a story for spring that begins like this

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

When my father was in hospital that year he later died, I often sat with him at his bedside reading Emily Carr’s Growing Pains. Or maybe it was The House of All Sorts. Or possibly The Book of Small. Some things are vague from this time. But I do remember it was Emily Carr. And I remember my father’s hands, so strangely still above the sheets (I don’t remember the colour of the sheets, only how they contrasted with the ruddiness of his skin) and I sometimes paused in my reading to look at them as he slept, remembering how all through my childhood they so confidently held a hammer or a saw, magically transforming various shapes of wood into things, into furniture, all while I watched from a tall wooden stool beside his workbench. Sitting beside him feels natural and for the first time in my life I reach out to touch those familiar hands. This wakes him. I hadn’t counted on that and my immediate reaction is to pull away (we’ve never been a family of hand holders and I don’t want to embarrass him) but before I can move, his fingers wrap around mine, weakly, but insistent enough to hold me there. His eyes open for a moment to meet mine, then close. I pick up my book with the other hand, continue reading.

I don’t have a picture of his hands.

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A story for spring will continue every other day or so as the mood strikes me...

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spring!

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Meteorological spring, that is. Begins March 1st. So we’re well into the season and while the view is still all white, I swear there’s something in the air. Walking past the apple trees this morning I notice flitting in the branches; there hasn’t been flitting in that area for months. Vireos probably, they like to nest there. And the chickadees, who hang out deep in the forest where I keep feeders and where the juncos hop about underneath picking up whatever falls, strike me as being more chipper than usual. The geese are active on the creek again, already nesting among the cattails and ice. I try not to disturb them as I tiptoe by. I notice there are more woodpeckers and fleeting notes of birdsong, still rare and subtle and maybe only one voice at a time, but even so… there is something.

And as much as I love winter and this one has been perfection, and though I woke this morning and revelled in dazzling sunrise followed by blue blue sky and pristine landscape and the crunch of snow in the crisp cold air, I thought, for the first time since winter started… I’m ready to welcome the grass again.

Ready, but not in a hurry.

Greetings from my magnificent raised beds, each over a metre tall, the snow so deep and so hard-packed that I can stand on it and tower above them. Don’t even talk to me about the compost bins.

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zwetschgenkompotterinnerungen

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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The german language likes to take two or more things and make them one. So… memories of plum compote becomes Zwetschgenkompotterinnerungen (plumcompotememories).

This is the language I grew up with, spoken by my parents to each other and to me, although I almost always answered in English. Still, most of my childhood memories come with German subtitles. And it doesn’t take much to inspire memory, especially when it comes to food. Recently, a conversation about compote had me back in my parents’ fruit cellar where cement walls held wooden plank shelves which held rows of glass jars which held preserved pears, plums, cherries, peaches, and pumpkin, each of them eventually served as compote, a simple dish of fruit-in-syrup to end a meal, and then only occasionally, depending on the meal. No such thing as dessert in our house, which seemed to me (and still does seem) a strange course. In a restaurant, if I’m still hungry after a meal, I’ve been known to order another starter, but never a ‘dessert’.

My favourite of my mother’s compotes was pumpkin (which, I’ve learned is, botanically, a fruit) because of the way the pumpkin-stringy texture softened in the sugary brine but remained al dente, a hint of cloves… perfection. Unlike, say, her pear compote, which I didn’t like for being either too hard or too soft or the texture rough, depending on the pears. Peaches were reliable preserves, and cherries were excellent. (She once gave me a particularly ancient jar, at least a decade or two old, assuring me it was safe to eat. I survived, so I guess it was. It was also nectar. The cherries so soft they melted on my tongue. I ate them straight out of the jar with a spoon.) I didn’t like her plum compote much, again the texture wasn’t right and anyway I preferred plums in dumplings… but this morning I happened to take some from the freezer, Zwetschgen I’d pitted last year and ate them with yoghurt and the texture was fine, which made me think it’s possible my mushiness standards have loosened over time. Or maybe now that I preserve my own fruit, I’m not so fussy.

It’s also probably worth mentioning that if you come to my house for a meal I will almost certainly not have thought to make anything for dessert and because I don’t make compote, there will be nothing at all sweet. (I do, however, always have chocolate on hand…)

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the view from here

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

I’m sitting on a small wooden deck, plastic chair well padded with a wool blanket. Comfortable despite the temperature. I’m looking at trees dancing in wind and thinking how different they are, birch, balsam, maple, spruce, tamarack, alder, beech, and yet the same, needing water, light, nourishment. Kinda like us. Each of us different yet the same. What I love about the dancing is that every one of them has their own way of moving depending on variety, age and size, its location relative to other trees. Every nuance in wind direction, no matter how brief or tiny the increment, registers in their branches, the same effect but differently for each. The same but different. And how it’s this difference that makes the whole thing work. If they all leaned the same way, to the same degree, in the same moment, the forest would fall over. It’s the variation of sway that gives strength to the whole. Like us I’m thinking. Not so different from us. More same than different.

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do’s and don’ts, an ongoing list

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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Don’t fret about what you can’t do anything about.

Do what you can do in your own small space of self, community, your own three square feet. Consider your choices. DO what you can do. This is not nothing.

Stop scrolling. Just stop. Stop.

Breathe. Walk.

Read something made of paper. Listen to the sound of each page turning.

Think about what you just read.

Read a cook book and realize all the food in the world. Make some.

Find a window to look out of. Paint, write, sing, dance what you see. Send the painting to a friend.

Befriend a tree or a rock and if the weather allows, stick around a while, see if it befriends you back.

Find the sun, turn your face to it, eyes closed, heart open. Send it thanks. Not just on the solstice.

If you can breathe, walk, read, cook, write, sing, dance, paint, are near rocks and trees, if you are relatively healthy, safe, and comfortable, and if the sun occasionally shines, especially then, kiss the ground.

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Image courtesy of Wikicommons.

the catiquette of ‘things that shouldn’t be there’

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

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The way a cat enters a room and sees, on the floor, on the far side of said room, a bit of crumpled paper That Isn’t Supposed To Be There. The cat freezes. Stares. Eyes super wide and their expression as if That Is For Sure An Intruding Tiny Dragon Over There And Who Let THAT In?? She walks slowly, carefully, toward it. Brave. Extends a paw. (Brave but still careful.) Immediately determines it’s a bit of crumpled paper and just like that walks away. Turns her back on crumpled paper. Washes face in sunbeam. Somehow still cloaked in dignity.

Image courtesy WikiCommons.

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where the old liquor store used to be

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

I don’t have the kind of phone with GPS. Or internet. Or texting. I have the kind that’s decades old, half the size of a Crispy Crunch, and only with me when I’m in the car and then only used to call someone should the car stop moving for whatever reason. Never for directions. For directions I use the Pull Over And Ask That Person There system, which involves a) hope, and b) trying to remember what they say about going along this road until you get to where the old liquor store used to be then left at the place that used to be the school and past where the Zellers was, directions that almost always include a big tree or a purple house at some point.

And I’m fine with that. Because even if That Person There isn’t sure, but… or I’ve already forgotten what to do at the big tree, not to mention I haven’t a clue where Zellers was, there’s something rather jolly about the asking, the standing there on the side of a road with a stranger who’s trying their best to be helpful and then possibly getting even more lost anyway but something has changed, this moment of personal contact that keeps me feeling hopeful as I trundle along, discovering a wooden bridge over a stream, a hilltop view, a tearoom, and a tiny community art gallery I’d never have found otherwise and I make a mental note to come back when I have time to explore.

Assuming I can ever find any of it again.

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the serendipity of joice

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

I see one of these online and immediately buy a mop, whose hair I braid and not long after on a dollar rack at the front of my tiny thrift shop a perfect dress I’m not even looking for shouts at me and right beside it, the perfect blouse which I’m also not looking for and then at a garage sale a child is selling her old games and stuffed toys and a single pair of flowered pink wellies that feel full of beautiful child energy and when I say I’ll take them I notice the child’s face change and I say: I’ll bet you’re sad your feet don’t fit these anymore and she nods and I tell her I can see that they’re special and that I’ll take good care of them and she smiles and no sooner has it occurred to me to put ‘straw hat’ on my list for the next thrift shop visit than I remember the one in my beachbag I haven’t worn in years because I prefer a ball cap that says beach goats, which is another story entirely.

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