a wee excerpt followed by my own feelings (not the chair’s) on macaroni, mother’s day cards, and being an orphan

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

On a day when thoughts go to maternal places I remember how my mother liked bluebirds and flowers on her cards, the more saccharine the better and preferably store-bought. Nothing made at school with macaroni thankyouverymuch. So I grew up with a certain amount of seasonal card anxiety and my teeth still ache at cardboard bluebirds but what’s more interesting is how this stuff finds its way into our work. Here’s a slice from a story I wrote some years ago and which came to mind today. The first half is narrated by a woman who sees an abandoned chair at the side of the road and picks it up. The second half is narrated by the chair and begins like this:


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“So there I am, just hanging out at the corner of Main and Redfern, minding my own business when a white Chevy Impala pulls up. Hop in, says the broad behind the wheel, take a load off. What am I supposed to do, be rude? Okay, I say. She opens the door, I get in. Gee you look a little blue,she says and then it comes up that I’m an orphan. Fine, I’m an orphan, so what. Well she gets all choked up like it’s a big thing. Me, I see it as freedom from having to stand in line every year buying Mother’s Day cards.”

***

My own feelings on macaroni are that I prefer spaghetti.

About mother’s day cards, I have to agree with the chair, but I feel that way about most greeting cards. Much prefer making my own. But not with macaroni (see above).

And on being an orphan… I come from a family of four. My sister died first, much too long ago, of ALS. My dad next and with that, part of my mother. She was forever different without him and I was too and somehow in our differences we found each other, eventually singing more often than arguing and to be honest I’m not sure she even cared about cards at that point, in any form. It’s a strange thing to feel orphaned as an adult, and maybe it’s not quite the right word but there’s certainly a feeling of being cast adrift in some way and so it fits how I felt for a long time after she died. It’s more than missing a person, more like wondering where you fit now. The miracle is the answer, which is pretty much the same as it always was, but seeing it is the miracle. It’s all a process, isn’t it, sadness but with its own kind of beauty, different and the same for each of us I suspect, on some level anyway.

The chair, of course, might have an entirely different view.

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a woodland moss-tery/moss-story

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A well placed forest chair invites me to stop and sit a while this morning instead of walking further along and down to the creek as I usually do and even though the sky is overcast and still chilly enough at this hour for parka and scarf, I never say no to this kind of thing, especially here, an area that used to be dark and heavily treed, now open to light, created by hurricane Fiona a year and a half ago and where I now hang a couple of feeders which the juncos, chickadees, and squirrels share, and where today I watch a chickadee work at something in the moss, a breakfast of bugs?… but no, the motion is more gathering, nesting material I decide and assume bits of dried grass until it goes on for ages and I realize there’s no actual grass in the area so I can’t imagine what she’s gathering because it’s not the moss itself and when she finally flies off I wander over to see what else is there and I recognize an old deposit of fox scat, (because when you walk in a forest every morning you notice these things) and I know this particular scat has been there for months, I’ve seen it morph, the scat part having deteriorated, leaving a pile of mainly fur… fluffy and clean enough for a chickadee’s nest apparently… which delights me as only scat can, and which is why I never refuse a woodland invitation.

scat

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spring is in the air, the sequel

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

A story written for a little girl in France, who speaks both English and French.

The preamble: https://matildamagtree.com/2024/02/29/spring-is-in-the-air/

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L’HISTOIRE DE PEPE LE PEW

Asseyez-toi and listen to the story of un homme that smelled in a way that not tout le monde loved.

It was hiver and Pepe le Pew was frois. He needed une maison to stay chaud. He tried un arbre but it was tres windy and his chapeau kept flying off.

He tried the inside of a trrrrrreeeeessssssss ENORME rubber boot (a polka dot one!) he found in a ditch, but it smelled worse than Pepe le Pew. And it had boue and l’eau inside, which was not nice pour dormir.

He tried the nid of a chickadeedeedee (too petite), and the nest of an aigle (too high up to climb every day).

He asked the ecureuil rouge if he would like a roommate and the ecureuil rouge said: are you kidding me??? (which means non)

And then une nuit froide, when the neige was starting to fall, Pepe noticed un chat going under one end of the barn. And he followed the cat (we aren’t sure if the cat is a he or a she so we will refer to them as they) and the cat fell asleep on a little nid of newspapers and dry bits of feuilles and they looked very chaud et confortable. 

So Pepe le Pew, very politely, and very quietly, made himself une petite nid at the other end of the grange and there he stayed tout l’hiver and came out during the jour to enjoy the soleil and to find little things to eat and then went back under his end of the barn to snuggle up for the nuit.

And the chat didn’t mind one bit.

And so they spent the hiver together, tranquillement.

But that’s not the fini of the histoire because even though by printemps Pepe le Pew had moved out of his nid d’hiver he had left behind a fragrance in the grange that when the door was opened for the premiere time (by moi), made moi rire et rire et rire (parce que I don’t mind the fragrance) and say, ah, c’est evident you were ici, Pepe le Pew!! and I’m heureux that we could give you a maison d’hiver. Bonne chance, bonne chance!

Come back again l’annee prochaine!

La fin.

pepe

Le vrai, et le vraiment, le Pew.

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spring is in the air

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

barn door

Opened the barn door for the first time in two months because until yesterday’s thaw it’s been blocked with ever increasing levels of snow and drifts too big to clear away and was immediately met with a loud and clear fragrance, bringing two thoughts to mind:

one, I’m glad we’ve been able to provide safe shelter for the producer of said fragrance—I’ve seen its tracks in the snow all winter and often wondered how it (and others) survive,

and b) it’s a good thing I like an earthy pong (for that is what I’ll call it).

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skunk
Large-tailed Skunk (Mephitis macroura) from the viviparous quadrupeds of North America (1845) illustrated by John Woodhouse Audubon (1812-1862)

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dreamy wednesday

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

In the room where I write, a woman who now raises alpacas once slept, and in another room I dream of a poet bringing me a precious peony bush from her garden but whose name in the way of dreams I’ve forgotten. She says oh dear, I’ve brought the wrong peony and I say what I really want is to know how one word can be a poem, a request the poet ignores as she tuts and tsks over my garden which I’ve asked her to advise on and which she does by pointing and saying that there is in the wrong place and this is how you choose the right place, it has to do with breath not some wild-ass idea you have about freedom and this has to come out and this and this and when we’re done a single shrub remains, a La Di Da Floribunda Rose, everything else in a heap at the feet of the compost bin.

rose.3

Van Gogh’s Blooming Rose Bush, 1889

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metaphor in pin stripes

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

I have a black and white pin-striped suit.

For many years I loved it.

I wore it to fancy events with bare feet and Birkenstocks. I once wore it to a black tie event with bare feet, Birkenstocks, and a black satin tie loosely looped like a necklace.

Once upon a time I was required to attend many fancy events. I don’t like fancy events.

And eventually I didn’t like the suit.

Or thought I didn’t.

I kept trying to give it away but it wouldn’t leave. It just stayed at one end of my closet like an old friend, the kind that still feels part of your life even though you know you’ve grown apart, gone down different roads. You still understand each other, but you also make each other uncomfortable.

The suit had become a source of familiar discomfort.

So the other day I decided again to get rid of it.

I tried it on, for old times sake. I started with the pants.

And suddenly everything made sense.

I love the pants. It’s the jacket I don’t like. I have never truly liked the jacket. There, I said it. What a relief. I hate the jacket but I love the pants. I want to wear them with a unmatching jacket or baggy sweater, a tee shirt, a loose cotton blouse. And Birkenstocks. Always Birkenstocks.

And, no, I don’t want to wear the jacket, at all, with anything.

And this is the amazing thing: to realize I can let go of the part that no longer suits me. I don’t need to keep the jacket just because it’s a SUIT.

Why didn’t I know this years ago?

I can let go of the part that no longer suits.

And embrace what remains.

me, merrygo

the tao of garum masala

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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Here’s how it goes:

You run out of garum masala.

Days go by. A couple weeks even.

You love curry.

But you refuse to shop in grocery stores for things you can find elsewhere.

There is a spice store in town.

You don’t go into town that often.

So this morning you look at your Indian cookbook (one of Vij’s), hoping to find a discussion about what to do when you have no garum masala and are not heading to town anytime soon.

Make your own Vij says.

Of course!!!

He also says: but make sure your kitchen has good ventilation and the doors to your bedrooms are closed as the roasting of spices can get quite pungent. Maybe open a window. Also you will need a spice (or coffee) grinder.

Hmmm. You’re missing a few of the spices and anyway you don’t feel like breaking up a bag of cinnamon sticks or buying a grinder and you especially don’t like the word ‘ventilation’…

But you DO have SOME of the necessary spices and this in itself is oddly thrilling, this idea of neither buying garam masala nor roasting and grinding your own nor doing without but simply making an easy version of it… until you next go to town and can either a) buy some already made or b) buy the spices necessary to blend your own now that you know what they are, but what’s even more thrilling, and seriously odd too, is that it never once occurred to you in all the decades you’ve been making curry to wonder what garum masala actually was.

Epiphanies come in many flavours.

spice blends

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extreme ikebana

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Also known as an empty vase.

A wedding gift that over the decades has held bouquets of tulips, daffodils, all manner of wildflowers, yarrow and goldenrod, bunches of dogwood, wild pussy willow stems, sometimes nothing more than a single leaf from a giant sage green hosta, and just a year or two ago it was home to a birthday arrangement from a faraway friend and the magic of it kept bits of that arrangement going for a ridiculous number of weeks.

But we have young cats now and they jump everywhere and notice EVERY NEW THING that’s brought into the house. A single hosta leaf included.

And so, Ikebana — the Japanese art of minimalist flower arrangement, the idea being that the empty space around the stems is an important part of the arrangement.

Ikebana translates to : making flowers come alive.

And so, extreme Ikebana : the empty vase itself becoming the space where bouquets of memories and memories of bouquets… live.

All of which, invisible to the cats.

vase

the light getting in

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

There’s a beach where I sing Cohen’s Anthem to the seals, the chorus anyway, about cracks letting in light, the perfection of imperfection. I’m pretty sure that’s what the seals are singing too.

But this post isn’t about seals.

It’s about trees, which is part of the reason I’ve been inconsistently present for the better part of a year,

I’ve been wandering among what’s left of the them ever since Hurricane Fiona struck the east coast, when the island is said to have lost 40% of its trees on that single day in September, 2022.

Much has changed about the landscape since, not to mention the shoreline, not to mention the bridges, wharves, barns and houses demolished. The everywhere piles of timber have become a testament to the art of log stacking.

I’ve been wandering in what’s left of wandering space in the forest around my house, initially dazed, less so each time. We’ve done mammoth cleanups and have begun to cut a few new trails but we’re taking our time. I realize I don’t need a whole forest to wander through in order to feel awe.

There is new sunlight, saplings too, and mossy glades have sprung up among the still standing spruce and eastern larch (tamarack), the maple and birch, groves of beech, mountain ash, serviceberry, alder and aspen.

The other day I counted eight or nine new oak trees I’d never seen before. A few days after that I saw twenty on the same walk. This morning I stopped counting. This is the way of trees, I realize, the slow reveal of them. A forest at a glance is… green space. Up close it’s an unending universe.

Just the other day, at the edge of the tree line, I found two new apple trees, each a great distance from the other. One I call the galette tree for its tiny perfect fruit, tart enough for galettes, one of the few things I enjoy baking, precisely because the crust wants to be imperfectly shaped.

The old linden beside the house was perfectly shaped, but also imperfect because it had grown so large it almost touched the hydro lines and a month or so ago when another hurricane threatened, and because the direction of the forecasted winds (different than Fiona’s) would force the tree’s branches right onto the power lines, we took no chances, and had it cut down. I expected to be sad, pained even, but it wasn’t in the least painful, not a bit sad. There was a sense that the tree itself knew it had become a danger and the space it left was given like a gift, not only to the bee balm and juniper, lilac and witch hazel that have barely survived in its shadow but to me, personally. Its stumps invite me to weave ribbons around them and carve them with Cohen’s words.

Now every morning I salute these stumps and the space once filled with the old linden’s canopy, thank it for its willingness to continue standing despite (we realized) rotting from the middle and something eating its leaves, for making it easy to do what was necessary, and for the light its absence allows.

The other day in my ramblings along the tree line, I noticed among the ‘greenery’ a tiny grove… of linden saplings.

What else to say…

Here’s to the cracks and the light.

Ring all the bells.

light gets in

summer postcards — call the library

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

library, cardigan

When I was a kid the local library was a kind of household guru where not only the books were revered but also anyone who answered the phone. My dad’s mantra, call the library!, used whenever he was stumped by one of my questions and didn’t feel like guessing. And it wasn’t a suggestion… but delivered as a godsend solution, a way of contacting The Oracle itself. And while I don’t remember any of the calls, what I asked, what they answered (and there were many calls) I have the feeling they always came through. Wait. I remember one call. I’d received a chain letter warning me to make X number of copies… or else. Heaps of carbon paper and cramped fingers would have been involved not to mention I didn’t know enough people to send them to. Still, I didn’t want the ‘or else’ fate so asked my dad what to do and, erring on the side of caution, he decided The Oracle would probably know how to proceed and if they didn’t no one would. As it turned out, The Oracle was brilliant, I can still feel the relief in my ten year old self. Just send out a couple letters to cover your bases, they said. Maybe I’m paraphrasing. But only slightly. The Oracle never minced words.

A library is a medicine cabinet. What can heal one person may not work at all for somebody else.

—Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own

Long postcard.

But, books.

I was speaking the other day with a friend about home library/bookshelf organization, the categories we have and I loved hearing the sameness and difference of her method to mine. For the record, mine is alphabetical and separate categories. A small room lined with thrift shop and IKEA shelving holds the majority. Novels and short stories get separate spaces. Non-fiction is divided into four categories: essays, memoir, biographies, general info. There’s a poetry shelf. One for gardening (two categories: essays and how-to). Another for nature, generally. A Canada shelf. An anywhere-but-Canada shelf, which mostly includes Florida, Austria, and a tiny island in the Caribbean. A shelf for my favourite children’s books. A small, pared down, collection of literary journals. A shelf of miscellaneous wotnots including greek mythology and holistic cat care. Dictionaries and writing related books live in my office. Art books are in a second sitting room. All food related books are in the kitchen. Yoga and anything I find inspirational, lives on a small bookshelf in my bedroom.

I used to know someone who refused books as gifts because her shelves ONLY held books of the same size and specific colours. Note: used to know.

I often wonder at the origins of a person’s bookish habits, The What and How of what we keep and Why. And, our love of books to begin with, is it a nurture or nature thing, the fact of growing up with many books or almost none, of being read to daily or never being read to, that makes a difference or is there some other mystery involved? Not sure if it qualifies as an origin story, but here’s mine.

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me, cardigan