Ria Meronek's All About Arta

(Note from Arta: When people asked me what I would like for the celebration of my 80th birthday, I told them I would like a bit of writing that I could put on our family blog. Here is that writing from my friend, Ria)

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Arta and I met in a non-credit creative writing class at the University of Calgary and developed our friendship in  group that continued after the writing class was over. The group started with six or seven women but soon was only five. That group met monthly (except for July and August when we all indulged in that love affair that Canadians have with summer) for more than a decade. Then life pulled apart that group of woman, but not the memories and bonds we share. Karen died, Arta retired and moved to BC and I went on a trip to Africa. I lost touch with Arta, there were no exchanges of emails, no calls, no visits for almost a decade, only fond memories. Early in 2019 I sent out an email – a tentative “are you still alive? are you there?” and within moments there was a reply – “Yes, I am alive, yes, I am here in BC.” And so began part two of our friendship.

Ria Meronek at Annis Bay Siding 2019

I have wonderful memories of the week I spent with Arta at her home on Shuswap lake in June of 2019. You could say I invited myself – I did not want to wait longer to reacquaint myself with the amazing woman I had known and to get to know her even better. I had learnt in the intervening decade how fleeting moments of connection could be and how easily it can be to miss opportunities to connect.

Arta is like a package wrapped in layer upon layer of beautiful cloth and paper and scarves, adorned with stickers, jewelry and calligraphy. Each layer is beautiful. Some are simple, some are filled with color and texture, but each is a part of Arta. It takes time and patience and prodding to begin to expose all those layers.

In that week last June we had walks through the forest and through great patches of blossoming lupines. We talked and laughed, we wrote, and while I read, Arta gardened. Boy did she garden! It was as if she even resented the need for sleep because the gardening was calling her. She was up and out before 6 am – pulling weeds mostly. She loved pulling weeds. “I have never been here in the Spring and it is just so wonderful” she said. “I love pulling the weeds and making this a beautiful place for my grandkids to play.”

I would pull her in for meals and to relax and for ice cream. How Arta loves ice cream! Big bowlfuls of ice cream. No wee desert bowls, no, it is big soup bowls full of ice cream. We went to see the last films of the winter film series in Salmon Arm – a film about when all the planes landed in Gander, and another from Iceland to which we arrived 15 minutes late, but no worry we didn’t have to pay because we were late. We went to the second hand store - Churches she called it. She needed a new toaster, or at least newer than the one she had. She told me of all the wonderful treasurers she had found at Churches over the years. She took me to the Sicamous dump because it had the best view of Mara Lake, which it did. And towards the end of the week Arta told me that she had never spent time alone at the lake with just one other person. That with her large family there had never been the opportunity to do so. And I think that it was different because there was no one else for her to put forward, there was just me, wanting to see her, to know her better, and my focus was on her and she was patient with my prodding and poking at the layers.

Arta is one of the most calm, understated people I have ever met. You could mistake her for being bland and uninteresting – a big mistake. Her presentation is like a swan gracefully gliding upon still water, not even disturbing the water as she glides past. Partly I think this is because Arta does not think of herself as being anything but ordinary – as being just like anyone else. She always reflects about how interesting other people are, but refuses to see herself and her life as anything but ordinary and somehow unremarkable. But how wrong she is! Over the years of the writing group Arta would reveal little nuggets about her life and then be surprised and puzzled about the reaction of the other group members who found these nuggets interesting and extraordinary. I remember her nugget of how she started writing and the revelation of the binders of writing she had – copies of the letters she sent to her parents each week. She brought several of these binders (each a large 3 ring binder filled to capacity) to the next meeting as we were eager to see this extraordinary compilation. Random pluckings from the binders revealed gem after gem of writing. This was before the internet and email and blogging.

It is hard to ruffle Arta – very hard. I have yet to see her angry or upset. That is the smooth glide of the swan. But there is much that goes on below the surface; a great curiosity, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding, a keen eye and sensitive ear, her own (often private) laughter at the world and the antics of others, her willingness to say yes to opportunities and patience, oh so much patience.

In thinking about what I would write to acknowledge and honour Arta I was struck that she is a Renaissance woman. I looked up the description of what a modern Renaissance woman is:

Being a modern day Renaissance man doesn’t mean you have to be an accomplished poet or master sculptor. Rather, it means being as open to the world as possible and embracing all opportunities as they come your way. It means keeping your mind sharp and your body in good shape, for the mind needs a healthy body to achieve its full potential. It means learning as much as you possibly can. It means traveling and seeing the world, experiencing its people, and learning its language. It means not being afraid to be who you are and feel comfortable in your own skin.

Does not this description, with the exception of that pesky word ‘man’, fit Arta to a T? Arta is a frequent and wholehearted consumer of the arts – opera, film, music, theatre. Who do you know, besides perhaps some dusty academics, who have read the full report on the Royal Commission on the Status of Women AND is reading the full report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The full report – I know because she told me when she had finished reading the list of all the schools, pages of them, she told me. Arta has travelled the world and she revels in meeting people and experiencing different cultures whether it is in some far off place or in her own back yard. Ok, she does not speak other languages, but she does use the English language with great skill as her writing attests. Her thirst for knowledge, her curiosity and her willingness to say yes to opportunities, lead to her evolution as a feminist. She did not start out to be a feminist, she told me, it just happened as she was exploring her world.

I am younger than Arta by almost two decades. I often wonder if I can be as accomplished and as interesting as Arta is by the time I am 80. The best compliment that I could give Arta is that she sets the bar very high just by being herself.

Ria