Yesterday, I was doing the ever-routine task of laundry which for me as a renter means having to take the elevator down to the first floor and go into the communal laundry room. It's my least favourite task. I'm not sure if thats because it reminds me I have never owned my own washer and dryer and that definitely feels like a fail or if it's because the gathering, the sorting, the steps leading up to being ready to do laundry always feel a bit daunting for some inexplicable reason. Then afterwards, it feels the same as well, not a big deal and should have been done sooner afterall.
As in a lot of older apartment buildings, there is a common room somewhere near the laundry room and the one in my building is large and dark, full of books that other tenants have left, an assortment of furniture, an old piano, which I hadn't even realized was there. On one of the bookshelfs someone has left two books standing up as if a librarian has curated these two books they most want to spotlight.
My eyes were immediately drawn to one of them, a poetry book, because of the author's name: Alan Woodland, In the Space Between. His signature was written on the first page. The bill, tucked inside, made it clear it was purchased from Black Bond Books in Maple Ridge at Valley Fair Mall. It looks like the book may have been a gift bought Dec. 11, 2021. The book was published in 2021.
It's a slim book with a white cover. There's a picture of a beach in black and white, and a person, gender undistinguishable, running at the shoreline. Alan Woodland's photo is, as customary, on the back cover.
The reason this book stood out, and the author's name, is because my eldest sister, Heather, who died from breast cancer in 1991 at 43 years of age had worked with him at the New Westminster Public Library where he had been its chief librarian for many years.
In the late sixties, and into the early 70s, I would hear his name mentioned at our kitchen table and always with reverance. I conjured up what he might be like. A man of letters. Sophisticated. Gentle. Funny. This is the image I created of him based on some of the stories I heard of him, without having ever met him. On at least one occasion my sister would bring a co-worker or two home from the library for lunch and as a young child, 13 years younger than her, her work there, and the pile of books on her bedside table, her light on in her bedroom into the wee hours of a night, seemed ever present.
Is finding the book a sign from my sister? It made me happy to think that way. Why not? Of all the books people leave, why was that one on top of the bookshelf awaiting the right reader, a poetry book so many people would have no interest in at all? I like to think it was not a coincidence. Someone had to bring that book on a ferry to get it here to Victoria. How long has it lived on the island? Was it purchased at the epic annual Times Colonist book sale? Was the person who put the book in our common room still living in the building? Did they read the book before putting it down there? I don't have any answers, and probably never will but it's my treasure now.
Alan Woodland would be about 95 years old now. I do believe he is still alive. I'm sure it would please him to know someone who has never met him, has a very warm feeling about him as a result of a sister who once worked for him in her hopeful, youthful days long before cancer took hold.
I think seeing his face on the back cover may be the first time I have ever been able to put a face to the memories I have of this man's connection to my sister all those years ago.
It would be wrong not to share some of his words from one of his poems here. I've chosen a short one that seems appropriate in this context:
Between the Lines
We poets
write out of the long history
of ancestors and family
our hands in their earth
our words warmed by their fires
voices of ancient pipes
echo in our vowels
We poets
watch antd wait
sensing
the turning of their seasons
sunrise
moonwane
their stars in our breath
their tides in our hearts
We poets
listen for footsteps
snatches of old songs
search for fleeting shadows
dancing between the lines
- Alan Woodland