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We took a couple of days to travel to Nice. From Paris, it’s an overnight train and we booked ourselves into the cheap sleeping bunks – six to a room. All of the other folks in our compartment were elderly and the room was stiflingly warm with no moving air. With my nose about 10” from the ceiling, it was everything I could do to not succumb to a claustrophobic scream. There was no sleep for me that night, but Sarah had no problem.

Our hotel in Nice was behind the grand dame hotel edifices along the coastal promenade. As we approached our second floor room, I noticed a telephone on a small stand and a rather tall canister of some kind of spray. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed to be anti-cafard or cockroach spray!! It was mildly alarming to find it freely dispensed outside our door. As we entered our room, my hand was poised on the trigger to blast anything that moved. That night, sharing a bed as economy’s dictated, we were both bitten by bedbugs and woke up with red welts. One night there only, thank goodness!

And, we were disappointed to find we had chosen the one day that all the galleries and museums were closed. We wandered the streets marvelling at the architecture, which was very different from Paris. One could absolutely see the Italian influence. 

I’m still looking for the photo that we had asked someone to snap of the two of us in our black & white ensembles, leaning against a Nice wall …

As with the rest of us, the frailties of age have plagued Sarah and undoubtedly annoy the hell out of her. But she must mind herself and she’s wise enough to know it’s necessary. Her environment requires a lot of physical attention. And although she’s brilliant at finding help, the constant minding needed to maintain her home is wearing. She’s been ruminating about a change, moving on…. maybe her time at Therah is ending as she’s surrendered most of her duties and involvements. She’s been culling. New horizons are calling. She’s comfortable as a nomad, maybe that’s a direction to consider again? The urge towards change is strong. She’s recently had a another reading with the magnificent Robert Sabella and is slowly unpacking its many layers.

Sometimes, when she opens her deep blue eyes wide, I can see the glossy white and they look like shiny porcelain. I’ve wondered about her nose… and her somewhat darker complexion and leanness of countenance… a native echo? I’ve just always wondered. Her beautiful, beautiful face has aged exquisitely; limbs still giving expression to her meanings. Her small hands are muscled and sensuous, fingers twittering as she tilts her head forward and looks intensely at me from under her brow. 

I said that Sarah is not afraid; but she’s alone a lot. And one can get a little crazy… she has so many circles of friends she welcomes into her home, but maybe it’s not enough. She’s always hungry for deeper connection and understanding. She experiences things in so many dimensions that it’s sometimes hard to attend. She’s always willing to follow a thread to see where it leads. Many of her books would be too esoteric for most people.

When Sarah and I get together, we ‘grok’ each other. Grok is a term from a 1961 Robert Heinlein book, Stranger in a Strange Land. Definition: “to drink, metaphorically meaning to understand something so thoroughly and intuitively that observer and observed are one.” Sarah uses the term somewhat frequently as it best describes what she means.

I remember that during her Night Visions installation gala opening at a restaurant on Granville Island, she disappeared for awhile. At least a hundred plus people were there to see her work and laud her accomplishments. She just vanished and I couldn’t find her. Her rabbit nature had emerged and she needed to step away. She’s an intensely private person too.

She has liked a splash of Calvados in her tea while working. She likes mandarin oranges. She can whip up a coffee cake in minutes from scratch.

When she and Sean were about to marry, we were fitting what I remember to be a lovely antique cream dress. She was panicking that she couldn’t go through with it. I calmed her by saying she could divorce him tomorrow. 

If you’ll indulge and forgive me, I’d like to write in the present tense:

Sarah’s favourite time in the life of growing things is when they first poke their little heads up through the soil to take a look around. As an Aries metal rabbit, that would make sense. She’s a first bud, an explorer, an adventurer and innovator. New spring green is one of her favourite colours as is deep cobalt blue and lemony sun yellow.

Sarah is immortal in all of us. Formational. Foundational. She has imbued our lives with a sense of wonder, even about the most common things. She creates rich ritual around almost everything to remind us of how important it is to hold everything in an honouring way. 

‘Nasties’ are one of her favourite food garnishes. (edible nasturtiums)

She is a lover of stinky cheese, rich deep sauces and bold flavours. Conversely, she lives mostly on crisp fresh garden greens. No one understands her love affair with kale…

Sarah has been recycling since before most people knew what that meant. By example, she encourages us to do the same. She saves the tiniest bit and end of a cheese to place somewhere on her plate and honour it. Hard old end crusts of bread find their way to a bird feeder. I’m sure Sarah is the first person I heard say ‘compost’. Her thoughtfully wrapped gifts are often ensconced in re-used wrinkly tissue and string with an exquisite flower or bauble laid across the top.

She talks to all living things and not a few non-living objects.

In the early days, I sometimes thought Sarah ‘flaky’ and unrealistic, yet she holds her ground ferociously insisting on the somatic way of understanding. She is incredibly generous and open. I have also seen her intense dark blue eyes narrowing in calculation about some point, accompanied by her cackling laugh. Initially, my ability to grasp her way of moving through the world had been bounded by my own limited experience. We are both children of alcoholic families. I tried to create structure to understand the world and survive; Sarah tossed boundaries and has explored herself and her world through creative expression. By association, my world exploded into possibility with fuzzier edges…a deep fresh breath of sensory exploration framed in ’not-knowing’. And she’s adept at left brain stuff, taking care of business as she must. Sarah is not daunted by big ideas and new paradigms. She embraces them, turning them over in her mind and letting them stew with her countless other learnings. 

Sarah is not afraid.

In the spring of 1988, Sarah loaned me the plane fare to join her in France in September where she was to spend time with her older brother, Roger, who was living in a garret room in the Marais in Paris. And she was to meet her mother for a week of family time.

We flew to Amsterdam and toured by train through Lille to Brittany and then on to the Loire Valley before heading to Paris. 

We ensconced ourselves in the cheap seats and I went to secure a mini bottle of red train wine, attempting to converse in French with every porter along the way. I sat across from Sarah, delighting in the opportunity to try French phrases in the country of origin, and pestered her with my attempts. Tolerating this for hours, she finally just looked at me and said, “SHUT UP!!!”

I hadn’t once considered her plight in having to listen to my excited babble. And, unbeknown to me, she had been quietly enduring a dark purple stain ringed around the inside of my lips…