Walking on water

Slightly over a week ago, on a rare, rainless winter morning in Vancouver, we found ourselves on a suspension bridge fifty metres above a rushing river bounded on both sides by sheer, rocky sides. On our right, a small but spritely waterfall gushed over the edge of its cliff into Lynn Canyon. The rapids below us roiled with the rainwater collected throughout the Lynn River’s pristine catchment, but we could see the rocky riverbed strewn with boulders, sand banks and the odd plant. Signs near the Lynn Canyon Ecology Centre had warned of the dangers of the river and its canyon. Walking through the forest to the bridge, the canyon’s edge, obscured by the dense trees, came up suddenly and surprisingly. Various people had died in the waters of the river; in one grisly case, the body of an unfortunate hiker spent five days trapped under the hydraulic pull of a waterfall along the river before it could be recovered. Just before the suspension bridge, we had also come across a small memorial to a young woman whom the river had swept away suddenly. She had apparently been sunbathing on a large boulder on the canyon floor.

Such macabre reminders did not detract from our enjoyment of Lynn Canyon and its suspension bridge. Joshua was absolutely enthralled with the idea of crossing the suspension bridge, and went across it four times fearlessly and enthusiastically. A group of Korean tourists had come just before us, in their dark suits, jackets, trousers and leather shoes, but the canyon still felt like it belonged us. Above the canyon, surrounded by the sound of rushing water that silenced every other man-made sound, we felt excited and enervated, strangely anticipating something mysterious and revelatory beyond the bridge, or around the next corner. The clear, cleansed air, scrubbed and fresh and almost glistening in its purity, felt like it could carry our voices and our thoughts for miles above the roar of the water.

We spent the rest of that Friday at Granville Island. Despite its status as one of Vancouver’s major tourist attractions, Granville Island has somehow avoided the trap of kitsch and feels authentic and unforced. It’s not really an island, but a small piece of land sticking into Vancouver’s False Creek that, up till the 1970s, had been filled with derelict sawmills, machine shops and other corrugated-tin factories that disposed of their toxic wastes right into the waters off their doorstep. Since the 1970s, Granville Island has experienced a remarkable transformation, one that similar sites in other cities have rarely repeated. Many of the original structures and buildings now house galleries, art and cooking schools, nonprofits, theatres, housing, parks, marinas, a wonderful children’s market (where we happily spent many hours and hard currency) and of course, the Granville Island Public Market.

If the availability of great seafood, fruits and tasty baked goods were the sole criterion for judging the quality of a city, Vancouver would trump just about any other city in the world. And the Granville Island Public Market would be the place to find it all, from cheesebreads to organic M&M cookies (we bought one for Joshua, only to have a sugar-deprived seagull grab some of it right out of his hands), to honeyed planks of smoked salmon, and piles of berries, mushrooms and doughnuts light as air that we gobbled up in a flash.

The previous night, we had watched Nigella Lawson prepare fried calamari for her supper, which had caused Fiona and I to crave, with almost indecent desperation, for something similar for our lunch at Granville Island. In good Singaporean fashion, Joshua, Emma and I waited for a table in the crowded eating area of the market, while Fiona joined the line for fish and chips, and, of course, calamari. While walking through the market, I had earlier seen a shop selling stuffed cabbage and greasy latkes with apple sauce, which I decided that I had to have too.

I wolfed down my lunch, and took Emma (who was happy with ketchup for her lunch) for a walk after that. We walked outside the Public Market, along False Creek. Emma initially was quite happy to walk; she toddled a few steps after me, sometimes making faces through the glass wall to the hungry diners inside and waving to them. I think a group of Japanese tourists even took a photograph of her. But then she grew nervous and wanted me to carry her. She had stopped looking at the people and at me, and had instead looked down at her feet. We were walking on the boardwalk outside the Public Market, directly over the waters of False Creek, with the Granville Street Bridge soaring right above us. She had stumbled on the wooden planks of the boardwalk and had seen, through the planks, the water beneath, and grew afraid of walking by herself. I had to scoop her up, and after that, she refused to walk on her own on the boardwalk.

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Some time before our trip to Vancouver, Joshua started asking us questions about death and mortality. “Mo-o-o-o-m,” he would ask plaintively at night, after we had put him into bed, “are you going to die?”

- “Ermm, no, not for a very, very long time. . . But you don’t need to be scared, Joshua.”
- (With increasing panic) “I don’t want you to die, mom . . . Am I going to die?”

At this point, he usually starts to whimper, and we try to make comforting noises to get his mind off the topic, at least for the moment. We’ve even tried explaining that even if we were to die, our souls would live on – but even I, at 33, have problems grasping the immortality of the soul (or immortality, for that matter). So the discussions along those lines haven’t quite resonated with him too.

I don’t often think of death and mortality very much. I exercise regularly (and even enjoy it), eat good things like granola, fruits, vegetables, wild salmon, brown rice and multi-vitamins, don’t smoke, drink lots of water and tea rich in anti-oxidants, and I laugh quite often. (Fiona and I recently watched “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” and laughed ourselves silly in the scene in which she skies herself right into a Swiss pharmacy and tries, with gesticulating hilarity, to buy a pregnancy test. Yes – I watched a “Bridget Jones” movie.) At my last full physical, just about a year ago, I had a clean bill of health. According to RealAge.com, my body is 25 years old. So, mortality does not enter my consciousness much, although, perhaps at 33, it should.

So Joshua’s questions have reminded me of the reality of death. And I wish I could convey to him that we have nothing to fear. That day, on Granville Island, Emma started to fear when she saw the water beneath the planks, and did not want to walk on her own anymore. But earlier that day, we walked on a slender, narrow suspension bridge across a roaring river, with no fear. We trusted that the bridge would hold, that each piece of wood on that bridge was securely fastened, solid and sound, that nothing would give way under our blind and trusting feet. And in the absence of fear, we felt freedom and we tasted the slightest tang of eternity.

Sometimes, however, our eyes will turn away from the planks that hold us up and will instead grow fixated on the roiling waters underneath us. And when those times come, we will grow anxious, stricken, and allow the shadows in our hearts to grow. And we will not want to keep walking anymore, but we may stand, paralyzed, frozen, unable to see the road ahead, the way out.

But, like Emma on that beautiful, cold Friday in Vancouver, I know that I have a Father to turn to, who will carry me on His shoulders, even when my sight fails. And in that way, I can keep on walking.