My Love

Gem cleared the patio of its bounty of leaves today. Before he did so, I took photographs; A carpet of winged red maple. My angels peeping from gold and scarlet dreams.

He wore his old tweedy, leathery jacket, the one he basically now only wears for gardening and puttering around outside on frosty, nippy days. Occasionally I like to press my face against its scratchy folds as it hangs in the closet. There is something immensely comforting to me about the feel and scent of that jacket. It contains the essence of Gem's strength and manliness, his gentleness and his love. It is chock full of love. Love bursts through its seams in an accumulation; his silly little sayings, his uncomplaining toil, his long arms stretched out for the rake or mugs of coffee. Love, that I have sometimes in my conceit, taken lightly, as my due.

As a leaf raker may pray by raking, a lover may pray by intimate conversation with an old worn jacket.

Fred Dances

(Dancing sculpture, titled 'Joy' by Bruce Garner, in Ottawa.)

A few evenings ago I attended a local Kamloops Blazers hockey game with Gem and three of our friends. To be honest, I did not really closely follow the action on the ice, preferring to enjoy myself in my own absurd way. I was more interested in observing the other attendees around me. Near me was a mentally challenged man. He was about my age, stooped, very thin, bald, with an oddly elongated head. His jacket bore the name 'Fred' in white scripted letters. Fred clutched a large cup of coffee in one hand and in the other held a noise-maker. The young man seated beside him, obviously his caregiver, frequently reached over and dabbed dribbles of coffee from his chin.

Fred plied his noise-maker enthusiastically and appropriately throughout the game. Occasionally he'd look over and smile at me, nodding and smacking his lips. During the first intermission, Fred opened a small backpack that has been lying near his feet. One by one he removed the contents, lifting each up and showing me the item; a large bar of chocolate, a pen, a pair of gloves, a knitted hat, and a small battered stuffed mouse. I smiled and made a thumbs-up sign, and then rummaged in my purse and showed him the apple I had secreted there. Fred grinned and then pretended to feed the bar of chocolate to the mouse, as his caregiver smiled indulgently.

During the second intermission, the presenter announced a giveaway called 'Dance for your dinner', during which people could stand up in the aisle, dance to the music, and the winner would be given a $50 gift certificate to a local restaurant. As several young people began to dance, Fred observing them, stood up, removed his jacket and shuffled to the aisle a few seats away. As the music blared, this small, elfin figure lifted his arms and began to dance, unabashedly and unashamedly. Then he looked over at me and gestured for me to join him. I smiled and shook my head, but this didn't deter him. He waved at me again, using a broader, more expansive movement. Twenty seconds later, there we were, Fred and I dancing in the aisle together. Beaming at me, he echoed the sign I had made at him earlier, raising his hand in a prolonged thumbs up. My small embarrassment disappeared completely and I just gave myself in to the moment.

Neither of us won the prize, but I am humbled to have been a tiny part of the heart, instinct and courage I witnessed that night. Joy, indeed.

Verismo

A living tree is taken so I may give birth
to words on paper, and yet today
I see only Rorschach splattering ink on the wall.

"I see a sleepless angel"...
"I see a clumsy lover"...
"I see a girl crying in a Rowan tree"...
"I see Mary calling out for grace".

but my fingers are still.

Holy Smoke

This afternoon Gem and I made a wonderful visit to a local Native Museum and Heritage Park. Located on the banks of the South Thompson River, there are more than a kilometre of trails leading through the archaeological remains of a two thousand year old Secwepemc village. This major archaeological site includes a cache of over fifty unique lodges. It also features four authentically reconstructed winter pit-houses.


I spoke with a remarkable eighty year old aboriginal woman, an elder, whose stories both enthralled and captivated me. She told how in the old days, as a little girl in her village, there was always a welcoming fire. Everyone shared what they had in a circle around the flames; smoky morsels of fish and wild meat, bannock, tea. She said, too, how when you saw smoke rising from the huts, you knew you were welcome, that it was not too early to make a call on your neighbour. The whole village was blessed with a mingling of the smoke from the many fires of the community. Nowadays, she said, sighing deeply to express her sorrow, nowadays, you hardly see any smoke, and people are too busy to visit their neighbours.


There was a time when smoke communicated the presence of the holy. Where there is smoke there is fire, the fire of the scared energy at the heart of life, the hearth of creation. The first peoples of this continent experienced the communion of the sacred sweat lodge and the vision sleep ... ecstasies induced by the smoke from ritual fires. Even now, when I see smoke rising from a bonfire of fallen maple leaves or I get a resinous whiff of alder smoke from a fireplace, I sense the benediction of a spiritual, fleeting presence.

"For my days", says the psalmist, "pass away like smoke." Sometimes it's a holy thing to allow ourselves to be transformed, to be absorbed into the very air we breathe, the apparent nothing which is everything.

Clothed Body and Soul

I gather the velour infant sleeper , the little red fleece hoodie, the small Canucks hockey jersey, and the brown Carhart overalls that my oldest grandson, D, loved so much and insisted on wearing until the straps literally dug into his shoulders. All are outgrown now. They contain memories as palpable as the fabric between my fingers as I fold them neatly. Each recalls a time-woven tapestry of the three years when two of our grandsons lived with us.


I remember buying baby M that orange sleeper with the man-in-the-moon decal over his heart during that first harried week as we frantically readied a room for the boys. It speaks to me of those early days after they had arrived beautiful, beguiling and a little bewildered, at three and half years and six months old. I took this picture of him wearing them, sweetly sleeping in the borrowed crib Gem had scrubbed, in the bedroom where the sky-blue paint still smelled new and looked unfamiliar. How full my heart was that first night five years ago.

I remember the joy on D's face when he chose the little hockey jersey, how he clutched it to his chest, his face beaming. My fingers linger over the small red hoodie, and I joyously recall M, at age 14 months, lying on the grass at our summer cottage kicking his legs in beatific delight.


Parting with my children's outgrown clothing is a ritual which has always given me bittersweet pangs. Over the years, some I have given away, some I have donated to a women’s transition house where sometimes mothers and little ones show up in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Yet others, I can’t let go; the first tiny pink dress purchased by her Daddy for our daughter Sarah-Beth when she was born, The cub scout shirt with its rows of badges so proudly earned by my eldest son, Nicholas. The penguin sweatshirt belonging to my younger son, Joshua, which he loved into faded shabiness. He wore it until the opening would no longer stretch over his head and the sleeves were only a little past his elbows. I remember his words when he solemnly accepted the fact that he just couldn't wear it again, "He was a good penguin, wasn't he, Mummy?"

All these items are imbued with the souls of my children. I place them back into my memory box, adding to them the few items now outgrown by my grandsons. The freshness, sweetness and fragility of their history reach down to the very marrow of my bones. They are strewn with the songs of yesterday; tunes of dawning faith and promise and unblemished hope. They still possess the power to both nourish and elate.

October Gratitude

Here, in this deeply wooded land, I have a ringside seat to all this season holds. Each day the colours intensify. Less green, more gold and lemon, rust, orange and deep red.

Sometimes I stand rapturously with my mouth open in wonder. I wander around in a dream-like state, thinking of superlative adjective after adjective, a successive seasonal litany. The children I encounter on my daily little walks romp in a glorious shuffling of boots and fleece jackets. They gather pine cones and clutch reddening leaves in their hands.

I took my five year old grandson, M, for a walk in the park on a crisp October afternoon. Following an old ritual I recently read about, I told him to gather the five most perfect autumn leaves he could find, and that each would represent the giving of a perfect day to someone he loves. The collecting done, we stood holding our bounty on the pier overlooking the river. One by one he tossed them into the rippling water, calling out the names ... "Daddy, I wish for you a perfect day! Nana, I wish for you a perfect day!" The delight of the afternoon is as sweet, as spicy, as fragrant as a Macintosh apple.


October is a time of the fullness of ripening. Seed pods hang swollen from the memory of their petals. The orchards and fields lie bloated in their excess. Pumpkins and squash rise among their slow leaves and show their thick skins to the paling sun. Cool mornings ride on the hot air balloon of Indian summer afternoons. My arms take turns in wool and skin.

This, too, is the season of fragility. I think maybe wholeness is possible only when we embrace our fragility. It is a paradox, perhaps, that the only way to really be fully alive is to open your heart to all your life contains ... the sad and poignant and hurting, too. My heart often feels wrung, as if all the grief and joys of my life are stirring together in one large lump in my throat.

I always take pleasure in finding an apple on which birds have fed. We all make our mark on the things we touch, and the curves and arabesques of the birds’ beak is a signature to its hunger. Writing is like that for me. It is the food I carve my name upon. I feel much gratitude this October day to once again possess the strength to write.

Northern Reflections

The Northern Lights, interpreted by the Tlingit of Alaska as the dancing of human spirits, came alive for me in a glorious concert Gem and I attended last evening. We accompanied lovely new friends to a concert given by the Thompson Valley Community Orchestra. Themed 'Northern Reflections', it featured gorgeous music from Norway, Finland and Russia; Jean Sibelius, Edvard Grieg, Gustav Holst, Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov, Peter Tchaikovsky, Alexander Scriabin. The guest pianist was a brilliant, passionate twenty-one year old young man named Clinton Denoni, who last year won the Canadian composer's class at the B.C. Festival of the Performing Arts.

The music, under the direction of the wonderfully talented Norris Berg, came alive in banners of unfurling green light, each note possessing its own geometry of grace. I felt nourished as I listened, my soul fed. I could feel the distinctly Northern reflections of each piece; music seeking the kaleidoscopic transformation of the ever-shifting beauty of mountains, of snow, of liquidity and ice, of dark and light.


It occurred to me as we drove home, that the whole evening was a form of prayer; an intimate dialogue, gathered and given. For just as a dancers pray by dancing, and musicians pray by playing music, we human beings have a continuous, ongoing need for prayer through the rituals of communing.

(Clinton Denoni, wonderful young pianist.)

Dance of February

Today is all glitter and sunlight and blue shadows. Swells of the sheerest intimation of winter transition quivers in my bones; a tune that teases memory but can’t quite find the words.

After waving goodbye to my parents, who have been visiting for the past week, I hasten to go for a walk. There are melting pools of snow everywhere as the temperature soars to 8 degrees above zero. For the first time in months my body feels an inkling of spring. It registers in my legs, my brain, my heart.

The snow has separated into bone-shaped islands. Blonde grasses peek out everywhere. I stop and eat my apple on a small bridge while looking out at the thawing skin of the river. I knew I was weary of the winter crust on my world, but I hadn't realized quite how much until I feel the glad leap in my heart.

On my way home, I run into my neighbour out walking with her two little ones. B, aged three, scampers ahead, stamping his little boots, mittened hands pawing the thinning snow for treasure. Not having seen her close-up since the autumn, I am astonished at how big baby L has grown. Fat, dimpled, pink-cheeked, she grins at me, revealing two perfect pearly teeth. I issue an impromptu invitation for lunch, and am accepted.

We unwind scarves, remove snowsuits, undo boots. I pass the baby to her mother, a soft, plump burden of love, and then seek out the box full of little toy cars for her brother. I bring out, too, the big Noah's Ark with all the animals. Ben finds this fascinating. Soon giraffes and lions, sheep and elephants, jostle for position in the ark alongside myriad little cars. Baby L gums and drools on a sculpted plastic camel.

I chat with their mother as I add a mixture of sauteed scallions, dried apricots, roughly chopped almonds, and a diced Granny Smith apple to rice cooked in chicken broth. B would prefer a grilled cheese sandwich, and this I prepare as I sear scallops in garlic butter to serve with the rice.

My neighbour comments on a garden plaque resting on the Welsh dresser. It reads 'My Secret Garden'. This I bought the other day because it called to me, partly because The Secret Garden was one of my favourite books as a child, and partly, because I think each of us possesses a secret garden of self which just needs the right conditions to unfurl. We all need light and warmth and watering tears and tender hands. Once the snow disappears completely, I will place the plaque outside.

As we eat and laugh and sip tea and savour the antics of the children, a wave of feeling rushes over me. The dance of February; slowly releasing the soil, stretching the spiralling buds ... thwarting the breath of winter, not just in nature, but in we human beings, too.

Magpie Tales: The Piano Teacher's House

The Piano Teacher’s House

Floors of hardwood, high ceilings,
white curtains, candlesticks on the
brick hearth, clock ticking in dark
wood. Glass bowl of seashells.
No shouting here. No stale beer smell.

She waits for her turn making
up stories for the pictures
lining the room. Babies in white
dresses, men in uniforms,
women in plumes and velvet.

The green house with the piano
converts black insects into
music. She plays them into
gilt-edged pages of incense
breathing secret beauty.

Too soon, in the car, sitting
next to her father, not talking,
eyes closed, trying to keep
the piano teacher’s house
humming inside her.


(Go here for more Magpie Tales.)

The Pink Cape

(Jo, aged ten years old, 1967.)

Spring in my family meant new spring clothes; a dress or two, new shoes, and a spring coat. Usually the clothing was sewn by my mother, and although I’d see the pattern, and glory in tracing my fingers along the fabric, my sisters and I would only have glimpses of the garments until they were almost finished. Sometimes I’d gaze in wonder and growing anticipation at the little heap of shapes on my mother’s sewing table.

She had a small sewing room right off the kitchen at our house. My bedroom was directly above it, and often I could hear the whirring of the sewing machine at night when I drifted off to sleep. It was a lullaby that always made me feel loved.

My mother was happy when she sewed. "You’re going to love it", she would say, smiling, "As soon as I saw that material, I knew it was exactly the right shade to bring out the green in your eyes." Or, "Princess Anne has a dress just like the one I‘m making you. I saw it in my magazine." In a trifling, I’d imagine myself in my new dress, feeling beautiful as the material floated around me.

The year I was ten years old, my mother sewed me a cape for my new spring coat. It was of pink Melton cloth with a darker pink silk lining and magenta buttons. I hated it! I had expected a coat. The picture on the front of the pattern had showed three figures. My eyes had fixated on the two in coats, barely noting the one girl wearing a cape. No one in my class wore a cape. Nor did anyone else I knew.

My mother, as she measured the hem line on me, knew immediately that I didn’t like it. I also knew I would have to wear it anyway. That didn’t stop me protesting, though. My disappointment came flooding out in a litany of grievances:

"Nobody wears a cape. Nobody!"

"Everyone is going to laugh at me."

"Couldn’t I just wear my old coat?"

My face burned with dislike, and also with shame at having offended my mother.

I wore my cape to school for the first time, filled with mute despair. I tried to carry my satchel strategically front of me, and place my arms in such a way that it hid the fact that it was a cape. To no avail, of course, and my fears of being teased were realized. Being called, "Stinky Pinky Bat Girl!" really doesn’t sound all that dreadful now, but I was a very sensitive little girl, and at the time it stung to the quick.

A few weeks after the cape made its debut, my father had business in London and he took me with him for the day. This was a rare treat, and I was thrilled, despite having to wear my pink nemesis.

As I waited in a rather grand reception room as my father attended his meeting, my eyes were increasingly drawn to a beautiful young woman sitting at the big polished desk. I don’t remember what she was wearing, just that I was very impressed with her beauty and poise.

As my father and I went to leave, I was startled when this elegant being spoke to me, "Your cape is just lovely. It’s the very height of fashion. You look so chic in it!" I left the building feeling almost like I had just had a bath; clean, transformed.

My father and I went out for lunch, and then to feed the pigeons at Trafalgar Square. He snapped my picture as I stood there in my pink cape. The delight of that spring day glows in my face.

In time I grew to love that cape. In fact, I wish I still had it.

(This is a Saturday Sepia post.)