Nyel’s View

Nyel is on the eighth floor of Vancouver’s Peace Health Hospital. They tell us it is one of the two largest rooms on the floor but, the best part is that it looks out on a panoramic vista that could almost make a hospital stay seem worthwhile. Almost.

It was a bit cloudy yesterday but, when the sky is clear, there is presumably a perfect view of Mount Hood. We will probably be leaving on Thursday or Friday, and I know for a certainty that it won’t be clear enough to see any mountains while we are here. As I’ve known since I was a very little girl, you can only see Mount Hood on Sundays. Ditto the Three Sisters.

The Patient

From the time I was three until I was five, we lived on College Avenue in Portland. It was up a hill so steep that our friend Gyla Cannon wouldn’t go up it in a car. Whenever she came to visit, she would have the driver drop her off at the bottom and she would walk up the stairs which served as the sidewalk. Gyla and her husband Ding were members of the Trails Club and I don’t think that trek up the hill was difficult for her

I don’t know if we had a view of the mountains from our little apartment. But I do know that whenever they appeared, it was a BIG deal! Somehow in my little girl mind such an auspicious occasion equated with something just as special. And there was nothing more special than Sunday.

Mount Hood

Those were the days when Sundays had a unique place in the great scheme of things. For one thing, many people worked half a day on Saturday. As Manager of the Catalog Order Department at Montgomery Ward, that was my father’s situation. So, Sunday was the one day both of my folks were home and we often did something out of the ordinary – like go for a Sunday drive. Maybe even up to Mount Hood… if it was a Sunday that the mountains had ‘come out!’