it's spring
There are several regulars that come to the dog park each morning. Including a few retired professionals, a few work at home moms, this lovely young piano teacher, a dog trainer, this woman who goes into work at eleven everyday and of course the dog walkers.
Over the past week I witness these people slowly emerge from their nylon cocoons – shedding mitts, hats, scarves, hoods, and jacket. We stand about now unencumbered by weighty coats, our faces to the sun like long ago druids – that is if druids stood around holding coffees and those plastic ball flinging poles. (I don’t know the proper name for them)
Most of us are reluctant to leave the park these mornings. It has been so unbelievable mild – I can’t believe I weathered a whole winter season of mornings with these people. It became so routine. I look forward to this hour every day more and more.
I now have 80% of the spring-cleaning done and feel very good about that. Rugs shampooed and windows done. I think I just might be ready for our visitors. I also spent a few hours in the back yard raking and surveying the damage. One rose bush - dead. One grape vine (the young one) – dead. Emerging tulips – chewed on. Lawn – annihilated. I bought some chicken wire and poles and hope to make some kind of barrier between most of the garden and the dogs. I know chicken wire isn’t the prettiest thing to look at but maybe I will plant some morning glories or some other vine to climb it? Or plant thick stalk sunflowers along it? The daffodils are already beginning to sprout from the ground and I will be disappointed if the dogs don’t let me see at least a few yellow heads. I swear there are holes in my yard at least three feet deep.
I have been jogging regularly and Erin has kindly offered to show me a few cords on the guitar and hopefully teach me how to play a song. I will enjoy that, especially because it will give us something to do together in the evenings. Tonight we are all going to supper at my brother –in-laws place. Kids are excited to see their grandparents. And tomorrow night I am off to a friend’s place who is hosting a little euchre competition. Now I only played euchre once but I played Auction all the time back east so I think I will be able to hold my own. Should be fun. Sorry, I’ll stop now..
procrastinating
Sorry about that last post. It didn’t make much sense. I am a bit manic these days. Greg’s parents are arriving on Thursday and I have yet to start hauling out the child size dust balls beneath the beds or clean the windows to let some spring sunshine into this mite infested house. However, I did clean the inside of my fridge and it is a glorious site to behold. The ketchup bottle glistens, the remaining yogurts have this year's date, the jam jar’s spillage has been wiped clean from the glass, and every shelf shines like a fine jewel. But will this be enough to satisfy my in laws? I think not. Even from here I can hear their inner dialogue, “Our poor, hard working son married to that lazy sod.”
No they wouldn’t say that but it is how I feel right now. Actually I get along with Greg’s mom. I don’t think in the beginning I would have been her first choice for her son but I think we grew on each other over the years. I remember the second or third time I met her. It was in her kitchen and the first thing she did was hand me a pair of my nylons and say, “these must be yours, I found them behind the cushions of my GOOD couch.”
Talk about fall through the floor time. It’s not a long story. My brother’s wedding, several drinks, his home was not far from the Reception hall. But hey it is twenty years later and I shouldn’t be so panic stricken that my in laws are coming.
Greg and Monica went off to ski for a couple of days. I would have gone but for the dogs. Erin didn’t want to go. So, we are going to rent a movie tonight, order out – have some daughter- mother time.
Anyway, the dogs are whining at me in stereo for their walk. I am making progress with work and I ended up finishing that short story. It’s not very good but at this stage I figure my writing is like my cooking. Some times I fluke out and get it right but that is only after I burn about ten lasagnas or half bake several apple pies. One of these days I will end up with a decent story, I just got to keep getting them down.
thursday
Monica closed the back cover reluctantly on the book, Eragon by Christopher Paloini, sighed and announced, “That was the best book I ever read.”
“Better than Harry Potter?” I questioned.
“Yah, it was like I was right there the whole time. I didn’t want it to finish. You got to read this book, Mom.”
I will definitely put it on my reading list although I am not making much progress through the books I’m already reading. Greg and I rented Capote last night and really enjoyed it. I am writing this fast because I need to get the dogs out, go for a jog, and then get the work I am doing, for Greg, finished up. The work he gave me I am doing in illustrator. I like Illustrator. It is pretty easy to work in except the other day I had it up and lost the align palette. It was checked off under window but it wasn’t anywhere on my screen to be found. I even closed and reopened the file a few times hoping it would wander back to me. I am hopeless with the rulers, I am entirely dependent on that align tool. Anyway, I closed the application again and noticed beneath it that I had a short story up that I had been trying to finish and suddenly I was sucked into it. An hour later Greg walks in wondering what progress I was making on the figures.
“What’s this? I thought you were working on the stuff I gave you?”
“I was but I lost the align palette.”
Got to make it up today.
spring
When we took the dogs to the park on Sunday we spotted eight or nine robins on the ground all together. I never see them in bunches like that. I wasn’t sure if it was a good sign or not. Do you make one big wish on all of them or a separate wish on each one??
A mob of robins
numerous bursts of red breast
but only one wish
I have so much to do I can’t get started.
Raining
It is hard to get motivated this morning. Girls want to go to the mall. Yesterday ended up being so mild you didn’t need a jacket. Monica got her bike out and went off through the neighbourhood with her friends. I took the dogs for a long walk – they found huge puddles in the quarry and were absolutely in their glory running and wrestling in them. A friend from New Brunswick was in the city a week ago and stopped in the night of the Oscars. He watched them with us. He took a liking to the dogs. Especially bow and would have taking her if we thought two dogs were too much. You know it crossed my mind – not that I think they’re too much – but he does a lot of field work, is in the woods a lot and I can imagine either dog would be in her element racing through a wooded area, near fields and streams. I would like that for them. Heck I would like that for me. But I don’t think I could part with them.
Last night I went to the wake of a wonderful man. He was just starting his retirement the year we moved into this house. He would do anything for anyone – he helped us with the grape vines, took care of Annie in her later years when she couldn’t go on long trips with us anymore, always told us what was happening on the street, last spring he grew to many cucumber plants and gave me a bunch for my garden, gave the girls chocolate bunnies at Easter time and he just loved our cat. Lucky would always be on his porch at his feet when he sat out front in the late afternoons and he would call out to us if we came out of our house, point down at the cat and say, “HEY, I’m going to start charging you guys rent.” And then he would laugh.
He will be very missed on this street.
homesick
I let the dogs out early this morning and stood for a little while at the back door to watch them run circles around the old shed and the pear tree. Our poor yard. It looked less damaged when there was a little winter on it.
A mourning dove sat on the telephone wire, his grey breast silken with sunlight, flashes of white on his tail. I know we are not quite to the end of it yet but it feels pretty much over. Winter, this year, never truly settled in anyway. Greg is off to New York tomorrow. Staying at a friend’s place in SoHo. His parents are arriving here in two weeks. I need to spring clean. I’m restless now. I have this urge to get on the train, go back east for a week – walk the streets of my home town – eat sugar donuts with hot tea – sit on the porch steps of my childhood home until the wood warms beneath me and snowmelt runs in little rivulets down the driveway. I want to find Sandy. Want to bury my hands in the thick coarse manes of the ponies. Look down at my father’s work boots. Hear the rattle of the tractor’s motor. I am restless for what was. For all the things this city fades.
Here in this spring
Here in this spring, stars float along the void;
Here in this ornamental winter
down pelts the naked weather;
This summer buries a spring bird.
Symbols are selected from the years'
Slow rounding of the four seasons' coasts,
In autumn teach three seasons' fires
And four birds' notes.
I should tell summer from the trees, the worms
Tell, if at all, the winter's storms
Or the funeral of the sun;
I should learn spring by the cuckooing,
and the slug should teach me destruction.
A worm tells summer better than the clock,
the slug's a living calendar of days;
What shall it tell me if a timeless insect
Says the world wears away?
Dylan Thomas, Selected Poems
Mom
I don't have many photos of my mom and I always liked this one. I don't even know how old she is in it. It certainly predates all of us kids. I think it was taken in Nova Scotia.
wing clipping
They slam the car’s back door and wave goodbye
And break into a half jog, worried
they might be a little late for the 7 0’clock show
I see only the backs of my long limb girls
Silver slipping sideways across their parkas
But I can tell Erin is excited
by how her elbows press against her sides
by how she holds her hands fist like
This effort it takes her not to flap
At eleven she discovered it brought her ridicule
and so it is only in her room now
that I sometimes catch her
moving her arms wide and lithe like
as if remembering
feathers and hollow bones
wednesday already
I am having an interesting week. First, I thought I was having this cathartic episode on Saturday thinking I could find all my unanswered questions regarding my mother through the poetry of Anne Sexton. But I was finally able to give my head a shake and move on from that. But then Neil Young’s movie (concert) had me pining for roots. He just seemed so personably as he sang about family and dogs and guitars. You can almost smell the earth his music makes you want to get down and touch -- Afterwards, I came up here just to sit for awhile, digest my day, think on things. And I ended up just staring out at the street light -- through the slats of my blinds and through the bare branches of the elm. A hard circular border of light encased the lamp’s inner softness keeping the night from touching it. And in between the elm and this light, snowflakes found their way earthward. The light giving each white flake angel like properties. I am continually amazed at how individuals can reach us through their music, through their placement of words, through their ability to expose themselves so completely. Anne Sexton almost had me spiraling down darkened corridors and had me willingly wanting to go there but Neil Young pulled me back, sat me down and put everything right. All in one day.
And then on Sunday, a Husky who got a bit over protective of his tennis ball attacked Bow. She got a gash in her lip but it is healing well. However that incident kind of ruined my Sunday and Bow’s too. And then there was Erin’s project. I don’t know how many boxes of jello she went through? Jell-O isn’t as easy a medium as it may appear but Erin and I both agree that endoplasmic reticulum is a great sounding word. And although it’s easy to pronounce it makes you feel smart anyway. Similar to Leptictidium, that small prehistoric mammal.
Monday I volunteered for a field trip Monica’s class was taking to the city’s core to see a performance by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I enjoyed it – however, it is not an easy job making sure the group of children you are assigned to get on and off the crowded subways. And I am not use to dealing with young boys – those wild little things were swinging off the subway poles and wrestling and pushing each other and only one of them appeared to know what “stay with the group” meant. But that being said I was amazed at how quiet they were through the performance and it was touching when the children got a chance to play their recorders along with the symphony.
And yesterday I actually did some actual work (meaning I’ll get paid for it) and I also got a nice surprise when an east coast webzine sent me an email requesting permission to reprint a little piece I wrote in 2003 – they are finally going to start a print version of their magazine this spring (a quarterly) and wanted to include some of the older stuff. They’ll send me a contributor’s copy of the issue. I was really pleased about that.
Anyway, Monica just came in for lunch must go.
