jumpingfish

I had a dream last night—about work. Here we are in summertime Ontario, and I had a dream about work.

It wasn’t a particularly happy dream. I was getting left behind. Meetings were being called, and I wasn’t invited and had to show up myself. A summer student was getting assigned work that I was supposed to do, a doubly stressful event because of the reassignment of my work but also because of the unspoken implication that the work I was doing was student-level work.

Today there isn’t a cloud in the sky. The view is spectacular from the balcony of Dad and Khadija’s condominium. Parliament Hill is peeking out from behind downtown Ottawa, and the forested hills of Quebec are visible across the river in the distance.

We are about to leave for a few days in Montreal. So I choose to interpret those dreams last night as my head finally leaving work behind. And so perhaps now the vacation starts in earnest.

He waved us in from behind the window, motioned for us to come in and held out a plate with salad and potatoes and round bread filled with meat.

“Today’s special! You get this and a drink,” he said.

The place was tiny, the back half of what obviously used to be a single restaurant, the other half now a burger joint facing the street. We hadn’t noticed it until we drove into the parking lot.

We both ordered the special, and couple that owned the place set about preparing our food while their three year old son wandered around the tiny space and his sister sat in a stroller with a bottle of water in her mouth.

We sat at one of the two tables, and I started smiling at the boy. He had long, dark curly hair and round brown eyes with long eye lashes.

“What’s his name?” I asked his mother, watching him run around.

“Leon,” she said. “It means lion in French.”

He walked up beside her and looked up at us from behind the counter.

“Hi Leon,” I said and winked.

He squinted both eyes, trying out a wink on his own.

“Almost,” I said. “One eye at a time. Like this.” And I winked an exaggerated one-eyed wink.

He winked back.

“That’s it!” I said. “Now try the other eye.” And I showed him.

He squinted and blinked both eyes, his facial muscles contorting and his lower lip sticking out from the effort.

Our shawarma arrived. It was hot and delicious and almost too much food to eat. But, you know, somehow we managed. And the store got very busy. And the little girl sat in her stroller, letting with water running down her front. And Leon ran back and forth, trying out a wink each time he passed our table.

When we finished, we got up to wash our hands in the sink behind a curtain against the back wall and then thanked the owners for the meal and said goodbye.

“Goodbye!” Leon said from behind his mother, and he peered out and winked a perfect wink.

As it happened, thanks to the labor of the Fair and Industrious Trudy, our full day at Niagara Falls included three things for which we needed rain slickers.

1. Under the Falls

On the Canadian side, they have tunnels that lead into the rock to several places behind the falls.

They give you yellow rain slickers, and you walk down the long, sloping tunnel with damp walls and floors toward the rumbling sound in the distance. As you descend, others returning from the far end have smiles on their faces and wet hair (for those who didn’t pull up their hoods).

At the end of the tunnels are holes seven feet tall that evidently emerge from the rock face of the cliff directly into the heart of the falling water. It falls in swirling sheets, and there is of course too much water there to see beyond. And the rumbling is now a crashing splashing sound, and the ground below you and the rock above and beside you is shacking and pounding. And the air is pulsing.

And your face is all wet.

2. Maid of the Mist

They tell you not to worry where you stand, that they will spin the boats so everyone will see everything. Well let me tell you it’s categorically not true. Pay attention to where you stand!

“Let’s stand over here!” I said to Trudy, and we stood on the starboard side. But when we approached the base of the American falls, the captain didn’t turn the boat.

“So let’s stand over there!” I shouted, and we shuffled in our blue slickers over to the port side where the mist from the American Falls and the afternoon sun coming down from the Canadian direction lit up a rainbow that must have been 270 degrees. We screamed in glee with all the other kids.

“Now let’s go over here!” I shouted to Trudy, and she laughed at me.

“And now let’s go over there!”

And so it went. We screamed in glee with all the other kids as the boat surged so far into the mist of Horseshoe Falls that it was hard to hear anything other than the pounding water and hard to see for the spray of water in your eyes.

The boat stayed there, pointed bow-first into the falling water for what seemed like a very long time. And we stood here and there and here and there and got wetter and laughed and screamed in glee with all the kids.

And our faces got very wet.

3. Niagara’s Fury

When the animated feature was over, the far wall opened into a huge, black, round room with water dripping from the ceiling and wet floors made of metal grating with water somewhere beneath. Covered in our blue rain slickers, we shuffled in.

The lights went dark. An ice-cold breeze started blowing. And then bright white lights came on above us and snow was falling. Real snow! Blowing in the cold breeze, falling from somewhere up above.

Then a screen lit up with a video of snow and ice and white mountains. And all around us was the sound of howling wind. And real snow! And then the ground started rumbling and the snow and ice on the screen started falling and the ground shook.

Now the sound of melting snow. Drops of water all around us. On the screen. Falling from above. It came faster and then the sound of crashing thunder and falling rain and water streamed onto us from above and the lights flashed white and the ground shook and more water rained down on us.

Trudy and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t stand up straight. And we would duck our heads as the falling sheets of water fell from above soaking the row of people in front of us to the bone.

Then the water stopped falling and the screen around us showed the Niagara River and the rapids. We were flying down the course of the river in big sweeping arcs from one wall of the canyon to the other, leaning to one side and then another. And then we came to the edge of the falls, to the very edge where the pastel bluegreen water drops into the abyss and white mist rises up from the floor of the gorge. And the crowd screamed as we went over the edge with the water.

And our faces got very wet.

We had dinner on the terrace overlooking the falls and got a seat right at the edge—something that only comes to those who are so ready to eat that they show up before the rush. And frankly, we were very ready to eat.

From our perch, we were able to watch the rainbows come and go depending on the whims of the mist

and watch the people milling around and generally marvel at what a good time we’d had that day.

We were dog-tired. At some point, we figured we’d been on our feet for nigh on 12 hours, and there was more yet to come. But we had smiles on our faces.

“I’m having a real good time,” I told Trudy.

Her eyes sparkled.

Our plan for the evening was to hang out at the falls until after dark, after the colored lights on the falls, after the Wednesday fireworks. But the flaw in that plan was that we would have to take a hotel shuttle back instead of the People Mover.

because the last People Mover leaves just as the fireworks start. (How could they do that, we wondered to ourselves.)

When we reconnoitered the Casino where the shuttle stops, our hearts dropped.

We had left the world of the falls behind and entered the world of the mall. It felt like a science fiction movie, where only you realize that you’re in some artificial world and everyone else is wandering around in zombie-like bliss making you wonder if it is you that is messed up. From the sunset rainbows and people walking on sidewalks and kids running around on the grass, we entered a world of piped-in music and bright lights and shiny floors and store-front facades and fake luxury and meaninglessness and …

Oh my, we hadn’t come here for this. We were desperate to escape.

In the end, we gave up on the hotel shuttle bus and returned to the falls as fast as we could. Except the promenade outside the casino led nowhere but around the casino, back to entrances on the other side. There was no way to return—or rather no way without great walking distances, unless we took the tram up the bluff, which we thought we’d avoid and just do on foot. But the sidewalks went in circles and there we no obvious way back down the hill.

But of course, there was a way; it was just … out of the way, but in the end we found it: a mostly-empty sidewalk crossing over a busy street going by some deserted parking lots at the edge of the casino landscaping, where well-fertilized grass gave way to bare dirt berms and parked cars.

By the time we got back down, we were dog tired and plopped ourselves down at a People Mover stop and told ourselves that we didn’t really have to watch the fireworks, after all.

But you know, this isn’t what I sat down to tell you about. I wanted to tell you about the fireworks, because in the end we did see them, but I see that I have written too much, and so I’ll continue my story later. Tune in then.

After the sun goes down and the sky turns black, they turn on great spotlights from the Canadian side.

And they shine them on the falls.