Friday, December 31, 2004

the loon

I was talking to my father on the phone the other day and he began to describe in detail about this Loon that is stuck on a lake in New Brunswick. All his buddies had left for the winter but he is stranded in this small amount of open water in the middle of this lake. The rest of the lake is encased in ice and this ice is slowly closing in on this small open area where the loon sits. Loons are awkward on land and can only take off from the water but they need a certain amount of runway in order to get airborne and this poor little guy doesn’t have enough room to take off. Dad said that the bird tries several times a day but always runs out of water before he can launch himself. Everyday his runway gets shorter as the ice takes over. I had asked Dad if someone might try to go out onto the ice and break it up for him a little? Dad doesn’t think that will happen. A tad dangerous maybe and what is one stranded bird in the greater scheme of things? But dad just loves this little fellow’s determination to keep trying day after day. It just seems like such a hopeless situation for him but still he continues to give his best run at it.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004


winter trees Posted by Hello

the other day

white feathers on swans
tapping the cold still water
near icy breakers

Tuesday, December 28, 2004


Swan Posted by Hello

Monday, December 27, 2004

a moon and a movie

I caved a little there yesterday and I could feel myself sliding and I just let myself go. I growled at the kids over something trivial, I snapped at Greg. I wasn’t pleasant at all. It surprised me because I thought I was doing so well and we did have a very nice Christmas. I gave Greg a bonsai tree (a juniper) and he gave me a new digital camera. Monica made such a nice observation when we opened our gifts. She said, “Hey, you guys gave each other a little a bit of yourselves because Dad likes technology and mom likes nature.”

It may take me a while to learn this new camera. It has a lot more settings than my old point and click one. We were going to go boarding on the 28th but Greg threw out his back yesterday during a neighbourly game of ice hockey so I am not sure now. We took up snowboarding three years ago. I guess the thought of turning forty scared us enough to try something new. We figured it would either make us feel young or kill us. Actually, I really enjoy it. It is one of those sports that when you first attempt, you think, “tell me again why I am doing this?” but once you start getting the feel of it and can actually make it down a hill, it is very fun.

After supper last night, I went for a walk trying to shake my doom and gloom attitude and there sat the culprit in the night sky. I always thought that a full moon acts a little like a poultice, pulling from us unwanted feelings. And there it sat large in an indigo sky, in the centre of all these jig saw pieces of grey cloud. It's hard not to take notice, hard not to let it pull at you, take you slightly from yourself. I could have kept walking. I like a cold night and so few people were out but instead i stopped into a movie rental place and picked up Napoleon Dynamite. We watched it last night. It is a very funny movie.

Greg and the girls went for a swim. I think I will wander down to the shore and see if i can get this new fangled camera to work for me. And I should throw that leash away that is still hanging near the front door.

I'm ready for a fresh year.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

boxing day

I was wondering what I could take from my journal and place on my blog, regarding these last several days but a lot of it was too confusing to make much sense of. My image of Christmas this year is a mixture of blessings and despair. On Thursday after the ice had come, I went for a walk, to fetch a few last moment things (stocking stuffers and tea lights). As I was walking, the sun came out for the first time that day and it sent all this warm light to bounce off every ice-covered object. The bare tree branches were brilliant. They all looked like they were strung with white lights. It was one of those big sigh, happy to be a live moments and then the bus came by and just labeled me with heavy, wet brown slush. This sums up the holidays for me. I am trying hard to appreciate it but real life sometimes sneaks in. And then when I figured I made it through, I wake up to the news about the earthquake and flooding on the coast of South East Asia. It just made my tiny balancing act that I have been trying to maintain just plain meaningless. In the wake of such tremendous loss, it is hard not to let despair win this one.

Friday, December 24, 2004


Merry Christmas Posted by Hello

Thursday, December 23, 2004


and still more Posted by Hello


and more Posted by Hello


pine needles Posted by Hello


and a pear tree - all in ice Posted by Hello

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

a few cold days

We had a bit of a cold snap but it’s not so bad now. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here. We have a lovely, tree farmed, balsam fir in the corner of our dining room. We didn’t have room in our living room for it. I am not sure why it isn’t filling our house with that lovely balsam scent? Probably because it was cut down in August? The side table is filled with Christmas cards and my sister in law sent us a beautiful floral centrepiece for our table. I need to go shopping today to fill the house with comfort holiday type food. I also need to replace the bag of pistachios that I somehow consumed in one sitting. I had bought them to make cranberry/pistachio bark but once opened I was unable to leave them alone. And I haven’t yet made a cookie. Greg said he will make the turkey this year. The Christmas cards are still sitting here waiting for stamps. It ‘s not like I have ever sent them out on time anyway.

Erin has been playing Gwen Stefano’s new song – what you waiting for – constantly. I love coming slowly around the corner just to watch her dance to it. Although if she sees me, she will stop, so I need to be a tad sneaky.

Here is a joke I heard From Greg. It is probably an old one but I thought it was funny so I will share.

A Buddhist was walking along the path of enlightenment when he came across a hot dog stand. Feeling a little hungry he went up to the vendor and said, “I’ll have one with everything.”

Tuesday, December 21, 2004


Sun dried roses Posted by Hello

Monday, December 20, 2004

home

The night held onto a softness that gently pressed itself into the metal of the moving car. For great stretches we had the only vehicle on the highway. Jack Pine and Balsam fir lined both sides of the road, their dark green needles beneath a layer of white. This white that kept coming, spiraling down from the sky to drift and blow over the lone highway, glistening in the head lights, being pushed away by wipers, leaving great patches of winter everywhere. I love this stretch of road. It is the road to Kouchibouguac and its great length of sandy ocean beach, and white pine trails. It is the road to Bouctouche with its sand dunes and long neck herons, it is the road home. My brother- in –law drove and my third oldest brother sat in the front seat passenger side. I sat in the back with my oldest brother. The one I met up with at the airport in Toronto. The road was icy and visibility was poor but the darkness and the snow and the stretch of highway in front and being in the car with family had this tremendous peaceful quality about it and I hung onto it like a glass vase.

Growing up I idealized my brothers but ball-playing brothers never had much time for younger sisters. I took on a lot of their characteristics anyway. I fought to have their quiet, stoic strength and in the car I knew we shared that. We talked mainly about the past but I have never felt more in the present, in the moment. We all wanted a coffee, especially my oldest brother but it was only a tree-lined highway for the time being. I listened to my brothers as they brought up childhood friends they shared and what some of them were up to now. They talked of old stories of our youth. Stories that always held the quality and characters of a Dicken's novel. And we talked of our sister.

We pulled into Bouctouche to the Tim Horton’s but it was closed, so we ended up in an Irving Station pouring ourselves hugh coffees from the dispenser while the friendly owner chatted to us and this long day finally fell into another.

By the time we arrived home it was nearing one-thirty. I stayed the first night at my brothers and his girl friend/partner’s place. I was exhausted but I couldn’t sleep. The following morning everyone gathered at my Dad’s. It was a sad reunion but I was so grateful to be amongst them again. Cousins and neices and nephews and aunts and uncles and friends and neighbours kept dropping in with food and warm sentiments. Again we talked endlessly about her, about her great ability to laugh at any situation she found herself in, about her wonderful way with children and her stubborn streak. My family always had this gift of finding humor in the most unlikely situations and we used this humor in great abundance that day and the days that followed.

At the wake we all looked a bit like deer in a deer field – vulnerable and timid. We joked about the bad tasting coffee and the possibility that it held embalming fluid and were all truly amazed at the volume of people who walked down the line of us, shaking our hands, offering their condolences. My brother who I was standing next too, kept joking with me or asking me “who is this one coming, she/he looks familiar, I should know him, right?” And most of the time I shrugged my shoulders because although I recognized faces, I was always lost when it came to names and being away so long made this even more difficult but still I knew many.


I didn’t cry at the funeral until my younger sister (by one year) read the speech she prepared. She is a wonderful speaker and a true writer and she captured the spirit of our sister in her words. My sister’s twin also wrote a speech but did not want to read it. Instead she gave us all a copy of her words, which I placed in my journal as soon as I arrived home.

After the funeral we went back to Dad’s and watched old home movies. It felt fitting because most of it was of Christmas (1974) and my sister and my mother were alive and well on the screen.

I changed my flight that went into Toronto for the flight my brother was on, which landed in Hamilton and then went on to Calgary. It was hard saying good-bye to everyone that last day. I am not sure if I truly said good-bye to my sister yet. I tried but for some reason it didn’t feel heart felt, like I meant it. I think I need a summer day, a stretch of space and a field full of wild grass to make it seem real. The last family member I said good-bye too was my oldest brother. We parted in Hamilton. One of the last things he had asked was “Do you ever regret moving away?”

And I answered. “Sometimes.”

He said he felt the same way. He works in construction and once, after working a few years out there, he asked some Newfoundlanders, who had been living out west for much longer than that. “ Does it ever get to feel like home out here?” and they laughed and said “never.”

I caught the Go Bus to Toronto. As I was getting on dragging my suitcase behind me, there was a man who didn’t have the right ticket to get him back to Toronto and he was pleading his case, explaining to the driver how he thought he had paid for a two way trip and how important it was for him to get home. I had to agree with him. It is important to get home so after I pulled my suitcase onto one of the seats, I fished around in my pocket for his fare but than I heard the bus driver tell him that it was O.K. and for him to find a seat. And I was happy for the dark interior of the bus as we pulled away because this kind gesture from the bus driver had me tearing up again.

Out side of Union station I stood and looked around for the girls and Greg but couldn’t spot the car. Snow was falling. It was getting cold. Taxis were lined up all down front street calling for fares, the exhaust and the snow intermingling. The city once again big and overwhelming and I thought of what my brother said about regret. Greg and the girls surprised me by coming up behind. And when I turned around, it was the smiles on their red-cheeked faces that told me I didn't have any.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Saturday Quote

“It was easy enough to say, as Monroe often had, that the path to contentment was to abide by one’s own nature and follow its path. Such she believed was clearly true. But if one had not the slightest hint towards finding what one’s nature was then even stepping out on the path became a snaggy matter.”

Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain was in the top five of my favourite books of 2001. The movie, for me, didn't hold a fraction of the power the book had but than again I have never came across a movie that did hold the power of a book.

Friday, December 17, 2004


winter white  Posted by Hello

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

sad news

December isn’t going so well. I guess that is a bit of an understatement. My sister died suddenly last Wednesday morning. I got a flight home on Wednesday evening. I was on the same flight with my oldest brother who was coming home from Calgary. I would like to write a little about the last week but it all had this numbness to it that I wouldn’t be able to articulate very well. I arrived back here last night. I just want to get through Christmas now and make it happy for the girls. I’m adjusting. My heart hurts mainly for her twin and her son. It is hard for me to let her go, it must be devastating for them. I wish when I had hugged my sister good-bye this summer that I had held on to her a little tighter, a little longer.

Monday, December 06, 2004


in the quarry Posted by Hello

skylines and quarries

We had snow but this is the first real snow. It is coating everything. I like it best in the crooks of branches, clinging there in small white clusters. It sits so placidly in these splits, in the spaces where leaves never grow.

Yesterday, all was bare and the sun seemed to be giving December a gentle talking to. I decided to go for a walk to the old quarry. Monica came with me. What an overgrown and lovely, quiet place that is. However the ground there is marshy and toxic and I think that was the main reason it stayed undeveloped so long but now there is talk of high rises going up where the bull rush and red wing black bird thrive. I am running out of places to get my little fixes of wild around here.

On Friday night we went to our first Christmas party. It was nice. Lots of food. It was in a condo right in the heart of the city, on one of the higher floors. They have a great view of the skyline. But I always find it to be a very lonely feeling looking out onto all those lit up buildings. And the moon on Friday night had a shadow cutting it almost horizontally in half. It looked like a bowl that someone was tipping ever so slightly to maybe drink from. It was different.

Sunday, December 05, 2004


on a Sunday walk Posted by Hello

Saturday, December 04, 2004

a saturday quote

just now she had reached security; she hovered like a hawk suspended; like a flag floated in an element of joy which filled every nerve of her body fully and sweetly, not noisily, solemnly rather, for it arose, she thought, looking at them all eating there, from husband and children and friends; all of which rising in this profound stillness seemed now for no special reason to stay there like a smoke, like a fume rising upwards, holding them safe together.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Friday, December 03, 2004

this week

December started off with my final story being returned. Five went out this year and five came back, just like that cat in the song. Except that none of them came back the very next day. This last one took nine months. However, it was a very nice rejection letter, in a form letter kind of way. The last paragraph said

“again, thanks for sending your work to us. We look forward to reading future submissions from you.”

How nice is that? This must make for a lot of re-submitting? I know I’m going to. I am bound and determined to send out at least ten this January around to various places. I just have to spend some time fixing up a few first and finishing the one I started in Oct. And I am not giving up on my nano book either. Lots to do after Christmas to keep me entertained.

Cold day. Girls don’t have school so we are off to a slow start. This was report card and teacher/parent interviews week. All went well. Yesterday Greg and I went out to lunch in Little India. We went to this pure vegetarian place. The food was delicious. And on Monday I had found myself in Greektown up on the Danforth while on an errand. It was a sunny day and although I did have my camera with me and there were some great shots it was a little too busy and I didn’t have the guts to pull out my camera. There are a lot of bridal salons in that area. I walked by one window and this young woman was sitting in front of it trying on a bridal veil. She was looking into a mirror and at first glance I thought she was a mannequin she was so still but then she reached up slowly with her hand to brush blonde hair away from her forehead and readjust the band.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

blueberry pancakes

This morning Greg came down and ask me what I was doing.

I said, “I’m making blueberry griddle cakes.”

He laughed and said, “Who are you? I have never seen you turn that stove on before noon.”

“Shut up or you won’t get any of these griddle cakes.”

This started the night before. Monica had said she was not going to write a fiction story this time in her school journal and that instead she wanted to describe a cold December morning.

“Great,” I said. “Remember your adjectives. Teachers love to see lots of adjectives.”

And wow did she pack on the adjectives. She had done a great job but I started to question the non-fiction aspect of it. In it, she had herself up before the rest of us, eating a plate full of blue berry pancakes with hot maple syrup and sipping on a hot chocolate. God love her – she never had that for breakfast in her life. But to her it must have sounded so much better than, “I am gazing at the morning sun through the frost etched windows while chewing on my fruit-to-go bar and my rock hard eggo waffle.”

Anyway, so I got up early this morning and made blueberry griddlecakes trying to put a little non-fiction back in her journal writing.