discharge him. He had adamantly
refused hospice care and just wanted © 2021, MORGAN CHARLES. FROM ”PLAGUED,”
to go home. He just needed some rest, THE FIDDLEHEAD (AUTUMN 2020), THEFIDDLEHEAD.CA
he insisted, then he could get stronger.
I was in the third trimester by then, and

Me Time

Solitude sharpens awareness of small pleasures otherwise lost.

KEVIN PATTERSON, AUTHOR

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reader’s digest

reader’s digest MANY TIBETANS HAVE never set foot in
their homeland, and for much of her
BOOK CLUB life, author Tsering Yangzom Lama was
one of them. In the early 1960s, after the
In her epic debut, fall of Tibet to Chinese forces, Lama’s
Tsering Yangzom Lama parents and grandparents fled their
explores a life in exile country of origin, leaving their grass-
land villages, crossing the Himalayas
BY Emily Landau and settling in Nepal. Lama grew up
in Kathmandu, where she could see
104 june 2022 Mount Everest from her school bus,
and later lived in New York, Toronto and
Vancouver. When Lama was 26, she
hiked for seven days to the border sep-
arating Tibet and Nepal, marked by an
army camp, where she saw her home-
land for the first time. “What stretched
before us was the land and the sky. On
and on, across my mother’s vil-
lage, across my father’s ancestral pas-
tures. Across the prison camp where
my great-uncle died, where many
heroes remain bound,” she wrote in an
essay about the experience.

We Measure the Earth with Our Bod-
ies, Lama’s debut novel, is inspired by
her family’s long-ago flight, document-
ing the experiences of statelessness
that followed them across borders.
The story revolves around two sisters,
Lhamo and Tenkyi, who are preteens
when the Dalai Lama flees Tibet for
India after a failed Tibetan uprising
against Chinese occupation in 1959.
The following year, the girls’ mother—
who serves as the village oracle—
decides they must leave their home-
land. They travel on foot to a series of

makeshift camps, sleeping in yak hair Canada’s “It’s a Small World” self-
tents and foraging for food and water, image. “It soon dawned on me that
eventually losing their parents to ill- paperwork alone wouldn’t be enough
ness and despair. Then comes a longer to make us belong,” Dolma says. “We
exile in Nepal. Finally, Tenkyi lands wore our difference on our bodies, not
in Toronto, where she’s later joined just in our dark hair and brown skin
by Lhamo’s daughter, Dolma, in the but in our posture, the slower, foreign
west-end neighbourhood of Parkdale, rhythm of our steps.” Instead of jolly
where refugees have clustered in a diversity, she encounters casual colo-
so-called Little Tibet. The novel jumps nialism. One of the novel’s central
between time periods and locations. mysteries involves the disappearance
Each new spot, they find, is a diluted and reappearance of a ku, or Nameless
version of the original. “A copy of a copy Saint, a small, ancient statue made of
of home,” Dolma says of Toronto and mudstone from Tibet. One evening,
Little Tibet. decades after the ku has vanished from
the family’s camp, Dolma attends a
THEY TRAVEL ON cocktail party at the home of a wealthy
FOOT, SLEEPING IN art collector in Toronto’s plush Rosedale
YAK HAIR TENTS, AND neighbourhood. There, she discovers
LAND IN TORONTO’S none other than the priceless ku, pur-
chased from an anonymous antiques
LITTLE TIBET. dealer in Nepal. To the collector, the
statue is a trophy. To Dolma, it’s her
The novel follows the sisters and family’s last physical link to their
their loved ones as they live together homeland, and she goes to drastic
and apart, always in exile. Lama’s writ- lengths to get it back.
ing is gorgeous, sketching a world both
impressionistic and richly detailed, The novel spans decades and conti-
especially when filtered through the nents, its characters infused with both
perspective of teen girls: to Lhamo’s wistful homesickness and fury at their
eyes, for example, her mountain camp own displacement. The farther they get
is “a buffalo sunning on a hill, reveal- from Tibet, the farther they grow from
ing everything,” while a Kathmandu each other, and Lama makes you vis-
refugee camp is a dense forest of alleys cerally feel this longing for belonging,
and twisting paths. Her depiction of the same thing she felt standing at the
Toronto, meanwhile, crisply challenges border between Tibet and Nepal at age
26. The result is something rare in a
book of this scale: a novel that’s as
moving as it is ambitious.

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reader’s digest

BRAINTEASERS

25 20 22 2 3 4 8

9 11

15 6

1 to 25 16 1 23

Medium To solve, move the

numbers from the outer ring 21 24
onto the board in the directions

of the chevrons. As you place 18 19
them they must snake together

vertically, horizontally or diago- (1 TO 25) JEFF WIDDERICH (SYNDICATED PUZZLES); (DAISY CHAIN) FRASER SIMPSON

nally so they link in sequence 17 14 13 10 7 5 12
from one to 25.

Daisy Chain
Difficult Add a letter to the first set of letters below and form a common word by
unscrambling the six given letters plus the one you added. Enter the word in the squares
to the right. For each succeeding row, add the last letter of the previous word you wrote
to the new set of letters before unscrambling. The last letter of your fifth word should
be the letter you added to the first word. Can you complete the daisy chain of words?

1 A C G I O R __
2 A A H K S W __
3 A E E L N R __
4 C E N S U U __
5 C H I N O U __

106 june 2022

(PIC-A-PIX) DIANE BAHER; (THE SMALLEST MAZE, WITH FLYING COLOURS) DARREN RIGBY 22 The Smallest Maze
Difficult A prime number (for
22 example, 11) is only evenly divisi-
ble by itself and one, whereas a
2 4 4 2 10 10 2 4 4 2 composite number is evenly divis-
ible by itself, one and at least one
2 whole number other than one
and itself (for example, 8 ÷ 2 = 4).
4
Every time you enter a room in
4 this maze your number increases
as indicated, and you may only
222 pass through a door if the number
you currently have is the right
10 kind. (As soon as you enter with
your one, it becomes a two, which
10 is prime, so you can only pass
through the white door.) There
222 are many ways to leave the maze,
but what is the smallest number
2 you can leave the maze with?

4 +2 +3 composite
numbers only
4
+4 +1 prime
Pic-a-Pix numbers only
Easy Reveal a hidden picture by shading
in groups of horizontally or vertically 1
adjacent cells. The numbers represent
how many shaded cells are in each of the
corresponding row’s or column’s groups.
(For example, a “3” next to a row represents
three horizontally adjacent shaded cells
in that row.) There must be at least one
empty cell between each group. The
numbers read in the same horizontal or
vertical order as the groups they represent.
There’s only one possible picture; can you
shade it in?

Orjavi Robleno Vivema Griblave With Flying Colours
Medium The fictional French nation
? of Drapovia has flags for its provinces.
Three of these flags are shown along
with the names of the provinces they
represent, but the fourth flag is miss-
ing. What should it look like?

For answers, turn to PAGE 111

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reader’s digest

TRIVIA 12. Which Caribbean
country boasts the devel-
BY Beth Shillibeer opment of five COVID-19
vaccine candidates and
1. Sidney Poitier, who 7. According to the has a higher vaccination
died in 2022, won the Oxford English Dictio- rate than most countries
Academy Award for Best nary, which American in the world?
Actor for what 1963 film? author coined the terms
“wicked” and “T-shirt”? 13. Chaturanga, played
2. Which Chinese festi- in seventh-century India,
val celebrates third- 8. New fossil evidence was a precursor to what
century BCE poet Qu shows that Australia’s arid immensely popular
Yuan with rice balls and central desert was once strategy game?
boat racing? what type of landscape?
14. Whose scientific
3. Round, waggle and 9. Where can you stroll journal did Bill Gates buy ISTOCK.COM/BLOODSTONE
sickle are all dances per- through the longest at auction in 1994 for
formed by what animal? underwater tunnel US$30.8 million, making
in Europe? it one of the world’s most
4. What has Reed Hast- expensive books?
ings, CEO of Netflix, said 10. Jockey Lester Piggott
is the main competitor has won what famous 15. The Platinum Pudding
against the company? horse race, held annually Competition encouraged
in June, nine times? anyone eight years old
5. What nation made the and up to create a new
decision in 2021 to stop 11. NASA launched what dessert in honour of
all new oil and gas explo- project on Christmas Day what 2022 event?
ration within its territory? 2021, designed to
observe infrared light
6. What is the only and look back toward
bird species that can the earliest events of
fly backwards? our universe?

Answers: 1. Lilies of the Field. 2. Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie). 3. Bees. 4. Sleep.
5. Greenland. 6. Hummingbird. 7. F. Scott Fitzgerald. 8. Rainforest. 9. In Valencia, Spain, at the
Oceanogràfic. 10. Epsom Derby. 11. The James Webb Space Telescope. 12. Cuba. 13. Chess.
14. Leonardo da Vinci’s journal (Codex Leicester). 15. Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee.

108 june 2022

WORD POWER 10. golden parachute—
A: compensation paid to
Staying on top in the business world means an executive fired after a
speaking the language. How much financial merger or takeover.
B: company’s gold hold-
jargon do you know? ings. C: bribe paid to cir-
cumvent regulations.
BY Rob Lutes
11. blue-sky thinking—
1. racket—A: counting for a new product. A: solutions found during
device. B: illegal scheme C: business waste. flights. B: visionary ideas
to make money. C: bank that are not practical.
employee. 6. blue chip—A: reliable, C: unrealistic stock pro-
as an investment. jections.
2. upsell—A: persuade a B: unusual, as business
customer to buy a more practice. C: related to 12. stakeholders—
expensive product. B: use the gem trade. A: people affected by a
positive thinking to drive company’s decisions.
sales. C: client call early 7. oligopoly—A: compli- B: predatory businesses.
in the morning. cated situation. B: lan- C: consultants who prop
guage related to business up failing businesses.
3. fungible—A: expen- or finance. C: when a few
sive. B: replaceable with firms dominate a market. 13. start-up—A: first-
another of the same type. quarter earnings.
C: unsalable. 8. collateral—A: some- B: company in the initial
thing pledged as security stages of operations.
4. low-hanging fruit— for repayment of a loan. C: penny stock.
A: discounted items. B: labour strike. C: job
B: popular products. shared by two employees. 14. deliverable—A: idea
C: sales deals that are that gestates over
easier to close. 9. churn rate—A: busi- months. B: mail-order
nessperson’s anxiety level. company. C: good or
5. usury—A: charging B: rate at which compa- service provided at the
exorbitant interest. nies lose customers. end of a project.
B: repurposing machinery C: assembly-line speed.
15. dividend—A: merger.
B: part of a company’s
profit distributed to
shareholders. C: divisive
business practice.

rd.ca 109

reader’s digest

WORD POWER 6. blue chip—A: reliable, 12. stakeholders—
ANSWERS as an investment; as, A A: people affected by a
careful investor, Vi pre- company’s decisions; as,
1. racket—B: illegal ferred blue chip stocks. Stakeholders wanted the
scheme to make money; head office in Calgary.
as, The enormous return 7. oligopoly—C: when a
on investment made few firms dominate a 13. start-up—B: com-
Mika suspect he was market; as, With just pany in the initial stages
involved in a racket. three major players, the of operations; as, The
auto industry was an oli- business grew from
2. upsell—A: persuade gopoly. start-up to industry leader.
a customer to buy a
more expensive product; 8. collateral— 14. deliverable—C: good
as, Barry tried to upsell A: something pledged as or service provided at
the client into a more security for repayment the end of a project; as,
costly package. of a loan; as, Bob offered The list of deliverables
his watch as collateral to made Bronwyn doubt
3. fungible—B: replace- the lender. the project’s viability.
able with another of the
same type; as, Oil is a 9. churn rate—B: rate at 15. dividend—B: part of
fungible commodity, which companies lose a company’s profit dis-
since one barrel is the customers; as, Busi- tributed to shareholders;
same as another. nesses can lower their as, Theresa could live off
churn rate by improving her stock’s dividends.
4. low-hanging fruit— customer service.
C: sales deals that are CROSSWORD
easier to close; as, Maria 10. golden parachute— ANSWERS
focused on low-hanging A: compensation paid to
fruit, targeting her offers an executive fired after a FROM PAGE 112
toward repeat clients. merger or takeover; as,
The CEO smiled as he M I DD L E R I NG
5. usury—A: charging received his golden ANEM I A E TON
exorbitant interest; as, parachute. I DLEST HTTP
Matias knew the lender T I ED OKAYS
was engaging in usury, 11. blue-sky thinking— AAA ONE S
but he needed the B: visionary ideas that I ND E X T HUMB
money. are not practical; as,
The annual company NE S T NOR
retreat was full of blue- SCENE ACRE
sky thinking. CARR ATPLAY
F L AG OR I OL E
BABY F I NGE R

110 june 2022

BRAINTEASERS SUDOKU
ANSWERS

FROM PAGE 106 BY Jeff Widderich

1 to 25 7 98
3 4
25 20 22 2 3 4 8 2 6 14
9 14 13 11 9 8 11 5
15 15 12 10 7 6 6 6 429 6
16 16 22 23 1 5 23 8 72 4
21 21 17 2 24 4 24
18 20 19 18 3 25 19 64 5
17 14 13 10 7 5 12

Daisy Chain
organic, hacksaw,
renewal, nucleus, cushion

Pic-a-Pix: Clubs

59

The Smallest Maze 18 2

17 To Solve This Puzzle SOLUTION
12 15 5
Put a number from 1 to 9 in 714395826
10 6 each empty square so that: 236148759
2 598276314
) every horizontal row and 462517938
1 vertical column contains all 183429567
nine numbers (1-9) without 975863241
With Flying Colours repeating any of them; 649732185
The names of the prov- 827651493
inces correspond with the ) each of the outlined 3 x 3 351984672
flags’ stripes in French. boxes has all nine numbers,
The flag of Griblave is, none repeated.
then, gris, blanc, vert.

rd.ca 111

reader’s digest

CROSSWORD 32 Big Raven painter Emily
33 Happily romping
Single Digits 35 Nunavut’s one bears an

inukshuk
36 Baltimore baseball player
37 Hospital delivery
38 Each of five digits found

in this puzzle

BY Barbara Olson DOWN
1 Cabana cocktail
1 23456 7 8 9 10 2 Richard Wagamese’s
___ Horse
11 12 3 Remove plumbic traces
from
13 14 4 Used the envelope icon
on Twitter, briefly
15 16 17 5 Sue Grafton’s ___ for
Lawless
18 19 6 Canadian department-
store founder
20 21 22 23 24 25 7 Talk over again
8 Bitty beginning
26 27 28 9 The haves and have-___

29 30 31 10 Country’s econ. output
17 Mannerly Etta of an old
32 33 34
comic strip
35 36 19 Plough-pulling team
21 The “E” of E=mc2
37 38 23 Use a plumber’s snake
24 Team spirit
ACROSS 16 Green-lights 25 Ice-cream company
1 TV’s Malcolm in the ___ 18 Mouse battery, maybe
7 Box-shaped boxing 19 Opening numbers, often? founder
area, oddly 20 Back-of-the-book 27 ___ Tranquility (moon

11 Condition causing reference region)
sluggishness 22 Hitchhike, casually 29 Living room, in Lisbon
26 Where eggs go on trees 30 Sebastian in The Little
12 School that’s a homo- 28 “Neither” mate
phone of 6-Down 29 Act division in a play Mermaid
31 Hundred ___ Wood 31 Neat as ___
13 Most likely to laze 32 Mil. centre in Kingston,
14 Website lead-in (Pooh’s place)
15 Got even? for one
34 Angular opening?

For answers, turn to PAGE 110

112 june 2022



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