maybe the kids’ll be alright after all…

February 9, 2013February 11, 2013 ~ carin ~ 6 Comments

1. At the No Frills, where I go looking for a box to make a temporary three-sided bed for our elderly cat and for the first time in history find NO boxes in the discard bin — just as I’m giving up on that plan, a young man walks by, an employee, with a carton of just the right proportions, which he’s just about to pitch… and in the most happy-to-have-bumped-into-me way says yes, of course, I’m very welcome to have it as if he couldn’t be more delighted to have found such a good home for this stray bit of cardboard. And I think: what are the odds of that — the timing, certainly, but the gift of such good cheer from an unlikely source… especially when much needed.

2. A scruffy looking boy with dyed jet black hair, long and unkempt, smoking, jeans that begin somewhere around his thighs and a ragged shirt. Very bored, very detached demeanor, standing outside the plaza. I drive by [the carton from No Frills in my back seat] and notice an elderly woman exit the dental office with what looks like a large pizza box. Ten or so metres along, l look in my rear-view mirror, curious as to whether I’m imagining the pizza box and I see her fall on the icy pavement. I stop the car and in that instant of thinking I must go back to help, I see — still in the rear-view mirror — that, without missing a beat, the scruffy boy has leapt to her aid. They chat for a moment and then she and he go their separate ways.

3. On the way home I notice a hockey net on the frozen pond, and when I stop to take a picture, a boy appears, alone, with a hockey stick, heading in its direction.

That’s it.
That’s enough, I decide.
There’s hope still.

what’s not litter

January 14, 2013January 15, 2013 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

1. A green tennis ball stuck to the ice, immoveable, which is just as well once I realize that a gallumping, tail-wagging, tongue-lolling beast will likely be back tonight or tomorrow to look for it. And if it’s not IN ITS PLACE there will be hell to pay.

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2. Anything red and ribbony and tied to a tree.Or indeed any ribbony colour.

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3. Things on TOP of a garbage bin.Especially if that thing turns out to be a full Timmy’s.

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4. See #1 above. [No ice but same reasoning applies.]

wedding party under miami moon

January 11, 2013February 24, 2015 ~ carin ~ 12 Comments

It was a warm and windy night

on Matheson Hammock.

They were kite sailing in the bay,

Miami as a backdrop.

I was being silly.

The sky grew dark

the way skies do

especially at night

and the moon was out and there was a wedding on the beach.

The bride laughed as the wind whipped her skirt and shawl and later the wedding party, such as it was, a few friends, had dinner on the patio, all casual and chatty, not a young couple, fifty-ish. Not boisterous. Not like it was new or anything, this wedding lark. Not like there was anything to prove.

I didn’t get a picture of them.

But I got a star.

Some blue lights.

And a raccoon.
In the light of that wedding party moon.

◊♦◊

More Travel:

Montreal
Prince Edward Island
Stratford
Niagara Region
Peterborough
Chile
Vancouver

this isn’t about trains

November 30, 2012November 30, 2012 ~ carin ~ 8 Comments

I have a history with train tracks. Used to walk along them to school eating bunches of dark purple grapes from a nearby vineyard. This was before the invention of Canadian wine, when Ontario grapes were only useful for jelly, juice, or Baby Duck.

I think of this whenever I walk the path beside the tracks not far from my house—I remember the boys who played chicken with oncoming trains, and a ditch of tall grasses where older kids would hide and smoke at recess. The Brew Hole it was called. Maybe they drank beer too. I wouldn’t know. I was happy enough eating stolen grapes.

I also think of hoboes [different from tramps; hoboes work] and Arlo Guthrie. I imagine a kind of romance about riding the rails, leaning up against a bale of hay, watching the world swish by through an open door.

But tonight there’s no train. Just a few kids playing soccer in the field on the far side, near the school. Their voices so clear, laughter cutting through the evening chill. They’re not even playing a game, just kicking the ball around, making the most of the weather, keeping warm.

This is just before sunset. A brilliance of mango-ey light falls across the neighbourhood, over rooftops, making windows look almost liquid. I try to capture it but it never looks right; it’s like trying to photograph fairies.

The path beside the tracks eventually connects to the street where a woman about my age is strolling with her elderly mum. The mum uses a walker and goes slow and the daughter, hands in pockets, walks slightly ahead. I hear snippets of conversation: something something term deposits. It’s partly English and partly another language and only when I get close enough do I realize it’s German. The mother is asking questions about money and the daughter is short-tempered in her answers. The mother changes the subject. The daughter remains miffed. I feel for them both, but want to tell them: this time you have together… don’t waste it.

A man puts snow tires on his car while two boys ride different sized tricycles on the sidewalk around him.

And a few houses along two girls, maybe eleven or twelve, are drawing in chalk on their driveway. They wave as I pass and smile and they’re the ones who say hello first. It occurs to me how rare this is, the smiling and waving and speaking. Children have had so much of that warned out of them. But these girls—bless their brave souls—are fearless!

I loop around through the park, head homeward, and then I hear it.

The train.

If I hurry I might be able to make it back to the path and catch at least some of it but just as I get there the last car speeds by on the other side of the trees and then—silence. All those imaginary hoboes heading off to who knows where, who knows what kind of adventure, what sights await through that open door.

The sky has gone from orange and crimson to a yellow silvery blue.

The rooftops and windows look solid again.

I find a penny on the sidewalk, new and very shiny.

I toss it over my shoulder.

♦◊♦

“Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-coloured lenses which paint the world their own hue and each shows only what lies in its own focus.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

encounters in stillness

November 19, 2012December 11, 2012 ~ carin ~ 11 Comments

The first shock of frost on the grass this morning and in the sunrise, contrails suggesting warmer destinations. But I’m happy to be right here walking in this lightly iced air, watching my breath, proof that I am, indeed, here.

A faint scrunch underfoot, so small I have to concentrate to hear it. And then a bare patch where the earth is slick and a different kind of attention is necessary until, further along still, where the leaves are thick on the ground and the light filters through and there’s no ice, only a scent of hibernation, transformation, where leaves are leaving as leaves, changing not only colour but molecules, breaking down with a view to reappearing as loam—possibly as early as Spring—that’s where I let my guard down, on this decomposing carpet where the soles of my moderately priced runners feel secure.

There are places where the tall grass has bent over as if there’s no point in arguing, the cold mornings have won; it acquiesces, prepares to serve as a nest or bed for whoever or whatever would care to nest or bed there.

I walk down a slope toward the creek, once more careful, it’s muddy and slippery, warmer here, protected from wind, the sound of water like a conversation. I take off my red and white maple leaf mittens and do a quick standing salutation to the sun. This, before I notice a dog and walker a few metres away. I say good morning and expect a strange look but there’s only a glimmer of curiosity followed by an open, friendly smile.

I walk past the Italian man’s garden that faces the park, all tidy and empty, unlike mine, which still sports all manner of herbs and dandelions, still food. But we’re different styles, he and I. He grows vast quantities to preserve: tomatoes, beans, peppers, zucchini, eggplant. I grow the same things but mostly just enough to eat during the season, a few extra jars of this or that. I stop and talk to him sometimes. He invites me to take tomatoes. I never do. I tell him I grow my own and he smiles. He knows I’m an amateur and he’s right. Still, my garlic is not to be sniffed at.

On the way home I meet a neighbour who walks with a different purpose. Whereas I dress in babushka and an anorak, she’s got glow in the dark stripes and a proper walking toque. She stops and tells me to hang on a minute while she tries to turn off her device, grumbles that it’s finicky; I wait while she fiddles with the dial, eventually settling on turning it down because off isn’t working. Then she invites me to a xmas thing at her house. I promise to check the calendar.

Back through the creek I climb small hills, follow the narrow shoreline and wonder if the campers are down there again this year with their plywood lean-to and other comforts of home. They’re not, just bits of litter. I will never understand the mentality of letting something fall from your hand onto the ground…

The possibility of running into the campers changes my mood. I decide to go back up top where it’s open and then I catch a glimpse of something dark and big behind me.

There are coyotes in the ravine, I sometimes hear them at night. But it’s not them I worry about. I remember a conversation I had with my stepdaughter when she was very young, whether it would be scary to sleep in a cemetery all night. I said I wouldn’t be afraid as long as I could be guaranteed no people would show up.

Especially live ones.

I still feel the same way.

It’s never the outside that’s scary.

Even the dead bits.

Still…

I turn around.

A juniper bush stares back.

I let out a frosty breath and head home.

the power of dark

October 22, 2012October 22, 2012 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

This morning’s walk in all that lovely blackness, stars still out and street lights on—just the way I like it. In a few weeks we ‘fall back’ and mornings will be much brighter. I have no idea why we persist in this time altering routine every year. Didn’t it originate with children needing to help with farm chores before walking ten miles to school? Uphill. Both ways. Something like that. Light was important, that’s all I remember.

But that was before it was everywhere. All the time. Surely we could do with less of it now.

So I get up early and walk and in the darkness, I pass a young woman, she looks cosy in a pink hoodie, carries a large drinking container, presumably coffee [I’m not sure tea drinkers are as prone to wander about with flasks of chamomile and lapsang souchong, but I could be wrong]. Beside her an acorn coloured dog about the size and shape of a rolled up newspaper, walks in that sprightly way of short-legged canines who stroll with long-legged humans. She stares straight ahead, and the contrast between her yawning demeanor and the dog’s peppy Isn’t this great, isn’t this fun, doncha love a walk, doncha, doncha, doncha, wanna go faster, wanna throw me a stick, go ahead, throw me one, throw me one, isn’t this just so GREAT??!! vibe makes me smile. We exchange pleasant good mornings as we pass each other and I think what a civilized thing it is to greet a stranger so early in the day. A tiny celebration of being alive, the kind of greeting that doesn’t always happen on brighter occasions.

We walk the same loop but in opposite directions so a bit later meet again, this time both of us doing what Douglas Adams in The Meaning of Liff calls the corriecravie:

“…[a] highly skilled process by which both protagonists continue to approach while keeping up the pretence that they haven’t noticed each other…”

By now the streetlights are off, the day’s crept in and we can see each other quite clearly. Pink hoodie maintains her part in the corriecravie by chatting with the previously-ignored acorn pup while I feign interest in the leaves I’m kicking through, although we’re probably both en guarde for making eye contact and chuckling if necessary.

Turns out it’s not.

In the light of day we pass each other without a glance.

seen heard and noted on a late september ramble

September 28, 2012September 28, 2012 ~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A woman dashing, that is, walking swiftly and with purpose, from front door to car, but not without glancing up at a strolling passerby. That would be me. And then glancing away without so much a s Hale Fellow Well Met! I’m all set to say good morning but it’s clear she has no time for such nonsense.

A chap, in his thirties, looking smart in a purple tie, approaches his smart silver car, starts the engine then returns to his house, leaving the car in idle, spewing unpleasantness into his smart neighbourhood while he’s back inside his smart house possibly positioning his tie so as not to get anything on it as he slurps the dregs of his coffee, very possibly made with the very smartest of coffee makers.
I consider how early the poor soul will have to rise in order to warm his vehicular interior once the morning temperatures fall below 15 celsius.

Something about the pillows on the porch chairs, the shade of green, the fact that bird silhouettes are stenciled on them in a sort of pale burlap colour, the way they look recently leaned against, makes me warm to the strangers living inside this house.

The very day after someone asks: why is it you never see two people walking a dog?—and at the exact moment I’m pondering this almost-koan—I see coming toward me two people walking a lovely rust-coloured pooch of indeterminate breeding.

I notice a bottle of Listerine in a neighbour’s blue box. This feels an oddly personal thing to know about them.

A bottle and can man in a red and black lumberjacket pulls a trolley along the street. I know it’s bottles and cans, it’s recycling day and I can hear them clatter. I respect this form of earning a few bob. In fact, I’d like to see those plastic bottle return depots they have in Calgary. Keeps the streets cleaner, folk make a little dough and there’s less for the landfill. What don’t I know about this seemingly good idea? Why aren’t they in every city and town?

I’m pleased and proud to see Giant Tiger yard waste bags, also President’s Choice, Canadian Tire and ‘Life’ brand in my neighbourhood. I think maybe we’re actually, collectively, getting how every tiny choice matters, support local! choose wisely where you spend your dollars or you will soon be surrounded by big box stores! Maybe the 100 monkey thing is kicking in at last. Hooray! Then I turn a corner and just like that it’s all Costco and Home Depot, Loews. A different crowd entirely, and it occurs to me that you can probably judge someone’s politics by their yard waste bag as easily as a sign on the lawn.

Yet another man in red and black lumberjacket, this time a bathrobe. He sneezes as he walks to his garbage bag already on the street, opens it, adds something, then catches my eye as he turns and we say good morning, good morning. He looks like Peter Gzowski.

men

August 14, 2012March 20, 2015 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

The first one has a dog. A shih tzu, I think. Small and fluffy, friendly. A soft tongue and short attention span (the dog, I mean). He’s just coming out of the park and I know him so I stop and say hello, how’s the new puppy, has he changed your life? As it turns out, he has. They no longer need an alarm clock, the man says, not that they really want to get up at exactly 6:15 every morning now that they’re retired. He smiles when he says it though and then we say goodbye—me to the man, me to the dog. The man says goodbye for them both and as I round the corner I hear him talking to the dog in a sing-song voice that in no way matches his grey hair, weathered face, his sweat pants and tee-shirt: Let’s go home and see mommy…

The next is much younger. Shirtless and shooting hoops in his driveway. A dog, fox coloured and Lassie shaped, sits politely off to the side, presumably keeping score.

I’m not looking for men, they’re just about tonight as I wander through the neighbourhood and beyond. Maybe it’s the hour—6 p.m.—dinner being cooked, or just eaten. The wimmin inside playing with power tools or sewing on buttons.

The guy in a white floppy hat and suspenders putting out his recycling lives alone I decide. He’s lived in this same house, a small brick bungalow, for forty years; he was the first owner. He and his wife chose rose-pink broadloom from the builder’s catalogue to cover the hardwood; they panelled the basement, put in a fake fireplace and a dartboard. He has a little workbench in the corner and his wife crocheted doilies for the arms of every stick of living room furniture. Cabbage rose chintz. Went smashing with the rug. She died ten, maybe twelve, years ago. In her sleep. He’s still grateful for that. Not that she’s gone, but how she went. The kids moved out in the 80’s and come back most weekends to see how he’s doing; they bring food and stay for supper, wash dishes and tidy the place up a bit. All the clatter and voices makes him feel like almost no time has passed and he might even think it stood still if it weren’t for garbage day coming around the way it does, reminding him yet another whole week is gone.

A man in his 70’s sits on the porch with a woman in her 40’s. I’m guessing, his daughter. Something about the way he leans back and she, slightly forward, towards him, as if falling into familiar postures in each other’s company.

A younger man rakes grass clippings, having moved a soccer net and ball.

Another mows his lawn carefully, precisely, perfectly even rows on a perfect angle. I want to stop and ask what he does for a living. He’s either an engineer or an acrobat.

The construction workers are still jackhammering and chatting, and the guy around the corner shakes open a yard waste bag while the one across the road waters hanging baskets of red impatiens.

♣♣♣

sounds of summer

June 20, 2012June 21, 2012 ~ carin ~ Leave a comment

Gulls. Always gulls.
Then something else, a party of black birds, a celebration.
Ten thousand voices in the reeds.

The sound of roses.

—Wilting in the heat, the kerplunk of falling petals almost lost against the din of all that invisible black bird revelry.

Seaweed drying.
It sounds like this: schwimfftmtzwuft
You have to lean over to hear it.

The splash of a dog named Winston belly-flopping into the drink.

The slosh of my feet and the surf blocks voices of walkers, strollers, the breath of joggers, a herd of cyclists and a grown man working out on the monkey bars.

But a woman comes through loud and clear, warns of dog poop ahead.
“Somebody let their dog just poop, poop, poop…”

The skip of a stone.

Scrunch of pebbles.

Me cursing the mentality that appreciates beauty enough to come here, then spits in its face.

But no one warns of litter ahead…

Inhale.

Exhale.

friday the thirteenth

April 13, 2012April 14, 2012 ~ carin ~ 8 Comments

Starts with a massage.

My occasional luxury of choice. (Which really isn’t a luxury at all if you talk to Hippocrates.)

No complaints there. Even though the massage therapist tells me she’s not a morning person. I worry momentarily about cold stiff hands and lethargic moves, yawning from above, but she turns out to be great. Even gives me a couple of tips:

1) buy a timer to remind myself to stand up at my desk now and then, move about, roll my shoulders, breathe, etc.

2) get a new mattress every ten years.

So I go to the dollar store and buy a timer in the shape of a pear and while I’m in line I think about evolution and wonder if humans accidentally stopped evolving a lot sooner than we were meant to. I mean, everything else in the universe seems to have the sense to remember to roll its shoulders without the help of plastic fruit.

The woman ahead of me has two baskets filled with what I recognize as the fixings for loot-bags and I remember the first birthday party I organized for my stepson. He was nine. We did the usual: cake, lunch, games, arts and crafts, then a trip to the bowling alley for some five pin action. At the end of the day, as the parents started arriving to pick up their kids, and as we waved and said bye bye now, you little darlings, one of the kids said: so where are the loot bags? I had no idea what he was talking about. Last kid party I’d attended I was nine myself and the only thing I brought home was a piece of cake wrapped in a soggy serviette.

From there I take my still squishy, flushed, massage face with its massage table indentations to the library where I hope not to frighten small children. I smile the smile of the freshly massaged who have three books waiting to be picked up:

Gould’s Book of Fish: a novel in twelve fish, by Richard Flanagan
Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, by Joan Didion

I wander over to the free-giveaway shelves where I find a bumper crop of Canadian Gardening magazines. It would be selfish to scoop them all so I sit down and flip through each one in order to choose. Then scoop them all. (I paint a rosy cast over this unbecoming behaviour by telling myself I’ll return them to the giveaway shelves once I’ve finished reading them and have become a brilliant gardener; it could be a while…)

There are also a number of French books, including dozens of Harlequins, which remind me of a friend who once told me she learned French by reading stacks of Harlequins while living in Paris. I grab one for her for old times’ sake and one for me, as a learning aid. Also find a copy of Gabrielle Roy: De quoi t’ennuies-tu, Eveline? The cover shows a matronly woman in feathered hat and fur collared coat, a snow-covered field and two small houses in the background. I like it already. Er, that is… Je l’aime deja. (BTW, I had to google translate that, which tells you all you need to know about my French; I can only pray the Harlequin will do its magic.)

I should be heading home now but instead find myself entering a little second-hand clothing shop. The woman sitting by the till is covering for her daughter who has pleurisy. She’s taking care of her grandkids also. She looks tired. She lost her husband in February and helping her daughter keeps her mind off things, she says. I tell her she must remember to look after herself as well and she nods, smiles, says no one sails stormy seas forever. When I knock over a display with my shoulder bag she calmly fixes it while I apologize and worry about any teacups in the debris. She says no, nothing breakable, laughs, says it happens all the time. She’s one of those people. I’ll bet it doesn’t happen all the time at all.

I buy a floral print jacket in lime green and pale pink. An odd choice given that I mostly wear black with occasional splashes of white or grey. Never prints. Especially flower shaped ones. (Could it be that I picked up some weird pourquoi pas? c’est printemps! vibe among all those books with their covers of feathery hats, heaving bosoms and holiday themes…?)

By now it’s almost lunchtime so I decide to get some rotis and fish cakes from the Carribean place next door, and a new thing called ‘doubles’—a spicy chick pea wrap.

At home I pick dandelions in the garden, sorrel leaves too, make a salad and watch The Big Bang Theory, which I admit I’ve developed a slight addiction to.

I write.

I hang sheets.

I tidy the yard and make a note to buy more seeds.

Later I will have a glass of chardonnay on the patio and eat grilled salmon and Peter’s double baked potatoes, which we will douse with butter and sprinkle with garlic chives.

We will talk about the day. His, mine.

There will be reading.

Some gossip about the neighbours.

Plans for tomorrow.

And—despite the possiblilty of evolutionary glitches—very big chunks of gratitude.