Author: carin

here is a day

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

It begins with the light.

Different this morning, although not really anything you can single out. The sun comes up, shines; the sky is blue, the trees are naked.

The grass still shivers and the only blooms are the brave-hearted snowdrops. But something has changed.

It’s spring.

No matter what the calendar says, no matter if there’s a blizzard tomorrow—a corner has been turned. The squirrels know it and so do the doves, the neighbourhood stray and the fly that landed on my arm today as I sat reading on the patio. It’s like hair. One day it’s perfectly fine, like it’s been for weeks or months, and the next [and you will never know how this can happen] it’s changed and it needs a cut and it will not be fine again until you cut it.

Spring arrives like that. Overnight. And suddenly everything is different. Regardless of weather, it will not be winter again until the last month of the year.

So we go for a walk on this beautiful spring day, Peter and I.

We walk to the grocery store to buy some baby food for Jake The Cat who’s a bit plugged up with shedding-his-winter-coat hairballs; my cat book recommends a recipe involving a veggie/meat blend along with melted butter, psyllium husks and water.

It’s about twenty minutes, if that, through a ravine and a park where, amongst all that loveliness, somehow people decide to just drop things and carry on.

We carry bags to scoop up the debris.

Back home again, I bake what could be my favourite thing in the world— today I use (local, frozen from summer) cherries.

And while I do, the sun shines in on my beach glass [and sunshine on my beach glass makes me happy…]
I read outside.

And I read inside.

I vacuum downstairs, but not upstairs.

I write a little. Not a lot.
And too soon the sun is on the other side of the house and making those end of day shadows on the guy across the street’s garage door and the wall in the living room and I put chicken wings in the oven and shrimps on the barbie…

— and Peter pours glasses of wine and today’s light will soon be gone but it was here and it was spring light, and before it fades and turns suddenly too cold to sit outside comfortably…

…I sit comfortably.
Happy spring.

Note:  Jake The Cat ate his ‘recipe’ and, later, things cleared up nicely. [In case you were wondering.]

blame it on the cheese

~ carin ~ 10 Comments

Last night was a blast.

Went to the fabulous annual Trafalgar 24 event hosted by Driftwood Theatre Group. A night of plays. Six of them. Each no more than fifteen minutes long and each staged in a different part of a local castle [once a private home, now a private girls’ school]. The plays run concurrently and continuously as the audience [divided into six groups] makes its way from venue to venue [venues being the landing of a grand staircase, library, science lab, locker room, chapel, and auditorium].

Here’s the best part: the plays have all been written and rehearsed in the 24 hours preceding the event.

Each playwright [there are six] arrives at the castle the night before the show, where they’re given a venue, a theme and some actors, after which they spend the night locked in the castle, writing. In the morning they rewrite and rehearse until showtime at 7:30 p.m.

The whole thing sounds mad and, really, there should be chaos at every turn, anxiety in the corridors, voices, flushed faces, crossed eyes. But the reality is the exact opposite. The thing is brilliantly organized and every year comes off smooth as silk. In fact [and I don’t know how this is possible] everyone involved—from volunteers, organizers, actors, writers—appears to be in complete control, mellow even. Surely drugs are involved. Herbs, at least… [aromatherapy?]

There is also food. And drink. And a silent auction.

But it’s all about the plays and when all six audience groups have completed the circuit and seen all six plays, they’re asked to submit a vote for their favourite.

At the same time a jury is sequestered in a very comfy lounge on very comfy large sofas to discuss the whys and hows and wherefores of each play and to determine the overall winner [said winner receives a commission and subsequent workshop with director, actors and dramaturge, to develop their play].

Now then… the astute reader may, at this point, wonder how it is I know the sofas of the jury room are large and comfy…

To which I would reply: I bought myself a seat.

It’s true.

It cost a bit, but was worth it. There was a bidding war, you see.

It started the way these things do. I was just standing around eating cheese when the emcee announced that the highest bidder would get a seat on the jury along with D. Jeremey Smith, C. Derrick Chua, Toby Malone, Lynn Slotkin and Kathryn Westoll. He started at two million dollars.  Ha ha, I thought, What a card.  I continued nibbling my cheddar, sort of listening, sort of not. At some point he lowered the opening bid to a hundred. A few people bandied numbers back and forth. At something like two fifty it was about to end with a guy at the front trying to impress his date.

Coincidentally, it was at that moment I’d finished the last of my cheese. My hands were empty. One of them shot up.

Two hundred and eighty!  the emcee shouted. He appeared to be pointing at me.

It went on from there.

Long story short. I won.

So, later that night, after the plays were done, I sat with the five judges in a private room and listened with rapt attention to the chat about each performance, loving the passion that every single juror put forward. Remember, these were plays written and rehearsed in less than a day. Didn’t matter. They were treated with a respect for the form that almost made my eyes water. What I loved most was that I’m pretty sure the conversation would have had the same intensity had it been about plays staged at Stratford or Shaw—the focus was on the work not the marquee. It was an honour to be privy to this behind the scenes banter, to be in that room with these people who adore the art of theatre. Period.

Also a privilege to be able to donate dollars to something I believe in. A tiny drop in the bucket of hope that it will continue it’s good work. Which, if it does, ends up in a way being a gift to myself.

Congratulations to the playwrights, actors and directors. And to Driftwood for setting the stage so perfectly— Bravo! You do amazing things.

Trafalgar-Castle-SchoolClick for castle tour.

a rough cove…

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

“I heard me grandmother say that when the first of our family came here, the French settlement was abandoned. They said it was too rough a cove for fishing out of. It just suited our people….”

“Those old midwives that were here then, they were only trying to do the best they could, the best they knew how. Didn’t know very much, but they’d try to born the babies and do whatever they could. I often heard my mother telling about it. When the baby’d be born, you’d be put to bed for nine days; and what clothes you had on you when you went to bed, that’s what’d be on you when you’d get up. She said you’d be so sore you wouldn’t be able to walk; you’d be chafed to death with the clothes. That was their belief. If you took off the clothes you had on—all the warm clothes—you’d get cold then. Die then.”

— from Outport: The Soul of Newfoundland, by Candace Cochrane (Flanker Press, 2008)

things missing something

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Twinkle lights on front yard bushes. Pretty but they seem out of place without a reason, xmas for instance, to attach themselves to—a purpose other than simple loveliness during these still dark early evenings. My, how narrow we are. I am.

A horse trailer without a horse. And in a neigh(pun not intended, but I like it)bourhood that can in no way accommodate a horse, secretly, in a backyard. Or in any way otherwise.

A bright orange wrist thingy with a whistle attached. I don’t like seeing this. Makes me wonder how it got detached from its wrist. And if it belonged to a child, when did we start making children wear whistles? And did wearing it [or worse, the need to wear it] make him/her [I suspect it was a her] feel safer or more afraid?

i’m not your honey, toots

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

I finally did it. For years and years I’ve been swearing that one day I’d respond in kind when someone called me Dear or Sweetie. (Anyone, that is, outside a grandmotherly type, or kindly uncle-ish/auntie-ish soul, or anyone in Newfoundland… or, for that matter, anyone who does it correctly, like the British, who are masters at endearment, as are several other nationalities in various languages and dialects. Delivery is everything with this; it’s what comes with it that grates, more than any specific word.)

Well. Today someone did it. Incorrectly. Honey, they called me. About my age, maybe a bit younger. (And yes, it does make a difference sometimes.)

As usual, I was momentarily taken aback—wrong person, wrong tone—and normally, in my taken-abackedness, I miss my opportunity. But not today. Today, still within the window of normal response time, I rallied, answering in a reciprocal tone, casual, as if nothing unusual was going on a’tall, a’tall.

When she said Would you like a bag, honey?  I said: no thanks, sweetheart.

I’m not sure what I expected to happen. (Would bells go off, the manager be summoned?) Thing is, I didn’t do it for a reaction; it just needed to be done. To be honest, I assumed she wouldn’t even notice but she glanced at me in what felt like an awkward beat before things got back to normal. As if she was also slightly offended but hardly in a position to say so.

I was smiling the whole time of course, which may have confused her even more.
Most importantly, I realized it was the right thing to do. I enjoyed it immensely, and, who knows, maybe she got something out of it too.

So, yeah, I’m kind of looking forward to the next time. Go ahead, call me Dearie—and be prepared for a Snookums in return.

airing my laundry

~ carin ~ 8 Comments

If you, like me, have always thought hanging laundry in winter results in plank-sheets, you, like me, have probably not been leaving them out long enough. 

I first heard the rumour last year, that letting them go beyond the plankified state is the way to get things soft and dry. I heard it from a Saskatchewan woman and why it didn’t sink in, I can’t imagine. Who would know better about the dynamics of wind and air? (I’m sure my mother may have mentioned this also, but I was probably too busy knowing everything at the time to listen…)

Well, seems they were both right. Laundry will dry in below freezing weather as long as the air around it is drier than the laundry itself, as explained here in the Globe and Mail’s ‘Collected Wisdom’. Temperature doesn’t matter; you just have to leave it outside long enough.

If you, like me, get a weird thrill from hanging laundry year-round, this will be happy news.

If, on the other hand, you hate laundry in all forms, read this, from Geist, and feel better about your placement in the freshly scented, fabric softened, evolutionary conga/laundry line of life.

dear lady

~ carin ~ 14 Comments

Dear lady in the check-out line at Sobeys who the whole time the cashier rang in your stuff you were on the phone… So how ARE you? Uh huh, uh huh…. and in this way you managed to ignore her, the cashier I mean, even as she gave you the amount and set up the ATM machine and thanked you and printed out your receipt and handed it to you… all during that you never once made eye contact… And how is Brittany? Uh huh… oh wow… uh huh…

Yes, it’s true, I was watching you. And listening. Forgive me. I assumed you wouldn’t mind given how your personal space (and everyone else’s) doesn’t seem overly important to you. Forgive me also for any sarcasm you may detect in this note, of which there is plenty, especially if Brittany, et al, are in the throes of dysentry or scurvy and you are their ward nurse, checking in (though even that could probably have waited until you were in the parking lot).

Mostly, dear lady, I’m writing to say how much you missed. The cashier was a lovely person and when, after you left, it was my turn, and I said to her, in an exaggerated way: So, how are YOU?…  she got it and laughed (please don’t think we were mocking you although we were) and then as she rang in my yellow tulips and my spinach we talked about Spring and she said she was thinking of planting her first garden ever in Canada this year, flowers mostly, and I suggested including a few tomatoes and some lettuce and she said she would do that even if her husband thought she was mental. And I said good. Because the world needs more gardens.

That is what the world needs, dear lady. Gardens. And conversations with people who are standing right in front of you.