As a child, visits to Stanley Park always started with a warm bag of popcorn. Behind the steaming glass windows of the vendor's cart, I knew his animated hands would scoop the perpetually popping corn with long languid arms. The plastic scoop he used, as if starting from the sky and diggin' deep into the yellow pile of fluffy kernels, whose only goal was escaping the red-hot, round metal popper.
My mother would always have the exact change ready for the popcorn man. His jolly outlook shone from his fingertips, the red and white striped paper bags of corn finding a home in tiny hands with little effort. Countless kids and moms stood patiently, politely, sniffing euphorically between the somewhat conflicting smells between the salty sea aroma of playful, backstroking otters to buttery smell of the vendors who scurried like birds to the next cluster of moms and kids.
A trip to Stanley Park was not solely taken for the chance to eat popcorn, though. No, trips to Stanley Park with Mom were much more. She was smart. Funny. Knowledgeable.
"Do you remember that sound you asked me about? The one we hear at night?"
"That big boom?"
"Yes," I said eagerly. Growing up in our neighbourhood, the 9 o'clock gun was rock-skipping distance to Stanley Park. Its glorious "BOOM" was easily heard on summer nights when it was too hot or too light to fall asleep.
"That is called the 9 o'clock gun," she said, "It was made in England. Each night when you hear that big boom. It means it's 9 o'clock.
"But what makes it boom?" I asked.
"Dy-no-mite!" she said, with a light spray of tickly fingers to my t-shirt covered belly.
Mom's role as tour guide was not limited to history of the park's 9 o'clock gun. Just when I thought our jaunt through the park was complete, a walk along the seawall brought me to my current and forever loyal, favourite. I had heard of a lovely mermaid statue, the gentle curves of her mermaid body, cast in bronze and perched on a rock where all of Vancouver would wait with her until her watery return to the sea.
In person, it was my Mom who pointed out that in fact she was not a mermaid at all, but a girl in a wet suit, complete with diver's mask. One day she said, if I wanted too, I too, could be a diver.
"Really?" I said.
"Of course."
And with that "of course", clarification that options to try new things would always be encouraged, infused and inspired, by my mom. The Mermaid, no longer that forlorn shadow that stood out from the backdrop of the North Shore Mountains but a beacon of courage and determination.
Continuing along the seawall, we'd make our way to malt vinegar perfumed air of Third Beach - the perfect place to lay out my mother's gray vinyl car coat and contemplate the camouflaged images of slow moving, cumulus clouds. Their billowy mischievousness had ways of tricking my eyes into seeing Santa Claus one moment, a giant teacup the next.
"Hmmyou getting hungry?" she asked, with a sly grin, knowing my favourite treat was sharing a cardboard dish of fish and chips.
"Yes" I replied.
"Fish and chips?"
"Yes" was all I could muster.
The abundance of silver coins in her purse was clear to me that we could each have our own. The fact that we always shared one order was the best part. It was fine by me to compete for dips in the squeeze bottle clump of ketchup into the corner of the saucer. After a thorough licking of savory French fry fingers, it was only right to scour the sky one last time for a puffy white glimpse of an enormous Easter Bunny or a wheelbarrow in motion.
"Where should we go now Mom?"
"Wellhow much do you know about totem poles?" And off we'd go.
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Have a super suggestion for summer activities? Send me an email. We'll share some resourceful mom secrets! shelleyfranchini@ yahoo.com
